Half hours on the quarter-deck: The Spanish Armada to Sir Cloudesley Shovel 1670

by Anonymous

ROCHELLE.

In 1567 Hawkins sailed in charge of an expedition for the relief of the French Protestants at Rochelle. This object was satisfactorily effected, and he proceeded to prepare for a third voyage to the West Indies. Before this expedition sailed, Hawkins, while off Cativater waiting the queen’s orders, had an opportunity, of which he made prompt and spirited use, for vindicating the honours of the queen’s flag. A Spanish fleet of fifty sail, bound for Flanders, passed comparatively near to the coast, and in sight of Hawkins’ squadron, without saluting by lowering their top-sails, and taking in their flags. Hawkins ordered a shot to be fired across the bows of the leading ship. No notice was taken of this, whereupon he ordered another to be fired, that would make its mark. The second shot went through the hull of the admiral, whereupon the Spaniards struck sail and came to an anchor. The Spanish general sent a messenger to demand the meaning of this hostile demonstration. Hawkins would not accept the message, or even permit the messenger to come on board. On the Spanish general sending again, Hawkins sent him the explanation that he had not paid the reverence due to the queen, that his coming in force without doing so was suspicious; and he concluded his reply by ordering the Spanish general to sheer off, or he would be treated as an enemy. On coming together, and further parley, Hawkins and the Spaniard arrived at an amicable understanding, and concluded their conferences in reconciliation feasts and convivialities, on board and on shore.

The new expedition sailed on the 2nd October 1567. The squadron consisted of the Jesus of Lubeck, the Minion, and four other ships. As before, the adventurers made first for Guinea, the favourite gathering-ground for the inhuman traffic, and collected there a crowd of five hundred negroes, the hapless victims of their cupidity. The greater number of these they disposed of at splendid prices, in money or produce, in Spanish America. Touching at Rio Del Hacha, to Hawkins’ indignant surprise, the governor, believing it to be within his right, refused to trade with him. Such arrogance was not to be submitted to, and Hawkins landed a storming party, who assaulted and took the town, which, if it did not exactly make things pleasant, compelled submission, and, for the invading adventurers, a profitable trade. Having made the most he could of Hacha, Hawkins next proceeded to Carthagena, where he disposed, at good prices, of the remainder of the five hundred slaves.

The adventurers were now (September 1568) in good condition for returning home with riches, leaving honours out of consideration, but the time had passed for their having their own will and way. Plain sailing in smooth seas was over with them; storm and trouble, and struggle for dear life, awaited them. Shortly after leaving Carthagena the squadron was overtaken by violent storms, and for refuge they made, as well as they could, for St. John de Ulloa, in the Gulf of Mexico. While in the harbour, the Spanish fleet came up in force, and was about to enter. Hawkins was in an awkward position. He liked not the Spaniards, and would fain have given their vastly superior force a wide berth. He tried what diplomacy would do. He sent a message to the viceroy that the English were there only for provisions, for which they would pay, and he asked the good offices of the viceroy, for the preservation of an honourable peace. The terms proposed by Hawkins were assented to, and hostages for the observance of the conditions were exchanged. But he was dealing with deceivers. On Thursday, September 23rd, he noticed great activity in the carrying of ammunition to the Spanish ships, and that a great many men were joining the ships from the shore. He sent to the viceroy demanding the meaning of all this, and had fair promises sent back in return. Again Hawkins sent Robert Barret, master of the Jesus, who knew the Spanish language, to demand whether it was not true that a large number of men were concealed in a 900-ton ship that lay next to the Minion, and why it was that the guns of the Spanish fleet were all pointed at the English ships. The viceroy answered this demand by ordering Barret into irons, and directing the trumpet to sound a charge. At this time Hawkins was at dinner in his cabin with a treacherous guest, Don Augustine de Villa Nueva, who had accepted the rôle of Hawkins’ assassin. John Chamberlain, of Hawkins’ bodyguard, detected the dagger up the traitor’s sleeve, denounced him, and had him cared for. Going on deck, Hawkins found the English attacked on all sides; an overpowering crowd of enemies from the great Spanish ship alongside was pouring into the Minion. With a loud voice he shouted, “God and St. George! Fall upon those traitors, and rescue the Minion!” His men eagerly answered the call, leaped out of the Jesus into the Minion, and made short work with the enemy, slaughtering them wholesale, and driving out the remnant. Having cleared the Minion of the enemy, they did equally effective service with the ship’s guns; they sent a shot into the Spanish vice-admiral’s ship that, probably from piercing the powder-room, blew up the ship and three hundred men with it. On the other hand, all the Englishmen who happened to be on shore were cut off, except three who escaped by swimming from shore to their ships. The English were overmatched to an enormous extent, by the fleet and the attack from the shore. The Spaniards took the Swallow, and burnt the Angel. The Jesus had the fore-mast cut down by a shot, and the main-mast shattered. The Spaniards set fire to two of their own ships, with which they bore down upon the Jesus, with the desire of setting it on fire. In dire extremity, and to avert the calamity of having their ship burnt, the crew, without orders, cut the cables and put to sea; they returned, however, to take Hawkins on board. The English ships suffered greatly by the shots from the shore, as well as from the fleet, but inflicted, considering the disparity in strength of the combatants, much greater damage than they sustained. The ships of the Spanish admiral and vice-admiral were both disabled,—the latter destroyed; four other Spanish ships were sunk or burnt. Of the Spanish fighting men,—fifteen hundred in number at the commencement of the battle,—five hundred and forty, or more than a third, were killed or wounded. The Jesus and the Minion fought themselves clear of the Spaniards, but the former was so much damaged as to be unmanageable, and the Minion, with Hawkins and most of his men on board, and the Judith, of 50 tons, were the only ships that escaped. The sanguinary action lasted from noon until evening. The wreckage to such an extent of Hawkins’ fleet involved, of course, a heavy deduction from his fortune.

After leaving St. John de Ulloa, the adventurers suffered great privations. Their design to replenish their failing stock of provisions had been frustrated, and Hawkins was now threatened with mutiny among the crew, because of the famine that seemed imminent, and which he was powerless to avert. They entered a creek in the Bay of Mexico, at the mouth of the river Tampico. A number of the men demanded to be left on shore, declaring that they would rather be on shore to eat dogs and cats, parrots, rats, and monkeys, than remain on board to starve to death. “Four score and sixteen” men thus elected to be left on shore. Job Hortop, one of the crew, who left a narrative of the voyage, states that Hawkins counselled the men he was leaving to “serve God and love one another, and courteously bade them a sorrowful farewell.” On the return voyage, Hawkins and the remnant with him, sustained great hardships and privations. At Vigo, where he touched, he met with some English ships, from which he was able to obtain, by arrangement, twelve stout seamen, to assist his reduced and enfeebled crew, in the working of his ships for the remainder of the homeward voyage. He sailed from Vigo on the 20th January 1569, and reached Mount’s Bay, Cornwall, on the 25th of the same month. Thus ended his third eventful and disastrous expedition to El Dorado.

The poor fellows, left on shore in Mexico, entered upon a terrible campaign of danger and suffering. The first party of Indians that the castaways fell in with, slaughtered a number of them, but on discovering that they were not Spaniards, whom the Indians hated inveterately, spared the remainder, and directed them to the port of Tampico. It is recorded of two of their number, Richard Brown and Richard Twide, that they performed the wonderful feat, under such cruel disadvantages and difficulties, of marching across the North American continent from Mexico to Nova Scotia,—from which they were brought home in a French ship. Others of the wanderers fell into the hands of the Spaniards, who sent some of them prisoners to Mexico, and others to Spain, where, by sentence of the Holy Inquisition, some were burnt to death, and others consigned for long terms to imprisonment. Miles Philips, one of the crew, reached England, after many perilous adventures and hair-breadth ’scapes, in 1582. Job Hortop and John Bone were sentenced to imprisonment for ten years. Hortop, after twenty-three years’ absence from England, spent in Hawkins’ fleet, and in wanderings, imprisonment, and divers perils, reached home in 1590, and wrote an interesting account of the voyage, and of his personal adventures.

SIR JOHN HAWKINS PURSUING THE SHIPS OF THE ARMADA.

In his last expedition Hawkins had returned with impaired fortune, but without dishonour. He had, indeed, added to the lustre of England, and to his personal renown, by the skill and valour he had displayed in the affair of St. John de Ulloa,—in which the glory was his, and infamy attached to the treacherous Spaniards, whose immense superiority in strength should have enabled them to extinguish their enemy, instead of being beaten by him. In recognition of his valour, Hawkins was granted by Clarencieux, king at arms, further heraldic honours, in an augmentation of his arms; he was also appointed Treasurer to the Navy, an office of great honour and profit.