DRAKE.
Francis Drake, the first British circumnavigator of the globe, was born in Devonshire, of humble parents. So much is admitted: with respect to the date of his birth, and the method of his nurture, our annalists, Camden and Stowe, are not agreed. By the latter we are told that Drake was born at Tavistock, about 1545, and brought up under the care of a kinsman, the well-known navigator, Sir John Hawkins. Camden, on the other hand, anticipates his birth by several years, and says that he was bound apprentice to a small shipowner on the coast of Kent, who, dying unmarried, in reward of his industry, bestowed his bark upon him as a legacy. Both accounts agree that in 1667 he went with Hawkins to the West Indies on a trading voyage, which gave its colour to the rest of his life. Their little squadron was obliged by stress of weather to put into St. Juan de Ulloa, on the coast of Mexico; where, after being received with a show of amity, it was beset and attacked by a superior force, and only two vessels escaped. To make amends for his losses in this adventure, in the quaint language of the biographer Prince, in his ‘Worthies of Devon,’ “Mr. Drake was persuaded by the minister of his ship that he might lawfully recover the value of the King of Spain by reprisal, and repair his losses upon him any where else. The case was clear in sea divinity; and few are such infidels as not to believe in doctrines which make for their profit. Whereupon Drake, though then a poor private man, undertook to revenge himself upon so mighty a monarch.”
Engraved by W. Holl.
DRAKE.
From an original Picture in the possession of
Sir T. F. Eliott Drake Bart. of Nutwell Court, near Exeter.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.
Dr. Johnson, in his ‘Life of Drake,’ states, with perfect complacency and without a word of qualification, that the bold sailor determined on an expedition, “by which the Spaniards should feel how imprudently they always act who injure and insult a brave man.” In his national zeal, the moralist seems to have forgotten that the retaliation of which he speaks was a lawless robbery, exercised upon the peaceable subjects of a king with whom we were not at war, in satisfaction of a wrong in which they the sufferers had neither part nor interest, and that this forcible levying of satisfaction, without national warrant and commission, is what in modern language we call piracy. It is fortunate for the peace of the world that this system of “sea divinity” is gone by. But in judging of this undertaking, which the courage, constancy, and success of its contriver could not by themselves save from the stigma of piracy, we must take into account the peculiar circumstances of the times. War, it is true, was not declared between Spain and England; but the bigotry of Philip II., his deep-rooted hatred and persecution of the Protestant religion, and his known support of the Catholic malcontents, caused Spain to be regarded by the English Protestants as their deadliest enemy; so that the plunder of Spanish America might be regarded, in the language of the Puritans, merely as a spoiling of the Egyptians; and the more because it was pretty clear, however the Queen’s prudence might delay it, that a breach must ensue between the two nations ere long. This feeling was strengthened by the jealous care with which the Spaniards sought to exclude all foreigners from navigating the new-discovered seas; and there is some justice in Elizabeth’s reply to the Spanish ambassador, when he complained of Drake’s piracies, that his countrymen, by arrogating a right to the whole new world, and excluding thence all other European nations who should sail thither, even with a view of exercising the most lawful commerce, naturally tempted others to make a violent irruption into those regions.
In the years 1570–1 Drake made two voyages to the West Indies, apparently to gain a more precise acquaintance with the seas, the situation, strength, and wealth of the Spanish settlements. In 1572 he sailed with two ships, one of seventy-five tons, the other of twenty-five tons, their united crews mustering only seventy-three men and boys, all volunteers. His object was to capture the now ruined city of Nombre de Dios, situated on the isthmus of Panama a few miles east of Porto Bello, then the great repository of all the treasure conveyed from Mexico to Spain. Off the coast of America his little armament was augmented by an English bark with thirty men on board; so that, deducting those whom it was necessary to leave in charge of the ships, his available force fell short of an hundred men. This handful of bold men attacked the town, which was unwalled, on the night of July 22, and found their way to the market-place, where the captain received a severe wound. He concealed his hurt until the public treasury was reached, but before it could be broken open, he became faint from loss of blood, and his disheartened followers abandoned the attempt, and carried him perforce on board ship. Such at least is the account of the English: there is a Portuguese statement in ‘Hakluyt’s Voyages,’ vol. iii. p. 525, less favourable both to the daring and success of the assailants.
Failing in this attempt, Drake continued for some time on the coast, visiting Carthagena and other places, and making prize of various ships; and if we wonder at his hardihood in adventuring with such scanty means to remain for months in the midst of an awakened and inveterate enemy, how much more surprising is it that the wealthy, proud, and powerful monarchy of Spain should so neglect the care of its most precious colonies, as to leave them unable to crush so slight a foe. The English appear to have felt perfectly at their ease; they cruised about, formed an intimate alliance with an Indian tribe, named Symerons, the bond of union being a common hatred of the Spaniards, and built a fort on a small island of difficult access, at the mouth of a river, where they remained from September 24, to February 3, 1573. On the latter day, Drake set forth with one portion of his associates, under the conduct of the Symerons, to cross the isthmus. On the fourth day they reached a central hill, where stood a remarkable “goodly and great high tree, in which the Indians had cut and made divers steps to ascend up neere unto the top, where they had also made a convenient bower, wherein ten or twelve men might easily sitt; and from thence wee might without any difficulty plainly see the Atlantic Ocean, whence now wee came, and the South Atlantic (i. e. Pacific), so much desired. After our captain had ascended to this bower with the chief Symeron, and having, as it pleased God at that time, by reason of the brize, a very faire day, had seen that sea of which he had heard such golden reports, he besought Almighty God of his goodness to give him life and leave to sayle once in an English ship in that sea.” We quote from a tract entitled ‘Sir Francis Drake Revived,’ written by some of Drake’s companions, corrected, it is said, by himself, and published by his nephew in 1626, which contains a full and interesting account of this adventurous expedition. Drake’s present object was to intercept a convoy of treasure on the way from Panama to Nombre de Dios. The route was this: eight leagues from Panama, lying inland to the north-west, is the town of Venta Cruz, high on the river Chagre. For this distance merchandise was carried on mules, then embarked in flat-bottomed boats, and carried down the river to its mouth, then shipped for Nombre de Dios, or after the abandonment of that town, for Porto Bello; and this is the route by which it has often been proposed to make a canal to join the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. By this route the treasures of Peru and Chili, as well as Mexico, were brought to Europe, for the passage round Cape Horn was then unknown, and no ship but Magalhaens’ had yet accomplished the passage round the world to Europe. Guided by the Symerons, the English approached Panama, learned that a valuable treasure was expected to pass, and beset the lonely forest road which it had to travel. But the haste of one drunken man gave a premature alarm, in consequence of which the march of the caravan was stopped: and Drake with his party, their golden hopes being thus defeated, forced their way through Venta Cruz, and returned by a shorter route to their encampment, after a toilsome and fruitless journey of three weeks. It was not till April 1, that the long-desired opportunity presented itself, on which day they took a caravan of mules laden with silver, and a small quantity of gold. They carried off part of the spoil, and buried about fifteen tons of silver; but on returning for it, they found that it had been recovered by the Spaniards.
Drake returned to England, August 9, 1573. In dividing the treasure he showed the strictest honour, and even generosity; yet his share was large enough to pay for fitting out three ships, with which he served as a volunteer in Ireland under the Earl of Essex, and “did excellent service both by sea and land in the winning of divers strong forts.” In 1577, he obtained a commission from Queen Elizabeth to conduct a squadron into the South Seas. What was the purport of the commission we do not find: it appears from subsequent passages that it gave to Drake the power of life and death over his followers; but it would seem from the Queen’s hesitation in approving his proceedings, that it was not intended to authorize (at least formally) his depredations on Spanish property.
With five ships, the largest the Pelican of one hundred tons burden, the smallest a pinnace of fifteen tons, manned in all with only 164 men, Drake sailed from Plymouth, November 15, 1577, to visit seas where no English vessel had ever sailed. Without serious loss, or adventure worthy of notice, the fleet arrived at Port St. Julian, on the coast of Patagonia, June 20, 1578. Here the discoverer Magalhaens had tried and executed his second in command on a charge of mutiny, and the same spot did Drake select to perform a similar tragedy. He accused the officer next to himself, Thomas Doughty, of plots to defeat the expedition and take his life; plots undertaken, he said, before they had left England. “Proofs were required and alleged, so many and so evident, that the gentleman himself, stricken with remorse, acknowledged himself to have deserved death;” and of three things presented to him, either immediate execution, or to be set on shore on the main, or to be sent home to answer for his conduct, he chose the former; and having at his own request received the sacrament together with Drake, and dined with him in farther token of amity, he cheerfully laid his head on the block, according to the sentence pronounced by forty of the chiefest persons in the fleet. Such is the account published by Drake’s nephew, in ‘The World Encompassed,’ of which we shall only observe, without passing judgment on the action, that Drake’s conduct in taking out a person whom he knew to be ill affected to him, was as singular as is the behaviour and sudden and acute penitence attributed to Doughty. But we have no account from any friend of the sufferer. It is fair to state the judgment of Camden, who says, “that the more unprejudiced men in the fleet thought Doughty had been guilty of insubordination, and that Drake in jealousy removed him as a rival. But some persons, who thought they could see further than others, said that Drake had been ordered by the Earl of Leicester to take off Doughty, because he spread a report that Leicester had procured the death of the Earl of Essex.”