On the 19th of November 1527, some Spaniards in a caravel loading cassava at the Isle of Mona, between Hispaniola and Porto Rico, sighted a strange vessel of about 250 tons well-armed with cannon, and believing it to be a ship from Spain sent a boat to make inquiries. The new-comers at the same time were seen to launch a pinnace carrying some twenty-five men, all armed with corselets and bows. As the two boats approached the Spaniards inquired the nationality of the strangers and were told that they were English. The story given by the English master was that his ship and another had been fitted out by the King of England and had sailed from London to discover the land of the Great Khan; that they had been separated in a great storm; that this ship afterwards ran into a sea of ice, and unable to get through, turned south, touched at Bacallaos (Newfoundland), where the pilot was killed by Indians, and sailing 400 leagues along the coast of "terra nueva" had found her way to this island of Porto Rico. The Englishmen offered to show their commission written in Latin and Romance, which the Spanish captain could not read; and after sojourning at the island for two days, they inquired for the route to Hispaniola and sailed away. On the evening of 25th November this same vessel appeared before the port of San Domingo, the capital of Hispaniola, where the master with ten or twelve sailors went ashore in a boat to ask leave to enter and trade. This they obtained, for the alguazil mayor and two pilots were sent back with them to bring the ship into port. But early next morning, when they approached the shore, the Spanish alcaide, Francisco de Tapia, commanded a gun to be fired at the ship from the castle; whereupon the English, seeing the reception accorded them, sailed back to Porto Rico, there obtained some provisions in exchange for pewter and cloth, and departed for Europe, "where it is believed that they never arrived, for nothing is known of them." The alcaide, says Herrera, was imprisoned by the oidores, because he did not, instead of driving the ship away, allow her to enter the port, whence she could not have departed without the permission of the city and the fort.[43]
This is the earliest record we possess of the appearance of an English ship in the waters of Spanish America. Others, however, soon followed. In 1530 William Hawkins, father of the famous John Hawkins, ventured in "a tall and goodly ship ... called the 'Polo of Plymouth,'" down to the coast of Guinea, trafficked with the natives for gold-dust and ivory, and then crossed the ocean to Brazil, "where he behaved himself so wisely with those savage people" that one of the kings of the country took ship with him to England and was presented to Henry VIII. at Whitehall.[44] The real occasion, however, for the appearance of foreign ships in Spanish-American waters was the new occupation of carrying negroes from the African coast to the Spanish colonies to be sold as slaves. The rapid depopulation of the Indies, and the really serious concern of the Spanish crown for the preservation of the indigenes, had compelled the Spanish government to permit the introduction of negro slaves from an early period. At first restricted to Christian slaves carried from Spain, after 1510 licences to take over a certain number, subject of course to governmental imposts, were given to private individuals; and in August 1518, owing to the incessant clamour of the colonists for more negroes, Laurent de Gouvenot, Governor of Bresa and one of the foreign favourites of Charles V., obtained the first regular contract to carry 4000 slaves directly from Africa to the West Indies.[45] With slight modifications the contract system became permanent, and with it, as a natural consequence, came contraband trade. Cargoes of negroes were frequently "run" from Africa by Spaniards and Portuguese, and as early as 1506 an order was issued to expel all contraband slaves from Hispaniola.[46] The supply never equalled the demand, however, and this explains why John Hawkins found it so profitable to carry ship-loads of blacks across from the Guinea coast, and why Spanish colonists could not resist the temptation to buy them, notwithstanding the stringent laws against trading with foreigners.
The first voyage of John Hawkins was made in 1562-63. In conjunction with Thomas Hampton he fitted out three vessels and sailed for Sierra Leone. There he collected, "partly by the sword and partly by other means," some 300 negroes, and with this valuable human freight crossed the Atlantic to San Domingo in Hispaniola. Uncertain as to his reception, Hawkins on his arrival pretended that he had been driven in by foul weather, and was in need of provisions, but without ready money to pay for them. He therefore requested permission to sell "certain slaves he had with him." The opportunity was eagerly welcomed by the planters, and the governor, not thinking it necessary to construe his orders from home too stringently, allowed two-thirds of the cargo to be sold. As neither Hawkins nor the Spanish colonists anticipated any serious displeasure on the part of Philip II., the remaining 100 slaves were left as a deposit with the Council of the island. Hawkins invested the proceeds in a return cargo of hides, half of which he sent in Spanish vessels to Spain under the care of his partner, while he returned with the rest to England. The Spanish Government, however, was not going to sanction for a moment the intrusion of the English into the Indies. On Hampton's arrival at Cadiz his cargo was confiscated and he himself narrowly escaped the Inquisition. The slaves left in San Domingo were forfeited, and Hawkins, although he "cursed, threatened and implored," could not obtain a farthing for his lost hides and negroes. The only result of his demands was the dispatch of a peremptory order to the West Indies that no English vessel should be allowed under any pretext to trade there.[47]
The second of the great Elizabethan sea-captains to beard the Spanish lion was Hawkins' friend and pupil, Francis Drake. In 1567 he accompanied Hawkins on his third expedition. With six ships, one of which was lent by the Queen herself, they sailed from Plymouth in October, picked up about 450 slaves on the Guinea coast, sighted Dominica in the West Indies in March, and coasted along the mainland of South America past Margarita and Cape de la Vela, carrying on a "tolerable good trade." Rio de la Hacha they stormed with 200 men, losing only two in the encounter; but they were scattered by a tempest near Cartagena and driven into the Gulf of Mexico, where, on 16th September, they entered the narrow port of S. Juan d'Ulloa or Vera Cruz. The next day the fleet of New Spain, consisting of thirteen large ships, appeared outside, and after an exchange of pledges of peace and amity with the English intruders, entered on the 20th. On the morning of the 24th, however, a fierce encounter was begun, and Hawkins and Drake, stubbornly defending themselves against tremendous odds, were glad to escape with two shattered vessels and the loss of £100,000 treasure. After a voyage of terrible suffering, Drake, in the "Judith," succeeded in reaching England on 20th January 1569, and Hawkins followed five days later.[48] Within a few years, however, Drake was away again, this time alone and with the sole, unblushing purpose of robbing the Dons. With only two ships and seventy-three men he prowled about the waters of the West Indies for almost a year, capturing and rifling Spanish vessels, plundering towns on the Main and intercepting convoys of treasure across the Isthmus of Darien. In 1577 he sailed on the voyage which carried him round the world, a feat for which he was knighted, promoted to the rank of admiral, and visited by the Queen on board his ship, the "Golden Hind." While Drake was being feted in London as the hero of the hour, Philip of Spain from his cell in the Escorial must have execrated these English sea-rovers whose visits brought ruin to his colonies and menaced the safety of his treasure galleons.
In the autumn of 1585 Drake was again in command of a formidable armament intended against the West Indies. Supported by 2000 troops under General Carleill, and by Martin Frobisher and Francis Knollys in the fleet, he took and plundered San Domingo, and after occupying Cartagena for six weeks ransomed the city for 110,000 ducats. This fearless old Elizabethan sailed from Plymouth on his last voyage in August 1595. Though under the joint command of Drake and Hawkins, the expedition seemed doomed to disaster throughout its course. One vessel, the "Francis," fell into the hands of the Spaniards. While the fleet was passing through the Virgin Isles, Hawkins fell ill and died. A desperate attack was made on S. Juan de Porto Rico, but the English, after losing forty or fifty men, were compelled to retire. Drake then proceeded to the Main, where in turn he captured and plundered Rancherias, Rio de la Hacha, Santa Marta and Nombre de Dios. With 750 soldiers he made a bold attempt to cross the isthmus to the city of Panama, but turned back after the loss of eighty or ninety of his followers. A few days later, on 15th January 1596, he too fell ill, died on the 28th, and was buried in a leaden coffin off the coast of Darien.[49]
Hawkins and Drake, however, were by no means the only English privateers of that century in American waters. Names like Oxenham, Grenville, Raleigh and Clifford, and others of lesser fame, such as Winter, Knollys and Barker, helped to swell the roll of these Elizabethan sea-rovers. To many a gallant sailor the Caribbean Sea was a happy hunting-ground where he might indulge at his pleasure any propensities to lawless adventure. If in 1588 he had helped to scatter the Invincible Armada, he now pillaged treasure ships on the coasts of the Spanish Main; if he had been with Drake to flout his Catholic Majesty at Cadiz, he now closed with the Spaniards within their distant cities beyond the seas. Thus he lined his own pockets with Spanish doubloons, and incidentally curbed Philip's power of invading England. Nor must we think these mariners the same as the lawless buccaneers of a later period. The men of this generation were of a sterner and more fanatical mould, men who for their wildest acts often claimed the sanction of religious convictions. Whether they carried off the heathen from Africa, or plundered the fleets of Romish Spain, they were but entering upon "the heritage of the saints." Judged by the standards of our own century they were pirates and freebooters, but in the eyes of their fellow-countrymen their attacks upon the Spaniards seemed fair and honourable.
The last of the great privateering voyages for which Drake had set the example was the armament which Lord George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, sent against Porto Rico in 1598. The ill-starred expeditions of Raleigh to Guiana in 1595 and again in 1617 belong rather to the history of exploration and colonization. Clifford, "courtier, gambler and buccaneer," having run through a great part of his very considerable fortune, had seized the opportunity offered him by the plunder of the Spanish colonies to re-coup himself; and during a period of twelve years, from 1586 to 1598, almost every year fitted out, and often himself commanded, an expedition against the Spaniards. In his last and most ambitious effort, in 1598, he equipped twenty vessels entirely at his own cost, sailed from Plymouth in March, and on 6th June laid siege to the city of San Juan, which he proposed to clear of Spaniards and establish as an English stronghold. Although the place was captured, the expedition proved a fiasco. A violent sickness broke out among the troops, and as Clifford had already sailed away with some of the ships to Flores to lie in wait for the treasure fleet, Sir Thomas Berkeley, who was left in command in Porto Rico, abandoned the island and returned to rejoin the Earl.[50]
The English in the sixteenth century, however, had no monopoly of this piratical game. The French did something in their own way, and the Dutch were not far behind. Indeed, the French may claim to have set the example for the Elizabethan freebooters, for in the first half of the sixteenth century privateers flocked to the Spanish Indies from Dieppe, Brest and the towns of the Basque coast. The gleam of the golden lingots of Peru, and the pale lights of the emeralds from the mountains of New Granada, exercised a hypnotic influence not only on ordinary seamen but on merchants and on seigneurs with depleted fortunes. Names like Jean Terrier, Jacques Sore and François le Clerc, the latter popularly called "Pie de Palo," or "wooden-leg," by the Spaniards, were as detestable in Spanish ears as those of the great English captains. Even before 1500 French corsairs hovered about Cape St Vincent and among the Azores and the Canaries; and their prowess and audacity were so feared that Columbus, on returning from his third voyage in 1498, declared that he had sailed for the island of Madeira by a new route to avoid meeting a French fleet which was awaiting him near St Vincent.[51] With the establishment of the system of armed convoys, however, and the presence of Spanish fleets on the coast of Europe, the corsairs suffered some painful reverses which impelled them to transfer their operations to American waters. Thereafter Spanish records are full of references to attacks by Frenchmen on Havana, St. Jago de Cuba, San Domingo and towns on the mainland of South and Central America; full of appeals, too, from the colonies to the neglectful authorities in Spain, urging them to send artillery, cruisers and munitions of war for their defence.[52]