From these buccaneering expeditions he was led to his greater exploit in “ploughing a furrow” round the globe, with the incidental discovery of California for the English.
XVI
DRAKE’S GREAT EXPLOITS
Francis Drake was born near Tavistock, Devonshire, where a colossal statue of the great navigator now stands. The date of his birth is uncertain. By local tradition it is given as about 1545, and this is generally accepted by his later biographers, but some authorities place it five years earlier. Authorities also differ as to his parentage. Some contemporary writers aver that his father was Robert Drake, first a sailor, afterward a preacher; according to others he was Edmond or Edmund Drake, also a sailor turned preacher, who, in 1560, became vicar of Upchurch in Kent, and died there in 1566. The second Sir Francis Drake, nephew of the navigator, related of the father that he suffered persecution, and “being forced to fly from his home near South Tavistocke in Devon unto Kent,” was there obliged “to inhabit in the hull of a shippe, wherein many of his younger sonnes were born.” He had twelve sons in all, “and as it pleased God to give most of them a being on the water so the great part of them dyed at sea.” William Camden, the contemporary historian and antiquarian, recorded that the father, after coming to Kent, earned his living by reading prayers to the seamen of the fleet in the River Medway.
When yet a boy Francis Drake was a trained sailor. He was early apprenticed to the master of a bark employed in a coasting trade, and sometimes carrying merchandise into Zealand and France. The youth’s industry and aptness in this business, says Camden, so “pleased the old man,” his master, that, “being a bachelor, at his death he bequeathed his bark unto him by will and testament.” At twenty, assuming the true date of his birth to have been about 1545, he joined with one Captain John Lovell in a trading voyage to Guinea and across to the West Indies and the Spanish Main. The next year, 1566, they made a second voyage to the same points, and on the Spanish Main, at Rio del Hacha, they suffered losses through the Spaniards. Doubtless the knowledge gained in these two voyages made him particularly serviceable to his kinsman, John Hawkins, and brought him the command of the “Judith” in their fatal voyage of the following year. He is said to have invested in this disastrous venture the whole of his little property acquired in his previous voyages and in the earlier coasting trade, and to have lost it all through the affair at San Juan d’Ulloa.
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE.
Upon reaching home with the “Judith,” bringing the first news of the fate of this expedition, he was immediately, on the very night of his arrival, despatched to London by Hawkins’s brother William, at that time governor of Plymouth, to inform the privy council and Sir William Cecil, then the secretary of state, “of the whole proceedings,” "to the end that the queen might be advertised of the same." Thus he was brought to the attention of the influential minister and, indirectly, to the favour of the court. At least he was given the support of letters from the queen in the move that he at once instituted for recompense from Spain for his losses. When at length he had become satisfied that nothing could be obtained through diplomatic councils, he determined to “use such helps as he might” to redress by ravaging the Spanish Main on his own account. Accordingly he first made two voyages in succession, the one in 1570 with two small ships, the “Dragon” and the “Swan,” the other in 1571 with the “Swan” alone, particularly to obtain “certain notice of the persons and places aimed at.” These reconnoitring expeditions convinced him that the towns would fall an easy prey to a small armed force, and were also gainful in plunder taken off the coast along the way. Thereupon he promptly arranged for his freebooting voyage, to avenge not only the San Juan d’Ulloa affair but the earlier one at Rio del Hacha.
For daring and audacity this voyage was astonishing, and its results were quick wealth to Drake and renown as a masterful man of the sea. Two ships, the “Swan” of the previous voyages, and the “Pasha,” a larger vessel, of seventy tons, with three “dainty” pinnaces in parts, stowed in the holds of the ships to be set up when occasion served, comprised the equipment. Drake sailed the “Pasha” as the “admiral,” while one of his brothers, John Drake, was captain of the “Swan” as “vice-admiral” of the fleet. Another brother, Joseph Drake, went along as a sailor. The company numbered in all seventy-three men and boys. All were volunteers, and all were under thirty years of age, excepting one who was not over fifty. The ships were well provisioned for a year, and they were fully armed, each like a man-of-war of that day. Although the enterprise was ostensibly Drake’s alone, it had a substantial backing furnished by influential silent partners.
The expedition set sail from Plymouth on Whitsunday eve, the twenty-fourth of May, 1572, with intent first to raid Nombre de Dios, on the north coast of the Isthmus of Darien, then “the granary of the West Indies wherein the golden harvest brought from Peru and Mexico was hoarded up till it could be conveyed into Spain.” On the sixth of July the high land of Santa Marta was sighted, and six days later the ships were anchored in a secret harbour within the Gulf of Darien, framed in a luxuriant mass of trees and vine, which Drake had discovered on his second reconnoitering voyage, and called “Port Pheasant,” "by reason of the great store of these goodly fowls which he and his company did then daily kill and feed upon" here. It is supposed to have been the Puerto Escondido, or “Hidden Haven” of the Spaniards. Upon entering it was seen that the nest had very recently been occupied, and, landing, Drake found nailed to a great tree a lead plate upon which was posted a warning that their rendezvous had been discovered by the Spaniards, signed John Gannet, and dated five days before. Gannet was presumably the former master of the “Minion,” of Hawkins’s ill-fortuned fleet. He had come out to the Spanish Main on a voyage of his own shortly before the sailing of Drake. Undisturbed by this warning Drake put his carpenters to work at setting up the pinnaces, and the rest of the company at fortifying the place with ramparts of trees. In the meantime there sailed into the snug harbour another English bark. This was captained by James Rouse, the former master of the lost “William and John” of the Hawkins expedition. He also had sailed on a part trading and part buccaneering voyage before Drake had left Plymouth. His company numbered thirty men, some of whom had been in Drake’s second reconnoitring voyage. They brought in two small prizes, one a caravel of Seville, a despatch boat, bound for Nombre de Dios, which they had captured the previous day, the other a shallop taken at Cape Blanc. Rouse joined forces with Drake.
Having got the pinnaces and all things in readiness within a week’s time, the fleet was off for their first foray. Coming to the Isla de Pinos (Isles of Pines), a group at the mouth of the Gulf of Darien (called by them “Port Plenty”), they found here two frigates for Nombre de Dios lading planks and timber, with a number of black men on board at work. These blacks were half-breeds, belonging to a local tribe sprung from self-freed Negro slaves and native Indians, known as “Cimaroons,” or “Maroons,” as the English sailors termed them, enrolled under two chiefs, and constant enemies of the Spanish. The frigates were seized, and the black men were taken to the mainland and set ashore to join their tribe and gain their liberty if they would, or, if they were disposed to warn Nombre de Dios, to make the troublesome journey overland, which they could not finish before the Englishmen could reach the place by sea. Then leaving the three ships with the prize in charge of Captain Rouse, and taking fifty-three of his own men and twenty of Rouse’s band, and adding Rouse’s shallop to his fleet of pinnaces, Drake “hastened his own going with speed and secrecy.” Five days later they had arrived at the island of “Cativaas” (Catives), off the mouth of the St. Francis, to the westward of which Nombre de Dios lay. Here they landed and spent part of a day making ready for the assault. Drake distributed the arms among the men and delivered a heartening speech setting before them the “greatness of the hope of good things” in this store house of treasure which might be theirs for the taking. That afternoon they again set sail and at sunset they were alongside the main. Keeping “hard aboard the shore” that they might not be “descried of the Watch House,” they made their cautious way till they had come within two leagues of the port. At this point they anchored till after dark. Then again “rowing hard aboard shore,” as quietly as they could, they attained a sheltered place in the harbour under high land, where they lay “all silent,” purposing to make the attack at daylight. When, however, talk of the “greatness of the town” and of its strength for defence, based upon stories told by the blacks at the Isles of Pines, was found to be spreading among the men, Drake “thought it best to put these conceits out of their heads,” by prompter action, taking advantage of the rising of the moon that night which he would persuade them “was the day dawning.” By this strategy the advance was begun at three o’clock, a “large houre sooner than first was purposed.”