The Boy's Hakluyt: English Voyages of Adventure and Discovery

by Edwin M. Bacon; Richard Hakluyt

From the moment of leaving the Cape Verde Islands, they sailed fifty-four days without sight of land. On the fifth of April the Brazilian coast presented itself to view. In the distance they saw fires on the coast. These they afterward learned were set by the natives when their ships were sighted, as a sacrifice to “the devils about which they use conjurations.” The custom of these natives, it seemed, whenever a strange ship approached the coast was to perform weird ceremonies to conjure the gathering of shoals and the outbreak of tempests by which the ship would be cast away. Two days afterward there actually came upon them a “mightie great storme both of lightning, rayne, and thunder,” during which they lost the “Christopher,” their captured canter. While sailing southward, however, they found her a few days later, and the place where she was met Drake called the “Cape of Joy.” Landing, they found no people, but the footprints they saw in the clay ground led them to believe that the inhabitants were “men of great statute,” if not giants. On or about the twenty-seventh of April they were at the great river La Plata. They merely entered it, and finding no good harbour bore to sea again. In bearing out the “Swan” was missed. They next made harbour in a fair bay where were a number of islands, on one of which were seen many “sea wolves” (seals). In early June they were anchored in another harbour, farther south, which they called “Seal Bay” because of the abundance of seal here. They killed from two hundred to three hundred of them, the chronicler averred, within an hour’s time. Again the “Swan” was found, and having become unseaworthy, she was stripped of her furnishings and burned. A few days later the “Christopher” was also discharged for the same reason. On the twentieth of June the fleet came to anchor at Port St. Julien, Patagonia, above the Strait of Magellan, giving entrance to the Pacific.

St. Julien was the original winter port of Magelhaens, so named and established by him, and whence he sailed to his discovery of the mysterious strait. Drake similarly made it his port for recuperation and preparation before attempting his passage of this strait to the goal of his ambition. Here two months were spent, while the ships were put in thorough condition,—three only, now, the “Mary,” the Portuguese prize, having been broken up on her arrival because leaky,—and the company disciplined for the better conduct of the adventures before them. The stay was most dramatically and painfully marked, however, by the trial, conviction, and beheading of Drake’s friend, the unfortunate Master Doughty, on the charge of inciting a mutiny in the fleet. The sight of a gibbet set up, as was supposed, seventy years before by Magelhaens for the execution of certain mutineers in his company, may have suggested this inexplicable proceeding, which has been the subject of much speculation by historians and of condemnation by Drake’s harsher critics. The affair is thus vividly reported, with careful particularity, by Hakluyt’s chronicler:

“The Generall began to inquire diligently of the actions of M. Thomas Doughtie and found them not to be such as he looked for, but tending rather to contention or mutinie, or some other disorder, whereby (without redresse) the successe of the voyage might greatly have been hazarded: whereupon the company was called together and made acquainted with the particulars of the cause, which were found partly by master Doughtie’s owne confession, and partly by the evidence of the fact, to be true: which when our Generall saw, although his private affection of M. Doughtie (as hee then in the presence of us all sacredly protested) was great, yet the care he had of the state of the voyage, of the expectation of her Majestie, and of the honour of his countrey did more touch him (as indeede it ought) then [than] the private respect of one man: so that the cause being thoroughly heard, and all things done in good order as neere as might be to the course of our lawes in England, it was concluded that M. Doughtie should receive punishment according to the qualitie of the offence: and he seeing no remedie but patience for himselfe, desired before his death to receive the Communion, which he did at the hands of M. Fletcher our Minister, and our Generall himselfe accompanied him in that holy action: which being done, and the place of execution made ready, hee having embraced our Generall and taken his leave of all the companie, with prayers for the Queenes majestie and our realme, in quiet sort laid his head to the blocke, where he ended his life.”

Whether he were guilty or not, Doughty’s fine courage and manly bearing throughout his ordeal calls only for admiration.

The execution over, Drake made a speech to the assembled company, persuading them to “unitie, obedience, love, and regard of” their voyage: and “for the better confirmation thereof” he “willed every man the next Sunday following to prepare himselfe to receive the Communion as Christian brethren and friends ought to doe.” This, the chronicler concludes, was done “in very reverent sort, and so with good contentment every man went about his businesse.”

St. Julien was left on the seventeenth of August, and on the twentieth the mouth of the Strait of Magellan was reached. At the entrance, Drake, as another chronicler recorded, caused the fleet, in homage to the queen of England, to “strike their topsails upon the bunt as a token of his willing and glad mind to shew his dutiful obedience to her highness, whom he acknowledged to have full interest and right” in his discoveries; and he formally changed the name of his own ship from the “Pelican” to the “Golden Hind,” in remembrance of his “honourable friend and favourer,” Sir Christopher Hatton, whose crest bore this design. Then the chaplain delivered a sermon and the ceremonies closed.

The passage of the strait was successfully made in the remarkable time of sixteen days, and on the sixth of September the little fleet emerged in the sea of their desire on the “backside” of America.

Instead, however, of the tranquil ocean that Magelhaens had named the Pacific, because of its serenity when he first saw it, they encountered a rough and turbulent water; and no sooner had they cleared the strait than a great storm arose by which they were driven some two hundred leagues westward, and separated. The “Golden Hind” was struggling against the almost continuous tempest for full fifty-three days. From the west she was carried south as far as fifty-seven degrees, and Drake was enabled to see the union of the Atlantic and the Pacific, and by chance to discover Cape Horn. He sighted numerous islands, and gave the name of the “Elizabethides” to the whole group of Tierra del Fuego. While beating about west and south the fleet came together again, but only soon to be parted forever. In the middle of September a harbour was temporarily made in a bay which Drake called the “Bay of Severing Friends.” Working northward again they stood in a bay near the strait. The next day the cable of the “Golden Hind” parted and she drove out to sea. Thus she lost sight of the “Elizabeth,” and never saw her more. It was supposed that she had been put by the storm into the strait again, and that she would ultimately be met somewhere above. The first part of this supposition was correct. She had recovered the strait. But instead of returning to the Pacific course Captain Winter made the passage back to the Atlantic, and so continued his voyage homeward, reaching England on the first of November. Captain Winter prepared an account of his companionship with Drake from the start, and of his experiences after parting with him, which Hakluyt reproduced. On the second of October the “Marigold,” in trying to regain lost ground, fell away from the “Golden Hind” and afterward (though Drake was not aware of her fate) foundered with all on board.

Now the “Golden Hind” was left alone with a single pinnace. Subsequently the pinnace with eight men in her separated from him and was seen no more. Her crew, as was some years after related by the single survivor, had marvellous adventures, which included the return passage through the strait; a voyage to the River La Plata; fights with Indians in woods on the shore; escape of those left alive to a lone island, where the pinnace was dashed to pieces on the rocks; two months on this island by the survivors, now only two, who subsisted on crabs, eels, and fruits with no water to drink; and final escape to the mainland by means of a raft of plank, where one of the two died from over-indulgence in the sweet water of a rivulet.

At length after her wanderings southward the “Golden Hind” with a favourable wind got fairly off on a northwestern course. Again coming to the height of the strait she coasted upward, Drake always hoping to meet or hear of his missing consorts. Through the inaccuracy of his charts he was carried more to the westward than he intended, and on the twenty-ninth of November fell in with an island called la Mocha. Here he came to anchor in the hope of obtaining water and fresh provisions, and of recuperating. Taking ten of his men he rowed ashore. The inhabitants were found to be Patagonians, who had been compelled by the “cruell and extreme dealings of the Spaniards” to flee from the mainland and fortify themselves on this island. They thronged down to the water side with “shew of great courtesie,” and offered potatoes, roots, and two fat sheep, Drake in return giving them trinkets. A supply of water was also promised by them. But the next day when the same party rowed to the shore and two men were put on land with barrels to be filled, the people, mistaking these men for Spaniards, seized and slew them. Another account says that in attempting to rescue their comrades the party were assailed, and Drake was wounded in the face by arrows. The ship then at once weighed anchor and got off.