Voyage of the Golden Hind.
A noble banquet room.
Soon after the affair of San Juan de Ulua, Drake conceived the idea of striking at this Spanish domain upon its unguarded Pacific side. In 1573, after marching across the isthmus of Darien, the English mariner stood upon a mountain peak, not far from where Balboa sixty years before had stood and looked down upon the waste of waters stretching away to shores unvisited and under stars unknown. And as he looked, says Camden, "vehemently transported with desire to navigate that sea, he fell upon his knees and implored the divine assistance that he might at some time sail thither and make a perfect discovery of the same." On the 15th of November, 1577, Drake set sail from Plymouth, on this hardy enterprise, with five good ships. It was a curious coincidence that in the following July and August, while wintering on the Patagonia coast at Port St. Julian, Drake should have discovered symptoms of conspiracy and felt obliged to behead one of his officers, as had been the case with Magellan at the same place. By the time he had passed the straits in his flagship, the Golden Hind,[11] he had quite lost sight of his consorts, who had deserted him in that watery labyrinth, as Gomez had stolen away from Magellan. For men of common mould a voyage in the remote South Sea still had its terrors; but the dauntless captain kept on with his single ship of twenty guns, and from Valparaiso northward along the Peruvian coast dashed into seaports and captured vessels, carrying away enormous treasures in gold and silver and jewels, besides such provisions as were needed for his crew. With other property he meddled but little, and no acts of wanton cruelty sullied his performances. After taking plunder worth millions of dollars, this corsair-work gave place to scientific discovery, and the Golden Hind sailed far northward in search of a northeast passage into the Atlantic. Drake visited a noble bay, which may have been that of San Francisco, and sailed some distance along that coast, which he called New Albion. It is probable, though not quite certain, that he saw some portion of the coast of Oregon. Not finding any signs of a northeast passage, he turned his prow westward, crossed the Pacific, and returned home by way of the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at Plymouth in September, 1580. Some time afterward he went up the Thames to Deptford, where the queen came to dinner on board the Golden Hind, and knighted on his own quarter-deck the bold captain who had first carried the English flag around the world. The enthusiastic chronicler Holinshed wished that in memory of this grand achievement the ship should be set upon the top of St. Paul's Cathedral, "that being discerned farre and neere, it might be noted and pointed at of people with these true termes: Yonder is the barke that hath sailed round about the world."[12] A different career awaited the sturdy Golden Hind; for many a year she was kept at Deptford, a worthy object of popular admiration, and her cabin was made into a banquet room wherein young and old might partake of the mutton and ale of merry England; until at last, when the venerable ship herself had succumbed to the tooth of Time, a capacious chair was carved from her timbers and presented to the University of Oxford, where it may still be seen in the Bodleian Library. In it sat Abraham Cowley when he wrote the poem in which occur the following verses:—
"Drake and his ship could not have wished from Fate
A happier station or more blest estate.
For lo! a seat of endless rest is given
To her in Oxford and to him in heaven."
Voyage of Gilbert and Raleigh.
Shipwreck of Gilbert.
Meanwhile in the autumn of 1578, while the coasts of Chili were echoing the roar of the Golden Hind's cannon, a squadron of seven ships sailed from England, with intent to found a permanent colony on the Atlantic coast of North America. Its captain was one of the most eminent of Devonshire worthies, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and one of the ships was commanded by his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, a young man of six-and-twenty who had lately returned from volunteer service in the Netherlands. The destination of the voyage was "Norumbega," which may have meant any place between the Hudson and Penobscot rivers, but was conceived with supreme vagueness, as may be seen from Michael Lok's map of 1582.[13] This little fleet had at least one savage fight with Spaniards, and returned to Plymouth without accomplishing anything. In 1583 Gilbert sought a favourable place for settlement on the southern coast of Newfoundland, probably with a view to driving the Spaniards away from the fishing grounds, but an ill fate overtook him. On the American coast his principal vessel crushed its bows against a sunken rock and nearly all hands were lost. With two small ships the captain soon set sail for home, but his own tiny craft foundered in a terrible storm near Fayal. As she sank, Gilbert cheerily shouted over the tafferel to his consort, "The way to heaven is as near by sea as by land," a speech, says his chronicler, "well beseeming a soldier resolute in Jesus Christ, as I can testify he was."
Gilbert's patent granted to Raleigh.
It was not Raleigh's fault that he did not share the fate of his revered half-brother, for the queen's mind had been full of forebodings and she had refused to let him go on the voyage. It was since the former disastrous expedition that Raleigh had so quickly risen in favour at court; that he had thrown down his velvet cloak as a mat for Elizabeth's feet and had written on a window-pane the well-known verse which that royal coquette so cleverly capped. He became Captain of the Queen's Guard and Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and was presented with the confiscated estates of traitors in England and Ireland. In 1584, when his late half-brother's patent for land in America expired, it was renewed in Raleigh's name. On March 25th was sealed the document that empowered him to "hold by homage remote heathen and barbarous lands, not actually possessed by any Christian prince, nor inhabited by Christian people, which he might discover within the next six years."[14] As had been the custom with Spanish and Portuguese grants to explorers, one fifth of the gold and silver to be obtained was to be reserved for the crown. The heathen and barbarous land which Raleigh had in view was the Atlantic coast of North America so far as he might succeed in occupying it. He knew that Spain claimed it all as her own by virtue of the bull of Pope Alexander VI., but Elizabeth had already declared in 1581 that she cared nothing for papal bulls and would recognize no Spanish claims to America save such as were based upon discovery followed by actual possession.[15] Raleigh's attention had long been turned toward Florida. In youth he had served in France under Coligny, and had opportunities for hearing that statesman's plan for founding a Protestant state in America discussed. We have seen Le Moine, the French artist who escaped from the Florida massacre, consorting with Raleigh and with Sir Philip Sidney. Upon those men fell the mantle of Coligny, and the people of the United States may well be proud to point to such noble figures standing upon the threshold of our history.
Promise of self-government.