| Elizabeth knighting Drake. |
From this period Drake's part as a discoverer is ended, and his after-life as a warrior and as the implacable enemy of the Spaniards does not concern us. Loaded with honours, and invested with important commands, Drake died at sea on the 28th January, 1596, during an expedition against the Spaniards.
To him pertains the honour of having been the second to pass through the Strait of Magellan, and to have visited Tierra del Fuego as far as the parts about Cape Horn. He also ascended the coast of North America to a point higher than any his predecessors had attained, and he discovered several islands and archipelagos. Being a very clever navigator, he made the transit through the Strait of Magellan with great rapidity. If there are but very few discoveries due to him, this is probably either because he neglected to record them in his journal, or because he often mentions them in so inaccurate a manner that it is scarcely possible to recognize the places. It was he who inaugurated that privateering warfare by which the English, and later on the Dutch, were destined to inflict much injury upon the Spaniards. And the large profits accruing to him from it, encouraged his contemporaries, and gave birth in their minds to the love for long and hazardous voyages.
Among all those who took example by Drake, the most illustrious was undoubtedly Thomas Cavendish or Candish. Cavendish joined the English marine service at a very early age; and passed a most stormy youth, during which he rapidly dissipated his modest fortune. That which play had robbed him of, he resolved to recover from the Spaniards. Having in 1585 obtained letters of mark, he made a cruise to the East Indies and returned with considerable booty. Encouraged by his easy success as a highwayman on the great maritime roads, he thought that if he could acquire some honour and glory while engaged in making his fortune, so much the better would it be for him. With this idea he bought three ships, the Desire, of twenty tons, the Content, of sixty tons, and the Hugh Gallant, of forty tons, upon which he embarked one hundred and twenty-three soldiers and sailors. Setting sail on the 22nd July, 1586, he passed by the Canaries, and landed at Sierra Leone, which town he attacked and plundered; then, sailing again, he crossed the Atlantic, sighted Cape Sebastian in Brazil, sailed along the coast of Patagonia, and arrived on the 27th November at Port Desire. He found there an immense quantity of dog-fish, very large, and so strong that four men could with difficulty kill them, and numbers of birds, which, having no wings, could not fly, and which fed upon fish. They are classed under the general names of auks and penguins. In this very secure harbour, the ships were drawn up on shore to be repaired. During his stay at this place Cavendish had some skirmishes with the Patagonians,—"men of gigantic size, and having feet eighteen inches long"—who wounded two of the sailors with arrows tipped with sharpened flints.
On the 7th January, 1587, Cavendish entered the Strait of Magellan, and in the narrowest part of it received on board his ships one-and-twenty Spaniards and two women, the sole survivors of the colony founded three years previously, under the name of Philippeville, by Captain Sarmiento. This town, which had been built to bar the passage through the strait, had possessed no fewer than four forts as well as several churches. Cavendish could discern the fortress, then deserted and already falling into ruins. Its inhabitants, who had been completely prevented by the continual attacks of the savages from gathering in their harvests, had died of hunger, or had perished in endeavouring to reach the Spanish settlements in Chili. The Admiral, upon hearing this lamentable tale, changed the name of Philippeville into that of Port Famine, under which appellation the place is known at the present day. On the 21st the ships entered a beautiful bay, which received the name of Elizabeth, and in which was buried the carpenter of the Hugh Gallant. Not far from thence a fine river fell into the sea, on the banks of which dwelt the anthropophagi who had fought so fiercely with the Spaniards, and who endeavoured, but in vain, to entice the Englishmen into the interior of the country.
On the 24th February, as the little squadron came forth from the strait, it encountered a violent storm, which dispersed it. The Hugh Gallant, left alone, and letting in water in all directions, was only kept afloat with the greatest trouble. Rejoined on the 15th by his consorts, Cavendish tried in vain to land on Mocha Island, where Drake had been so maltreated by the Araucanians. This country, rich in gold and silver, had hitherto successfully resisted all Spanish attempts to subjugate it, and its inhabitants, fully determined to maintain their liberty, repulsed by force of arms every attempt to land. It was necessary therefore to go to the island of St. Maria, where the Indians, who took the Englishmen for Spaniards, furnished them with abundance of maize, fowls, sweet potatoes, pigs, and other provisions.
On the 30th March, Cavendish dropped anchor in 32° 50' in the Bay of Quintero. A party of thirty musketeers advanced into the country and met with oxen, cows, wild horses, hares, and partridges in abundance. The little troop was attacked by the Spaniards, and Cavendish was obliged to return to his ships after losing twelve of his men. He afterwards ravaged, plundered, or burnt the towns of Paraca, Cincha, Pisca, and Païta, and devastated the island of Puna, where he obtained a booty in coined money of the value of 25,760l. After having scuttled the Hugh Gallant, which was totally unfit any longer to keep the water, Cavendish continued his profitable cruising, burnt, in the latitude of New Spain, a ship of 120 tons, plundered and burnt Aguatulio, and captured, after six hours of fighting, a vessel of 708 tons, laden with rich stuffs, and with 122,000 gold pesos. Then, "victorious and contented," Cavendish wished to secure the great spoils which he was conveying against any chance of danger. He touched at the Ladrones, the Philippines, and Greater Java, doubled the Cape of Good Hope, recruited himself at St. Helena, and on the 9th September, 1588, anchored at Plymouth, after two years of sailing, privateering, and fighting. At the end of two years after his return, of all the great fortune which he had brought back with him, there remained only a sum sufficient for the fitting out of a third, and as it proved, a last expedition.
Cavendish started on the 6th August, 1591, with five vessels, but a storm on the coast of Patagonia scattered the flotilla, which could not be collected again until the arrival at Port Desire. Assailed by fearful hurricanes in the Strait of Magellan, Cavendish was obliged to go back, after having seen himself deserted by three of his ships. The want of fresh provisions, the cold, and the privations of all kinds which he underwent, and which had decimated his crew, forced him to return northwards along the coast of Brazil, where the Portuguese opposed every attempt at landing. He was therefore obliged to put to sea again without having been able to revictual. Cavendish died, from grief perhaps as much as from hardships, before he reached the English coast.
One year after the return of the companions of Barentz, two ships, the Mauritius and the Hendrik Fredrik, with two yachts, the Eendracht and Espérance, having on board a crew of 248 men, quitted Amsterdam on the 2nd July, 1598. The commander-in-chief of this squadron was Oliver de Noort, a man at that time about thirty or thereabouts, and well known as having made several long cruising voyages. His second in command and vice-admiral was Jacob Claaz d'Ulpenda, and as pilot there was a certain Melis, a skilful sailor of English origin. This expedition, fitted out by the merchants of Amsterdam with the concurrence and aid of the States-General of Holland, had a double purpose; at once commercial and military. Formerly the Dutch had contented themselves with fetching from Portugal the merchandise which they distributed by means of their coasting vessels throughout Europe; but now they were reduced to the necessity of going to seek the commodities in the scene of their production. For this object, De Noort was to show his countrymen the route inaugurated by Magellan, and on the way to inflict as much injury as he could upon the Spaniards and Portuguese. At this period Philip II., whose yoke the Dutch had shaken off, and who had just added Portugal to his possessions, had forbidden his subjects to have any commercial intercourse with the rebels of the Low Countries. It was thus a necessity for Holland if she did not wish to be ruined, and as a consequence, to fall anew under Spanish rule, to open up for herself a road to the Spice Islands. The route which was the least frequented by the enemy's ships was that by the Strait of Magellan, and this was the one which De Noort was ordered to follow.
After touching at Goree, the Dutch anchored in the Gulf of Guinea, at the Island do Principe. Here the Portuguese pretended to give a friendly welcome to the men who went on shore, but they took advantage of a favourable opportunity, to fall upon and massacre them without mercy. Among the dead were Cornille de Noort, brother of the admiral, Melis, Daniel Goerrits, and John de Bremen—the captain, Peter Esias, being the only man who escaped. It was a sorrowful commencement for a campaign, a sad presage which was destined not to remain unfulfilled. De Noort, who was furious over this foul play, landed from his ships 120 men; but he found the Portuguese so well entrenched, that after a brisk skirmish in which seventeen more of his men were either killed or wounded, he was obliged to weigh anchor without having been able to avenge the wicked and cowardly perfidy to which his brother and twelve of his companions had fallen victims. On the 25th December, one of the pilots named Jan Volkers, was abandoned on the African coast as a punishment for his disloyal intrigues, for endeavouring to foment a spirit of despondency amongst the crews, and for his well-proved rebellion. On the 5th January, the island of Annobon, situated in the Gulf of Guinea, a little below the Line, was sighted, and the course of the ships was changed for crossing the Atlantic. De Noort had scarcely cast anchor in the Bay of Rio Janeiro before he sent some sailors on shore to obtain water and buy provisions from the natives; but the Portuguese opposed the landing, and killed eleven men. Afterwards, repulsed from the coast of Brazil by the Portuguese and the natives, driven back by contrary winds, having made vain efforts to reach the island of St. Helena, where they had hoped to obtain the provisions of which they were in the most pressing want, the Dutchmen, deprived of their pilot, toss at random upon the ocean. They land upon the desert islands of Martin Vaz, again reach the coast of Brazil at Rio Doce, which they mistake for Ascension Island, and are finally obliged to winter in the desert island of Santa Clara. The putting into port at this place was marked by several disagreeable events. The flag-ship struck upon a rock with so much violence that had the sea been a little rougher, she must have been lost. There were also some bloody and barbarous executions of mutinous sailors, notably that of a poor man, who having wounded a pilot with a knife thrust, was condemned to have his hand nailed to the mainmast. The invalids, of whom there were many on board the fleet, were brought on shore, and nearly all were cured by the end of a fortnight. From the 2nd to the 21st of June, De Noort remained in this island, which was not more than three miles from the mainland. But before putting to sea he was obliged to burn the Eendracht, as he had not sufficient men to work her. It was not until the 20th December, after having been tried by many storms, that he was able to cast anchor in Port Desire, where the crew killed in a few days a quantity of dog-fish and sea-lions, as well as more than five thousand penguins. "The general landed," says the French translation of De Noort's narrative, published by De Bry, "with a party of armed men, but they saw nobody, only some graves placed on high situations among the rocks, in which the people bury their dead, putting upon the grave a great quantity of stones, all painted red, having besides adorned the graves with darts, plumes of feathers, and other singular articles which they use as arms."