FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 36: The inscription on the upper front wall of the building is: "During the reign of her Majesty, Doña Isabel II, the Count of Mirasol being Captain-General, Santos Cortijo, Colonel of Engineers, reconstructed this royal fort in 1846.">[
[Footnote 37: Ducat, a coin struck by a duke, worth, in silver, about $1.15, in gold, twice as much. It was also a nominal money worth eleven pesetas and one maravedi.]
CHAPTER XVII
DRAKE'S ATTACK ON SAN JUAN
1595
Of all the English freebooters that preyed upon Spain and her colonies from the commencement of the war in 1585 to the signing of peace in 1604, Francis Drake was the greatest scourge and the most feared.
Drake early distinguished himself among the fraternity of sea-rovers by the boldness of his enterprises and the intensity of his hatred of the Spaniards. When still a young man, in 1567-'68, he was captain of a small ship, the Judith, one of a fleet of slavers running between the coast of Africa and the West Indies, under the command of John Hawkyns, another famous freebooter. In the harbor of San Juan de Ulúa the Spaniards took the fleet by stratagem; the Judith and the Minion, with Hawkyns on board, being the only vessels that escaped. Young Drake's experiences on that occasion fixed the character of his relations to the Dons forever afterward. He vowed that they should pay for all he had suffered and all he had lost.
At that time the Spaniards were ostensibly still friends with England. To Drake they were then and always treacherous and forsworn enemies. In 1570 he made a voyage to the West Indies in a bark of forty tons with a private crew. In the Chagres River, on the coast of Nombre de Dios, there happened to be sundry barks transporting velvets and taffetas to the value of 40,000 ducats, besides gold and silver. They were all taken.
Two years later he made a most daring attempt to take the town of Nombre de Dios, and would probably have succeeded had he not been wounded. He fainted from loss of blood. His men carried him back on board and suspended the attack. On his recovery he met with complete success, and returned to Plymouth in 1573 with a large amount of treasure openly torn from a nation with which England was at peace, arriving at the very time that Philip's ambassador to Queen Elizabeth was negotiating a treaty of peace. Drake had no letters of marque, and consequently was guilty of piracy in the eyes of the law, the penalty for which was hanging. The Spaniards were naturally very angry, and clamored for restitution or compensation and Drake's punishment, but the queen, who shared the pirate's hatred of the Spaniards, sent him timely advice to keep out of the way.