It is indeed no exaggeration to say that in the reign of Elizabeth Plymouth had become the foremost port in England.
"If any person desired to see her English worthies, Plymouth was the likeliest place to seek them. All were in some fashion associated with the old town. These were days when men were indifferent whether they fought upon land or water, when the fact that a man was a good general was considered the best of all reasons why he should be a good admiral likewise. 'Per mare per terram' was the motto of Elizabeth's true-born Englishmen, and familiar and dear to them was Plymouth, with its narrow streets, its dwarfish quays, its broad waters, and its glorious Hoe."
The roll of Plymouth's naval heroes begins with the Hawkins family, and one looks in vain in modern Plymouth for some statue to commemorate the most illustrious of her sons.
These Hawkinses were a remarkable race. "Gentlemen," as Prince says, "of worshipful extraction for several descents," they were made more worshipful by their deeds.
"For three generations in succession they were the master-spirits of Plymouth in its most illustrious days; its leading merchants, its bravest sailors, serving oft and well in the civic chair and the Commons House of Parliament. For three generations they were in the van of English seamanship, founders of England's commerce in South, West, and East, stout in fight, of quenchless spirit in adventure—a family of merchant statesmen and heroes to whom our country affords no parallel."[41]
The early voyages of Sir John Hawkins were to the Canary Isles. In 1562 he made his first expedition in search of negroes to sell in Hispaniola, so that he was not squeamish in the matter of the trade in human flesh. But in 1567 he made an expedition ever memorable, for his were the first English keels to furrow that hitherto unknown sea, the Bay of Mexico. He had with him a fleet of six ships, two of which were royal vessels, the rest were his own, and one of these, the Judith, was commanded by his kinsman, Francis Drake. Whilst in the port of S. Juan de Ulloa Hawkins was treacherously assailed, and lost all the vessels, with the exception of two, of which one was the Judith. When his brother William heard of the disaster he begged Elizabeth to allow him to make reprisals on his own account; and on the return of John "it may fairly be said that Plymouth declared war against Spain. Hawkins and Drake thereafter never missed a chance of making good their losses. The treachery of San Juan de Ulloa was the moving cause of the series of harassments which culminated in the destruction of the Armada. For every English life then lost, for every pound of English treasure then taken, Spain paid a hundred and a thousand fold."
In the following year, at Rio de la Flacho, whilst getting in supplies, he was attacked by Michael de Castiliano with a thousand men. Hawkins had but two hundred under his command; however, he drove the Spaniards back, entered the town, and carried off the ensign, for which, on his return, he was granted an addition to his arms—on a canton, gold, an escalop between two palmers' staves, sable.
In 1573 Hawkins was chosen by the queen "as the fittest person in her dominions to manage her naval affairs," and for twenty-one years served as Controller of the Navy. It was through his wise provision, by his resolution, in spite of the niggardliness wherewith Elizabeth doled out money, that "when the moment of trial came," says Froude, "he sent her ships to sea in such condition—hull, rigging, spars, and running rope—that they had no match in the world."
About the Armada presently.