History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce, Volume 2 (of 4)

by W. S. Lindsay

and sails for England.

With the proceeds of human beings, stolen from their homes, and sold under cover of his guns to the Spanish planters, Hawkins, having washed the pens in which he had cooped his unfortunate victims, sailed in high spirits for England. On his way home he made a cruise through the Carribean Sea, surveying, in the ostensible fulfilment of his mission, the islands, and mapping down the currents and the shoals. He then shaped his course round Cuba, steered through the Bahama Channel, and along the coast of Florida, to examine the capabilities of the country, as he explained, but more likely, from his marauding propensities, to see if he could pick up any of the treasure ships of Spain. He at length reached Padstow Harbour, and thence proceeded to London, where he rendered to his co-partners an account of his spoils, and for a time was the lion of the metropolis. Lord Pembroke and his colleagues in the Council realised a clear profit of sixty per cent. on their adventure, and it was generally supposed that Elizabeth was not uninterested in the spoils which the ship she had supplied had assisted in realising, unconscious, it may be hoped, that her favourite captain had done anything to offend her friend and ally the king of Spain.

Fresh expeditions.

Thus encouraged, the slave trade flourished. Nor was it surprising that the vast profits which Hawkins had secured should have induced others to fit out slaving expeditions. The merchants of London felt no hesitation in supplying the requisite funds.[131] They did not inquire very minutely into the mode in which their employés conducted their business. Ostensibly their capital was required to fit out vessels to carry on the trade of immigration from the coast of Africa, where labour was too abundant, to the shores of the newly discovered country, which had no bounds to its vast and rich territory, and where labour was in still greater demand. If these roving Englishmen ruined the colonies Spain had established and menaced the safety of her merchant fleets, that was a matter of no concern to England; and if they pillaged a few of them when a favourable opportunity occurred, the capitalists who supplied the means received a bonus on their investment beyond the ordinary dividend, and did not of course trouble themselves to inquire how it had been obtained.

1566.

As might have been anticipated, slave fleets were fitted out at most of the leading ports; they had orders, it is true, not to approach the West Indies, or break the laws or injure in any way the subjects of the king of Spain; but when they returned richly laden, no formal inquiries were made whether these riches had been obtained from the freightage of some Spanish vessel which the silent ocean had engulfed, or from the proceeds of the slaves the freebooters had landed at some rendezvous on the shores of the West India Islands or on the American colonies, in concert with the planters, whose profits were measured by the number of Africans whom they could obtain to cultivate the soil on which they had settled. “Your mariners,” remonstrated the Spanish ambassador with Elizabeth, “rob my master’s ships on the sea, and trade where they are forbidden to go; they plunder our people in the streets of your towns; they attack our vessels in your very harbours, and take our prisoners from them; your preachers insult my master from their pulpits, and when we apply for justice we are answered with threats.”[132]

They extend their operations.

1568.

The third expedition of Sir John Hawkins.

These freebooting expeditions continuing for some years practically unchecked, Elizabeth at last felt uneasy for her relations with Spain. Her attempts to suppress them, which were always languid, had been laughed at and evaded. Though the Channel was less infested with privateers than it had been at the commencement of her reign, or during that of her immediate predecessors, they had extended and increased their ravages on the ocean and in distant lands. With the Huguenots of Rochelle, under Condé’s flag and with Condé’s commission, they had made a prey of the property of Papists; and, like the crusaders of former ages, had, on the plea of propagating and extending the Protestant faith, plundered Papists wherever they could be found. But when Hawkins (now Sir John Hawkins) prepared to fit out a third expedition, this time on a much more extensive scale, the Spanish ambassador gave notice to Elizabeth that unless it was prohibited serious consequences would follow. Of course Sir John was reprimanded by the Council, and enjoined to respect the laws which closed the ports of the Spanish colonies against unlicensed traders. The reprimand, however, was but an empty display of friendship to the king of Spain, made merely to satisfy for the moment the demands of his ambassador. The slave trade had proved much too profitable to be thus relinquished. It had become a large source of profit to Elizabeth and many of her most influential counsellors, and consequently Hawkins had no difficulty in persuading her Majesty that he himself would not only be ruined if prevented from sailing with the expedition he had equipped, but that the crews whom he had engaged would be driven to misery and ready, therefore, to commit acts of folly which might seriously injure her merchants and endanger the well-being of her kingdom. “The voyage,” he promised, “would give no offence to the least of her Highness’s allies and friends.... It was only to lade negroes in Guinea, and sell them to the West Indies, in truck for gold, pearls, and emeralds, whereof he doubted not but to bring home great abundance, to the contention of her Highness, and the benefit of the whole realm.”[133]