departs, October 1567,
His arguments, or it might be the greatness of the temptation, overcame his sovereign’s scruples, and in October 1567, Hawkins sailed from Plymouth with five well-appointed vessels, including the Queen’s ship, the Jesus, which carried his flag, and among his crew was Francis Drake, his kinsman, who afterwards became famous or infamous, as our readers may interpret his career, in the maritime history of England.
and secures extraordinary gains.
The voyage was prosperous beyond Sir John’s most sanguine expectations. At Sierra Leone he formed an alliance with an African tribe, then at war with their neighbours; sacked a densely peopled town, was rewarded with as many prisoners as his ships could carry; and, in the spring of the following year, found himself among the Spanish settlements conducting a business fully answering his most glittering hopes. Where the ports were open he found an easy market for his slaves, and when the governors resisted his attempts to open negotiations, he carried his purpose by force of arms, for in either case the planters were eager to deal with him. Ere the summer was over he had amassed a very large sum of money[134] in bars of gold and silver, and other commodities, materially enhanced by even more desperate and depraved measures than that of slave dealing, as stray vessels, with valuable property on board, too frequently became objects of his plunder.
Attacked by a Spanish fleet and severely injured.
Having suffered severely during a gale of wind, which he encountered in the Gulf of Mexico, and finding also that the bottoms of his ships, foul with sea-weed and barnacles, required cleaning, he put into St. Jean d’Ulloa to refit; but the day after he entered a Spanish fleet made its appearance at the mouth of the harbour, consisting of thirteen men of war, the smallest of them larger than the Jesus; and though Hawkins, if he had been on the open sea, might have managed to make his escape from this very formidable force, it was sheer madness to seek an engagement. “If he could,” remarks Froude,[135] “have made up his mind to dispute the entrance of a Spanish admiral into one of his own harbours, he believed that he could have saved himself, for the channel was narrow and the enemy’s numbers would give him no advantage. But neither his own nor Elizabeth’s ingenuity could have invented a pretext for an act of such desperate insolence; at best he would be blockaded, and, sooner or later, would have to run. The Spaniards passed in and anchored close on board the Englishmen. For three days there was an interchange of ambiguous courtesies. On the fourth, Philip’s admiral had satisfied himself of Hawkins’ identity.” He had been commissioned specially to look for him, “and by the laws of nations he was unquestionably justified in treating the English commander as a pirate.”
The formality of summoning him to surrender was dispensed with. The name of Hawkins had become so terrible, that the Spanish admiral dare not give him any warning of his intentions. But, taking possession of the mole during the night, and mounting batteries upon it, and guns on every point of land where they could be brought to bear, the Spaniards opened fire upon the Jesus and her comrades. Though taken by surprise, and while many of their boats’ crews were in the town, “the English fought so desperately, that two of the largest of the Spanish ships were sunk, and another set on fire.” The men on shore forced their way on board to their companions, and, notwithstanding the tremendous odds, the result of the action still seemed uncertain, when the Spaniards sent down two fire ships, and then Hawkins saw that all was over, and that vessels and treasures were lost. “The only hope now,” continues Froude in his graphic description of the encounter, “was to save the men. The survivers of them now crowded on board two small tenders, one of fifty tons, the other rather larger, and leaving the Jesus and the other ships, the gold and silver bars, the negroes, and their other spoils to burn or sink, they crawled out under the fire of the mole, and gained the open sea. There their position scarcely seemed less desperate. They were short of food and water. Their vessels had suffered heavily under the fire; they were choked up with men, and there was not a harbour on the western side of the Atlantic into which they could venture to run; in this emergency a hundred seamen volunteered to take their chance on shore, some leagues distant down the coast, and after wandering miserably in the woods for a few days, they were taken and carried as prisoners to Mexico. Hawkins and Drake and the rest made sail for the English Channel, which, in due time, in torn and wretched plight, they contrived to reach.”
Reaches England in distress.
Immediately on their arrival at Plymouth, Drake rode in all haste to London with a schedule of the property of which he represented they had been plundered by the Spaniards, and prayed that he and Sir John, and his brother William Hawkins, might be allowed to make reprisals under the commission which they held from the Prince of Condé. Relating what had taken place in a way least prejudicial to themselves, Elizabeth, smarting under the great loss she had sustained through the failure of the expedition, listened eagerly to what they had to say, and was prepared to meet their wishes after hearing from the Bishop of Salisbury, whom she had consulted, that “God would be pleased to see the Spaniards plundered”—a theory which too generally then prevailed among all ranks of Protestants.
Prevails on the Queen to make reprisals.