[Illustration: The Santa Maria, flagship of Christopher Columbus
when he discovered America in 1492. Length of keel, 60 feet.
Length of ship proper, 93 feet. Length over all, 128 feet.
Breadth, 26 feet. Tonnage, full displacement, 233.]
France and England had something to say about this. Francis I wrote Charles a pretty plain letter. "Your Majesty and the King of Portugal have divided the world between you, offering no part of it to me. Show me, I pray you, the will of our father Adam, so that I may see if he has really made you his universal heirs." Nor did the two Henrys forget the claims of England. Henry VII claimed most of the eastern coast of what are now Canada and the United States, in virtue of the Cabot discoveries. In the Naval Museum at Madrid you can still see the bullock-hide map of Juan de la Cosa, which, made in the year 1500, shows St. George's Cross flying over these very parts.
But it was not till after 1545, when the mines of Potosi made Europe dream of El Dorado, the great new Golden West, that England began to think of trying her own luck in America. Some of the fathers of Drake's "Sea-Dogs" had already been in Brazil, notably "Olde Mr. William Hawkins, a man for his wisdome, valure, experience, and skill in sea causes much esteemed and beloved of King Henry the Eight." Hawkins "armed out a tall and goodlie ship called the Pole of Plimmouth, wherewith he made three long and famous voyages into the coast of Brasil." He went by way of Africa, "where he trafiqued with the Negroes, and took of them Oliphants' teeth; and arriving on the coast of Brasil, behaved himself so wisely, that he grew into great friendship with those savages"—very different from the vile cruelty with which the Spaniards always treated the poor natives. These voyages were made about 1530; and the writer says that they were "in those days very rare, especially to our Nation."
In 1554 Charles V planned to make all such voyages work for the glory of Spain instead of England. But, thanks chiefly to the English Sea-Dogs, everything turned out the other way. Charles saw that if he could only add England to his vast possessions he could command the world; for then he would have not only the greatest land-power but the greatest sea-power too. Queen Mary seemed made for his plan. Her mother, Katharine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife, was a Spaniard, and she herself cared less for England than for Spain. She was only too ready to marry Charles's heir, Philip, of Armada fame. After this Charles would leave his throne to Philip, who would then be King of England as well as King of Spain.
Philip sailed for England with a hundred and sixty ships, and came up the Channel with the Spanish standard at the main (that is, at the tip top of the main, or highest, mast). Lord Howard of Effingham sailed to meet him and answer Philip's salute. But Philip and his haughty Dons thought it was nonsense for the Prince of Spain to follow the custom of the sea by saluting first when coming into English waters. So the Spanish fleet sailed on and took no notice, till suddenly Howard fired a shot across the Spanish flagship's bows. Then, at last, Philip's standard came down with a run, and he lowered topsails too, so as to make the salute complete. Howard thereupon saluted Philip, and the two fleets sailed on together. But there was no love lost between them. Neither was the marriage popular ashore. Except for the people at court, who had to be civil to Philip, London treated the whole thing more as a funeral than a wedding. Philip drank beer in public, instead of Spanish wine, and tried to be as English as he could. Mary did her best to make the people like him. And both did their best to buy as many friends at court as Spanish gold could buy. But, except for his Queen and the few who followed her through thick and thin, and the spies he paid to sell their country, Philip went back with even fewer English friends than he had had before; while the Spanish gold itself did him more harm than good; for the English Sea-Dogs never forgot the long array of New-World wealth that he paraded through the streets of London—"27 chests of bullion, 99 horseloads + 2 cartloads of gold and silver coin, and 97 boxes full of silver bars." That set them asking why the whole New World should be nothing but New Spain.
But seventeen years passed by; and the Spanish Empire seemed bigger and stronger than ever, besides which it seemed to be getting a firmer hold on more and more places in the Golden West. Nor was this all; for Portugal, which had many ships and large oversea possessions, was becoming so weak as to be getting more and more under the thumb of Spain; while Spain herself had just (1571) become the victorious champion both of West against East and of Christ against Mahomet by beating the Turks at Lepanto, near Corinth, in a great battle on landlocked water, a hundred miles from where the West had defeated the East when Greeks fought Persians at Salamis two thousand years before.
THE FAME OF SIR FRANCIS DRAKE
Sir Drake, whom well the world's end knew,
Which thou didst compass round,
And whom both poles of heaven once saw,
Which north and south do bound.
The stars above would make thee known,
If men here silent were;
The sun himself cannot forget
His fellow-traveller.
—Anonymous.