To crown everything, the Golden Hind came round to London, where she was the wonder of the day, and when the Queen herself went aboard to a state banquet at which she knighted the hero of the sea: "I bid thee rise, Sir Francis Drake!"
CHAPTER X
THE SPANISH ARMADA
(1588)
By 1580, the year of Drake's return, Spain and England were fast moving toward the war that had been bound to come ever since the Old World had found the riches of the New.
The battle grounds of rival sea-powers had been shifting farther and farther west since history began. Now the last step was to come. We have seen already that the centre of the world's sea trade had moved for thousands of years from south-eastern Asia toward north-western Europe, and that in the fifteenth century it was pretty well divided between Venice and the Hansa Towns. This was only natural, because Venice was in the middle of southern Europe and the Hansa Towns were in the middle of northern Europe. The two were therefore well placed to receive, store, and distribute the bulk of the oversea trade. In a word, Venice (on the Adriatic) and the Hansa Towns (mostly on what is now the German coast) were the great European central junctions of oversea trade; while the Atlantic states of Spain and Portugal, France and England were only terminal points, that is, they were at the end of the line; for the Atlantic ended the world to the west.
The discovery of a rich New World changed all that. Venice and the Hansa Towns became only stations by the way; while the new grand central junction of the world was bound to be somewhere among the Atlantic states of England, France, Portugal, and Spain. When these four countries became rivals for this junction England won, partly because she had the advantage of being an island, and thus safe from invasion by land, but mostly because her men were of the fighting kindred of the sea. Yet she had to fight hard to win; she had to fight hard to keep what she won; and we all know how hard she has just had to fight again for the real "Freedom of the Seas."
Her first great rival, Spain, was stronger than ever in 1580, because it was then that Philip II added Portugal, as well as all the oversea possessions of Portugal to his own enormous empire. He felt that if he could only conquer England, then the dream of his father, Charles V, would certainly come true, and he would be the master of the world. France also stood in his way, but only by land; and if he had England and England's sea-power he could make short work of France. His having Portugal gave him much that he needed for his "Invincible Armada": plenty of ships, sailors at least as good as his own, new ports and new islands, like the Azores, and the "wealth of All the Indies"—for he now had the Portuguese trade with the Indies as well as his own with the West.
Luckily for England, Philip was a landsman, no soldier, and very slow. So England struck first, but at New Spain, not, Old, because Elizabeth would not have open war if she could help it. She had enemies in Scotland, enemies in France, a few at home, and millions in Spain. Besides, she was cleverer at playing off one against the other than in managing a big war; and, like most people everywhere, even in our own sea-girt Empire now, she never quite understood how to make war at sea.
In 1585 London was all agog about Sir Francis Drake again; for he was to command the "Indies Voyage" against New Spain, with Frobisher, of North-West-Passage fame, as his Vice-Admiral, and Knollys, the Queen's own cousin, as Rear-Admiral. There were twenty-one ships and twenty-three hundred men; with Carleill, a first-class general, to command the soldiers ashore. Drake's crew of the Golden Hind came forward to a man, among them gigantic Tom Moone, the lion of the boarding parties. It is quite likely that Shakespeare went down with the crowds of Londoners who saw the fleet set sail from Woolwich; for the famous London vessel, Tiger, which he mentions both in Macbeth and in Twelfth Night, was one of Drake's fleet.