-t c^. .Oo. ,0- \ %^'- ,i\ ^^ -%. ■ ■°, ■•;,,•• /\.., '% C' \ ■ ^ -, ' // -- ■%# .^^^- % ./- .< a\ v^^ ,-0' V c."^" ■-oo^ :t ■A * 8 I V \V 'V- ^0 O, o A-^ 'K ■r. " / 'O C^.^^^'"^ A-S ' " O. .0' v>^. ■X^ .V < "O. .^^^^- 1, ^ A^'^ >'^0^ ^^ ' ^> O' \^^ "^ -i^. '/ A SEA-DOG OF DEVON SIR JOHN HAWKINS. (From an Oiiginnl Oil Painting in the possession of Miss Ma)y W. S. Hawkins, at Hayford Hall, Buckfastlcigh. Devon.) A SEA-DOG OF DEVON . . . A Life of Sir John Hawkins > i BY R. A. J. WALLING With Introduction by Lord Brassey and John Leyland NEW YORK THE JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMVII ^H x%, TO F. V. W. yf/Cyf/ ol CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction ........ ix CHAPTER I. The Age ........ i CHAPTER II. The Family of Hawkins ..... 17 CHAPTER III. The Youth of John Hawkins .... 29 CHAPTER IV. The Trade in Negro Slaves ..... 38 CHAPTER V. The Second Voyage to the West Indies . . 54 CHAPTER VI. On the Spanish Main ...... 69 CHAPTER VII. The Return to England ..... 83 CHAPTER VIII. The Affair of San Juan ..... 99 * vi CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. PAGE The Affair of San Juan {continued) . . . iii CHAPTER X. The Affair of San Juan {concluded) . . . 127 CHAPTER XI. Aftermath ........ 143 CHAPTER XII. The Feria Plot . . . . . . -153 CHAPTER XIII. The Favour of the Queen . .... 170 CHAPTER XIV. Elizabeth's Board of Admiralty . . . ,181 CHAPTER XV. An Admiralty Memorandum ..... 199 CHAPTER XVI. The Armada ........ 210 CHAPTER XVII. The Fight with the S.-inta Anna .... 224 CHAPTER XVIII. Figures ......... 236 CHAPTER XIX. The Dainty ........ 249 CONTENTS. vii CHAPTER XX. PAGE The Bitter End ....... 261 CHAPTER XXI. Characteristics ....... 277 Note A. — The Family of Hawkins . . . 284 Note B. — Authorities ...... 285 Note C. — Hawkins and the Admiralty . . 286 Index . ........ 287 INTRODUCTION. The author of this book has rightly placed John Haw- kins among the first of those to whose undaunted spirit our sea supremacy is due. With Drake and RcJeigh, the Gilberts and John Davis, Hawkins was among the greatest and most resolute of those famous men of Devon who made the earliest expeditions to the un- known shores of the New World. Less bold and generous in temperament, perhaps, than Drake, less gifted as a statesman than Raleigh, without the inspiration of Humphrey Gilbert, Raleigh's half-brother, but with the attractive qualities of John Davis — Hawkins deserved well of his country. He was a man of courage and resource. He possessed in a high degree administrative ability. He was a leader in an age of splendid achieve- ments. He deserves to be better known to his country- men in these days. In introducing the present vigorous narrative to the reader, we shall endeavour briefly to describe the cir- cumstances and the prevailing views of the age in which Hawkins lived. It is necessary to take account of en- vironments in estimating character and conduct. The X INTRODUCTION. author undertakes to vindicate his hero from the charge of having inaugurated our British slave trade. Those who have made this reproach against Hawkins confuse the ideals of the nineteenth or twentieth century with those of the sixteenth. The great captain acted in con- formity with the spirit of his age. The Portuguese and Spaniards had engaged without scruple in the slave trade. Prince Henry of Portugal, the so-called navi- gator, and King John II.. combined zeal for the saving of the souls of negroes with a recognition of the possi- bility of profiting by the labour of their bodies. We are brought to another point which those who read the life of those valiant English seamen should bear in mind. Our great navigators — bold, en- terprising, and resolute as they were — came late into the field. Both the Portuguese and the Spaniards were before us. The courageous Portuguese captains who gradually pushed along the coasts of Africa, until Bartholomew Diaz doubled the Cape of Good Hope and Vasco da Gama reached India by sea, were the pioneers of the expeditions of our East India merchants. The voyages of Columbus, the exploration of Nicuesa and Ojeda, and the supreme triumph of Vasco Nuiiez de Balboa, " the man who knew not when he was beaten," the first of white men to look upon the Pacific, revealed an El Dorado from which gold poured into the coffers of Spain. Their success stirred up the spirit of enterprise. Bold hearts in every maritime INTRODUCTION. xi country were eager to share the spoil. The Spaniards were not wilHng that others should have part in the advantages of trade with the newly discovered lands. Their exclusive policy led inevitably to smuggling. The measures of repression which they adopted provoked sanguinary reprisals. Hawkins and Drake were over- whelmed in the treacherous affair at San Juan de Ulloa, and barely escaped with their lives. They resolved to take vengeance, the one by subtlety, and the other by the capture of Nombre de Dios, the sacking of Vera Cruz, and the seizing of the wealth of the silver-laden mules of Spain. Peace could be no longer maintained. There fol- lowed the fierce struggle of 1588, in which Enghshmen were proved to be the finest seamen in Europe. The Spaniards, though they had done so much to open up the New World, as seamen were not the equals of Englishmen. They were largely dependent on the skill of the navigators of Genoa and other parts of Italy. It is interesting to note that it was largely through the translation, in 1555, by Richard Eden, of the " Decades " of Peter Martyr, descriptive of Spanish and Portuguese expeditions, and in part through his rendering from the Spanish in the following year of Martin Cortes's " Arte de Navigar," published at Seville, that the voyages of our seamen were made more easy, and the first know- ledge was gained of the wealth which might be acquired in the New World. xii INTRODUCTION. To sum up. John Hawkins is one of an illustrious band of navigators, English and foreign, to whom the opening up of trade with America is due. His pro- fessional attainments were high. He was master in seamanship, and in the art of the shipbuilder. His services were brilliant. He took a leading part in the fierce struggle with the Spaniards. In the interests of religion, and from a selfish desire to secure the monopoly in a valuable trade, they had sought to enclose the New World and bar the way to the Indies. English seamen and merchants were resolved that the barriers should be broken down. In the volume here presented the fine career of John Hawkins is described in a deeply interesting narrative. The biography of such a man is full of instruction, and necessarily embraces a general survey of the great age in which he lived. BRASSEY JOHN LEYLAND. A SEA DOG OF DEVON. CHAPTER I. THE AGE. A Battle Incident — Drake's Overshadowing Fame — The Reformation in its Effect upon England as a Sea Power — ^The Beginnings of Naval Organisation in England — Early Assertions of Her Overlordship of the Seas — Spirit of the Elizabethan Age — The Privateers — Story of the Genoese Ducats. On a September day of the year 1568, amid the reek of powder smoke, the roar of culverins, and the cries of wounded men between the decks of the ship Jesus of Lubek, a Sea Dog of Devon was athirst. He made a gallant figure in gay attire, for he had just risen from his courtly entertaining of a grandee of Spain. Cheer- ing on of gunners against great odds, breathing of ven- geance against a ghastly treachery, inhaling the smother of war in the tropical air of Mexico — this was thirsty work. " He called to Samuel his page for a cup of beer," says the quaint Chronicler, "who brought it to him in a silver cup. And he, drinking to all the men, willed the 2 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. gunners to stand by their ordnance lustily, like men. He had no sooner set the cup out of his hand but a demi-culverin struck away the cup and a cooper's plane that stood by the mainmast, and ran out on the other side of the ship ; which nothing dismayed our general, for he ceased not to encourage us. . . ." If it be true that, in the moment when Death breathes upon the face of a man as he passes by, the man has vision of his life as in the flash of magic crystal, never doubt that the wind of the culverin shot cleared for an instant the red mist of battle and disclosed to John Hawkins the garden of a gabled house in Ply- mouth. There he saw two boys at play, their game disturbed by the coming of mariners fresh from far seas, their game forgotten as they hung upon the converse of those sailors with their father of the perils and rewards of daring men who furrowed uncharted seas in the golden west. There he saw himself, one of those wide- eyed boys, flush and thrill as the microcosm of his life was suddenly revealed — glittering with shining adven- ture, red with the hue of war, dark with the shades of intrigue, following the star of high emprise. The boy who had stood in the garden at Plymouth was on the deck of his flagship in San Juan de Ulloa, the thunder of disastrous battle was around him, the powder smoke thickened again. " He ceased not to encourage us, saying, ' Fear nothing, for God, who hath preserved me from this shot, THE AGE. 3 will also deliver us from these traitors and vil- lains.' " " Fear nothing " is the keynote of Hawkins's career. " God . . . will deHver us ! " comprehends his simple philosophy. This prototype of the Sea Dogs has been unaccountably overshadowed in the general litera- ture of the Spanish raids and the Armada time by Drake. The tremendously romantic figure of Sir Francis has obsessed the public imagination, almost to the exclusion of equally important figures among his contemporaries. There is something almost uncanny about the fascina- tion that Drake exercised over the men of his time, and the influence of the Drake legends has persisted to our own day. " The Captain " he was called by the people of Plymouth ; the Spaniards believed him to be assisted by the infernal powers in his prodigious exploits against them. His story has become encrusted with supernatural growths: he threw chips of wood into the sea, and they sprang up stately ships of war armed and equipped at all points ; he magically brought water from Dartmoor to Plymouth in a time of drought by uttering an in- cantation, whereupon the stream followed his horse's hoofs from the uplands to the town. There is the legend of Drake's Drum, with which all readers of Mr. Corbett and Mr. Newbolt are familiar. I have no purpose to de- preciate Drake, the Admirable Crichton of the Sixteenth Century seamen. He was a great leader and a great commander, and his influence upon the naval history of 4 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. his time, and his place in the history of the world, are in no manner of question. Yet it is impossible to resist the conclusion that the almost exclusive attention given to him in the modern revival of interest in the Tudor Navy has pushed into the background many other men of large pattern, and greatest among them John Hawkins. John Hawkins was much more than mariner ; but he was mariner first and other things after. This not only in point of time ; his other notable qualities and acquirements arose out of his quality and acquirement as mariner. If he became soldier, it was because mari- time adventure imposed the necessity upon him. If he became diplomatist, it was to complete work begun at sea. If he became statesman, it was to administer the naval affairs of England. Wherever he was, in whatever complicated course he found himself at any time in his career, his thoughts were at sea, he dreamed of blue water, and longed to exchange the cloak of the courtier for the uniform of the captain, or the pedestal of high office for his own quarter-deck. The life of John Hawkins is written in a hundred books : he is in the background of every naval history of the sixteenth century ; but he has never yet had a biographer. If this is not actually by way of being a reproach to his country, it is at least something strange that so striking a figure in the English school of action should have lacked a literary •. ortrait. Within the THE AGE. 5 limits assigned to this volume a complete biography is impossible ; if, however, there should arise from these pages a suggestion towards a detailed " Life," they will have served a good purpose. It has been said that modem English character was moulded in the Reformation. It is a com- prehensive, but a true saying. To the national movement of the sixteenth century we owe not a little of our modern greatness, our naval position, our world-empire. Only one facet of this thought need be examined here. The Reformation was the beginning of England's " glorious isolation," and the inspiration of the great sea-conflict with the Catholic Power. The wax of the systems lasted till 1688, and in the sense that the Reformation was not complete till WilHam anH Mary signed the Declaration of Rights, the national character and destinies did not emerge from the crucible till another century had passed. But the six- teenth century struggle with Spain determined a great deal when it determined the naval supremacy of England ; it cultivated the maritime genius of the Islanders, and laid the foundations of our colonial and imperial system in West and East. The model of English seamanship was cast ; to the Spanish wars we look for the earliest precedents of modern naval tradi- tions. How great a part the Hawkinses played in the making of the Navy, the establishment of seamanlike traditions, and the extension of the British Power in 6 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. distant latitudes it will be the essay of these pages to demonstrate. We must go back to the reign of Henry VIII. to find the genesis of the Hawkins family's connection with the Navy ; and, as it was Henry VIII. who began the work of naval organisation in the modern sense, they may be said to have had their part in the creation of the British Navy as a fighting machine. Dockyards were first provided in this reign at Deptford — scene of much of Sir John's work later on — ^Woolwich, and Ports- mouth ; commissioners were first appointed to look after the financial affairs of the maritime forces ; and the status and pay of Admirals, Vice-Admirals, and inferior officers were settled. The naval spirit came into being. England assumed the sovereignty of the Northern seas, and the nation began to feel that its mission in the world was greater than to populate and administer these small islands. The ambition of maritime discovery was lively ; the need for an efficient naval force, not merely to prevent invasion of the homeland, but also to afford protection to the ever-widening interests of British com- merce, began to be felt ; the modern naval policy was born. Though under Edward and Mary the tendency was rather to reduce than to increase Henry's naval force of 12,000 tons and 8,000 men, even in the reign of the Catholic Queen the maritime prestige of England was jealously upheld. We come across a curious incident THE AGE. 7 of naval etiquette during the voyage of Philip to this country to espouse the Queen. The EngHsh Lord High Admiral compelled Philip to strike the flag he was flying at his maintopmast-head in homage to the flag of England. How nauseating such a performance must have been to the proud stomach of Philip we may imagine ; the Spanish Admiral did not accede to the demand until a shot had been fired into him. Then he saw the force of the argument. Even when the Admiral had struck, English amour propre was not satisfied. The whole of the Spanish fleet of i6o vessels must strike flags and lower topsails ; and this was done be- fore the British ships received order to salute. We have in this a precedent for action taken in later years by Sir John Hawkins himself. The story is quaintly told by Sir Richard, his son. The date is 1567, and the place Plymouth Harbour : — "There came a fleete of Spaniards of aboue fiftie sayle of shippes, bound for Flaunders, to fetch the queen donna Anna de Austria, last wife to Philip the second of Spaine, which entred betwixt the iland and the maine, without vayling their top-sayles, or taking in of their flags : which my father Sir John Hawkins, (admirall of a fleete of her majesties shippes, then ryding in Cattwater), perceiving, commanded his gunner to shoote at the flag of the admirall, that they might thereby see their error : which, notwithstanding, they persevered arro- gantly to keepe displayed ; whereupon the gunner at the next shott, lact the admirall through and through, whereby the Spaniards finding that the matter beganne to grow to earnest took in their flags and top-sayles, and so ranne to an anchor. "The general! presently sent his boat, with a principal! 8 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. personage to expostulate the cause and reason of that pro- ceeding ; but my father would not permit him to come into his ship, nor to heare his message ; but by another Gentleman commanded him to returne, and to tell his general, that in as much as in the queenes port and chamber, he had neglected to do the acknowledgment and reverence which all owe unto her majestie (especially her ships being present), and comming with so great a navie, he could not but give suspetion by such proceeding of malicious intention, and therefore re- quired him, that within twelve hours he should depart the port, upon paine to be held as a common enemy, and to pro- ceed against him with force." This dispute was in the end adjusted without any such extreme measures ; the Spaniard acknowledged himself to be in fault, and the proceedings concluded with " the auncient amities renewed, by feasting each other aboord and ashore." The temper of the incident is significant of the British determination thus early that no Power, however great and aggressive, should be allowed to assume an overlordship of the seas. It took a long time to convince Philip that the English meant what these things implied ; " Achines de Plimua," as Hawkins was called in Spain, had to raid him here and there to assert the right of free commerce for Eng- lishmen ; Drake had to singe his beard in the harbour of Cadiz ; Howard, Hawkins, Drake, and the rest, had to scatter and destroy his mighty Armada before the truth was borne in upon him. Perfect daring, the supreme self-confidence that comes of faith in a national cause and complete know- THE AGE. 9 ledge of the meEins by which it may be best promoted — these were the characteristics of the great seamen of Queen Elizabeth. But these quahties in their highest manifestation — seen in the achievements of Hawkins and his companions — were not the spontaneous crea- tion of one generation ; they were a heritage which the EHzabethans developed as we know how. It was not until the end of the fifteenth century that the English gave their minds to maritime discovery. The Wars of the Roses had been too absorbing and exhausting to permit of any external enterprise. But the era of in- ternal peace that was inaugurated with the Tudors liberated a tremendous force of character and gallantry, which soon began to expend itself in sea-adventures. British seamen followed the Portuguese into distant seas, and ere a century had passed they had outstripped all predecessors and competitors in the boldness of their designs and the glory of their achievements. A great deal of the work of expansion, conquest, and discovery was done by adventurers whose connection with the national Navy was loose enough ; so far as the Hawkinses were concerned, though they came to the front in the first instance as merchant adventurers and the patrons of privateers, their association with the Navy was close. In those days of Henry VIII, when, as already set out, the real foundations of the modern Navy system were laid, the first Hawkins who takes rank as a great seaman was an officer of the Navy. His lo A SEA DOG OF DEVON. son John became the great " admirall " and Treasurer of the Navy ; his grandson Richard also attained the highest naval rank. They were all distinguished scions of the great race of Plymouth seamen. They were ad- venturers, but much more ; they were merchants whose genius and industry raised their fortunes so that of their wealth they could supply what the parsimony of their sovereign left lacking on occasions ; they could share in the greatest financial enterprises of their time. They were daring sailors, but much more ; they were, if not courtiers, yet skilled men in statecraft, and leaders commanding a devotion that amounted almost to idol- atry. They were the epitome of the spirit of their age. What that spirit was may be read in the eloquent words of Froude. It was the spirit of liberty, of in- dependence, of freedom ; the world was opening wide before Englishmen ; the ocean-sea was giving up to them its remotest secrets. That which stood between them and the fairest prospects that the earth could offer was the power of Spain ; that power it was which also menaced their civil and religious liberties at home. It was Spain that intrigued with Mary Queen of Scots and stirred up rebellion ni Ireland; it was Spain that threw English seamen and traders into the prisons of the Inquisition, starved and tortured them, or burned tliem at the stake. The story of the illicit war on the Spanish possessions, preceding the licit THE AGE. II war that culminated in the Armada, is the story of a nation s great uprismg and outcry against the preten- sions of " Popish tyranny " and Spanish ImperiaHsm. The leaders and the spokesmen were the seamen of the West. In the Western seas, in the Spanish ports, they took their price for the massacres of Smithfield, for the horrors to which their brothers and friends had been subjected in Spanish prisons ; they damaged the pos- sessions and harassed the subjects of the State which was their nation's enemy ; they began the long process of destroying the proud, vainglorious power of Spain. It is not to be pretended that altruistic motives, or even patriotism, alone ruled the conduct of the adven- turers of the West. Their imagination was fired by hope of rich reward for those who would dare venture ; plunder played its part in their endeavours ; the love of adventure for adventure's sake was also potent. Some facts and many fictions were circulated in England re- lating to the wealth the Spaniards derived from their possessions in the West Indies and on the Pacific Coast ; El Dorado beckoned. These excited the desires of merchants, speculators and soldiers of fortune. But any impartial reading of the original papers of the time, written by the sailors themselves or their chroniclers, must convince that to regard them as mere buccaneers and pirates is to entertain a sorry misconception. A great deal of the work done by the Hawkinses, for in- . stance, was in the nature of perfectly fair trading, and 12 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. would do no shame to honest merchants and ship- owners of our day. And so far as the spoihng of Spanish ships and the capture of Spanish treasure was concerned, it is to be remembered that Spain was The Enemy, and that these men fully believed themselves to be serving God and their Queen what time they also helped themselves to the contents of Philip's galleons. They did unto Philip as they knew Philip would do unto them if he might. In any estimate of the events of this period, the fact must be constantly kept in view that the warfare between the English privateers — whether equipped with the Royal assistance and consent or not — and the Spaniards was but emblematic of the greater conflict be- tween the two systems striving for mastery on the con- tinent of Europe. If a blow could be struck in any part of the world at a Spanish ship, it was a blow at the Arch-Enemy, a blow at the Catholic system, a blow at the Power which would have imposed the Inquisition on the whole world. English seamen knew the Inquisition, how relentlessly it struck down the unhappy Protestant who got within its reach. " It was not necessary that a poor sailor should have been found teaching heresy. It was enough if he had an English Bible and Prayer Book with him in his kit ; and stories would come into Dartmouth or Plymouth how some lad that everybody knew — Bill or Jack or Tom, who had wife or father or mother among them, perhaps — had been seized hold THE AGE. 13 of for no other crime, been flung into a dungeon, tor- tured, starved, set to work in the galleys, or burned in a fool's coat, as they called it, at an auto-de-fe at Seville."* Galleons burning to the water's edge, rifled treasuries of Spanish gold, fierce fights at sea, raids on Spanish colonial towns — these made answer to the auto- de-fe ; and a man of Plymouth or Dartmouth sailed into the powder murk with no less heart because of the fate of Bill or Jack or Tom whom he had known in the High Street or the Butterwalk, or had accom- panied to St. Andrew's or St. Saviour's, or had joined in dance and carouse at the Midsummer Night's Wake. Who shall doubt the sincerity of a man like John Hawkins when, writing to Burleigh, he says : " I have briefly considered upon a substantial course and the material reasons that by mine own experience I know (with God's assistance) will strongly annoy and offend the King of Spain, the mortal enemy of our religion and the present government of the realm of England " .''t Hawkins was no sniveller, no hypocrite ; when he in- voked the Divine assistance for a project of annoying and offending PhiHp as the mortal enemy of the Enghsh church and nation, he believed that he would get it, and acted in that belief. It is time to destroy the im- pression that the seamen out of the West were no better * Froude : " English Seamen." t Hawkins to Lord Burleigh. State Papers, 14 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. than pirates and corsairs, and that their only motive was plunder. They were devout and God-fearing men in their fashion, and they made no doubt that their war- fare was religious as well as political and personal. Hawkins's saiHng orders to his crews in 1564 form no bad rule of conduct : " Serve God daily ; love one another ; preserve your victuals ; beware of fire ; and keep good company." To come even closer to this question of the morality of the plunder accomplished on the high seas, the case must be judged by the ruling ethic of the age ; and the privateers had fair precedent for everything they did in the notorious instance of the Genoese ducats. It was in 1568 that Philip, pressed by the necessities of the war in the Netherlands, borrowed half a million sterling from two banking-houses of Genoa. The money, des- patched by several ships, was to be delivered to the Duke of Alva at Antwerp. The privateers of the Channel, with their headquarters at Plymouth, obtained information of the approach of the treasure-ships, gave chase to them, and drove them to various harbours for shelter, so that Alva's war-chest, instead of arriving safely at Antwerp, was distributed in the ports of Ply- mouth, Southampton, and Fowey. One of the vessels, commanded by Capitan Diaz, sailed into a hornets' nest in Plymouth Sound, where were numerous ships of the Prince of Conde's private fleet and Enghsh vessels flying his flag. William Hawkins, mayor of the town, brother THE AGE. 15 of John Hawkins, was awaiting the arrival of the latter from San Juan de Ulloa.* The Spaniards under Diaz knew all about the treachery proposed, if not of the actual disaster that had befallen Hawkins ; and the Spanish captain was naturally anxious to prevent the news from reaching Plymouth's ears. He therefore made up a cock-and-bull story for local consumption to the effect that John Hawkins's expedition had been completely successful, and that he was returning laden with fabulous riches ; " the worst boy in those ships might be a captain for riches." Unfortunately for Sefior Diaz, not long after his own arrival came the veritable news of San Juan ; and English indignation vented itself upon him and his treasure. William Hawkins implored permission to make war on the ducats that Diaz carried in order that he might himself be recompensed for his losses in the ill-fated expedition. He did not get it, but the govern- ment landed the money and conveyed it to London by road. There the agent of the Genoese bankers found that Queen Elizabeth's security was better than King Philip's, and decided to lend it to the English govern- ment. Consequently, half the wealth designed to assist in the shedding of Protestant blood in the Low Coun- tries was sent to the Protestant Prince of Orange, and the other half went to the support of the Protestant Queen Elizabeth's Navy. * See Chapter IX. i6 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. It is a curious attitude of mind that questions the wisdom of such a proceeding. True, England was not now nominally at war with Spain, but the conditions of war existed very completely in everything but name, and the name itself was added at the very end of the contest a few years later. The English people were cer- tainly at war with Spain, and the systems represented by Philip and Elizabeth were in the throes of a struggle for life and death. Without the seamanship, the bravery, the daring of the privateers, without the experience they had gained in all parts of the Western world, it is not unlikely that the history of 1588 might have read very differently, and the Great Deliverance would have been impossible. Men must be judged by the light of their age ; England, judging the sea-dogs of Elizabeth by the light of the sixteenth century, has approved them brave patriots and dauntless heroes, and enshrined them in imperishable memory. CHAPTER II. THE FAMILY OF HAWKINS. William Hawkins, Father of John— First of His Three Voyages to Brazil— His Second Voyage— Brings back a Native Prince — His Third Voyage — Marries the Daughter and Heiress of Roger Trelawny — An Appreciation of His Character. " Old Master William Hawkyns,"* as Hakluyt calls him, father of Sir John, was a great sea captain who in 1 513 was probably master of The Great Galley, second ship in Henry's Navy. In later years his sea- manlike skill, his knowledge of the world, his adven- turous disposition, and his genius for business obtained for him the distinguished favour of bluff King Hal. It is not possible to ascertain just how the friendship be- tween the sovereign and the Plymouth sailor grew up. "King Harry loved a man," quotes Froude ; and adds: " He knew a man when he saw one. He made acquaint- ance with sea-captains at Portsmouth and Southamp- ton. In some way or other he came to know one Mr. WiUiam Hawkins, of Plymouth, and held him in especial esteem." But we can hardly be in doubt that it was through his qualities and reputation as a seaman that * Note A, p. 284. c 17 i8 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. Hawkins's acquaintance with the King came about ; those fine quaHties and that high reputation certainly preserved him in the royal favour thereafter. By trading and adventuring he acquired a large for- tune. He was the owner of a considerable property in Plymouth, and is described as one of the richest men, if not actually the richest man, in the town. In the earUest list in existence of freemen of the old borough, he stands- fifth on the roll. He was " Receiver " in the year 1524-5, and, in the later years of his life, was twice mayor. Mr. Worth,* who examined the records of the Corporation minutely, thought that in all probability he was admitted a freeman in the early years of the cen- tury. He became member of Parliament for Plymouth, and for discharging his duties as a representative he was paid the sum of sixteen pence a day. Elsewhere in the books of the Corporation, he is mentioned as having been conspicuous in 1527-8 in "manning the bulwarks to defend the argosy against the Frenchmen." The exact record of this incident is as follows: — "Item received of tharrogosye for defending their shippe against the fifrenshemen that woukl have taken her, xvji' xivs iyd," " Tharrogosye " was " the argosy " — probably a Span- ish merchant vessel attacked by the French — and the ;£"i6 14s. 4d. was compensation for the part taken by the men of Plymouth in saving her from capture. * Note B, p. 285. THE FAMILY OF HAWKINS. 19 At this time, it may be noted, the Enghsh were hand in glove with the nation destined to be their bitterest foe fifty years later. The Reformation proper had not begun, and Henry VIII. and Charles V. were leagued together against France. Now, before he had come into national prominence, William Hawkins was a noteworthy person on his native heath, a capitalist who could lend money to the Cor- poration, or purchase suppHes for them, and afford to wait for repayment by instalments. Thus, in 1529 he sold to the town 196 lbs. of gunpowder and two braiis guns. The gunpowder was taken at the price of 6d. per lb., and the total debt was repaid by the Corpora- tion in three annual instalments of £^. Six years after- wards he lent cash to the borough Fathers, which was paid back in annuities of £^ a year. Earlier than this, Hawkins had begun the three voyages on which his historical fame as a seaman rests. The hrst of them may be fixed about the year 1528. Mention has already been given to the fact that, on the libera- tion of English enterprise after the Wars of the Roses, the thoughts of men were turned to new lands of pro- mise and English began to follow Portuguese and Span- ish adventurers over the Western Ocean. The voyages performed in the reign of Henry VII. were not organised by Englishmen. As Froude says : — " Columbus had offered the New World to Henry VII. while the discovery was still in the air. He had sent his 20 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. brother to England with maps and globes, and quotations from Plato to prove its existence. Henry, like a practical Englishman, treated it as a wild dream. The dream had come from the gate of horn. America was found, and the Spaniard, and not the English, came into first possession of it. Still, America was a large place, and John Cabot, the Venetian, with his son Sebastian, tried Henry again. England might still be able to secure a slice. This time Henry VH. listened. Two small ships were fitted out at Bristol, crossed the Atlantic, discovered Newfoundland, coasted down to Florida, looking for a passage to Cathay, but could not find one. The elder Cabot died ; the younger came home. The expedition failed, and no interest had been roused."* It remained for Henry VIII. and William Hawkins to wake interest and tempt Englishmen to reach for the prizes that awaited their arrival in the far-off seas. Sebastian Cabot made another voyage to the River Plate in 1527, sent forth by Spanish merchants who in- tended that the ships should go to the Moluccas. The English had some hand in this expedition, for we are told by Robert Thorne — a Plymouth man, like Hawkins — that he and his partners advanced 1,400 ducats mainly in order that two friends of his who were " learned in cosmographie " should go in the ships and report to him on the country visited and obtain such useful knowledge as they could pick up about the navigation of those seas. It is to be remarked, however, that the first purely English expedition to the American continent was taken out by William Hawkins ; further, that it was organised and equipped by him, and was his own private adven- * Fioude : " Enijlish Seamen." THE FAMILY OF FIAWKINS. 21 ture. This was the voyage of 1528. Hakluyt, in intro- ducing his account of it, remarks that Hawkins, " a man for l^is wisedom, valure, experience, and skill in sea causes much esteemed and beloued of K. Henry the 8, and being one of the principall Sea-captaines in the West parts of England in his time, not contented with the short voyages commonly made then onely to the knowne coaste of Europe, armed out a tall and goodlye shippe of his owne of the burthen of 250 tunnes called the Faille of Plimmouth." He adds that it was in this ship that Hawkins made " three long and famous voyages unto the coast of Brasil," and that such an enterprise was in those days very rare, "especially to our Nation." The adventure led first to the Guinea Coast, and thus, curiously, set the precedent for the celebrated route adopted by John Hawkins in after times. The Paiile of Plimmouth sailed into the mouth of the River Sestos, where Hawkins dropped anchor and began bartering with the natives and securing some of the profits that went to the building of the fortunes of the house. Ivory (" oliphant's teeth ") and other commodities which the negroes had to dispose of were shipped into his vessel, and when his business was completed, he weighed and shaped a course to the West. The Paule was the first British ship that ever pushed a way into the waters of the Brazilian coast. If William Hawkins had not been a great sailor and 22 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. a great merchant, he would have been a statesman and a diplomatist. No ambassador from one friendly Power to another could have acted with more tact and dis- cretion than he did towards the native chiefs with whom he trafficked. In all his voyages to the West, he never encountered any serious hostility or trouble, sagacious old trader and prescient man that he was. He " behaved himself so wisely with those savage people that he grew into great familiarity and friendship with them." Haw- kins was the first English commander the Indians of that region had seen ; they liked him well, for he spoke them fairly and treated them justly. Having returned to Plymouth, settled the accounts of his expedition, and put his affairs in order, he sailed a second time in 1530. He was effusively welcomed by the people with whom he had dealt before, and, when he weighed again for home, had a unique cargo on board. It included not only the valuable produce of the country, but a veritable native prince, one of the chiefs of the Indian tribes in- habiting the Brazilian coastlands. This was the first savage chief imported into England. Hawkins was something of a courtier, and he knew full well how keenly King Henry would appreciate the services of a man who should procure him such a novel lion for exhibition in London. For this reason he would be anxious to make the attempt. But it is no small tribute to his suavity and diplomacy that he was able to induce the chieftain to accompany him. Remember THE FAMILY OF HAWKINS. 23 that Hawkins was the first Englishman they had known, that he had only visited the country once before, and that if the people had any prejudices at all about the character and motives of the white man, these were de- rived from their acquaintance with the Spaniards, of whose dealings with the native tribes we know some- what. Hawkins's method was to be perfectly frank and open with them. Doubtless he told them something of the grandeur of England and the marvels that awaited their adventurous chief. He agreed to leave behind him a hostage, and the pledge he gave was one of his own townsmen, Martin Cockeram, of Plymouth. So the Paule sailed, the savage potentate was landed at Ply- mouth, and by Hawkins taken up to London, and pre- sented to the King at Whitehall. He was lionised just as better and worse men have been lionised since. The King and all the nobility did not a little marvel at the sight of this first specimen of the aboriginal American brought into England ; as Hakluyt observes, their won- derment was not without cause : — "For in his cheeks were holes made according to their savage manner, and therein small bones were planted, stand- ing an inch out from the said holes : which, in his own country, was reputed for a great bravery. He Kad also another hole in his nether lip, wherein was set a precious stone about the bigness of a pea. All his apparel, behaviour, and gesture were very strange to the beholders." The Brazihan remained in England a year, much feted and the object of great public curiosity. Then 24 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. Hawkins commenced the fulfilment of his engagement to restore him to his own land unharmed. But royal favours, feasting, and the life of a civilisation dif- ferent from his own disagreed with the chief's constitu- tion, and he died on the voyage back : " It fell out in the way that by the change of air and alteration of diet, the said savage King died at sea." Here was a crucial test of the impression which Hawkins's character had made upon his Brazilian friends. If he had not con- vinced them of his sincerity and honesty, Master Martin Cockeram would never have seen Plymouth any more. But Master Cockeram did get back to Plymouth, and lived there to a good old age. The Indians, " being fully persuaded of the honest dealing of our men with their prince," restored the hostage to Hawkins and filled up his ship with goods, with which he sailed home to Devon. He went once more to the Spanish Main two years later, and then settled down to the life of a burgess of Plymouth, a prosperous merchant, and a popular Par- liament man. He came back from his last voyage laden with the wealth of the Indies, and cloaked with the mysterious glory of an adventurer into the new world of the West. He was immediately elected Mayor of Plymouth. When next he held that office the situation was altered. The Reformation was in full swing. The cru- sade against the ecclesiastical establishments had been set moving, and they had commenced pulling down the THE FAMILY OF HAWKINS. 25 images in the churches and confiscating the parochial plate and valuables. " The Pious and Godly Institution of a Christian Man " had been compiled, the "monasteries had been suppressed, and the Abbeys had been rifled — among them those of Tavistock and Plympton, close home — Becket had been unsainted : the plate and jewels of the mother church of Plymouth, St. Andrew's, shared the fate of all the rest. The sympathies of Plymouth were Puritan from early times, and at the commence- ment of the Reformation it gave earnest of what it would do in another hundred years, when it was to make so great a fight on behalf of the Parliament against the Crown. It entered with zeal into the new movement, and became the headquarters of Huguenot privateers in the Channel. William Hawkins, the leader of Plymouth men during his life, was the guiding spirit in the new movement, and it was with no mean satisfaction that he, as Mayor, received on behalf of the Corporation in 1540 the " church juells and other thynges," and made arrange- ments for their sale in London. In 1543 a still larger quantity of church furniture was handed to him, " to by therewith for the Toune gunpowder bowys and for arowys." During one of his visits to the capital in the capacity of member of Parhament he made these pur- chases — ten barrels of gunpowder, twenty bows, and thirty sheaves of arrows. His wealth and consequence continued to increase. In 1544 he bought the Manor of 26 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. Sutton Vawter — the estate remained in the hands of the family for a century — and became the owner of other property in the town. In 1553, the year in which he had been re-elected to Parliament, the old man died. It has seemed well to recite these details of a fine, active, useful life — a life full-blooded with the stream of enterprise that upsprang in the midst of the sixteenth century — in order to show the nature of the stock from which Sir John Hawkins issued. " Old William Haw- kins " — so called contemporaneously to distinguish him from his son William — was, in fact, the first, the patri- arch, of the Sea Dogs of Devon. Now note the family into which he married. Sir John Trelawny, distin- guished owner of a great Cornish name, was with Henry at the Battle of Agincourt in 141 5. He displayed great bravery in the fight, and the King rewarded him with an addition to his coat of arms and a pension of ;£^20 per annum. On a tablet over the West Gate of the town of Launceston were the arms of Henry V., with an effigy, and beneath a couplet graven — "He that will do aught for mee, Let hym love well Sir John Trelawnee." The third son of Sir John was Roger Trelawny, after- wards of Brightorre ; Roger's only daughter and heiress was Joan, and Joan Trelawny became wife of William Hawkins. In this way, the merchant and adventurer allied himself with a good family and acquired a large THE FAMILY OF HAWKINS. 2; fortune at the same time. The marriage was blessed with two sons, the elder, William, named after his father, and the younger, John, after his grandfather. It is the latter whose career we are to follow. It is impossible, however, to leave the first of the Plymouth captains without a sentence or two in tribute of admiration for his strong and sterling character. He was valiant in action and sage in counsel. He had the wisdom of the serpent and the gentleness of the dove. He lived a long and varied Hfe, and he brought to the training of his two sons all the manifold advantages that an experience of the world almost unique in his day could give him. He had been a war-commander in the very infancy of naval warfare with explosive weapons ; he had smelt powder in actions against the French ; he knew of the business of a merchant what the known world could tell him ; he had seen lands and peoples on which his eyes were the first English eyes to gaze ; he had taken a full share in the duties of the chief office of his native town ; he was at home in the Court and in the Parliament House. No more versatile character ap- pears till his own sons go forth. And in all the later years of his life, it is the sea that calls him : as he stands on his quays at Plymouth, or walks upon its cliffs, it is of the Brazils that he talks to the youths budding into manhood, and of his last voyage in the Paule of Plini- mouth, completed when they were in infancy. And this is their inspiration. Wilham is already a man of con- 28 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. sideration, and, as his father's heir, will become a great shipowner, whose cruisers will be a constant deadly menace to the King of Spain and his fleets. John is just of age, and will presently make voyages far surpassing anything his father has achieved, become the organiser of the English Navy, and help to defeat the Armada. And so, with a long record of duty well done, having founded a race that shall live as long as the sea-history of his land, the old man closes his eyes upon the glitter of the waters and passes to his grave. CHAPTER III. THE YOUTH OF JOHN HAWKINS. Plymouth Present and Pa/st — Francis Drake — William Hawkins, John's Brother — John's Education — His Passion for Seamanship — His Determination to break down the Spanish Monopoly. John Hawkins, born in 1532, has been described as Patriarch of the Sea-Rovers. Reasons have been set out why that proud title belongs of prior right to his father. In his gay response to the invitation of the sea — none can doubt that it was gay and gladsome, for if ever the world held a born sailor it was John Hawkins — he was but following in the wake of his sire, fulfilling the tradi- tion established in the time of the Paule of Plimmouth. The craving for adventure, the desire for progress in the art of seamanship, the admixture of the craft of ambassador and statesman and courtier with that of sailor and warrior — the precedent for these was great and recent in the family that gathered in the old house in Kinterbury-street of Plymouth. Those who know the Plymouth of to-day and haply are acquainted with the narrow, darksome, grimy, utili- tarian lane of factories and poor houses that bears the 29 30 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. ancient name, and occupies the site of the fair mansions and gardens once ranged along the slope overlooking the valley and harbour of Sutton, v^ill have difficulty in conjuring up the scene it must have presented in the sixteenth century. A great deal of the older part of Plymouth which was fashionable when Hawkins and Drake walked its streets has so degenerated. The High Street, near by Kinterbury Street, and other thorough- fares have " come down " in a melancholy manner as the tide of business and wealth has spread inland. The old houses, or such of them as remain, are let out in flats to the poorest people, and there is no means of identifying the place where the house and garden stood that old William Hawkins bought in 1537. Of Kinterbury Street in an aesthetic sense the less said the better. But when the Hawkinses occupied that " tenement and garden in a certain venella on the east of Kin- terbury Street," the condition of affairs was very dif- ferent ; this was suburban luxury, embowered in green. From the sloping garden the boys had a fine, inspiriting outlook over the eastern harbour of Plymouth, Sutton Pool, and the Cattewater, that sheltered, almost land- locked arm of the sea where their father's ships lay, where they were themselves to embark on many a memorable voyage. Nor was it a far cry to The Hawe, as the Hoe was then called — signifying a height — the historic cliff where Drake is reputed to have been playing bowls in 1588 THE YOUTH OF JOHN HAWKINS. 31 when news of the arrival of Philip's Armada was brought. There they would be in the exciting times of their youth, when the old men played their games and told their tales of danger faced and glory won, when ships were going and coming between Plymouth Sound and all the known oceans. There, with no huge breakwater intervening between them and the vision of the Channel, with no lighthouse upon the deadly reef of Eddystone, they looked out upon the wide sea and felt its fascination, and turned from it to the wrinkled faces and blue eyes of ancient mariners, and breathed the atmosphere, imbibed the intoxication, submitted to the spell of it. The great sea called them with command, that great sea which was to be the winding sheet of one of them ; they felt its oneness with themselves, its harmony with the soul within them, these sailors born. Their destiny was written in their father's life, in the surroundings of their youth. Open-eyed, wide-eared boys, listening to the converse of the sea-captains who frequented their home, gathered inspiration and stimulus for the deeds which in after years were to make them famous. In another and distant part of England was being reared in similar circumstances a boy upon whose history their own was to exercise a powerful influence. In 1 544, when John Hawkins was twelve years of age, Francis Drake was born at Tavistock. He was a kinsman of the Hawkinses, who in former years had established connec- 33 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. tions with the little town on the moorland frontier. While William and John Hawkins were watching the great growth of private maritime enterprise at Plymouth, Francis Drake was witnessing the first great outburst of naval progress in England from the banks and boats of the Medway, and keeping also the company of sailor- men and adventurers. His father had removed from Devon to Kent while he was yet very young. Some con- troversy has gathered about the question of the rela- tionship between Drake and the Hawkinses ; doubt has been cast even on its existence. It has been said to be improbable because Drake himself never told Camden anything about it. Not in itself a very convincing nega- tive ; further, we have documentary evidence in the affirmative, which is worth a lot more. In a letter from William Hawkins, reference is made to " our kinsman called Fransyes Dracke " — the occasion being that on which Hawkins sent the future hero of Cadiz to London to Sir WiUiam Cecil with news of the disaster at San Juan. Drake does not seem to have been associated with the men of Plymouth till a later period. His first sea employment was from the Medway, and it was not until he had reached the age of twenty-two that he joined John Hawkins in the Guinea trade. Still, there would probably have been communication between the families. The memory of their father's last voyage to the Spanish Main was twenty years old when he died and THE YOUTH OF JOHN HAWKINS. 33 the brothers came into the possession of his business, his ships, and his wealth. In the same year, WilHam, of whom a few words now fall to be said, was admitted to the Freedom of Plymouth, so that he was already recog- nised as a man of consequence in his native town. He stepped at once into his father's place. Indeed, he soon far excelled the influence the old gentleman had wielded ; it is not long before we find him held in such esteem that he is tacitly regarded as the governor of the port. It was an unofficial position, arising from the ex- tent of his relations with the varied commerce of the place and the great importance of his shipping property. From the beginning — it was probably the natural accom- paniment of his headship of the family — he paid much more attention to local affairs than did his brother John, and although he was a man of great sea-knowledge and experience, he seems never to have had quite so broad an outlook upon the world. We discover him concerned in obtaining the revised Town's Charter from Queen Elizabeth in 1561, and in the transfer of St. Nicholas' Island (now known as Drake's Island) to the Corpora- tion, and from the Corporation to the Crown ; and at a comparatively early age he filled the office of mayor. He largely increased the local status of the family. The quays that had been built'or purchased by his father in Sutton Harbour were fixed by Act of Parliament in 1558 as the sole quays at which goods might be legally landed in Plymouth. His local importance appears to have 34 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. tended a little in the direction of monopoly. There is, however, no evidence that he abused his trust, for he remained popular enough to be re-elected mayor, and he was occupying the civic chair in the year of the Armada. William Hawkins's purely local activities and in- terests need not detain us ; but one significant fact is to be observed. As an owner of ships in the port of Ply- mouth, he was one of the earUest organisers of the great fleet of privateers that now began the career of terrorisation from which Spain suffered for so many years. To his influence and encouragement was due the circumstance that the volunteer ships of the Prince of Conde made their headquarters at Plymouth. Old William Hawkins, his father, was an earnest and en- thusiastic partisan of the Protestant Reformation. His heir was a burning Protestant, and took no small share in the historic conversion of Plymouth into a Puritan stronghold. And he was not merely a passive owner of vessels which made raids on Spanish ships and Catholic towns. He himself sailed to the Spanish Main in com- mand of his own flotillas, and was in some sharp fighting at Porto Rico. He held a commission under the Prince of Conde. There is no need to repeat here the drama of the Genoese ducats in which he was one of the chief actors. Long before this, John Hawkins had begun to acquire his reputation. It is a rather silly fashion to THE YOUTH OF JOHN HAWKINS. 35 represent every man who became a great seaman and fighter in Elizabethan days as a sort of hybrid between a stage pirate and a modern coal-lumper ; and Hawkins, because he was a bluff and blunt man, has suffered more than most of his contemporaries from this kind of fiction. In actual fact, he was well-educated and accomplished for his time, and lived in excellent style. Some of his dispatches show a sense of the effect of words, though he was an artist rather with tacks and sheets, with guns and money, than with the pen. His first great voyage was begun when he was at the age of thirty, in 1562 ; but before this, as we learn from Hayluyt, he had made several trips to Spain and Portugal and the Canary Islands. In the Spanish ports he had heard fascinating stories of the glamour and the wealth of the Western Islands, which led to his first expedition into those waters. From his earliest years the seaman-genius of Haw- kins had displayed itself. Seamanship was his greatest care as a youth ; it became a fixed passion. He culti- vated it by the best means he could procure. He read mathematics and studied navigation theoretically and practically, and gave early promise of the greatness that awaited him not only in exploration and pioneering ad- venture, but in maritime administration. He showed some capacity for affairs generally, and only two years later than his brother (1555) was admitted as freeman of Plymouth. He was then just twenty-three years of 36 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. age, but had already entered upon his profession. This is demonstrated in a really curious way. There happened to be two John Hawkynses admitted freemen in the same year, and he is distinguished as " John Hawkyns, majynr." One can imagine no title which John Haw- kins would have preferred to it, either at twenty-three or at sixty-three. He is registered in this year as the owner of the Peter of Plymouth, about which vessel it was declared that she had been captured by the French at sea before war was declared. Such complaint, we may take it, was not a very serious matter among men whose ideas of such international law as existed were, to say the least of it, loose. Such a man as John Hawkins was, now achieving maturity, would be very unlikely to find content for his ambitions in saihng seas that were known, in prosaic voyages that everybody else had made to the ports of Europe and the western coast of Africa. The great world of the West was being opened up. The legends current about it could not fail to be attractive to a trader of adventurous disposition. There was another stimulus which would be equally operative in the case of Hawkins. Henry VH. had been offered the chance of acquiring for the English every- thing that was meant by a first footing in the West Indies ; he rejected the opportunity, and it was accepted by Spain. Spain did not intend, having won great terri- tories and great riches there, to share its wealth with THE YOUTH OF JOHN HAWKINS. 37 any other nation. The facts about the islands and their resources, and about the navigation of the waters of those regions, were therefore maintained in great secrecy. The Spaniards placed an embargo on trade between their settlers and the ships of other nations ; they built a wall of exclusion. That was one of the prime factors in the initiation of John Hawkins's voyages. He saw that fame and profit were to be ob- tained in the West ; above all he saw that the wall was there, and that it was not invulnerable to a man of in- genuity and strength. He possessed both in a very high degree. He had not made many voyages to the Canaries before he came to the determination that the breach could be made, and that he would be the man to make it. Here we have the origin of the first dispute between John Hawkins and Philip of Spain. On it hung momentous issues. CHAPTER IV. THE TRADE IN NEGRO SLAVES. Hawkins engages in the Slave Trade — How he regarded the Matter — The Whole Nation Responsible — The Irregular Warfare between Englishmen and Spaniards begins — Hawkins arrives at His- paniola — His Return — His Grievance against the Spaniard. Up to 1562, Hawkins had been a simple trader. He had made a name as a skilful sea-captain, and had added largely to his wealth. But it had all been done by way of perfectly legitimate business, that is to say, he had not come into conflict with any of the peoples with whom he traded, and was no foe to their governments. In this eventful year, however, occurred the great de- parture. He had "made divers voyages to the Isles of the Canaries, and ... by his good and upright dealing . . . grown in love and favour with the people."* It was here he found the immediate inspira- tion of his great adventures. The little archipelago was intimately associated with the great explorations of the fifteenth century. Hence Columbus jumped off upon his first venture into the unknown West. John Haw- kins's cronies in the Canaries could tell him all that was * Hakluyt. 38 TRADE IN NEGRO SLAVES. 39 to be known about " West India " ; he took pains to acquire and retain all the information they had to im- part. His father's voyages to the western continent, though thirty years old, were fresh in his mind. From the old house in Kinterbury Street his young imagina- tion had sped to the lands beyond the setting of the sun ; from the shadow of Teneriffe his man's resolution prompted him thither. A trader so inspired must know what merchandise to take with him into new markets. What the Spanish Islands in the Gulf of Mexico wanted most, his Canary friends told him, was negroes. After much deliberation he determined to become a slave-trader. A prodigious quantity of ink and invective has been expended in the denunciation of Hawkins as the pioneer of England's association with the slave-trade. First, as to the fact : he was not the pioneer. John Lok, an Englishman, visiting the West Coast for ivory and gold- dust some ten years earlier, is entitled to the honour. We may therefore cease to execrate Hawkins on that score. Lok's view of the subject was ostensibly that of Las Casas ; he saw, in the words of Froude, that " the negroes were people of beastly living, without God, law, religion, or commonwealth, gave some of them oppor- tunity of a life in creation, and carried them off as slaves." Idle as it is to waste words in expressing abomination of the Sixteenth Century Englishman's share in the slave traffic, it is equally futile to pretend 40 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. that philanthropy was the spring of what he did. Neither Lok nor Hawkins was moved by any altruistic considerations in his action. If, by their removal from their native shores where they were oppressed by their own chiefs, raided by neighbouring tribes, carried off to torture and captivity, and saw their brothers and sisters on the table, and by their transference in slavedom to the Western islands, where they were at least fed in- stead of being fed on, the negroes were benefited, that was not the reason why Lok captured and sold them to West Indian traders, or Hawkins took shiploads of them to Hispaniola. In a great many cases this was what actually happened. In others, the slavers relieved chiefs of their most troublesome subjects, " who would otherwise have been hanged. Thieves, murderers, and such-like were taken down to the depots and sold." Yet, when all this has been said, it is on no such pretence that we should hang a defence of the conduct of John Hawkins. Himself would have been startled to find that any such pretence was considered necessary. In his own opinion and the opinion of his time, if he was transgressing any law it was not a law of humanity or morality, but the law of a foreign State — a law quite subject to transgression by a bold man because it was a law of protection and monopoly. Hawkins was merely embarking in a new branch of business, and it was busi- ness v/hich was regarded all over the world as perfectly TRADE IN NEGRO SLAVES. 41 legitimate. Certainly in the England of Elizabeth's day — and we must endeavour to get the perspective of the time if we are to attempt to judge its actions — slave-trading, was regarded with no horror ; there was no party in the State to compare with the humanitarian party that properly arises in our own day at the whisper of forced labour ; there were very few apostles of the fine gospel of the Brotherhood of Man. Slavery had horrible results, and to try to depict the attitude of mind in which the Elizabethans approached it is certainly not to set up a defence of the institution. What we are concerned to notice is that John Hawkins contributed no appreciable drop to the volume of misery that resulted from the establishment of negro slavery in America. Every account of him makes Hawkins a man of large heart and generous sympathies. What he did was to divert into his own pockets and those of the people who adventured with him some of the profits that would otherwise have been retained by the Spaniards and the Portugals. Slavery was a very flourishing trade ere ever he touched it. The wither- ing effects of the Spanish occupation upon the natives of the Caribbean Isles had rendered the importation of labour necessary for the planters. Familiar illustra- tions of the same problem may be found in twentieth- century experience, and need no reference here. Charles the Fifth had issued licences for the importation of negroes into the West Indies as long ago as 1515. Sir 42 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. Clements Markham* Has adduced an excellent argument against the reasonableness of blaming John Hawkins for the part of England in the slave trade, by pointing out that whatever obloquy attaches to it must be shared by the whole EngHsh people for a period of 250 years: " The English were particularly eager to enter upon the slave-trade; and by the Treaty of Utrecht, in 171 3. England at length obtained the asiento, giving her the exclusive right to carry on the slave trade between Africa and the Spanish Indies for thirty years. So strong was the party in favour of this trade in England that the contest for its abolition was continued for forty- eight years, from 1759 to 1807." Just two hundred and thirty years after John Hawkins's first slaving voyage began, there was a debate in the House of Commons in which the very arguments that would have appealed to the Elizabethans were used. I have a report of a speech by Colonel Tarleton, in which he contrasted the lenity of the West India government with the savage ferocity of the African princes in their effects upon the life of a negro. And he added that " if we were inclined to rehnquish the traffic, the other nations of Europe would not follow our example, but would make their advantage of our folly. The Dutch and the French would deride us for giving up our share in a beneficial commerce, which would nevertheless go on. The losses would be ours ; * Introduction to " Hawkins's V^oyages. " TRADE IN NEGRO SLAVES. 43 the profit would be theirs. An equal number of slaves would continue to be imported into the West Indies, and the case of the African would be exactly the same, whether he crossed the Atlantic in an English or any- other European bottom." If this contention prevailed upon the British House of Commons for many years against the eloquence of Wilberforce, it is surely foolish to condemn Hawkins for yielding to it more than two centuries before, when the traffic had the blessing of the Church, and he was able to induce his own Queen to join him in it. This is a somewhat inordinate digres- sion from the narrative ; but most of the writers on the subject take so hurried and partial a view of it, barely mentioning Hawkins's slaving voyages as a national infamy, that some detailed consideration seemed neces- sary. It is more conveniently dealt with here than during the description of the voyages. Having, then, returned to Plymouth from the last of those divers voyages to the Isles of the Canaries before he ventured farther afield, Hawkins had fully made up his mind as to the destination of his next, the " mer- chandise " he would carry, and the means by which he would do his business. That " diligent inquisition " of his at Santa Cruz had borne its fruit, and he was pre- pared to risk all that had to be risked in order to establish himself as a trader to the West Indies. Up to the present time, though he was a Protestant, and his brother was encouraging the French Protestant 44 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. privateers, and John, though much at sea, knew all the lively doings of Plymouth Sound and Cattewater, yet he was friendly with the Spaniards, and did most of his business with them. He did not go about his West Indian adventures of ^et purpose to come into conflict with the Spanish government ; but if a collision did occur he was bound to take the chances of it. Still, as I have said, the decision at which he had arrived during his voyages to the Canaries was mo- mentous. It was, in fact, the first step towards that irregular warfare between the private squadrons of English adventurers and the Imperial fleets of Spain which terminated in dire catastrophe for King Philip. It is not possible to agree with those writers who suggest that Hawkins was surprised by the issue, and had no expectation that his venture would end in conflict. It is true that the Spanish merchants encouraged him in the idea, and that his cargoes were welcomed in the islands ; but none knew better than Hawkins how jealously the Spanish Government guarded all the secrets of their Western possessions, how determined they were that the ships of other nations should not plough the waters of the Gulf of Mexico or trade in their harbours ; they had El Dorado, and they meant to keep it to themselves. This determination, this jealousy, were menaced by his first voyage to His- paniola ; the man who projected it could not be ignorant TRADE IN NEGRO SLAVES. 45 of its possible consequences. Hawkins was a long- sighted man ; he saw at least as far as that. He was also a dogged man, slow to arrive at a decision, im- movable in it when once it was taken. On his return to Plymouth, he had concluded that the affair was a little bigger than he cared to under- take entirely on his own responsibility. He communi- cated his idea to certain friends. Four years before, Hawkins had been married to Katherine Gonson, daughter of Benjamin Gonson, Treasurer of the Navy. He thus secured an alliance which was to have an im~ portant influence upon his career. The Gonson family had been closely associated with the Navy for many years. William Gonson, father of Hawkins's beaii-pere, had been treasurer in Henry VHI.'s time, when old William Hawkins commanded The Great Galley, and Benjamin had meirried Ursula Hussey, daughter of an Admiralty Judge. In addition to the Gonsons, he had many other influential friends in London. It was to them that Hawkins turned now for assistance in his venture. Some of them were great merchants, and it is evidence of the high repute in which his capabilities were held that they found it good and lent it countenance and financial support. It was a scheme more daring than any Enghshman had ever propounded, but they knew that if any EngUshinan could carry it through, Hawkins 46 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. was the man. " The first EngHshman," says a con- temporary,* " that gave any attempt on the coasts of West India was Sir John Hawkins, Knight : who there and in that attempt, as in many others sithens, did and hath proved himself to be a man of excellent capacity, great government, and perfect resolution. For before he attempted the same it was a matter doubtful and reported the extremest limit of danger to sail upon those coasts . . ." Benjamin Gonson knew all this, and so did Sir Lionel Ducket, Sir Thomas Lodge, Sir William Winter, Mr. Bronfield, and others to whom the plan was unfolded. But they made no difficulty about providing the money and the ships : they all " Hked so well of his intention," as Hakluyt puts it, " that they became liberal contributors and adventurers in the action." The expedition was fitted out at Plymouth. It con- sisted of three cockleshells, as we should consider them now: the Solomon, the flagship, of 120 tons burthen; the Swallow, of 100 tons, one Hampton being captain ; and the Jonas, of 40 tons. Froude has expressed sur- prise at the dimensions of the ships ; he speaks of them as " inconceivably small." But even in our own day, a ketch-rigged vessel not so large as the Swallow annually makes two round trips across the stormy Western Ocean from Plymouth. And no doubt Haw- kins thought he was respectably equipped. He had * John Davis: "World's Hydrographical Description." TRADE IN NEGRO SLAVES. 47 under him all told about a hundred men, "for fear of sickness and other inconveniences, whereunto men in long voyages are commonly subject." In October, 1562, then, the road to the West Indies was inaugurated for the English. The vessels weighed at Plymouth, and shaped a course for the Canaries. At Santa Cruz he was among his old enthusiastic friends. They knew of his project, wished him luck in it, and gave him and Hampton and their men "friendly entertainment." Whereafter they left the islands to embark upon the real business of the cruise. They cast anchor off Sierra Leone, and began to collect negroes and other goods. He " got into his possession, partly by the sworde, and partly by other meanes, to the number of 300 negroes at the least, besides other mer- chandises which that country yieldeth." Hawkins had been to the Guinea Coast before, and knew the trade. He did not give offence by competing with the Government depots for his booty ; he picked up slaves where he could get them with the least amount of fuss, and we may be sure that the " sworde " was not employed a great deal. The local chiefs never showed much back- wardness about disposing of their prisoners of war and their criminals ; it was much more profitable than be- heading them and eating them, or feeding them in captivity. The manner of the transaction necessitated a long stay on the coast ; but when he had his three hundred blacks safely on board, Hawkins made short 48 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. work of the rest of it. " He sailed over the ocean sea unto the island of Hispaniola." So had Columbus sailed over the ocean sea exactly eighty years before, and on the coast of Hispaniola lost and abandoned the Santa Maria during the voyage which discovered the New World. In this island, which he named " Espagnola," or Little Spain, there were about two millions of people when the Spaniards took possession of it. They were of a low type, and, accord- ing to Spanish authorities, deficient in intellect, morals, and physique. They were effectually exterminated by thirty years of abject slavery imposed upon them by ad- venturers who were attracted by fabulous stories of the golden wealth of Espagnola. Long before that, the negro traffic had begun, and it was maintained in great volume all through the sixteenth century. The history of Hayti serves in a measure to vindicate the arguments of those who said that their removal to the West Indies was good for the blacks ; they could endure labour under conditions which were death to the Caribs, and they thrived upon it, increased and multipHed, took posses- sion of the country and rule it at this day. Hawkins struck the island on the North, and his flotilla dropped anchor at Port Isabella. His first pro- ceedings were the very pattern of diplomacy. It was true, he said, that he had three hundred negroes with him, and he was willing to sell them if he could obtain permission. But that was not his primary object ; he TRADE IN NEGRO SLAVES. 49 had been driven out of his course while on a voyage of exploration, and he wanted money and supplies. The local Spanish authorities saw nothing wrong in this. There was a state of peace between England and Spain. It was true that they had general orders with regard to the treatment of foreigners who arrived in those waters ; but this foreigner was harmless so far as they knew. He had things to sell which the people of Espagnola wanted to buy. Black labour was in great demand, and it would have been rejecting the good gifts of Providence and transgressing the general desire to have allowed this first foreign importer to go away without achieving the projected deal. They therefore made terms with him, advantageous both to them and to him, and chanced what the Government of Madrid would say about it. How that fell out is in the sequel. At Isabella, Hawkins " had reasonable utterance of his English Commodities, as also of some part of his Negroes," Hakluyt says, " trusting the Spaniards no further than that, by his own strength, he was able to master them." Assuredly, John Hawkins would never make the mistake of trusting strangers beyond reason- able bounds ; but there is ample evidence to show that his relations, not only with the planter purchasers of his wares, but also with the authorities, were perfectly amicable. There was no occasion for any display of force. From Isabella, Hawkins moved on to Puerto Plata, and repeated the performance ; he finished hi§ 50 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. bartering at Monte Cristi. The arrangement with the Governor of the island was that he should sell two hun- dred of his blacks and leave the others with the authori- ties in case of any difficulty about the duty. He re- ceived (still quoting Hakluyt) " in those three places by way of exchange, such a quantity of merchandise, that he did not only lade his own three ships with hides, ginger, sugar, and some quantity of pearls ; but he freighted also two other Hulks with hides and other like commodities, which he sent into Spain." The fate of the cargoes thus consigned to King Philip's own dominions is also part of the sequel. Hawkins had good cause to be pleased with the issue of his first adventure into the West. It had been more successful than there had been any absolute reason to expect. If on his arrival at the Port of Isabella he trusted the Spaniards " no further than that by his own strength he was able to master them," the excellent re- ception that had awaited him evidently calmed a good many of his suspicions, or he would not have embarked any part of his gains in cargoes for Spain. This was enough for an initial step, and he ventured no farther into the Spanish seas, but stood out into the Atlantic, and steered for England. He arrived in Plymouth in September, 1563, nearly a year after his departure. He was received with much joy by his wife and his brother William. He found his son Richard, now aged three, TRADE IN NEGRO SLAVES. 51 grown a year bigger and taller ; his business prospered, his star was in the ascendant. The townspeople were glad to see the Captain back again. His partners in the enterprise were well pleased with his success. And all the rejoicing and all the congratulations offered to the first Englishman who had opened the route for English trade to the golden west were expressed in complete ignorance of the momentous fact that this exploit had in reality opened another vista — the long vista of conflict and bloodshed in which Spain and England were engaged for thirty years. The Captain himself was not long without an inkling of the fact. Not many days after his own arrival in Plymouth, there came post-haste his friend Hampton, who had sailed with him in the Swallow. Hampton had been despatched by Hawkins with the cargoes of hides to Spain. They were consigned to an English- man in Cadiz named Tipton, who was to dispose of them to the best advantage in that port, where they were a good marketable commodity. Hampton's story was dis- appointing in itself, and alarming for the future. He had nothing to show for the cargoes. Immediately upon their arrival, Philip, through the officers of the Inquisi- tion, had seized and confiscated them. It was also given out that an order had been sent to the Governor of His- paniola to regard the 125 slaves left there with him as forfeit. As for Hampton, he had lost Hawkins's hides and run a considerable risk of his own skin, for he had 52 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. fled from Spain with the familiars of the Inquisition at his heels. Indeed, the Inquisition was saving up store of ven- geance for a day of reckoning to be appointed by the seamen of Plymouth and the Western ports. This was one more count in the long indictment. Hawkins was enraered : the loss to himself and his fellow-adventurers was 40,000 ducats. It was not to be borne in patience. He set in motion all the machinery on which he could lay his fingers for the coercion of Philip into a more reasonable temper. He wrote to Philip himself ; prob- ably he had been in the presence of the Spanish monarch a few years before when the latter landed at Plymouth and was lavishly entertained by the Corporation (of which Hawkins was a member) at a cost of ;^300. Philip saw accurately in Hawkins the forerunner of the English merchant-adventurers who were to be stout thorns in his side for so many years. It was the begin- ning of his almost superstitious hatred of the man and his name. He would have no parley with him. No eloquence of argument, no fury of threats would move him. Finding personal appeal of none avail, Hawkins turned to his influential friends in London, and brought the Government and the Court to his aid — with just as little effect. A letter from Queen Elizabeth to King Philip asking consideration for her subject was fruit- less. She commanded Sir Thomas Challoner, her Am- bassador at Madrid, to intercede for Hawkins, and help TRADE IN NEGRO SLAVES. 53 him to the utmost of his power. PhiHp was obdurate, and told Challoner to warn the EngHsh that mischief would arise if the visit to the Indies were repeated. Haw- kins talked of going to Madrid on the business. Chal- loner entreated him to stay at home — Challoner's sym- pathies were with Spain, for which he had fought under Charles V. : he was half a Spaniard. So the wrangle went on for nearly a year. In July, 1 564, Challoner wrote to Hawkins telling him that there was no chance of obtaining any favour from the Spanish Court, and advising him to give four or five thousand ducats to some favourite of King Philip's to ask for the forfeited goods, prescribing that the balance should be handed over to the agents of Hawkins. John Hawkins did nothing of the sort. He sat in Plymouth brooding over his wrongs and meditating his vengeance. The illicit war was now declared. Philip's warning was com- municated to the Government, and Sir William Cecil begged the Queen to forbid any more expeditions of the sort. But the Queen at this time had a keener in- sight than Cecil's into the real issue that was at stake ; the next time Hawkins went westward he sailed in a Queen's ship. CHAPTER V. SECOND VOYAGE TO THE WEST INDIES. Hawkins's Deliberateness — Queen Elizabeth lends him the Jesus of Lubek — His Second Expedition sets Sail — John Sparke's Log of the Voyage — Hawkins's Sailing Orders — A Hostile Reception at Teneriffe — A Pinnace capsized — The First Capture of Negroes — A Misadventure at Bymba — In Peril at Sierra Leone — Making for the Spanish Main — At Margarita — A Call at Cumana. Hawkins acted with characteristic caution in the steps he took to place himself even with King Philip. He never hurried a decision ; he revolved pros and cons ; he exhausted all other methods before he proceeded to the extreme. He had been disputing with Spain over those unhappy cargoes of hides for nearly a year. In July, Challoner's letter informed him of the hopelessness of his case ; in October, his second expedition sailed. Hawkins was slow of resolution because of a native de- liberation in all his works, not from any weakness of his character, for in action he was the promptest of men. He now had a definite grievance to redress, and Spain should pay for it Sagacious and wily in counsel as he was ready in deed, Hawkins knew that this had become a bigger affair than could be properly tackled by a private com- 54 THE SECOND VOYAGE. 55 pany of adventurers ; he made the Queen a partner with him in his enterprise. Elizabeth hked a resolute man, an adventurous man, above all a capable man ; such a man she recognised in John Hawkins. Against the advice of Cecil — and these proceedings were much too strong for his stomach — she went into the business to the extent of lending Hawkins her famous ship the Jesus of Lubek, a vessel of 700 tons. At httle risk and at great profit, she thought, a severe lesson might be administered to Philip. The cold sweat into which he had been thrown by the first descent of Hawkins upon the West Indies showed that in that remote corner of the world was a spot where pin-pricks would reach him ; Hawkins was an auxiliary arm which would keep Philip busy, and distract his attention from other projects that might be annoying to his sister-in-law. Nominally, England and Spain were on terms of peace and friendship ; in fact, the crisis was gathering ; this was a means of staving off a more expensive form of warfare. Englishmen in 1564 could not have failed to read the adumbration of 1588. Again, this was an assertion of a truth which was yearly becoming of more vital consequence to England — the truth that there is no Hen upon the seas. If Englishmen wanted to sail in the Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico, not all the power of Spain should proscribe them. This is im- portant to be observed ; also that England placed upon the Spanish Government the onus of seeing that its S6 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. own laws were obeyed. Hawkins was trading with Spanish settlers in the islands who were very willing to trade with him ; if the trade were to be prohibited, upon the Spanish authorities lay the obligation of enforcing the prohibition. In this view of the matter — it was un- questionably the view taken by Elizabeth and by Haw- kins — the confiscation of the hides had been perfectly unjustifiable, and savoured more of piracy than anything that the captain himself had done. So, in the second expedition, in addition to lending her great ship, the Queen took shares ; other adventurers were the Earl of Pembroke, the Earl of Leicester, and all the members of the Council except Cecil, whose dis- taste for the work persisted. Hawkins was instructed in general terms that no wrong must be done to the King of Spain ; the particular application of the word to his measures was left to his own defining. Four ships were fitted out and assembled in Plymouth harbour. They were the Jesus of Lubek ; the Solomon, of 140 tons ; the Tiger, of 50 tons ; and the Swallow, of 30 tons. All being ready, Hawkins took leave of his wife and his little boy, and on October i8th went on board the ] csiis and set sail for the Canaries. The programme was to be much the same as that of the first voyage, but everything was contrived upon a larger scale. He had more ships and greater carrying capacity, and a hundred fighting men in case of need. It is here that we first THE SECOND VOYAGE. 57 meet with Hawkins in the capacity of a mihtary sea- man ; throughout the adventure he proved himself a born strategist, as well as a rough-and-ready diplomatist and a skilled leader. He had with him John Chester, son of Sir William Chester, Anthony Parkhurst, Thomas Woorley, and WilHam Lacie, among other gentlemen in search of adventure and fortune. A valuable log of the voyage was written by John Sparke, the younger, who sailed with Hawkins, and was a fellow-townsman ; he afterwards became Mayor of Plymouth. This may be read in detail in Hakluyt, and it will be found a very illuminating document, exag- gerating nothing and extenuating nothing. It is par- ticularly illustrative of the sentiments of the English world of that day with regard to the slaving trade. Here was Sparke, a thorough Puritan, of a Protestant family, whose tendencies were rather strait-laced than otherwise ; and he saw nothing amiss in Hawkins's trafficking. In his view the negroes were taken from Africa for their own good and exported to the Western Islands for the good of the Indians, while Philip was duped for the good of the Protestant cause — a very meritorious concatenation. Sparke does not express these sentiments in these words or anything like them ; but they are plain to be read between his vivid lines. Shortly after leaving Plymouth, Hawkins fell in with the Minion, another ship of the Queen's Majesty, and 58 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. the John Baptist of London, bound in company to the Guinea Coast on the slaving business. We shall hear more of them hereafter. They kept company at in- tervals during the voyage to the Canaries. Tempes- tuous weather and contrary winds being encountered off Finisterre, Hawkins put into Ferrol on the 25th, and remained there till the 30th, being rejoined in the port by the Minion, which had been separated from him in the storm. It was while at Ferrol that Hawkins issued his much-quoted sailing orders to his squadron. They were these (the spelling is modernised) : — " The small ships to be always ahead and aweather of the Jesus ; and to speak, twice a day, with the Jesus at least. "If in the day, the ensign to be over the poop of the Jesus; or in the night, two lights: then shall all the ships speak with her. " If there be three lights aboard the Jesus, then doth she cast about. "If the weather be extreme, that the small ships cannot keep company with the Jesus, then all to keep company with the Solomon ; and forthwith to repair to the island of Tener- iffe, to the northward of the road of Sirroes. " If any happen to any misfortune ; then to shew two lights and to shoot off a piece of ordnance. " If any lose company, and come in sight again ; to make three yaws and strike the mizzen three times. " Serve God daily ; love one another ; preserve your vic- tuals ; beware of fire, and keep good company." There is a ring of Thorough about these sentences. The last is peculiarly fine in expression, and, as was suggested before, makes no bad rule of conduct, taken THE SECOND VOYAGE. 59 in its modern significance. " Keep good company," of course, means that the ships were to sail in consort so far as possible. Without noteworthy adventure they arrived at Teneriffe. At the port of Adecia he went ashore in a pinnace, but found himself the subject of a hostile de- monstration by some fourscore men, armed with arque- buses, halberts, pikes, and swords. Apparently, they were unaware of the identity of the expedition. As soon as he saw what the situation was, Hawkins got his boat out of range of the fire-arms, and announced himself, saying that his business was with the Governor, Peter de Ponte. De Ponte was at Santa Cruz, but his son Nicholas was among the officers on shore at Adecia, and at Hawkins's request he ordered the soldiers to retire. The captain then landed and made known the wants of his squadron. The preliminary difficulties over, the old friendly relations were re-established. Hawkins got his fleet victualled, and trimmed the mainmast of the Jesus, which had been sprung during the gales. As soon as de Ponte heard that Hawkins was at the island, he journeyed from Santa Cruz to greet him, " and gave him as gentle entertainment as if he had been his own brother." A week thus passed, and on the night of November 15th Hawkins gave his adios to de Ponte and the islanders, and set sail for the Guinea Coast and his ^egro hunting. There was one incident on the way in which his 6o A SEA DOG OF DEVON. seamanlike skill and promptitude were displayed. Five days out from Teneriffe, the Jesus s pinnace, sailing be- side the big ship, with two men on board, was through carelessness capsized. There was a brisk breeze, and the Jesus was far away to leeward and the boat out of sight before the ship could be put about. It was Hawkins himself who marked by the sun the spot where the accident had occurred, and he who directed the course of the rescuers in the " great boat," manned by two dozen of the strongest oarsmen in the crew. In the cir- cumstances nobody expected to see the two unhappy wights again, but they were discovered sitting on the keel of the overset boat and brought on board, while the pinnace was recovered. Having saved their lives, Hawkins probably quarter-decked them and rated them soundly for their stupidity: he had a rough tongue for anything like incompetence and folly. They touched at Cape Blanco and at Cape Verde ; and at the latter place took off a shipwrecked French- man who had been livmg for some time with the blacks. Hawkins had thought to obtain a part of his living cargo there, but Cape Verde was drawn blank. It has been mentioned that the Minion and the John Baptist were bound to the African coast on the same errand as the Jesus and her consorts. Leaving Teneriffe before them, the Minion s men had forestalled them at Cape Verde, and they found the birds too wild. Leaving on December 7th, they made for Jeba, stopping by the way THE SECOND VOYAGE. 6i at Alcantraz Island, a place inhabited only by sea-birds. The two big ships rode at anchor here while the Tiger and the Swallow were sent to an adjoining island, La Formio, where eighty men of arms were landed and pur- sued a number of negroes of the tribe named by them Sapies. The blacks showed fight, and being unac- quainted with the effect of firearms, showed no alarm at the discharge of the arquebuses till one of their number received a shot in his thigh. There were no signs of large settlements, and Hawkins, seeing that he could not hope to get any number of slaves there, left. He also abandoned the intention of going into Jeba, because he found so many shoals on the coast and was afraid of getting his two big ships stuck aground. The first haul of hegro flesh and blood was there- fore made on the island of Sambula. Here they found orderly villages and well-tilled lands, but the native Sapies in a state of subjection to a cannibal tribe which Sparke names the " Samboses " — the original " Sam- boes." The latter fled at the white men's approach, and Hawkins conducted as many as he could get of the former from one condition of slavery to another. The boats were filled with rice, fruit, and "mill," and they departed on December 21st, having lost one man — a greedy fellow who wanted an extra share of " pompions," which he had found good eating, went unarmed to raid them, and had his throat cut by some natives in ambush among the trees, 62 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. On the succeeding day Hawkins conducted an expedi- tion in person up a river " called Callowsa." This was effected by means of boating parties, the two big ships being left at anchor in the estuary, while the two smaller went up some distance to serve as a base for the boats. The result of three days' operations was " two caravels laden with negroes." Then came the assault upon the town of Bymba, the one misadventure of the expedition. The Portuguese factors on the coast had told Hawkins that the place would be an easy and a profitable capture. They narrated glowing stories of the gold it contained, and of the slaves that might be impressed, and of the weakness of its de- fences. Forty men in armour and arms were landed by boat, the Portuguese acting as guides. The tall tales of the treasure of Bymba demoralised all Hawkins's plans, for they induced his men to split into very small com- panies and thus to go raiding houses in search of gold. They were overwhelmed by the savages, who chased them down to their boats, and shot arrows at them as they scrambled through the shoal water or attempted to swim for their lives. Hawkins, at the head of a dozen men, had gone right through the village in good order in search of slaves, and now returning found all the rest of his party routed, a couple of hundred yelling natives on the shore, and the boats' crews in pretty plight, many of them wounded, drowning, or suffocated in the mud. He gave fight and forced his wav to the boats, and so THE SECOND VOYAGE. 63 got clear of the pestilential place. The casualties among the English were seven killed, including Field, captain of the Solomon, and twenty-seven wounded. All they got for their pains was the addition of ten negroes to their tale of slaves. Here is Sparke's picture of Hawkins in the moment of adversity: — "The Captain, in a singular wise manner, carried him- self, with countenance very cheerful outwardly, as though he did little weigh the death of his men, nor yet the hurt of the rest (although his heart was inwardly broken in pieces for it) : done to this end, that the Portuguese being with him, should not presume to resist against him, nor take occasion to put him to further displeasure or hindrance for the death of our men." Cool, calculating, apparently dispassionate as ever, Hawkins was deeply grieved by the punishment of his comrades ; but he allowed nothing to interfere with his aims, and he was as wary after a bad buffet in a savage country as he was in a counting-house deal at home in Plymouth. They left, on December 30th, for Taggarin, and on New Year's Day of 1565 the two small ships and the boats parted company with the J esus and the Solomon^ and went negro-hunting up the river Casseroes. They were away five days, " trafficking," and must have made a large number of captures and purchases, for, with just one further trip by the Swallow alone, the business on the Guinea Coast was completed. The climate of Sierra Leone was deadly to white men, or Hawkins would have 64 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. taken greater store of slaves to the West Indies this second voyage. The Portuguese had informed him of a forthcoming battle between the tribes of Sierra Leone and Taggarin, and he would have waited for it, follow- ing the now usual course of purchasing from the victor his prisoners of war at a cheap rate, but for the deaths and sickness which were reducing his men, " which came by the contagiousness of the place, which made us to make hast away." Haste they did, at the best pace the flotilla could achieve, westward to the Indies, setting sail on the night of January i8th. They just escaped an ambush pre- pared for them by the King of Sierra Leone, who missed his chance of seeing " what kind of people we were " by delaying the arrival of his army for a single day. If it had appeared at night when the men of the expedi- tion were all busy filling water in preparation for the voyage across the Atlantic, there might have been another story to write. But, as the chronicler of this piratical, slave-raiding, buccaneering company said with all sincerity, " God, who worketh all things for the best, would not have it so, and by Him we escaped without danger. His name be praysed for it." " Almightie God, who never suffereth His elect to perish ! "... So Sparke exclaims a little later, in describing the terrible twenty-eight days during which the four ships, with their great company of sailors, sol- diers, and slaves, were becalmed in the Atlantic. Quaint THE SECOND VOYAGE. 65 evidence of the perfect faith they had in the morality and righteousness of their business, horrible as its details are. The calm was only varied by brief fierce storms of contrary wind till February 1 6th, when " Almightie God. . . sent vs the ordinary brise, which is the Northwest winde, which never left vs till wee came to an Island of the Canybals, called Do- minica." It was on March glh that Hawkins made signal to his little fleet to heave-to off the Dominican coast, and from that time till May 3 1 st he was busily engaged upon his mission of getting even with King Philip for the trick played upon him at the end of his first voyage. He knew that the task he had taken in hand was both difficult and dangerous ; but he had omitted no neces- sary thing by way of preparation for all possible emer- gencies. He was prepared with his story to explain his presence in those waters. He was prepared with goods to sell which the Spaniards wanted to buy. If any official punctilios stood in the way of his trade, he was prepared with ample force to back up what he conceived to be his right to trade. Above all he was prepared with his own inimitable sang-froid and adroitness. John Hawkins's nerve never deserted him. He could always preserve his British stolidity, whatever the situation, however delicate, however perilous ; and his subordinate officers and his men had perfect faith in his abihty to deal with every problem that arose, and to get them 66 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. out of every hole into which they tumbled. He set forthwith about the business of disposing of the 400 negroes he had with him, and never relaxed his effort till they were all on shore and paid for in various parts of the West Indies. The great trouble of the prolonged voyage across the Atlantic had been shortness of water, and Hawkins only delayed long enough at in- hospitable Dominica to obtain water for the slaves. They lay off shore one night, and the next day set sail to the south-east. The principal settlement and the biggest market at that time in the West Indies was Hispaniola ; but to have gone there after what happened in 1562 would have been to put his head into the lion's mouth. Hawkins hoped to cir- cumvent King Philip by going to the more remote parts of his Western possessions and dealing with men who might know less of him in places where his armada would be more formidable than in the great island of Santo Domingo. Therefore he made for the Spanish Main — the northern mainland of the South American continent, the shores of what is now Venezuela. He touched first at the island of Margarita, where he found the few Spanish settlers very willing to entertain him hospitably enough and victual his ships, but unwilling to hear of trading with him. The Governor of the island was decidedly hostile, and set about harassing Hawkins by every measure he could devise. Not only did he THE SECOND VOYAGE. 67 forbid a pilot whom Hawkins had engaged to go with him along the coast, but he took steps to acquaint greater authorities than himself with the- fact that the dreadful " Achines " was on the coast. He sent a caravel express across the Caribbean Sea to Santo Domingo to inform the Viceroy of the Spanish Indies. The Viceroy had already warned the settlers on the Main against trafficking with any foreigners who might attempt to violate the Spanish monopoly. He now redoubled the emphasis of the prohibition. But this is anticipating events. Margarita was drawn blank. The Governor was able to put a check on any desire that the settlers might have entertained to trade with Hawkins. But the Englishman's display of force had an ominous look ; there was no doubt that with the ships and men at his disposal he might have imposed his will on Margarita and anticipated some of the later exploits of his kinsman Drake. The Governor evidently feared that where complaisance failed him Hawkins might try coercion ; and he therefore commanded the withdrawal of all the inhabitants from the town, and assembled them on the hills behind, where the adven- turers could have them at no advantage, if indeed force were to be used. The captain, however, had no idea of using force in such a case. He saw that in any event there would be little chance of profitable trade in the island, and he wanted to get on with his work before the narrow seas became too hot to hold him. He went 68 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. his way. He slipped across to the Main, and two days' sailing brought him to Cumana. Hawkins himself went ashore in his pinnace to sound the settlers as to the prospects of business. They ap- peared to be soldiers newly arrived in that region, and declared that they could not raise enough capital among them to invest in a smgle negro. They were, however, able to show him a convenient place for watering his ships, at Santa Fe, a couple of leagues away, where the " Indians " came down to the shore and traded with the newcomers, bringing cakes made of maize — a novelty to their eyes — poultry, potatoes, also new, " the most deli- cate roots that may be eaten, and do far exceed our parsnips or carrots," and pines. Beads, pewter whistles, glasses, and knives were the articles bartered for these welcome provisions. They departed from Cumana on March 28th, and coasted eastward for three days, keep- ing well inshore. Hawkins himself generally sailed in his pinnace close to the land to spy it out. " Burboroata " was the next place at which they called. It was prob- ably at La Guayra, or near it. Hawkins anchored his ships off the town and went on shore to speajsi with the authorities. The colloquy was a long and interesting one. CHAPTER VI. ON THE SPANISH MAIN. Things to be borne in Mind in judging Hawkins — At Burboroata— He demands a Licence to Trade — A False Pretence — A Show of Force — Traffic begins — The Viceroy interposes — Hawkins in- sists, and carries his Point. In the story of Hawkins's dealings with the Spaniards on the Main, there is much that may seem unmoral and impossible of approval. To modern sense, the way m which he contrived to get rid of his blacks and com- pensate himself for the misadventure of the previous voyage is thoroughly objectionable. This is no attempt to canonise Hawkins, but some circumstances must be constantly kept in mmd. First, the age had no humani- tarian ideas about slave-trading. Next, the English were determined to maintain the franchise of the seas and the right to trade. They did not contest the right of sovereigns to levy import duties on goods landed in their dominions by foreign ships ; but they did contest the right of sovereigns to close whole seas to trade. Again, the lively sense of injustice and injury under which Hawkins was suffering must be remembered, 69 ;o A SEA DOG OF DEVON. He insisted on trading. He would trade as a plain Englishman who had commodities for sale to any who wanted to buy. He would on his part provide excuses for his appearance m their ports if excuses were re- quired, and reasons why he must require them to pur- chase his cargoes in order that he might replenish his exchequer and his storeroom — reasons which they could pass on for him to any authority that might manifest an inconvenient tendency to ask questions. Or he would land men and guns and threaten dire things if they still refused. But he would trade. He knew that at the back of him— behind the guns of the Jesus of Lubek and the soldiers she carried — was the power of England. He had declared a private war against King Philip ; but in that private war he had the sympathy and covert assistance of Queen Elizabeth. The Spaniards found Hawkins the most troublesome, most persistent Englishman that had ever crossed their path. He was a man of slow speech, but not to be denied. He was a man of slow anger, but terrible in his wrath — the more terrible because its manifestations were so calculated and orderly. The pourparlers with the residents at Burboroata, and with the Governor whom they brought from a dis- tance to their assistance in the matter, provide a fair example of his methods, and of the way in which he proceeded from fair words to force, and finally carried his point. Going ashore to them on his arrival, he ON THE SPANISH MAIN. 71 bluntly declared that he was an Englishman who had come there to do business. He had some four hundred negroes to sell, and he required a licence to trade. They replied that they were forbidden by the King to traffic with any foreign nation, on penalty of forfeiting their goods, and they requested that he should not molest them further, but " depart as he came ; for other com- fort he might not look at their hands, because they were subjects, and might not go beyond the law." Imagine John Hawkins's look-out to the bay where the Jesus of Lubek and her consorts lay at anchor. They had sailed from Plymouth exactly seven months before ; they had experienced many adventures and endured much hardship ; as yet they had done practically no business. And these Spaniards, who wanted his goods, talked to him of laws ! See his brows contract a little, and his lips tighten under his beard, as he witnesses the failure of his first overture, and prepares to open the second They talked of law ; he answered that necessity knoweth no law ; his necessity was to trade. " For being in one of the Queen of England's Armados, and having many soldiers in them, he had need of some refreshing for them, and of victuals, and of money also : without the which he could not depart."* He told them that he had no ulterior motives ; he wanted to trade, not to get them into trouble with their rulers. And why should * Sparke's Narrative. 72 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. any trouble be anticipated? He was sailing under the flag of England, and was content to be open and above- board ; he would do nothing to dishonour his sovereign and his own reputation. What he asked them to do was to supply for themselves an admitted want, in a trans- action which would redound to their profit as well as his own. As for the prohibition, it must surely be a mistake so far as he was concerned, and they might deal with him without danger, " because their Princes were in amity one with another, and for our parts we had free traffic in Spain and Flanders " — Philip's own domin- ions — " and therefore he knew no reason why he should not have the like in all his dominions." This was clever rather than ingenuous. Hawkins knew full well that the Spaniards wanted the blacks and would be eager to buy if they thought they could do so without risk to themselves ; but he knew of the embargo that had been placed against him, and knew that they knew it. They declined to listen to the voice of the tempter ; at least they would have nothing to do with him on their own responsibility. They invited him to bring his ships from the bay into the harbour and wait for ten days while they communicated with the Governor of the Province, who resided at sixty leagues' distance. To bring the business to this point had taken four days. Hawkins fetched his ships inside and re- victualled. But he had no intention of waiting ten days there, with his slaves and his men eating their heads ON THE SPANISH MAIN. ^^ off in idleness, on the off-chance of an answer from the Governor which might be favourable or mifavourable. He therefore asked for permission to sell at once " cer- tain lean and sick negroes, which he had in his ships likely to die upon his hands if they were kept ten days," whereas they would be recovered and found fit for work speedily enough if they could be brought on shore. This request, he said further, he was forced to make be- cause without the value of the slaves he could not pay for his provisions. The officers and the townsmen consulted upon this proposal. They were all itching to do the business if by any means they might get to windward of the authori- ties. They decided to accept. There was some delay in the consummation of the bargain ; the Spaniards naturally wanted to beat down the price, and imagined that the longer they kept Hawkins about, the lower would be the figure at which he would finally sell. They never misjudged a man more completely. At once he took the high hand, and threatened to cast the dust of Burboroata off his feet, taking his blacks with him. This did not suit their book. They were at deadly enmity with the Caribs of the district, they were short of labour, and Hawkins's blacks were much too precious to be allowed to depart. A few were bought imme- diately. The haggling went on again, and was con- tinued till April 14th, when the Governor appeared upon the scene. 74 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. To him, Hawkins made formal petition. He declared that "he was come thither in a ship of the Queen's Majesty of England, being bound to Guinea ; and thither driven by wind and weather ; so that being come thither, he had need of sundry necessaries for the repara- tion of the said Navy, and also great need of money for the payment of his soldiers, unto whom he had promised payment ; and therefore, although he would, yet they would not depart without it. And for that purpose, he requested licence for the sale of certain of his Negroes ; declaring that though they were forbidden to traffic with strangers : yet for that there was great amity be- tween their Princes, and that the thing pertained to our Queen's Highness ; he thought he might do their Prince a great service, and that it would be well taken at his hands, to do it in this cause." It was a glaring false pretence, fully understood on both sides, designed merely to give the Spanish authori- ties an excuse for presentation to their own conscience and to their superiors. Hawkins got his way. Sitting in Council, the Governor heard the petition and granted the licence. There was another dispute about the King's custom. The duty was 30 ducats on each slave— i^8 5s. of the money of that day, and nearer £^0 value of our own. Hawkins saw that the buyers at Burboroata were not going to approach the price he wanted for the slaves, and that, if he had to pay this heavy duty, his own profits would be a vanishing quantity. Time was slip- ON THE SPANISH MAIN. 75 ping on. He had now exhausted every device but one : he had recourse to that. "He prepared 100 men, well-armed with bows, arrows, harquebuses, and pikes ; with the which he marched to the townards." This was his first armed measure against the Spaniards. The show of hostility set up a panic. The Governor sent him a messenger, " straight, with all expedition," to ask him to state his demands, and to march no further until he had received the answer. Hawkins said the duty must be reduced to /i per cent., which was the ordinary custom for wares imported into the West Indies, and not a stiver more would he pay. Further, if they refused to make the abatement, " he would displease them." It was enough. They had no great wish to be " dis- pleased " after the manner which they knew Hawkins might be expected to adopt, and the Governor sent him word that " all things should be to his content." Host- ages were demanded for the performance of the Spaniards' promises, and sent. The traffic in slaves commenced. The poorer settlers having bought all they could afford, the richer sort came down to haggle further about the price. Once more Hawkins had to threaten that he would take his goods elsewhere ; once more the threat was successful. By May 4th they had exhausted the market and had done very well indeed in it. While they v/ere at Burboroata they received further news of the Minion, of which we last heard on the 7^ A SEA DOG OF DEVON. Guinea coast. A French captain, Bontemps, of The Green Dragon, of Havre, arrived in the harbour telhng a moving story of hot encounter with the Portuguese on that coast, of being driven off with only half a cargo of blacks. He was able to inform them that the Minion had been in a like strait. Her captain, David Carlet, a supercargo, and a number of seamen had been betrayed by the negroes and captured by the Portuguese — " which was most sorrowful for us to understand." In some sort, the people at Burboroata had reason to be thankful to Hawkins for his threats of force. He had so effectually awakened their defences that they were fortuitously ready for a sudden attack made by the Caribs on the town on the night of May 3rd, and were able to beat off the enemy with loss. On his de- parture, the Captain made for Curasao, and traded most profitably for hides, the principal product of the island. Since the occupation of Curagao by the Spaniards forty years before, the cattle introduced from Europe had thriven and increased so remarkably that the beasts were now killed merely for their skins. The tongue of an ox was cut out, and the rest of the carcase left to the birds. In nine days Hawkins had invested to good advantage in hides the money obtained for his negroes at Burboroata, and left. He coasted eastwards along the Main again, sailing inshore in the pinnace himself as of old, rounded Cape de la Vela, and on May 19th arrived at Rio de la Hacha. ON THE SPANISH MAIN. ^^ By this time the caravel despatched from Margarita had arrived at Santo Domingo, the Viceroy had raged furiously when he learnt that " Achines " was upon his coasts, and had sent an express commission to La Hacha, La Vela, and other places, forbidding the King's sub- jects to have any dealings with the English marauder. Hawkins learnt this the first day he went on shore to " have talk with the King's Treasurer of the Indies, resident there." But he had foreseen the circumstance, and divined the course of events that vv^ould follow. He was not to be disturbed either by the prohibitions or by the threats of the Spaniards. He had some negroes left ; the settlers wanted to buy them. Viceroy and Council notwithstandmg, he meant to conclude his trad- ing at Rio de la Hacha. The Treasurer told him that they durst not traffic with him, for, if they did, " they should lose all that they did traffick for, besides their bodies, at the magistrate's commandment." Hawkins smiled at their fears, knew how much they counted for, and quietly advanced the old story. " He was in an Armado of the Queen's Majesty of England," and on the affairs of the Queen. He had been driven out of his course by contrary winds, and he had hoped in these parts to find the same friendly relations existing between honest traders of England and Spain as in Spain itself. J'here was no reason that he knew of why this should not be so, for perfect amity reigned between King Philip and Queen Elizabeth. Thus he preferred 78 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. his request to be allowed to trade ; if it were not granted, he would see whether he could not argue more forcibly, employing falcons, arquebuses, bows, and pikes, instead of words. He " willed them to determine either to give him Hcence to trade, or else stand to their own arms ! " Experience had taught Hawkins that a lot of argument was nothing but waste of time. The Spaniards wanted his slaves, and the cause of their apparent reluctance to buy was not any fears of the thunders of the Viceroy or the distant displeasure of the Monarch ; they believed that by making it as difficult as possible for him to sell they would get a reduction in price corresponding to the size of the obstacles they placed in his way. But they could not carry out this programme twice with Hawkins. Upon the first sign of prevarication he threat- ened to retaliate with cannon-balls. The result demonstrated his prescience and the per- spicacity of his judgment. At the first suggestion of force, the opposition collapsed partly: they would give him licence to trade if he would reduce the price of his slaves by half. " If it liked him not," they said, " he might do what he would, for they were determined not to deal otherwise with him." There was a saturnine humour in Hawkins's response to this piece of bluff. " You deal too rigorously with me," said he, in effect, to go about to cut my throat in the price of my com- modities, which are so reasonably priced that you cannot get them as cheap from any other trader. But, seeing ON THE SPANISH MAIN. 79 that you've sent me this for supper, Senor Treasurer — I'll see what I can bring you for breakfast."* There was some stn- the next morning on board the ] esus of Lubek, lying off the town. The men had been entertaining themselves during the parley by watching the crocodiles about the ship. They saw many, " of sundry bignesses," travelling so far seaward because the volume of river water was so great that " the salt water was made fresh." One of their negroes, filling water, was carried off. But this morning, instead of watching the amphibians and speculating on the origin of th? phrase lachrymc2 crocodili (as Sparke does very enter- tainingly), they had bigger business to do. It was May 2 1 St. Soon after sunrise there was a puff of white smoke from the side of the flagship, and the hoarse voice of a whole-culverin awakened the town of Rio de la Hacha. Hawkms had a firm belief in the value of a demonstration of energy. He did not want a san- guinary encounter with the Spaniards ; the best way to carry his point without it was, he thought, to advertise a bloodthirsty intention as loudly as possible. He got ready his hundred men in armour, and presently a little flotilla of boats left for the shore. Hawkins led in the great boat, with two brass falcons in her bows. The other boats were armed with double-bases. The King's Treasurer of the Indies and his people did not mean to fight ; but for the honour of their boasts * See Sparke's account of the negotiations, 8o A SEA DOG OF DEVON. and for the sake of appearances they made a good show of opposition. The Treasurer collected 150 footmen and 30 horsemen, with drums and colours, and marched towards the landing place — it was a sandy beach — with every possible demonstration of defiance. They shouted war at the oncoming boats, and waved their flags and their weapons in invitation to the Englishmen to mortal combat. Hawkins knew how to dissipate their martial ardour. At a word from him the gunners trained the two brass falcons on them and fired. They afterwards de- clared their astonishment at the presence of pieces so large in a boat. The immediate effect of the fire was, Sparke says, that " at every shot they fell flat to the ground ; and as we approached near unto them, they broke their array, and dispersed themselves so much for fear of the ordnance, that at last they all went away without their ensign." The horsemen, finely capari- soned, with white leather shields and javelins, made a brave display, and caracoled up and down the sands until the boats' noses grounded — when they also retired, and the landing was accomplished. Hawkins went quietly on with his plans, knowing full surely that he had only to persevere with the attack in order to secure all he wanted, and that any show of pusillanimity would be fatal. He drew up his force on the beach, and marched towards the town. The ex- pected result followed immediately in the shape of a messenger with a flag of truce. "The Treasurer mar- ON THE SPANISH MAIN. 8i veiled," said the messenger, " what he meant to do, to come ashore in that order, seeing they had granted every reasonable demand he had made." Hawkins took no notice. This was not to the point, and he marched for- ward. The messenger then begged him to halt his men and come forward alone to speak with the Treasurer. This Hawkins agreed to do. Midway between the two forces the parley was held. Hawkins clad in armour, went without any weapon, and of course on foot. The Spanish officer was armed cap-a- pie, and on horseback. Thus they " communed together." It issued thus — that all Hawkins's requests were con- ceded, and we hear nothing more about half-price for his goods. Gages were obtained for the performance of the promises made by the Spaniards. Then everything was peaceful for several days. Hawkins had got rid of all his negroes, and was trying to induce the Treasurer to pay a debt left by the Governor of Burboroata upon some of the slaves purchased there. Negotiations on this point were proceeding when the whisper of treach- ery rose. A captain and a file of soldiers arrived at Rio de la Hacha from some neighbouring place. Hawkins suspected an unfriendly act, immediately broke off all business, and went aboard his ships. When he came ashore again next morning, it was in force, falcons in his boats, and men fully armed. Once more his demonstra- tion of an intention to stand no trifling was fully effec- tive, and he and the Treasurer parted good friends. The 82 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. Treasurer gave Hawkins a testimonial in writing of his good behaviour while at the port, and Hawkins saluted the Treasurer with a salvo from the bases in his boat. It would be useless to attempt to decide whether the Spaniards meant treachery or were merely making pre- parations to withstand any further demands that Haw- kins might impose upon them. All that is certain is that they reinforced their strength and got fresh guns. As the ships weighed, the English were surprised to hear the hoarse voices of four falcons set speaking from the town in token of farewell. However, it all ended amic- ably : Hawkins had done his business, he had got even with King Philip, and he left the Spanish Main on May 31st. CHAPTER VII. THE RETURN TO ENGLAND. Exploring Strange Seas — French Hospitality on the Coast of Florida — Hawkins helps the French Colonists out of their Plight — The Floridans' Use of Tobacco — At Newfoundland — Back at Padstow — The Adventurers tell their Story — Hawkins lionised in London — King Philip's Fury — The Queen's Appreciation — Cecil's Disapprobation — Hawkins compels a Spanish Fleet to salute the English Flag in the Channel — The Spanish Ambas- sador's Indignation. By dint of persistence and resource, backed by threats and the determination to carry them into practice if he could not carry his point without them, Hawkins had now finished with his good friend the King's Treasurer of the Indies for the time being. He was to meet him again three years later. On the last day of May, 1565, then, the Jesus of Lubek, the Solomon, the Tiger, and the Swallow hove anchor out of the river mouth, and the flagship led the way to the north. So far as trading in blacks was con- cerned, the business was over; Hawkins had sold all his slaves. His mercantile instinct was to invest on the spot the money he had obtained in some product of which the value appreciated in Europe ; he wanted to 83 84 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. go to Jamaica to trade in hides, and set his course for Hispaniola (Santo Domingo). His intention was not to beard in his den the Viceroy whom he had flouted, but simply to feel his way westward through unaccustomed seas to the island of Jamaica. This purpose was defeated by the prevailing lack of information as to the set of the currents. How jealously the Spaniards guarded all knowledge of the navigation of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico in their effort to preserve El Dorado to themselves has already been stated. As a matter of fact, owing to the westerly stream, Hawkins, fancying that he approached His- paniola on the South, struck the middle of the Jamaican coast instead, and did not discover his mistake till it was too late to amend. The error was encouraged by a Spaniard of Jamaica whom he had on board, having rescued him from the negroes on the Guinea coast. This gentleman pretended that he knew every land-mark thereabout, and most effectually fogged and befooled the captain. Done in all innocence and good part, it was none the less annoying. Hawkins got so far down to leeward that he could not get up again without a pro- digious waste of time, and he abandoned the idea, be- moaning what he considered the loss of a good two thousand pounds' worth of profit if he had been able to call at a Jamaican port. Resigning himself to a compulsory sacrifice, he coasted the southern shore of Cuba, and unfortunately THE RETURN TO ENGLAND. 85 also overshot the port of Santa Cruz, where he had reckoned that he might be able to make good the loss of the Jamaican deal. He watered at the Isle of Pines, doubled Cape San Antonio, the extreme western point of Cuba, and tacked about between its northern coast and the Florida Keys, intending to go into Havana. Once more he was misled as to its position — this time by a Frenchman. His chronicler Sparke has some contemptuous things to say of these " praters." All this time Hawkins was doing a good deal of valu- able work, taking soundings and noting the currents. On July 8th, a fair westerly wind sprang up, and he decided to wait about no longer, but to take advan- tage of the breeze and to commence the long voyage to Europe. They doubled Florida Reefs on July 12th, and so got out into the Atlantic again. Since they had struck the Leeward Islands at Dominica on March 9th, they had sailed along the Spanish Main, across the Caribbean Sea, through the Yucatan Straits, into the Gulf of Mexico and out again, traversing many seas that English sailors had never seen before. They mar- velled greatly at the extraordinary strength of the cur- rents prevailing in these waters. Owing to this pheno- menon of the Gulf of Mexico, they lost two boats on the very day they rounded Florida Cape — the pinnace of the Jesus and the Solomon's boat, which had been sent to one of the islands to find water. They expected 86 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. never to pick them up again, and had resigned their companies to the tender mercies of the cannibals of the coast, unless they should haply find their way 400 miles north to the River of May, where there was a French station. On November 14th they were recovered after the ships had beat about several days on the off-chance of seeing them, the Jesus bearing a light in her top- gallant by night to assist the eager eyes of the lost mariners on that lonely sea. Hawkins coasted the Atlantic shore of Florida for 120 leagues. He resumed his old practice of sailing inshore himself in the pinnace. The great want of the flotilla was water. He had heard of the French colony established on the coast at the mouth of the May River, and, believing that wherever the Frenchmen were he would be able to find opportunity of watering and re- victualling his ships, he never left searching for them, and sailed the pinnace into every creek till he succeeded. He had been told that they were to be discovered in about 28° N. lat., but found the river rather more than two degrees further north. Entering the estuary he saw a French ship of about 80 tons and a couple of pinnaces, whose officers informed him of a fort two leagues further up the stream, held by their captain, one M. Laudonniere, and a number of soldiers. Haw- kins took one of his small ships up, and had a far more hearty welcome than he expected. Indeed, Laudon- niere was much more rejoiced to see Hawkins than he to THE RETURN TO ENGLAND. %7 see the Frenchman, keenly as he was in want of water and provisions. He was entertained with such hospitaHty as the colonists could provide, and harrowed with a sorry story of misery and suffering. Whatever might be done in later years by the French in other parts of the world, it was clear that they were no fit colonisers for Florida. Laudonniere and his men had been on the River of May fourteen months, since May of 1 564 ; on their arrival they were about 200 all told. They had taken with them little provision, and did not seem to have the energy or the intelligence to get a living for themselves out of what was certainly a rich country. As Sparke observed, " they were soldiers who expected to Hve by the sweat of other men's brows." They ate up all the maize they could buy from the natives, and then, in order to get rations of millet, they consented to serve in military capacity a local chief against his enemies. Finally, they were reduced to eating acorns. This, not- withstanding the fact that the river was full of fish, to be had for the catching, and the soil fruitful of grapes, corn, and roots. The English heard the story with amazement which something diluted their sympathy. Eighty of the Frenchmen had revolted some time be- fore, clapped Laudonniere in prison, and run off with one of the ships and a pinnace to go buccaneering in the West Indies. They had a high piratical time, loot- ing Spanish ships and settlements, till twenty of them 88 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. were captured by the Spaniards and strung up by the neck. The other sixty returned to Florida — to be served in Hke manner by their incensed comrades. The survivors had, in the interim, been at war with the Flori- dans, and their numbers were sorely reduced. The few remaining when Hawkins arrived had about ten days' provisions in sight. " In which perplexity, our captain seeing them, spared them out of his ship twenty barrels of meal, and four pipes of beans ; with divers other victuals and necessaries which he might conveniently spare ; and to help them the better homewards, whither they were bound before our coming, at their request we spared them one of our barks of 50 tons."* Hawkins had first offered to transport the whole colony to France ; but Laudonniere did not accept this proposal. He was afraid that Hawkins " would attempt something in Florida in the name of his mistresse." Such was the reputation of "Achines de Plimua." The Englishman was therefore contented to sell Laudon- niere one of his smaller ships for 700 crowns, and let him have provisions and shoes for his barefooted com- pany. The Frenchman was duly grateful for this oppor- tune relief, and in an account of his life (Paris, 1586) he set forth, under the heading of " The Arrival and Courtesy of M. Hawkins to the Distressed Frenchmen in Florida," that the English seaman "gave divers * Sparke. THE RETURN TO ENGLAND. 89 presents to the principal officers of my company accord- ing to their qualities : so that I may say we received as many courtesies of the General as it was possible to receive of any man living. Wherein, doubtless, he hath won the reputation of a good and charitable man, de- serving to be esteemed as much of us all as if he had saved all our lives." Sparke gives a quaint narrative of the observations made by Hawkins and his officers in Florida. To this voyage, possibly, we may attribute the introduction of tobacco into England. The Frenchmen at the River of May had been staving off the pangs of hunger by smok- ing the seductive weed. Sparke says : " The Floridans when they travel have a kind of herb dried, who with a cane and a earthen cup in the end, with fire, and the dried herbs put together, do suck through the cane the smoke thereof ; which smoke satis- fieth their hunger, and therewith they live four or five days without meat and drink. And this all the French- men used for this purpose ; yet do they hold opinion withal, that it causeth water and phlegm to void from their stomachs." Another visible result of this voyage is the name of Hawkins County on the map of Tennessee. The three ships now remaining left the River of May on the 28th of July. Contrary winds forced them to go northwards still, and their provisions ran very low. Sparke piously remarks that they would have despaired go A SEA DOG OF DEVON. of ever coming home again, " had not God, of His good- ness, better provided for us than our deserving." This was by setting them on the Bank of Newfoundland, where they arrived on St. Bartholomew's Eve, 23rd of August. Cod was then obtained in some quantity, the ships being becalmed for a day, and more was purchased from a couple of French ships encountered on the 29th. The methods of adventurers in those latitudes were evi- dently not in very good odour with French mariners, for we are naively informed of their surprise at getting anything at all in payment for their fish ! Then, " with a good large wind," they crossed the Atlantic without further adventure or mishap, and arrived at Padstow, on the North Coast of Cornwall, on the 20th of September: "with a loss of twenty persons in all the voyage, as with great profit to the venturers of the said voyage, so also to the whole realm, in bring- ing home both gold, silver, pearls, and other jewels in great store." The " great profit " amounted to about 60 per cent, for which the adventurers were inclined to be very thankful. Hawkins, having brought his three ships into the little harbour of Padstow, immediately wrote to Queen Elizabeth informing her that he had made a most for- tunate voyage, and then hurried across Cornwall to Ply- mouth and home. There was a brief stay with Dame Katherine and his little son Richard, and a consultation THE RETURN TO ENGLAND. 91 with his brother. He was soon on his way to London. He must have known that the voyage would greatly increase his popularity in the country and the esteem in which he was held at Court ; but the bluff seaman was hardly prepared for the reception that awaited him. In the words of Froude, he was the hero of the hour, " affecting the most unconscious frankness, and unable to conceive that he had done anything at which the King of Spain could take offence." He told the Queen : " I have always been a help to all Spaniards and Portu- gal that have come in my way, without any form or pre- judice offered by me to any of them, although many times in this tract they have been in my power." An interesting document may be found in the State papers, a letter signed by some of the adventurers, relating to the Jestis, which lay at Padstow at the time : "Whereas the Quene's Ma'ie did of late at the petition and desier of the right honorable the Erie of Pembrock and the Erie of Leyceter graunte vnto their honors her Ma'ie's shipp called the Jesus with ordinance tackle and apparell, beinge in sort able and meete to serve a voyage to the Costes of Aflfrica and America, which shipp with her ordinance tackle and apparell was praysed by flfoure indifferent persons to be worth ijm xiji' xvs. ijd. , for the answeringe whereof to the Quene's Ma'ie the said Erles did become bounde to her Highnes either to redeliver the said shipp the Jesus at Gil- lingham before the feast of Christmas next comynge with her ordnance tackle and apparell in as good and ample manner as the same was at the tyme of the recevinge, or els to paie unto her Highnes the foresaid ijm xijii xvs. ijd. at that dale. And now forasmuche as we do understand that the said shipp 92 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. the Jesus is returned into this realme in savetie from the viadge aforesaid pretended, and presently remayneth in the west countrie in a harborowgh called Padstowe, from whence she cannot be convenyently brought abowt to Gillingham be- fore the springe of the next yere, and that the said Lordes are contented to allowe unto her Ma'^^ as well for the wearing of the said shipp her ordinance tackle and apparell, as also for the chardges which maye be sustayned for the bringinge abowt of the said shipp to the harborowgh of Gillingham, the some of V^ '' readie monney to be paid into her Highnes office of the Admyraltie to Beyamyn Gonson her graces Treasurer, which some ofVdi we her Highnes officers whose names are underwritten do thinke the same suificj^ent for the repayringe and furnyshinge of the ordinance tackle and appa- rell with the said shipp in as ample manner as the same was delivered to the said Erles. "Written the xxiijth of October 1565." The document was signed by Gonson and the Wynters, and by William Holstock. Apparently the ;;^500 compensation was accepted, for we find the ] csus granted to Hawkins again next year. The story of the voyage became general currency, and one of its incidents — the crocodiles at Rio de la Hacha — is thought to have inspired Shakespeare's lines in " Henry VI." : "As the mournful crocodile With sorrow snares relenting passengers." He was received by the Queen, and dined at the Palace, where he met De Silva, the Spanish Ambassador. Hawkins maintained his show of naivete. He kept up the same character that he had assumed before the Spanish officials in the West Indies — except that he THE RETURN TO ENGLAND. 93 neither threatened the Ambassador nor fired off brass cannon at him. He told him where he had been, and what business he had done, and gave him a full account of the expedition, albeit he did not mention the little display of force and expenditure of gunpowder at Burboroata and Rio de la Hacha. Hawkins had washed the smell of saltpetre off his hands long ago ; and what did it matter in any case, since no bones were broken on either side ? De Silva wrote an account of the affair to King Philip ; this was in November. " I met him in the Palace," said he, " and invited him to dine with me. He gave me a full account of his voyage, keeping back only the way in which he had contrived to trade at our ports. He assured me, on the contrary, that he had given the greatest satisfaction to all the Spaniards with whom he had had dealings, and had received full permission from the governors of the towns where he had been. The vast profits made by the voyage had excited other merchants to undertake similar expeditions. Hawkins himself is going out again next May, and the thing needs immediate atten- tion. I might tell the Queen that, by his own con- fession, he had traded in ports prohibited by your Majesty, and require her to punish him, but I must request your Majesty to give me full and clear instruc- tions what to do." * * Froude : " English Seamen." 94 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. De Silva did not know what to make out of this kind of man. He must have known that a demand for pun- ishment from the Queen, who was getting her 60 per cent, hke the rest of the adventurers, would be absurd. Phihp was furious. His scornful rejection of all Hawkins's entreaties when Captain Winter took that unhappy cargo of hides into Cadiz was now being repaid. " Ojo ! ojo ! " he wrote in exclamation opposite the name of Hawkins in De Silva's letters. Not only the Spanish, but the Portuguese, were up in arms against the daring Englishman who was treading on their privileges. He had infringed their rights by raiding negroes on the Guinea Coast. The King of Portugal made formal protest, with as much avail as the King of Spain. There could have been no limit to Hawkins's private satisfaction with the trend of events. He found himself famous, popular, and a favourite at Court. In spite of all Philip's anger, if Elizabeth remonstrated with the Plymouth corsair at all for what he had done in the West Indies, she knew that he understood her motives and knew where her sympathies were. He had done a very valuable service to the English marine by show- ing the way to the West Indies ; if he terrorised Philip at the same time, Elizabeth might protest with her lips, but she rejoiced in her heart. And equally did every English Protestant rejoice. Hawkins had got even with Philip in the matter of the hides at Cadiz. He was very THE RETURN TO ENGLAND. 95 soon to show what his temper was in some other matters. The affairs of the second voyage having been settled satisfactorily by the end of the year, the captain re- turned home to organise another. This time his boy Richard was between five and six years of age, be- ginning to take a keen interest in ships and the sea and maritime adventure, in the stories his mother and his Uncle William had to tell not only of his father's voyages, but of stirrmg deeds which were being done on their ships in all the seas. WiUiam and John Hawkins between them now owned a fleet of thirty vessels, and there was no branch of trade, there was no sort of enterprise current, in which they were not en- gaged. Just now one of their captains had got into trouble somehow with the Danish authorities. In Feb- ruary, 1566, the King of Denmark returned to John Hawkins a ship of his, together with the goods on board her, that had been " confiscated by law." There was much sympathy between the English port of Ply- mouth and the French port of La Rochelle. The Huguenot city armed ships for the harassing of the Catholic trade between Spain and Flanders ; the Devon- shire harbour received them with open arms, and the Devonshire men — chief among them William Hawkins —helped them to dispose of the loot. John was actively engaged in these operations. For various reasons at this busy time, the sailing of 96 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. the expedition to the West Indies was delayed till October, and the pertinacity of De Silva, acting on the instructions of Phihp, took some effect in the interval. When things were almost ready, Hawkins received a command from the Queen forbidding him to traffic at places in the West where foreign trade was prohibited by the King of Spain. Before he should sail he was required to execute a bond in ^^500 not to send the Swallow to any port " privileged " by Philip. Hawkins did as he was told, deciding to bide his time ; the bond was signed on the 31st of October. The affair was likely to be too milk-and-watery for his taste, and he sent a deputy in charge of it, himself remaining at Ply- mouth. The incident is a strange one, in the light of what we know of Elizabeth's attitude towards him. Its explanation is to be found in the influence of Cecil. The saturnine Secretary of State, though in later years he found the fate and policy of England bound up with the Protestant cause, never took a personal part in the religious strife of the period ; and at this time he was strongly opposed to the illicit warfare of the privateers. It offended his sense of international justice and national interest ; and it was he who secured the Queen's approval of the prohibition ; it was in his hand that the command was sent to Hawkins at Ply- mouth. The captain sent the Swallow alone on a suc- cessful but undistinguished voyage, and himself waited THE RETURN TO ENGLAND. 97 upon events. The Jesus of Liibek was brought round to the Devonshire port, and Hawkins became Admiral of the Queen's ships there, remaining in that position while he concocted the plans for his third and most famous voyage, which began in 1567. During this period of waiting occurred the incident, already related, of Hawkins's insistence upon Spanish respect for the Enghsh flag. The process by which the gunner of the Jesus of Lubek " lact " the Spanish admiral through and through was effective enough ; when the same squadron, returning from Flanders, met the English fleet in the Channel, sent to escort the Donna Anna Maria through English waters, Philip's ships " were constrained to vayle their flags, and to acknowledge that which all must do that pass through the English seas." The affair occasioned a great dis- turbance, however. In the hubbub caused by the firing some Protestant prisoners on the Spanish ships escaped and boarded the Jesus. Hawkins liberated them. When the news reached London, Cecil was almost as enraged as Philip himself might have been. He sent down a commissioner to examine the evidence on the spot. Hawkins rested secure in the knowledge that the Spaniards had broken the laws of the port of which he was Admiral, and had shown contempt for the Queen's Majesty. He knew that Elizabeth would uphold him, even against Cecil. De Silva waxed eloquent on the grievance : 98 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. " Your mariners rob our subjects on the sea, trade where they are forbidden to go, and fire upon our ships in your harbours. Your preachers insult my master from their pulpits, and when we remonstrate we are answered with menaces. We have borne so far with their injuries, attributing them rather to temper and bad manners than to deliberate purpose. But, seeing that no redress can be had, and that the same treat- ment of us continues, I must consult my Sovereign's pleasure. For the last time, I require your Majesty to punish this outrage at Plymouth, and preserve the peace between the two realms." It reads very like an ultimatum ; but Philip was in no position then to send an ultimatum to England, and all the parties knew it. Hawkins went on with his plans, undisturbed by the inquiries of Cecil and the in- dignation of Philip ; and the Queen assisted him even more fully than in 1564. CHAPTER VIII. THE AFFAIR OF SAN JUAN. Hawkins's Third Voyage — Is joined by Francis Drake — Composition of the Fleet — The Ships parted by a Hurricane — A Slave-hunting Expedition — Poisoned Barbs — Operations on the Guinea Coast — On the Spanish Main again — Trouble with the Spaniards at La Hacha. We now approach that third voyage of John Hawkins across the Western Ocean, which has been described as the most important expedition so far undertaken by the EngUsh nation beyond the coasts of Europe. " It was the first occasion on which EngUsh keels furrowed that hitherto unknown sea, the Bay of Mexico." Hawkins himself left a very brief narrative of an enterprise dis- astrous in its incidents, but full of momentous results for the history of the world. Now appeared upon the scene of strife between Plymouth sailors and Spaniards a figure that was to be the centre of many a crowded canvas in after years — Francis Drake. From the melancholy failure of the expedition, from the unspeakable treachery of San Juan de Ulloa, dates the implacable hatred which Drake bore throughout his life against the power of Philip. loo A SEA DOG OF DEVON. He was now for the first time actively associated with his kinsman and elder, Hawkins. Born at Tavistock, he was a Devon man ; but his father removed eastward while Francis was a boy. First he became chaplain of the fleet at Chatham, and afterwards vicar of Upnor on the Medway. Young Drake was brought up in a salt atmosphere, and from the earliest days of recollection all his interests were among the sailors and the ships. He was the eldest of a long family, and his father was a poor man ; accordingly, the chance offering of an apprenticeship to a master-mariner of the neighbour- hood was eagerly accepted, and we may be sure that it was to the taste of the apprentice. His diligence and his innate skill of seamanship were remarkable ; so high did he mount in favour that his employer, a bachelor, bequeathed his ship to the boy. Thus at a very early age Drake was trading on his own account. He had already acquired money, much experience, and a knowledge of the Guinea Coast when he and Hawkins came together. Hawkins's great achievements and successes in opening up the West India trade were, of course, the theme of all sea-faring men ; and no less on the Medway than in the western ports. In 1567, when the third voyage was preparing, Drake was fired with emulation, and willingly seized the opportunity of joining Hawkins. He sold his ship, bought the Judith, and went round to Plymouth to take his place in the flotilla. Thus, under the patronage of THE AFFAIR OF SAN JUAN. loi Hawkins, did Drake enter upon those larger adventures in distant waters which were to make him famous. We should not forget that in all these ventures there was more than one inspiration. It was not only trade and fortune that operated with the mariners. They were Protestants, and hated the system represented by the religion and the power of Spain ; every one of them took the same fierce delight as Hawkins in striking it a blow wherever they could. De Silva had full informa- tion of Hawkins's movements, and knew that this was the most formidable enterprise of the sort ever equipped in England. He warned Philip. The King of Spain made preparations to receive the adventurers in the West Indies if they should appear there, while other machinations were set on foot to prevent the expedition from starting. It appears from a letter written by Hawkins to the Queen a fortnight before he left that he had entered into an agreement with certain Portu- guese to assist him — probably in the business of obtain- ing negroes on the Guinea Coast ; but at the last moment they deserted him, either of their own motion or impelled by some extraneous influence. There was some talk of abandoning the expedition. Hawkins would not hear of it. His own words are the best evidence of the state of affairs. He wrote on September i6th that " certain Portyngales," who had made large promises and been well entertained at Plymouth, had that day fled, taking passage into France. Nevertheless, without 102 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. their help, he thought he had sufficient force to carry out the project and to bring home a profit of forty thousand marks, " without the offence of the lest of any of your highnes alyes or friends." He continued : — "It shall be no dishonour unto your highnes that your owne servante and subjecte shall in such an extremitie convert such an enterpryse and turn it both to your highnes honor and to the benefit of your whole realme which I will not enterpryse withowt your highnes consent, but am ready to do what service by your Ma^ie shall be commanded ; yet to shew your highnes the truth I should be undone if your Ma^'e should staye the voyadge, whereunto I hope your highnes will have some regard. The voyadge I pretend is to lade negroes in Genoya and sell them in the west Indyes in troke of golde perrels and esmeraldes, whereof I dowte not but to bring home great abondance to the contentation of your highnes and to the releife of a nomber of worthy servitures ready nowe for this pretended voyadge which otherwise would shortly be dryven to great misery and reddy to commit any folly. Thus having advertysed your highnes the state of this matter do most humbly praye your highnes to signifye your pleasure by this bearer which I shall most willingly accom- plish." It would, of course, have been a serious loss to Hawkins and to those who were venturing with him if the scheme had been dissipated. Men had been brought from all parts of the country to join, and the Mayor and Com- monalty of Plymouth would have been faced with a very pretty problem if the three hundred or more mariners and adventurers collected there ready to sail had been suddenly disbanded. But there was never THE AFFAIR OF SAN JUAN. 103 any danger ; Hawkins's " Sovereyne Ladye and Good Mistresse" signified her pleasure in the manner he desired, and the fleet sailed on October 2nd. The ships he had collected in Plymouth harbour were six in number. They were : The ]esus of Ltibek, the royal ship of the previous voyage, Hawkins's flagship, 700 tons; master, Robert Barret ; complement, 1 80. Her armament consisted of the following brass ord- nance : two whole culverins, two cannons, five demi- culverins, three sacres, and two falcons ; and the following iron ordnance: three demi-culverins, five sacres, two whole slings, ten fowlers, and thirty bases. For ammunition she carried fifty-four bar- rels of gunpowder and an equivalent supply of ball. The Minion, also a royal ship ; captain, John Hampton ; master, John Garret, of Hampton, a Plymouth captain ; Raleigh said that he was a seaman of " the greatest experience in England." The Swallow, 100 tons, one of Hawkins's own ships, already mentioned as having been returned to him by the Danish Government ; well armed. The Angel, 32 tons. The William and John; captain, Thomas Bolton ; master, James Raunce. The Judith, 50 tons ; captain, Francis Drake, I04 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. The first three were vessels of considerable calibre ; the others insignificant as a fighting force. Ill-starred from the first, the voyage of this armada ended in the lurid horror of San Juan, every awful incident of which the Englishmen had in their minds years afterwards when they harried King Philip's galleons through the Channel and into the North Sea. They set sail out of Plymouth Sound on a fine day, with hopes running high, and directed their course, as usual, for the Canary Islands. Storm took them after seven days at sea, forty leagues north of Cape Finis- terre. The hurricane lasted nearly a week, during which time the fleet was separated. The boats were washed from their decks, and the J esiis was so stricken that it was thought impossible she could continue the voyage. Hawkins had some thought of returning to Plymouth to refit. Indeed, he had put about and shaped a course for home when, on the i ith, the weather improved, with a fair wind. They then resumed their original intention of keeping rendezvous at the Canaries with the William and John and the Swallow, which had been lost sight of. At Grand Canary, Hawkins heard that they were at Gomera, whither he repaired, and watered and victualled his ships. Thence, with a re-constituted fleet, and everything in good order, he set sail for Cape Blanc, taking it out of his " certayne Por- tyngales " on the way by capturing a Portuguese fishing boat and appropriating her catch of mullet. From Cape THE AFFAIR OF SAN JUAN. 105 Blanc they proceeded to Cape de Verde, arriving on the 1 8th November. An incident had now occurred which is somewhat obscure. One of the best narratives of the voyage, affording more detail than that of Hawkins himself, is that of Job Hortop. It was published as a pamphlet in 1 591 under the title of "The Rare Travels of Job Hortop, an Englishman, who was not heard of, in three and twenty years' space. Wherein is declared the dangers he escaped in his Voyage to Guinea," etc., etc. We shall hear of him later on. Hortop gives the only description extant of the addition to the fleet of a ship which was afterwards rechristened the Grace of God, and took part in the great fight at San Juan. " In our course thither " (i.e. to Cape de Verde) " we met a Frenchman of Rochelle, called Captain Bland, who had taken a Portuguese caravel, whom our Vice-Admiral chased and took. Captain Drake, now Sir Francis Drake, was made Master and Captain of the caravel." Bland remained with the expedition. Likely enough, as he was a man from Rochelle, he was not unwilling ; he may even have been known to Hawkins. At any rate, he did good service when Hawkins was hard pressed at San Juan. At Cape de Verde the slave-hunting began. Haw- kins landed 150 men. They were not very successful. They captured a few negroes, but had stiff fighting for their prey with savages who used poisoned arrows. io6 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. Hawkins himself, Captain Dudley and eight men were wounded in this affair by the envenomed barbs. "Although in the beginning " (says Sir John) "they seemed to be but small hurts, yet there hardly escaped any that had blood drawn of them, but died in strange sort, with their mouths shut some ten days before they died, and after their wounds were whole. Where I myself had one of the greatest wounds, yet, thanks be to God ! escaped." Hawkins and Dudley were the only two of the ten that recovered. The eight men died. One of the captured negroes showed the Admiral how to cure himself of the wound by drawing out the poison with a clove of garlic. Withdrawing from this inhospitable and unprofitable region, they passed along the coast of Guinea, sending boat parties up the rivers in search of blacks. They had many adventures in the nature of skirmishes with the natives and fights with wild beasts, one of their boats being crunched up by a hippopotamus. On Jan- uary 1 2th, 1568, they arrived at Sierra Leone. Up to that time they had taken only 150 negroes. This was poor business. It would not pay them to cross the Atlantic with such a meagre cargo, and Hawkins was about to depart for El Mina to trade for gold when his aid was sought by the representatives of one negro tribe at war with another. Three chiefs were besieging the town of Taggarin (which Hawkins had visited three years before) with an army reputed to number 50,000 men. Knowing his business at the Coast, they bar- THE AFFAIR OF SAN JUAN. lo; gained with him for his assistance, promising that he should have as many slaves as his ships could carry from among the prisoners of war if he would take the town for them. The idea was approved. The place was strongly fortified with palisades. At first Hawkins sent up only a small force under one of the captains. The assault failed, and the Englishmen lost six killed and forty wounded. The reverse stirred up the Admiral's fighting spirit, and he took reinforcements and led them himself, attacking Taggarin " by land and sea," the pinnaces going up the estuary and using their small guns. With the aid of ball and fire and sword, they made a breach in the palisade, charged through it, and occupied the town, the inhabitants taking flight. His negro allies did the rest. In this fight the English took about two hundred and fifty prisoners, and their friends the native chiefs secured some six hundred. Hawkins had been prom- ised that he should have the pick of the bunch, and that was the reason which operated with him in under- taking the rather distasteful and hazardous work. " But," as he says, " the negro (in which nation is seldom or never found the truth) meant nothing less." Indeed, on the very night succeeding the engagement the chiefs struck camp and disappeared, prisoners and all. The Enghshmen had therefore to rest contented with the human booty they had captured for themselves. Hortop throws a little light on the character of the io8 A SEA DOG OF DEVON. native fighting, and the tender mercy which the victor displayed for the vanquished ; he states that the attack- ing party drove 7,000 of the defenders into the sea at low water at a point where there was no help for them, and they were all drowned in the ooze. Hawkins gathered his men, mustered his prisoners, and went back to the ships. Having watered, he pro- ceeded to Rio Grande. In the river there the fore- most ships of the English fleet were challenged by the Portuguese, who had seven caravels. The Angel and the Jzidith, which had gone in with the two pinnaces, were found nothing loth to fight, and drove the Portu- guese vessels ashore, where their crews took to flight, carrying their negroes with them. The conflict was continued next day, when Drake, with Captain Dudley and his soldiers, landed and encountered opposition from the natives. The English lost one man in the fight, and burned the town by way of reprisal. At the close of the operations on this coast, Hawkins had collected between four and five hundred slaves, and decided to tarry no longer. It had not been a highly satisfactory voyage so far, since the early difficulties and the opposition of the Portuguese had occasioned much delay and more fighting than he wanted. Having watered and provided his ships with fuel, he sailed once more " over the ocean sea " to the Spanish Main. The indifferent luck with which he had met ever since" he left Plymouth did not improve. The voyage across the THE AFFAIR OF SAN JUAN. 109 Atlantic was long and tedious, with contrary winds and storms. Leaving Rio Grande on February 3rd, he did not sight Dominica till March 27th — forty-five days. By that time they were in sore need of water and provisions, and, as usual, the fleet remained some time at anchor off the island while they replenished. Then they sailed to Margarita, following out very much the same pro- gramme as on the previous occasion. King Philip's proscription of all traffic with the Englishmen was no less severe than before ; the desire of the Spanish settlers to trade was no less keen, and the mind of Hawkins to trade with them no less deter- mined. Difficulties destined to end in dire disaster soon began to accrue. At Margarita, and again at Bur- boroata, they traded in spite of the authorities, and did very good business. They were at Burboroata two months. But when they reached Rio de la Hacha they found the situation somewhat altered during the two years that had elapsed since their last visit. The Spanish authorities were not to be bluffed or coerced so easily this time. Hawkins sent on the Angel and the Judith in front of the main body of the fleet. They had barely dropped anchor in front of the town before they received their baptism of fire. Three pieces spoke from a battery on shore, which " we requited with two of ours, and shot through the Governor's house." It was an inauspicious opening of business negotiations. The two little ships found themselves in a rather warm no A SEA DOG OF DEVON. place, for Rio de la Hacha had been well armed and fortified since 1565 ; and they weighed and drew out of range. The Spaniards wasted a good deal of ammuni- tion in the effort to get at them, but they rode smilingly at anchor for five days, awaiting the coming of Hawkins himself. All the West was now alive with the portentous news that Achines de Plimua was among the islands again with a more formidable force than before. From Santo Domingo the Viceroy sent a dispatch-boat with papers for the Governor at La Hacha. This provided a diversion for the Angel and the Judith, which chased the unfortunate caravel in shore, and then fetched him out from under the very noses of two hundred harque- bussiers. Then, satisfied with their week's work, they dropped anchor again, and kept a look-out for the Admiral. Hawkins found the situation strained when he arrived, and took strong measures, which became stronger and stronger till, at San Juan de Ulloa, he was involved in war at close quarters with the whole strength of the Spanish fleet in those waters. CHAPTER IX. THE AFFAIR OF SAN JUAN (continued). Hawkins seizes La Hacha— The Cargo of the Jesus— The Fleet encounters Cyclones — In the Bay of Mexico — Putting in at San Juan de Ulloa — Hawl