Elizabeth's Sea Dogs by Hugh Bicheno

Author:Hugh Bicheno
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781844861903
Publisher: Conway Publishing
Published: 2012-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

Baptista Boazio’s map of the assault on Cartagena shows Drake’s flagship Elizabeth Bonaventure followed by the galliot Duck in the foreground. Beyond them the Spanish galleys fire their guns at the flank of Carleill’s troops attacking the wall across the tidal neck between La Caleta and the mainland.

Four phases of the assault are portrayed: the landing at the undefended entrance to the outer harbour; the march across the seaward side of La Caleta; the main anchorage of the English fleet; and, top left, the attack led by Frobisher on the forts and chain barring entrance to the inner harbour.

Down went the butts of earth, and pell-mell came our swords and pikes together, after our shot had first given their volley, even at the enemy’s nose. Our pikes were somewhat longer than theirs, and our bodies better arm[our]ed; for very few of them were arm[our]ed. With which advantage our swords and pikes grew too hard for them, and they driven to give place. In this furious entry [Carleill] slew with his own hands the chief ensign-bearer of the Spaniards, who fought very manfully to his life’s end.

Amphibious landings are notoriously the most difficult of all military operations, yet Carleill made it all seem easy. If disease had not so greatly reduced his command he would have anticipated Morgan by 85 years and crossed the isthmus to take and hold Panamá, as Drake intended. Cartagena was not an adequate alternative because it would not interrupt the flow of bullion, which by now was the only thing in America that really mattered to Philip II. Cartagena was also more vulnerable to counterattack, and there’s no reason to believe Drake wanted to hold it any longer than necessary to extort the maximum ransom – although, as at Vigo, Praia and Santo Domingo, he seems to have stayed longer than necessary to emphasize his dominion.

Drake took up residence at the house of Alonso Bravo de Montemayor, one of the few professional soldiers in Cartagena who had been wounded defending the wall. Through daily contact Drake came to confide in him. Bravo reported that Drake was deeply disappointed to obtain a ransom of only 110,000 ducats, mainly in silver bars, because he had promised the queen a million. Bravo also recorded serious disaffection among Drake’s subordinates because he and Carleill enforced their instructions about loot very firmly. ‘All the gentlemen’, Bravo wrote, ‘said he would not again find any to go out with him from England’. Since nearly all of them did a year later, one may deduce that the dissidents who spoke to Bravo were probably Knollys’s men.

The dean of the cathedral, another Spanish witness, reported that Drake ‘treats his people harshly and hangs many’, which is not remarkable when one considers that, to bowdlerize a famous utterance attributed to the Duke of Wellington, they were the scum of the earth enlisted for spoil. On the other hand the dean had particular reason to exaggerate anything to the discredit of Drake because, tiring of burning

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