The Seafarers - The Spanish Main by Peter Wood

Author:Peter Wood [Wood, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788449942006
Google: XpMZQwAACAAJ
Publisher: Time-Life Books
Published: 1982-11-14T13:00:00+00:00

For the next 10 years the bold adventurer who had touched off all these international tremors was for the most part occupied in pursuits closer to home. Elizabeth gave him the title of Her Majesty’s Admiral-at-the-Seas, and named him to a commission charged with overseeing the royal dockyards. Meanwhile he was elected mayor of the town of Plymouth, and served also as a Member of Parliament. Except for a swift foray out to battle the great Spanish Armada when it finally attacked in 1588, he remained ashore throughout most of the decade. But he never lost his dream of strangling the Spanish trade route in the New World, and he persisted in trying to induce the Queen and her counselors to allow him one more voyage.

Toward the middle of the 1590s his prospects brightened, thanks to troubles that beset the Spanish Empire. French privateers were moving in increasing numbers onto the islands fringing the northern edge of the Caribbean, and Dutch trading vessels were nibbling along the coast of Venezuela. With such predators threatening the base of her wealth, Spain had to declare a moratorium on all debts at home in 1595 while she awaited the annual shipment of Peruvian gold. Drake urgently pointed out to his sovereign that now was the time to strike at Panama. Elizabeth wavered; by the time she finally made up her mind, most of the Spanish treasure fleet had already reached Seville. One ship, however, had put into San Juan, Puerto Rico, for repairs. That single ship had an irresistible cargo of three million gold ducats. Besides, there remained the entrepot of Panama. Thus Drake belatedly got approval for another expedition and sailed in August.

It was a formidable undertaking: 27 sail, led by the flagship Defiance, with 1,500 seamen and 1,000 troops. But for Drake this voyage, like so many others, was to prove a study in frustration. The Queen had no sooner given her tardy consent than she insisted that Drake share command of the expedition with his old cousin and sometime mentor, Sir John Hawkins. Like the Spaniards, who said of Hawkins and Drake that “God made them, and the devil brought them together,” Elizabeth seems to have judged them an inevitable team. She judged wrong. Drake had exercised independent command too often and too boldly to share it now with anyone else; and Hawkins, who was now almost 70, was crotchety and slow moving. Thomas Maynarde, an Army captain who wrote an account of the voyage, noted that Hawkins “entered into matters with so laden a foote that the other’s meat woulde be eaten before his spit could come to the fire,” and he added that it was not long before “cholericke speeches” were passing between the two men.

But Drake was soon relieved of the burden of dual command. Hawkins took sick on the outbound passage, and died just as the fleet came in sight of San Juan. “Ah,” Drake said as Hawkins expired, “I could grieve for thee, but now is no time for me to lay down my spirits.

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