The Longest Voyage by Robert Silverberg;

Author:Robert Silverberg;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

5

IN THE WAKE OF THE GOLDEN HIND

SIR FRANCIS DRAKE, AS NOW HE WAS, STILL was less than forty years old, and no less eager than before to harass Spain and to proclaim Queen Elizabeth’s glories on the high seas. Soon after the ceremony at Deptford he was involved in a new project, a voyage to the Azores planned for July 1581. Ostensibly its purpose was to help Dom Antonio, the pretender to the throne of Portugal, advance his claim; but in reality Drake planned once more to wound Philip II by intercepting his cargoes of American treasure. That was ever the goal of Drake’s private foreign policy: to swell England’s power and to diminish that of Spain by diverting the riches of the New World to Queen Elizabeth’s coffers.

The project miscarried when the pro-Spanish faction at the queen’s court interfered. As a result, the company that had been organized to make the voyage suffered heavy losses, and in an attempt at recouping, a new venture was sent to sea in May 1582. Drake did not go along, but he was among the backers. Edward Fenton, an experienced seaman who had sailed in the Arctic with Martin Frobisher, took four vessels toward the Moluccas via the Cape of Good Hope, planning to raid Spanish and Portuguese shipping on the way. The crewmen were less interested in the Moluccas than they were in piracy, preferring gold to cloves, and off the Atlantic coast of Africa they compelled Fenton to head west instead of east, so that they could duplicate Drake’s voyage. After a successful raid at Brazil, though, the enterprise fell apart; Fenton quarreled with his second in command, the younger William Hawkins, and never reached the Pacific at all, turning back to England in dismay with Hawkins a prisoner in irons. One of the other ships, commanded by Drake’s cousin John, did attempt to get to the Strait of Magellan, but was captured by the Spaniards near the Río de la Plata.

The dismal end of Fenton’s voyage discouraged English ventures to the Pacific for several years. Drake himself was in temporary eclipse, a victim of the machinations of Thomas Doughty’s brother, John, and of the intrigues of the Spaniards at Elizabeth’s court. But as tensions between England and Spain grew, he returned to influence as the leader of the war party. It was clear now that King Philip planned an invasion of England, and Drake, the national hero, was called to the defense.

His idea of defense was offense. In 1585 he began to assemble the largest privateering fleet yet raised, which he took to sea, after many administrative delays, in June of the following year. He sacked São Tiago in the Cape Verdes, which he had warily bypassed on his circumnavigation, and crossed the Atlantic to raid the Spanish settlement of Santo Domingo on Hispaniola; then, displaying awesome military skill, he looted Cartagena on the Spanish Main and St. Augustine in Florida, stopping on his way back to pick up the survivors of an ill-fated colony Sir Walter Raleigh had planted in Virginia.

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