Hawkins placed a restraining hand on Drake’s knee: ‘Mad desire for revenge is never a sound base for action, Francis. I’m almost afraid to take you with me.’
‘But I have cause, Uncle. The Spaniards …’ and a great hatred burned through his words.
‘Must I remind you? If you do sail with me, it’s so we can sell our slaves to the Spaniards, not fight against them.’
‘I’ll trade with them all right … at the point of a gun … my gun.’
‘I would like to take you with me. I need men of your courage when we’re on the Slave Coast. Pirates, Portuguese adventurers trying to steal our slaves, the flotsam of the world always attacking English ships.’
‘That’s the kind of action I seek,’ Drake said eagerly, but again his uncle reproved him: ‘To fight off pirates in Africa, yes. To fight our peaceful Spanish customers in the Caribbean, no.’
‘Peaceful Spanish customers?! Let me tell you about those peaceful Spanish customers. Early this year, at Río de la Hacha,’ and Drake spat out the Spanish name as if he loathed it, ‘the governor lured me ashore with my ninety slaves, which he offered to buy. But when the time came to pay me, he whistled for his soldiers. They drove me back to my ship, and he kept my slaves. Paid me nothing.’
‘It happens, Francis. My slaves have often been stolen by corrupt officials. But the slaves I have left I sell to honest officials at strong prices. In your battle with the Dons, you came home a winner, did you not?’
Drake leaped to his feet: ‘Uncle! Forty of those slaves were mine! Not the queen’s! I paid for them in Africa with my own money. Those Dons stole my profits from me, personally. And I’ve sworn I’ll get them back.’
Hawkins, growing impatient, snapped: ‘Don’t be a fool. Never allow revenge to get in your way of earning a decent profit.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Drake blurted out. Then he whistled for a young sailor of nineteen to join them: ‘Tell Captain Hawkins what happened to Christopher Weed.’ Then, turning to his uncle, he explained: ‘You remember young Weed? Son of Fleet Preacher Timothy Weed?’ and Hawkins said: ‘I know him.’
‘No more,’ Drake said with iron grating against his words. Then, to the sailor: ‘Tell my uncle what happened to my friend Weed.’
‘We sailed from Plymouth,’ the young sailor said, ‘to trade our goods for those of Venice. But as we passed the Spanish coast our little ship was captured and we were thrown in prison. They announced that since we were Englishmen, we had to be heretics and must be duly punished.’
‘Then what?’ Drake asked, eyes flashing.
‘Half our crew recanted—said they’d always been faithful Catholics and were still. They were lashed for having ventured into Spanish waters, then released. The other half, and I was one, refused to recant, so we were sentenced to the galleys. Six years … ten years … life.’
‘And you? How many years?’
‘Ten, but our ship was attacked by pirates and I escaped.’
‘God was watching over you. But what of Christopher Weed and the other two?’
‘Somehow the Spaniards learned that they were the sons of Protestant ministers—’
‘But so were you,’ Hawkins interrupted, and the young sailor said: ‘Yes, but no one revealed that to the Spaniards.’
‘Tell him what happened to the three ministers’ sons,’ Drake said, his hands clasped so tightly that no blood showed beneath his fair skin.
‘All of us, we who were headed for the hulks, even those to be released, were led to the great square in Sevilla. There, before the cathedral and the beautiful tower—I shall always remember them—stakes were driven into the ground, bonfires were built about them, and Weed and his two fellows were lashed to the stakes and burned alive. One of our men standing near me shouted: “For love of Christ, shoot them!” but they let them burn. To teach the rest of us a lesson.’
Grimly, Drake said: ‘You may leave us!’
When the two seamen were alone again, Hawkins said harshly: ‘Francis, when I see the blazing hatred in your eyes I have no wish to take you with me.’ Then he sighed, and said reluctantly: ‘But I think for various reasons I may have to. The ships I’ll be taking belong to the queen and must be protected. Two-thirds of the slaves we capture will belong to her, and two-thirds of our profits, all hers. This is her expedition and she has ordered me to take along only the most trusted men, for she cannot afford to lose the great wealth this adventure might bring. Desperately she needs the money.’
‘Why?’
In reply, Hawkins, trusted friend of the queen, gave an explanation which revealed the curious state of affairs in Europe: ‘You remember that our Queen Mary of sacred memory,’ and he crossed himself,’ took as her husband King Philip of Spain, and even though Mary is dead, Philip still wants to be King of England. He begs Elizabeth to marry him … bring England back to Catholicism. She needs money to fend him off, every penny we can earn on this slaving voyage.’ He paused, broke into a mischievous smile, and added: ‘Do you see the humor, Francis? You and I stealing from King Philip in order to do him harm … with his own money?’
‘And if we return to Río Hacha, will I have your permission to bombard that wretch who stole my slaves?’
‘No! And now I want to show you why I need you.’
Leaving the naval headquarters, the two men walked to an anchorage where Drake saw for the first time the great vessel Queen Elizabeth had recently purchased with her own money to serve as flagship for her slaving ventures. It was the Jesus of Lübeck, a ship to gladden the heart of any sailor, especially one who might have to be aboard as she sailed into battle. Built in Germany some thirty years earlier, she had been intended from the start to be a mighty man-of-war.
‘Look at her!’ Hawkins said as Drake’s eyes widened. ‘More than seven hundred tons, those four masts each twice as thick as any you’ve known. That long bowsprit, the great fortresslike towers soaring high into the air, fore and aft. And the flags!’
From various protuberances eight flags of England flew and at the deck level another ten, but Drake was noticing other aspects: ‘Look at these monster guns and the hoard of smaller ones … the room below for sleeping soldiers as well as sailors … that clean deck space for swordplay if we have to repel raiders. That’s a ship that’s crying to be fought properly, and we can do it.’
He then indicated to Hawkins that he would be honored to sail in her, but his kinsman shook his head: ‘No, Francis, you’re not to sail in the Jesus,’ and when Drake scowled, Hawkins added: ‘I want you always on my starboard, in your own ship, as captain,’ and he pointed to a handsome little fighting ship, the Judith, in which Drake, after he had purchased her, would sail to both glory and shame.
Hawkins, placing his arm about Drake’s shoulder, said: ‘From the start I knew I had to take you. The queen is so eager that her expensive new toy be protected that she gave me orders: “Hire your nephew Drake, a real fighting man I’m told, to sail at your elbow to safeguard my purchase.” So you sail at her command and my wish,’ and it was agreed.
In the weeks that followed, Drake was busy visiting ship’s chandlers in Plymouth and ordering supplies for the long voyage. A list in his handwriting of purchases indicated the level of his rough education and his freedom to spell as he wished: ‘vi pynazzes, bysket, beare, bieff, chiese, rieze, vyneger, sweete oyle, hamars’ (6 pinnaces, biscuit, beer, beef, cheese, rice, vinegar, sweet oil, hammers), but purchase was also made of ‘Caste ordenanunce, forged same, and divers munytions mownts,’ for Drake insisted that his little Judith be prepared for battle.
On 2 October 1567, Hawkins headed his little flotilla for the coast of Africa, where it would pick up some five hundred slaves to be carried into the heart of the Caribbean, where they would be peddled from one Spanish island to another. But wherever Hawkins and Drake sailed as partners, one vast difference would separate them: Hawkins, the cautious older man, wanted peace; Drake, the impetuous younger, sought vengeance against Spaniards
wherever and however he met them.
In the spring of 1568, while Hawkins was heading westward from the African coast, the holds of his vessel crammed with slaves, Governor Ledesma of Cartagena was listening to an ugly report from the captain of a small Spanish trading vessel out of Sevilla: ‘Esteemed Excellency, when I left Spain I was directed to enter the Indies by the extreme southern route to report on conditions on our island of Trinidad, and as you well know, for it lies within your territory, there has been no serious Spanish settlement there, nor any other that I could detect. Trinidad was empty and safe.
‘But some seven leagues after we had sailed west along the coast of America, we came to our great salt pans of Cumaná, and it was fortunate for me and my crew that we were comfortably out to sea, because a horde of some dozen ships, which I took from their build to be Dutch renegades, had deposited their teams of thieves onto our salt beds and were stealing a fortune.’
When Don Diego heard this distressing news, he did not reveal his dismay. Controlling his emotions, which were in turmoil, he asked quietly: ‘And what did you do when you saw the Dutch thieves?’ and the captain said honestly: ‘Glad that my ship was fast and theirs slow, I fled,’ and Don Diego said with equal candor: ‘Wise man. Even two Dutch ships would be an overmatch if their crews were determined to get salt—and you say there were at least a dozen working there?’ When the captain nodded, Don Diego said: ‘I think we must drink a toast to your successful trip … and your prudence.’
The apparent ease with which Ledesma received this report of Dutch incursions into the salt flats masked the considerable fright the news had caused, and after the captain left, Don Diego hurried to his wife, his face flushed: ‘Darling, walk with me on the battlements. I want no one to hear,’ and they paced for some time atop the defensive wall that protected the center of their city.
‘Ugly news. The Dutch have trespassed on our salt flats again.’
‘Cumaná?’
‘Yes. This time they’ve come in force.’
‘How do you know?’
‘A ship captain, just out from Sevilla. He saw them robbing us. And if he’s warned me, he’ll certainly warn the king, and Philip will expect me to act … to drive the scoundrels off.’
‘Isn’t Cumaná a long way from here?’
‘It is. More the reason why we must keep the Dutch away,’ and as they walked he spoke briefly of this treasure spot, so important to Spanish trade: ‘A long hook of land starting east and running west cuts off a shallow bay. This happens often along seacoasts. Remember the handsome one we saw when we laid over in the island of Jamaica, southern shore?’ And Doña Leonora nodded.
‘The gulf at Cumaná looks the same, but is different. It’s shallow, and every summer when the sun is high the water evaporates, leaving an enormous deposit of salt. There’s so much salt there, you can scrape it up with shovels.’
‘But don’t we station soldiers to protect the flats?’
‘Because it is so hot, no one can stay around Cumaná for long. The heat beating back from the white salt is incredible, not like any other known, and the saline air corrodes nostrils and makes breathing difficult. Men work with huge flat-bottomed shoes tied to their feet so as not to break up the salt deposits on which they walk, and a merciless glare shines back from the intensely white surface. A season in Cumaná is a season in hell. But the Dutch sea captains who creep onto the flats enjoy an unusual advantage. Judges in Holland tell criminals: “Death or work in Cumaná,” so the salt is collected by men who have to work there, the ships are loaded, and salted herring is made available to large parts of Europe.
‘What I must do,’ Ledesma told his wife, ‘is take a fleet out there before the king orders me to do so.’
‘Can’t you send one of your captains?’ she asked, and he replied honestly: ‘I suppose I could, but would it not look better …’ He hesitated, because as the father of three unmarried daughters and the uncle of two nephews with limited futures, he faced what could be called ‘The Spanish Problem’: ‘How can I protect and extend the interests of my family?’
In the Spanish society a man like Don Diego acknowledged tremendous obligations to four entities: God, God’s church, the king, his own family, though in reverse order if he was a prudent Spaniard. One could argue as to whose claims were greater, God’s, the church’s or the king’s, but any sensible man would have to admit that first came his family’s. And Don Diego had a most demanding one. His three daughters needed husbands of wealth and importance and his wife’s two able nephews deserved jobs. Then there were his three brothers, who had no titles but did have ravenous appetites for good things, and Doña Leonora’s inexhaustible array of cousins. If he played his cards cleverly and retained his governorship for another fifteen or twenty years, he would have a reasonable chance of placing all his relatives in profitable positions, and no man could discharge his family obligations more honorably than that.
So it was advisable that he conduct in person this campaign against the Dutch interlopers, for in doing so he might be able to connive two promotions for his wife’s nephews and at the same time ingratiate himself with a young captain of troops, a man of excellent family in Saragossa whom Doña Leonora had settled upon as a proper husband for their eldest, Juana. If, during action, Don Diego could find an opportunity to promote the young man, and then commend him in his report to the king, a marriage might very well be attainable. Getting the nephews started young in the naval service could mean that he might later be justified in placing them in command of one of the treasure galleons that sailed each spring from Cartagena for Havana and Sevilla. In fact, the more Don Diego thought of this expedition to the salt flats, the more attractive it became. A man could kill a chain of doves with one arrow well shot.
It was for these personal reasons, plus a desire to knock the insufferable Dutch renegades in the head, that Governor Ledesma assembled in late February 1568 a fleet of seven ships, well armed and manned, and set sail for distant Cumaná, a town most governors would never see but to which they would send troops on occasion to monitor the valuable salt flats. As self-appointed admiral of the fleet, he rode in the largest vessel, one with the biggest guns, and after the ships had sailed for some days on a northeast heading so as to clear the jutting peninsula protecting Maracaibo, he turned them due east for the long run to Cumaná. And he placed his nephews in charge of the port and starboard wings of the fleet.
These assignments were shocking, for as one of the captains who had to surrender his post grumbled: ‘Those whelps aren’t past the age of twenty-five and know nothing of the sea.’ But the answer from another old sea dog touched reality: ‘True, but you must remember they’re his wife’s nephews, and that does count.’
Satisfied that he had made two judicious moves, Don Diego now attended to the young nobleman who had been courting Juana Ledesma, and for him he created a wholly new position, vice-regent to the admiral; no one knew what it entailed, but it did evoke in the young man a feeling of great warmth toward Don Diego and his entire family. When one of the old-line captains asked: ‘What are the vice-regent’s duties?’ Don Diego replied without hesitation: ‘He relays my orders to my vice-admirals.’ When he went to sleep that night, with three more members of his family taken care of, he felt not even a wisp of shame at having abused his position so blatantly. If the truth were known, the long-dead bearers of the distinguished names he bore had probably gained their high places in history by similar attention to the promotions of their sons, nephews and cousins, for that was the Spanish way.
Toward the end of March, the fleet approached Cumaná from the west, and found at the mouth of the salt lagoon a group of three big renegade Dutch traders, each protected by heavy guns. Without the least hint of indecision Don Diego attacked, and in forty minutes the Battle of Cumaná, as the Spanish scribes would name it in their enthusiastic reports, was over, with one enemy ship sunk, one smoldering on a reef, and the middle one a captured prize.
Aware,
even in the heat of battle, that he was a Spanish gentleman bound by the rules of honor, Don Diego directed his interpreter to shout in Dutch to the survivors: ‘You may keep that ship you have and seek what port you can. But we’ll chop down your masts so you can’t chase after us in the night.’ But as his own men watched the defeated Dutchmen begin to climb aboard the surviving ship, a stout one, they protested: ‘Why give them that fine ship, while we must do with this poor one of ours?’ and he called to his men who were about to destroy the masts: ‘Stop! Don’t touch that mast!’ And without a moment’s reflection he directed his men to cut down the mast of one of his own ships and turn it over to the Dutchmen.
When his crew climbed aboard their prize and all the Dutchmen had been crammed into the leaky old craft, Don Diego called down: ‘What’s the name of this ship?’ and they pointed to the stern where the words had been neatly carved in oak: STADHOUDER MAURITZ. While the Dutchmen argued about which way to head, a horde of bright yellow butterflies seeking land saw the captured ship and alighted upon her rigging, clothing it in gold.
‘An omen!’ Don Diego cried, and before nightfall carpenters had fashioned a new board with the lovely new name MARIPOSA. When it was in place, each member of the crew was issued a bottle of captured Dutch beer with which he toasted the admiral when he poured his bottle over the new name and shouted: ‘We christen thee Mariposa!’
That night, flushed with victory, Don Diego directed his scribe to compose a letter informing King Philip of the capture of the Dutch ship, adding in his own handwriting: ‘Without the exceptional bravery and shrewd military judgment of the vice-regent and the two vice-admirals, this victory over three huge Dutch ships would not have been possible. They did their fighting on the decks of the enemy and deserve both commendation and promotion.’