Captains of adventure

Master John Hawkins, mariner, was a trader’s son, familiar from childhood with the Guinea coast of Africa. Worshipful merchants of London trusted him with three ridiculously small ships, the size of our fishing smacks, but manned by a hundred men. With these, in 1562—the “spacious times” of great Elizabeth—he swooped down on the West African coast, and horribly scared were his people when they saw the crocodiles. The nature of this animal “is ever when he would have his prey, to sob and cry like a Christian bodie, to provoke them to come to him, and then he snatcheth at them.” In spite of the reptiles, Master Hawkins “got into his possession, partly by the sword, and partly by other means,” three hundred wretched negroes.

The king of Spain had a law that no Protestant heretic might trade with his Spanish colonies of the West Indies, so Master Hawkins, by way of spitting in his majesty’s eye, went straight to Hispaniola, where he exchanged his slaves with the settlers for a shipload of hides, ginger, sugar and pearls.

On his second voyage Master Hawkins attempted to enslave a whole city, hard by Sierra Leone, but the Almighty, “who worketh all things for the best, would not have it so, and by Him we escaped without danger, His name be praised for it.” Hawkins had nearly been captured by the negroes, and was compelled to make his pious raids elsewhere. Moreover, when he came with a fleet loaded with slaves to Venezuela, the Spanish merchants were scared to trade with him. Of course, for the sake of his negroes, he had to get them landed somehow, so he went ashore, “having in his greate boate two falcons of brasse, and in the other boates double bases in their noses.” Such artillery backed by a hundred men in plate armor, convinced the Spaniards that it would be wise to trade.

On his third voyage, Master Hawkins found the Spaniards his friends along the Spanish main, but the weather, a deadly enemy, drove him for refuge and repair to San Juan d’Ullua, the port of Mexico. Here was an islet, the only shelter on that coast from the northerly gales. He sent a letter to the capital for leave to hold that islet with man and guns while he bought provisions and repaired his ships. But as it happened, a new viceroy came with a fleet of thirteen great ships to claim that narrow anchorage, and Hawkins must let them in or fight. “On the faith of a viceroy” Don Martin de Henriquez pledged his honor before Hawkins let him in, then set his ships close aboard those of England, trained guns to bear upon them, secretly filled them with troops hid below hatches, and when his treason was found out, sounded a trumpet, the signal for attack. The Englishmen on the isle were massacred except three, the queen’s ship Jesus, of Lubeck, was so sorely hurt that she had to be abandoned, and only two small barks, the Minion and the Judith, escaped to sea. The Spaniards lost four galleons in that battle.

As to the English, they were in great peril, and parted by a storm. The Judith fared best, commanded by a man from before the mast, one Francis Drake, who brought the news to England that Hawkins had more than two hundred people crowded upon the Minion without food or water. “With many sorrowful hearts,” says Hawkins, “we wandered in an unknown sea by the span of fourteen dayes, till hunger forced us to seeke the lande, for birdes were thought very goode meate, rattes, cattes, mise and dogges.”

It was then that one hundred fourteen men volunteered to go ashore and the ship continued a very painful voyage.

These men were landed on the coast of Mexico, unarmed, to be stripped naked presently by red Indians, and by the Spaniards marched as slaves to the city of Mexico, where after long imprisonment those left alive were sold. The Spanish gentlemen, the clergy and the monks were kind to these servants, who earned positions of trust on mines and ranches, some of them becoming in time very wealthy men though still rated as slaves. Then came the “Holy Hellish Inquisition” to inquire into the safety of their souls. All were imprisoned, nearly all were tortured on the rack, and flogged in public with five hundred lashes. Even the ten gentlemen landed by Hawkins as hostages for his good faith shared the fate of the shipwrecked mariners who, some in Mexico and some in Spain, were in the end condemned to the galleys. And those who kept the faith were burned alive. From that time onward, whatever treaties there might be in Europe, there was never a moment’s peace for the Spanish Indies. All honest Englishmen were at war with Spain until the Inquisition was stamped out, and the British liberators had helped to drive the Spaniards from the last acre of their American empire.

When Hawkins returned to England, Mary, Queen of Scots, was there a prisoner. The sailor went to Elizabeth’s minister, Lord Burleigh, and proposed a plot. By this plot he entered into a treaty with the queen of Scots to set her on the throne. He was to join the Duke of Alva for the invasion and overthrow of England. So pleased was the Spanish king that he paid compensation to Hawkins for his losses at San Juan d’Ullua and restored to freedom such of the English prisoners as could be discovered. Then Hawkins turned loyal again, and Queen Elizabeth knighted him for fooling her enemies.