THE CAPE HORN ROAD, PART X:
Francis Drake Sails for Freedom by Peter Stanford man can ' tdie, not while he's got the smell of this stuff in his nostrils." A gnome out of a Celtic fairy tale, the speaker was slight and dark, with a quizzical grin on his face and dark-hued, pine-smelling oil running off hi s hands as he held them up for our inspection. "Stockholm tar!" he explained. This was Joe Bennett, fatherofOswald. We had idly asked Oswald Bennett his age as he worked in the rigging loft, and when we congratulated him on still working in this strenuous trade at the age of seventy, he' d said: "Oh, when it comes to age you'd best talk to my Dad." And he had turned to call a dim figure working at the back of the loft, who came up to be introduced. The elder Mr. Bennett then offered the tarry nostrum cited above, with considerable delight-in which we shared. The conversation took place a quarter-century ago, in Alan Hincks's yard in Appledore on the north coast of Devon, England, where a working replica of Francis Drake 's Golden Hind was taking shape in the old-fashioned way, with the Bennetts , father and son, laying up her rigging. Stockholm tar is the traditional preservative that has been used to protect cordage from wind and weather from time immemorial. It's not at all like the petroleum-based tar we use on rooftops and roadways today, except for its dark color and resistance to water. It has a grand spicy smell to it and keeps rope supple and strong in near-miraculous fashion. When the replica of the Golden Hind was being built, we did not know that the original Hind had also been built in Devon. Scholars had believed that this formidable fast-sailing ship had been built across the English Channel in France. A document di scovered only in 1981 , however, shows Drake applying to Queen Elizabeth for a bounty--or as we would say, a subsidy-for building the ship in his home county of Devon. The little ship was eminently suited for war service, and in that dangerous era, the Queen had every reason to encourage the building of such ships. Norma and I pursued our way, visiting a round of old British seaports in that distant fall of 1972, thinking how good it was to meet the countrymen of Francis Drake. These were people of yeoman stock like Drake himself, talking the same gnarled, knotty, vividly expressive English he spoke. These West Country people were hi s people, whom he never forgot. And an observant Spanish prisoner, captured during Drake's global voyage, noted the immense respect his men had for him; as for how they felt about him , Don Francisco de Zarate said simply: "They adored him ." "The Famous Voyage" Around five in the evening on 15 November 1577, Drake's Golden Hind put to sea from Plymouth, on Devon' s south coast, steering southwest down the English Channel toward the open ocean. She sailed under her original name Pelican, rated at 100 tons (actually nearer 150) in the muster of the squadron she was leading to sea. Aboard her were some 80 souls, led by Francis Drake, as captain general, a recognized leader after his freebooting forays against the Spanish colonies in the Americas in recent years, and a new-minted man of substance who had 1,000 pounds of his own money invested in the voyage. England's foreign mini ster Francis Walsingham,
1\
8
the Royal Navy's George Winter, and others prominent in Queen Elizabeth's court made up the balance of the investment needed to get the little fleet to sea. But Elizabeth's role was suitably deniable, an eminently wise precaution as she steered her ship of state through the dangerous currents of an international scene overshadowed by the growing worldwide hegemony of Spain. Drake, as events were to show, most likely had no written commi ssion for the voyage he was embarking on. He was later to say that the Queen, in a personal audience, had told him: "I would gladly be revenged on the King of Spain for divers [various] injuries that I have received." But the mission of the voyage ran deeper than that. To both Elizabeth and Drake the object of the voyage, as revealed in their actions then and later, was to shatter the monopoly of oceanic world trade asserted by Spain and Portugal with the support of the Pope as God's spokesman on earth. Spain's tribute from the conquered American colonies had provided the gold and silver that made her all at once the dominant power in Europe, spurred on by a driving religious ideology that made her a menace to the independence of other nations. So, it is clear that Drake 's five ships, sailing into the autumnal evening to go out and attack the world's strongest and most aggressive power, carried a heavier cargo of concerns, and perhaps a greater share in the world 's destiny, than a casual raiding expedition . "The famous voyage," as it would soon be known, got off to a messy start. Standing southwest through the night of 15 November, by morning Drake's ships had reached the mouth of the English Channel, where they were met by a head wind "quite contrarie to our intended course." Under threatening skies they ran back to anchor in Falmouth, driven by a rising wind. Over the next two days this wind rose to a howling gale. The flagship Pelican and the little Marigold were both forced to cut away their mainmasts to avoid being driven ashore, even in the sheltered anchorage they'd gained. Running back to Plymouth the ships made good their damages. They put to sea again "with happier sayles" on 13 December. The squadron made a swift 12-day passage southward, keeping well to sea in fair winds. Sailing in the wake of Portuguese and Spanish navigators, man had come a long way from the headland-to-headland piloting practiced by Europeans only a century earlier in these same waters, as the Portuguese had worked their way step by step down the Moroccan coast, which Drake reached in one quick leap from England. The fleet raised the sandy, barren coast of Africa just north of Mogador on Christmas morning, 25 December 1577. From there, having reprovisioned, the fleet headed south along the coast. It had been talked up in seaport towns that Drake was bound to the Mediterranean, but as the fleet sailed southwest to the Cape Verde Islands and then struck out across the Atlantic toward Brazil, it became clear that Drake was bound into the Pacific world. In 1520 Magellan had discovered a way through the Americas to the Pacific. But in the intervening half century, few ships had sailed through the Strait of Magellan. Above, Drake by Nicholas Hilliard, J581, soon after his voyage.
SEA HISTORY 80, WINTER 1996-97