He asked God "life and leave to sail once in an English ship, in that sea!" It was not that Spain's Philip II did not see the importance of the Strait as a direct sea route to hi s growing colonies on South America's Pacific coast. It was just that the going was too tough . Samuel Eliot Mori son, the great chronicler of these voyages, sums up the agonies of the Spanish effort to carry out Philip's orders to develop this route: At least six expeditions had tried to get through, with about seventeen vessels, twelve of which had been cast away in or near the eastern entrance; and Elcano' s Victoria still held the unique distinction of passing through and returning home. "Of these vessels' crews," he adds, "not one man in five ever saw hi s native land again; probably well over a thousand had perished." The Ships and Their People Now that the ships' crews know were they are going, let's have a closer look at Drake 's squadron, its mission and its people, beginning with its remarkable Captain General. Francis Drake was born about 1540, son of one Edmund Drake, a yeoman farmer and wool-shearer who leased hi s farm near Plymouth from the Earl of Bedford. Edmund ran into trouble with the law, and for this reason or because of religious persecution (the story his children were brought up to believe), he left Devon when Francis was about eight, traveling across England to Chatham, a burgeoning naval base on the Medway just off the Thames estuary. Edmund found a home for his family in a laid-up ship's hull and scraped out a living as an evangelical preacher to the ships of the fleet. Francis acquired a good education in these straitened circumstances. The Oxford-educated naval officer and historian Sir William Monson later said of Drake: "He would speak much and arrogantly but eloquently, which was a wonder to many that his education could yield him those helps of nature. " In the early 1550s, Francis was apprenticed to the owner and master of a small bark trundling cargoes up and down the coast. She also made voyages to the Continent, and now and then piloted larger vessels through the treacherous sandbanks and swirling tides of the Thames estuary-a wonderful training ground for seamanship. It was a region where waterfront streets and taverns echoed to the talk of sailors and merchants just in from Lisbon, Bordeaux or Genoa. The Thames served as an outlet for the ever-growing trade of the port of London, which by the 1550s handled some 90 percent of England's exports. Francis 's mother had died , and Edmund followed in 1557, leaving a scanty estate. The master of the bark died a few years later and left the vessel to Francis, aged about 20. Francis sold the vessel and took his money , a few friends from the ship, and himself to Plymouth. There, in the early 1560s, he began shipping out in the deep-sea trading expeditions his cousin John Hawkins had begun to run to Africa and the Caribbean. England's entry into ocean voyaging, as Morison and others have noted, came late in the new day of oceanic commerce. From the beginnings of the late medieval revival of trade in the 11 OOs and 1200s, English ships had been barred from the Baltic trade by the paramilitary Hansa network. The well-capitalized state shipping lines of the Italian maritime republics, notably Genoa and Venice, had effectively monopolized the rich trade from the more advanced Mediterranean world, including precious spices from the Far East. The Hansa kept their grip on eastern trade until the mid- l 500s, and as Italian capital, know-how and initiative stimulated the great seaward surge of first Portugal and then Spain from the 1300s SEA HISTORY 80, WINTER 1996-97
on, England, despite isolated ventures and voyages (to which English-speaking historians have perhaps paid too much attention), remained a bit player on the oceanic scene. John Cabot 's (Giovanni Caboto) notable voyage to Newfoundland in 1497 was not effectively followed up, despite the growing wealth and stability of the new Tudor monarchy under the Henries VII and VIII; Cabot's son Sebastian left England to become piloto mayor or senior pilot of the Spanish monarchy , returning only late in life to English shores to share his wisdom , in rather pontifical fashion. The hard-hitting Hawkins family were something new on this scene. They were determined to seize their share of the rich Spanish trade with the Americas, which Spain reserved to itself, as noted earlier. Drake flourished in this heady atmosphere of voyaging in distant waters, far from any friendly base of support. In 1568 we find him in command of the bark Judith in a fleet of six ships led by John Hawkins, as the fleet put into San Juan d'Ulua for repairs after a gale. A Spanish squadron happened by, and promising no harm , were allowed to berth themselves alongside the English ships. The Spanish then attacked without warning. Hawkins and Drake, fighting a rearguard action, escaped with as many men as they could save, and limped back to England separately in the two surviving, overburdened ships. After this, Drake began to raid Spanish shipping ad lib. He concentrated his efforts on Panama, improvising brilliantly to outwit Spanish defenders of the silver shipped by mule train from the Pacific to the Caribbean for shipment home to Spain. He allied himself with the Cimarrones, escaped African slaves who formed effective auxiliaries. He collaborated on one occasion with a French raider. It 's hard to call these raiders "pirates" as it 's now fashionable to do. Real pirates tortured, raped and slaughtered their victims. Drake did none of these things and severely controlled his men 's behavior, as Spanish testimon y affirms with remarkable unanimity. In the course of these highly profitable ventures, in which the Queen surreptitiously took part, Drake and his companion John Oxenham guided by one Pedro, a Cimarrone chief, crossed the Isthmus of Panama to get at the port of Panama, where silver was brought in for transshipment to Nombre de Dios on the Caribbean side. As they struggled across high hills, Pedro invited Drake to climb a treetop observation post and, on a clear January day in 1573 , Drake saw the Pacific Ocean, or the great South Sea, gleaming in the sun before him. According to the official narrative in Sir Francis Drake Revived, he "besought Almighty God of Hi s goodness, to give him life and leave to sail once in an English ship, in that sea!" That was what this voyage of 1577 was about. Queen Elizabeth, backing her adventurous mariners , used the funds they brought in to strengthen her Royal Navy. Drake, with his usual eloquence, made the case for breaking into Spain 's American trade by the back door, sailing a squadron around to the Pacific by way of the formidable Strait of Magellan. Another West Countryman, the fiery Richard Grenville, had proposed a similar scheme. But Elizabeth astutely commissioned Drake instead . She did thi s in a personal meeting arranged by Foreign Minister Walsingham with the short, stocky, rough-hewn Drake-a man very unlike the dashing young nobles who flocked to the Queen 's court. One quintessential courtier, Thomas Doughty, was in the fleet as second-in-command , unfortunately both for the voyage and for himself. Duties can be delegated, counsel can be
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