In a time when people were burnt alive for dissident beliefs, this was a remarkable statement. The other great point with Elizabeth was her extraordinary and very clear vision of freedom of the seas. William Camden, her chronicler, citing Elizabeth's arguments with the Spanish ambassador over Drake's voyage, has her maintaining "that the use of the Sea as of the Ayre is common to all, and that publique necessitie permits not it shoud be possessed." It is against this background that Elizabeth sequestered the treasure Drake had brought home, having allowed him enough to set himself up as a leading gentleman of the realm, and to pay his crew generously. And she did something more, to make her message clear to Philip and all comers, and perhaps particularly to Englishmen. As Camden reports it: Her Majesty commanded likewise, that for a perpetual/ memory to have so happily circuited round about the whole Earth, his Ship should be drawne from the water, and put aside neere Deptford upon Thames, where to this houre the body thereof is seene ; and after the Queenes f easting therein, shee consecrated it with great ceremonie, pompe, and magnificence , eternally to be remembred .... The Queen 's extraordinary act in saving the Golden Hind was no mere sentimental gesture from this determined woman . Widely noted at the time, it suggested that while the ship would never sail earth's seas again, she would make another kind of voyage, a voyage through time, embodying an English purpose "eternally to be remembred. "
Singeing the King of Spain's Beard Drake, hailed by crowds in the streets of London as well as hi s native Plymouth, and with free access to the powers that be, was not one to rest on his laurels. He soon began planning another voyage, to follow up on the alliance he ' d made with the Sultan ofTemate in the Spice Islands. This scheme was set aside only when the Queen's counselors felt it more important to mount an expedition to bar Philip of Spain from taking over the Azores, that critical mid-Atlantic island group lying across the route home both from the Americas and the East Indies , as he had taken over mainland Portugal. That effort fell through after Drake had gathered a fleet to achieve it, and the project of the long-range voyage to the Indies was resumed. Drake did not sail in this expedition, which went forward under Edward Fenton in 1582, only to collapse miserably against awakened Portuguese and Spanish res istance, with Fenton returning to England after a rebuff in Brazil and John Drake, Francis's young cousin, falling captive to the Spanish when hi s ship was wrecked in the River Plate on the way to the Strait of Magellan. Philip, meantime, marched on from victory to victory, securing the Azores through the brilliant action of hi s admiral Santa Cruz, and progressively subduing the Dutch revolt in the Netherlands. In 1584, the Dutch leader William of Orange was assassinated. France, a traditional enemy of Spain with whom Elizabeth had sought to ally herself, was tom by religious di ssension sliding into civil war. The great seaport city of Antwerp was on the verge of falling to Spanish troops. Elizabeth took decisive action. She sent an army to the Netherlands to support the embattled Dutch , and loosed Drake with authority to descend on the Spanish coast and free English ships seized by Spain, and then go on to the Spanish Caribbean to raid the cities where the wealth of the Americas was gathered for shipment home . Re-provisioning his ships at Spanish expense in Vigo, where he learned the impounded English ships had been released, Drake swept on with his fleet 14
to sack Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola, Cartagena on the South American mainland and St. Augustine in Florida, pausing on his way home to evacuate the first English Virginia colonists, who had given up this early attempt at English settlement in North America. The raid damaged Spain through loss of ships and treasure, but the worst damage was to Spanish prestige, shattering the aura of invincibility which had helped their soldiers carry all before them . More was to come. In the following year, 1587, Drake got permission to attack the Spanish fleet that was now assembling for the invasion of England. He raided Cadiz, destroying 39 vessels including great warships ill-prepared to be attacked in their fortified harbor, and then sailed back to occupy Cape St. Vincent at the southwest comer of Portugal, where he set up an effective blockade interrupting all coastal traffic . Before returning, he made a side trip to snap up the Portuguese Indies carrack San Felipe, a prize that paid for the whole venture with money left over to strengthen Elizabeth's navy. Drake cheerfully wrote of this remarkable preemptive strike as "singeing the King of Spain ' s beard." But he was impressed by the "great forces" Philip was gathering. "Prepare in England strongly," he wrote, "and most by sea. Stop him now , and stop him ever!" On 29 July 1588, after false alarms, the Spanish Armada appeared in the English Channel, some 130 ships under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia who had been pressed into service following the death earlier in the year of the great commander Santa Cruz. Lord Howard of Effingham, with Drake as his vice admiral, used standoff tactics to avoid boarding by the Spanish ships crammed with soldiers, and chased the great fleet up the Channel, pounding them with superior gunnery. In theend they mauled the Armada so badly that it was obliged to give up the attempt. With storms battering the damaged ships on the homeward passage, the Armada lost roughly half its ships. Drake distinguished himself by capturing the damaged Nuestra Senora del Rosario, a powerful ship that surrendered without a fight when the captain learned that it was Drake he was up against. It was no disgrace to surrender to the greatest sea warrior of the age. The Rosario turned out to be another treasure bonanza; again most useful to Elizabeth's straitened treasury. Drake went on to mount the fireship attack which disrupted the Spanish fleet, leading to the decisive gun battle at Gravelines on 8 August, which convinced the Spanish to give up the attempt against England and make their way home as best they could. Drake 's career thereafter was undistinguished. He led an ill-conceived and weakly executed attack on the Spanish coast the year after the Armada, following which Elizabeth did not trust him to lead another expedition until 1595-96, when he set out for another great West Indies raid which was bungled by divided counsels and greatly increased Spanish defenses. Drake died of fever during this effort and was buried at sea off Porto Belo, on the Caribbean coast of today's Panama. His discovery of Cape Hom, and the "large and free scope" of the sea to the southward, was not published in hi s lifetime, since the fact that there was an open-water passage into the Pacific was a closely held state secret. The war with Spain was not resolved until 1604, when Philip and Elizabeth had both passed from the scene. The uneasy peace that followed looked more like a peace of exhaustion than any resolution of the conflicting aims of the two states. But the results were in fact decisive. Spain never again SEA HISTORY 81, SPRING/SUMMER 1997