THE CAPE HORN ROAD From Sea History issue 70 in the summer of 1994 until Sea History 92 in the spring of 2000, Peter Stanford, in 21 chapters and an Envoy, wrote the article series The Cape Horn Road, which laid out how seafarers shaped history. Starting with the assertion that the first voyages around Cape Horn opened the world, he traced the origins of those voyages back to the Mediterranean Sea some 12,000 years ago, to the Norse crossing the Atlantic in Viking ships, and opening trade routes. He wrote of Portugal's and Spain's ocean discoveries with Henry the Navigator, Christopher Columbus, and Magellan. He elaborated on the significance of the journeys of Francis Drake and Captain James Cook. We are with Great Britain as she ruled the seas, suffering the plight of HMS Bounty, and following the rise and defeat of Napoleon; and then we are with the young nation, the United States, as she changes the Atlantic world. The American dipper ships take on Cape Horn, steamships take over the Atlantic, seafaring lessons help win the World Wars and sailing ships are again built and sailed. We reprint here from the "Cape Horn Road," Chapter 10, "Francis Drake Sails for Freedom," from Sea History 80. The first time I met Captain Bob Papp, master of the US Coast Guard Barque Eagle and now Admiral Robert J. Papp, Jr., Commandant of the United States Coast Guard, he was aboard the ship and had just received his issue of Sea History. "I am waiting to read this chapter of The Cape Horn Road," he said. "I look forward to it each time. It is a wonderful series, and I learn so much." - Burchenal Green, NMHS President
PT'~ {j})rafee
(j!/adi/{j/)( PT'~
by Peter Stanford
CCAman can't die, not while he's got the smell of this stuff in his nostrils." A gnome our of a C eltic fa iry tale, the speaker was slight and dark, with a quizzical grin on his face and dark-hued , pine-smelling oil running off his hands as he held them up fo r our inspection. "S tockholm tar! " he explained . This was Joe Bennett, fa ther of Oswald . We had idly asked O swald Bennett his age as he worked in the ri gging loft, and when we co ngratulated him on still working in his 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 fi gure working at the back of the loft, who came up to be introduced. The elder Bennett then offered the tarry nostrum cited above, with considerable delight- in which we shared . The conversation rook place a quarter century ago [now more than forty yea rs hence), in Alan Hincks's ya rd in Appledore on the north coast of D evon, England, where a working replica of Francis Drake's Golden H ind was taking shape in the old-fashioned way, with the Bennens, father and son, laying up her ri gging. Stockholm tar is the traditional preservative that h as been used to protect cordage from wind and weather from rime immemorial. Ir's no t 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 H ind had also been built in D evon. Scholars had believed that this formidable fast-sailing ship had been built across the English C hannel in France. A document discovered online in 1981, however, shows Drake applying to Queen Elizabeth for a bounty-o r as we would say, a subsidyfor building the ship in his home country of D evon. The little ship was eminently suited for war service, and in that dangerous era, the Q ueen had every reason to encourage the building of such ships.
14
No rma 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 D ra ke. These were people of yeoman stock like Drake himself, talking the same gnarled, knotty, vividly expressive English he spoke. These West C ountry people were his people, whom he never forgot. And an observant Spanish prisoner, captured during D rake's global voyage, noted rhe 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" A round five in rhe evening on 15 November 1577, Drake's Golden Hind put to sea from Plymouth, on D evon's south coas t, steering southwest down rhe English Channel toward rhe 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 inves ted in the voyage. England 's foreign minister, Francis Walsingham, the Royal Navy's George W inter, and others prominent in Queen Elizabeth 's co urt, made up the balance of the inves tment needed to get the little Aeer to sea. Bur Elizabeth 's role was suitably deniable, an eminently w ise precaution as she steered her ship of stare through the dan gerous currents of an international scene overshadowed by the growing worldwide hegemony of Spain. Drake, as events were to show, most likely had no written commission for the voyage he was embarking on. H e 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 [va rious] injuries that I have received ." But the mission of the voyage ran deeper than that. To both Eli zabeth and Drake
SEAHISTORY 143, SUMMER 2013