Africans like Diego, who had formerly been enslaved by the Spanish, had language skills and local knowledge that proved very valuable to the English on their travels.50 When Drake went ashore at Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands with seven hundred men in November 1585 he took an African as their guide. This man had come with them from England, but had formerly lived in Santiago, so was able to lead the English. Drake promised him that if they were able to capture his former master, then ‘the Spaniard should be slave unto the Negro’. Whether or not this came to pass is not recorded.51 George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, used Africans as messengers. In 1586, at Rio de la Plata, he sent an African ashore with letters from the Portuguese held prisoner on the ship. Ten years later, in the Azores, he sent a Mozambican, bearing a flag of truce, to negotiate with the islanders.52
On Drake’s circumnavigation voyage, Diego’s skills as an interpreter proved particularly advantageous as the true nature of their mission became apparent. After an initial setback, when heavy storms forced Drake’s fleet to seek shelter in Falmouth harbour for almost a month, they sailed south, catching sight of the coast of Morocco on Christmas Day 1577. Drake then began seizing Spanish and Portuguese shipping off the West African coast. The most significant of these attacks for our story came in January 1578 near the Cape Verde islands, when Drake captured the Santa Maria, a Portuguese vessel under the command of one Nuño de Silva. Unluckily for de Silva, he was an experienced pilot, well acquainted with the South American coastline. Drake decided to keep him aboard in order to exploit this expertise.53
As the voyage progressed, Diego and de Silva fell into conversation. Diego told de Silva about his adventures in Panama and how he had sent Francis’s brother, John Drake, to meet the Cimarrons, whom de Silva described as ‘the wild rebellious runaway negro slaves’ when he later reported their conversation to the inquisitors in Mexico. It was de Silva who reported that Diego had been taken prisoner by Drake from a frigate near Nombre de Dios some seven or eight years earlier.54 Maybe this was true, and Nichols had put an overly positive spin on events in Sir Francis Drake Revived. Then again, de Silva may have calculated that his interrogators would prefer to hear of a captured African, rather than one eager to escape. Or perhaps Diego felt it was easier to build a rapport with the Portuguese pilot if it appeared they were both on Drake’s ship against their will.
Having crossed the Atlantic, the fleet reached Brazil in April 1578. As they travelled south along the coast they did battle with the Patagonian people that the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan had named ‘Giants’. Magellan had become the first man to circumnavigate the globe in 1519–1522, and Drake’s voyage followed in his wake in more ways than one. In the summer of 1578, Drake discovered the bones of the mutinous captains Magellan had executed at Port San Julian in southern Argentina. He then proceeded to have Captain Thomas Doughty, Essex’s retainer, who he’d first met in Ireland, tried for mutiny in the same port; Doughty was found guilty and beheaded.
When the English attempted to cross the straits named after Magellan, their path was stormy. At times they feared for their lives, with good cause: eighty or more men were lost in the course of the crossing. The Marigold ran aground on 30 September, marooning its crew of twenty. Just over a week later, the Elizabeth, with fifty men aboard, was separated from the others. Her Captain, John Wynter, decided to turn back rather than sail on into the unknown. Another three pinnaces disappeared somewhere in the Straits. By the time Drake rounded Cape Horn in the Pelican, his was the only ship remaining. This was the moment when, according to Francis Fletcher, the ship’s chaplain, he renamed the ship the Golden Hinde, after the personal crest of Christopher Hatton, Lord Chancellor of England, and one of the voyage’s key sponsors.55
On 25 November 1578, just over a year after they had left Plymouth, Drake and his crew landed on Mocha Isle, off the coast of Chile. They were desperate for fresh water, firewood and food after their difficult passage across the straits. To their great delight, the inhabitants of the island gave them two sheep, chickens, Guinea wheat (maize) and fruits. Using sign language, the English asked for drinking water. Their hosts told them to return the next day. That night, the mutton and chicken were ‘so sweet, that we longed for the day, that we might have more’.
The next morning, Diego, Drake and ten other men ‘set out with joy’ for the island. This time they were met not with friendship, but with a flurry of arrows ‘so thick as gnats in the sun’. It seems that the day before, someone had foolishly used the Spanish word agua to ask for water. Overnight, the island people became convinced that the visitors were their mortal enemies. For the islanders were Araucanians, refugees from Arauco on the mainland, which they had abandoned after ‘cruel and extreme dealing’ from the Spaniards. As Diego was fluent in Spanish, he may have been the offender. Two men, Tom Brewer and Tom Flood, who had already gone ashore at the time of the ambush, were captured. Those remaining in the boat were ‘enforced to be butts to every arrow’, and, by some accounts, darts and stones as well.56
The fate of the two captured men, Brewer and Flood, is uncertain. The official account, The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake (1628), stated that they were ‘suddenly slain’, but Francis Fletcher’s earlier notes on the voyage recorded a far more grisly fate. He claimed that when Drake’s men returned, armed, to the island to try to recover the men, they saw them bound and lying on the ground. A crowd of 2,000 Araucanians was dancing wildly around them, while a few cut pieces of flesh from the Englishmen’s bodies and tossed them in the air. The rest caught these ‘gubbets’ and ‘like dogs devoured [them] in the most monstrous and unnatural manner . . . till they had picked their bones, life yet remaining in them’.57 This episode reads like a typical account of the cannibalism supposedly practised by natives of South America and other distant lands, common to the travel literature of the time. And yet the detail is so vivid it is difficult to discount it entirely.
According to Richard Hawkins, Diego received more than twenty wounds in the Mocha Island attack.58 However, Francis’s cousin John recalled that ‘the arrows did not enter the flesh deeply’.59 In any case, he was not the only casualty: Drake was hit in the face and Great Nele the Dane died of his wounds within two days.60 When the injured men returned to the ship, ‘the horror of their bloody state wounded the hearts of all men to behold them’. They did not have much medical help. The chief surgeon was dead and the other was left behind in the Elizabeth. There was ‘none left us but a boy, whose good will was more than any skill he had’.61
Even if there had been an experienced doctor to care for them, recovery was far from guaranteed. The Barber-Surgeon’s chest found aboard the Mary Rose contains an impressive array of instruments that would be as useful for inflicting torture as effecting cures. William Clowes, a surgeon to Queen Elizabeth and her navy, included in his list of necessary equipment ‘a sharp curved incision knife: for cutting skin and flesh’, ‘probes of silver, lead and tin, or wood for finding foreign bodies in deep wounds’ and ‘a dilator, with three prongs and an expanding mechanism to hold wounds open’. Surgery was well developed by this time but the same could not be said of Tudor understanding of the importance of hygiene and sterilisation; often the operation was a success but the patient died of shock or infection. In one of his medical textbooks, Clowes detailed the cure ‘of a soldier being wounded with a poisoned arrow upon the coast of Brazil’, in an incident not unlike the attack on Mocha Isle. The ship’s surgeon was a man of ‘fine skill’ and ‘great experience’ who was familiar with such injuries, having ‘travelled diverse times into those countries’. He cut a large incision around the wound, then filled it with ‘hot Aeygptiacum’ – a mixture of vinegar, honey and verdigris, the green rust that forms on copper – before covering it with a ‘plaister of fine treacle’. But even this cutting-edge treatment, which Clowes recounted with approbation, did not save all who received it, and it is unlikely that the boy left aboard the Golden Hinde was up to speed with the latest cu
res.62 The World Encompassed put the survival of the men injured at Mocha down to the grace of God, the ‘diligent putting to of every man’s help’ and ‘the very good advice of our Generall’.63 Maybe Drake remembered his kinsman John Hawkins using a clove of garlic as a remedy for an arrow wound sustained whilst trying to capture Africans in Cape Verde a decade before.64
Despite his twenty wounds, Diego survived. Although the main text reporting the Mocha island incident reported that he died of his injuries, a marginal note adds that he died near the Indonesian Moluccas, islands which the Golden Hinde only reached twelve months later.65 It’s not clear how such wounds might take a year to kill a man, though the survival of the soldier who made it back from Brazil to consult William Clowes in 1591 shows it was possible for men to carry on for considerable lengths of time. It may be that one of his twenty wounds became infected and turned gangrenous, or he could have developed scurvy, which causes old wounds to reopen.66
Diego’s survival until November 1579 is corroborated by the testimony of others who saw him aboard the Golden Hinde months after he was wounded at Mocha. Nuño de Silva testified that Diego, whom he mentioned by name, was still aboard when he left the ship at the Mexican port of Guatulco in April 1579. Drake’s cousin listed an African ‘they had brought with them from England’ amongst those who set sail from Guatulco later that month.67 Juan Pascual, another Portuguese pilot, also met Diego while a prisoner on the Golden Hinde in the first half of April 1579. He later testified that he’d met two ‘negroes’ on Drake’s ship. One, clearly Diego, spoke Spanish and English, and ‘everyone said that the Englishman had brought him from England’. The other was ‘seized at sea’. Pascual also reported that one of these two men, though he could not recall which one, told him that they had ‘made a contract with Francis Drake’, meaning they were being paid wages, just like the rest of the crew.68 This could only have been Diego, who had been with the ship from the outset.
Juan Pascual had joined the Golden Hinde from a Spanish ship Drake first encountered off the Pacific coast of Guatemala an hour before dawn on 4 April 1579. As the English approached, a Spaniard called out, asking for identification. Drake made one of his prisoners, Alonso Sanchez Colchero, answer in Spanish that this was Miguel Angel’s ship from Peru. Thus deceived, it was quite a shock for the Spaniards when the English opened fire. The Spanish ship was unarmed, having set out on a trading voyage from Acapulco to Peru, and most of the men were still asleep when the English came aboard. The owner, Don Francisco de Zarate, was a member of the prestigious order of Santiago, and a cousin of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, one of Spain’s most prominent noblemen, who would go on to command the Armada fleet in 1588. As one might expect, the first question Drake posed to this unfortunate gentleman once he had him in his cabin was ‘How much silver and gold does your ship carry?’ The answer was very little, but they were carrying porcelain, linen, taffeta and other silks, in abundance.69 These were goods from the Philippines, so named in 1543 in honour of the future King Philip II of Spain.
Since 1565, the Spanish had conducted a regular trade between Manila and Acapulco, buying porcelain, spices, silks and other goods with their American silver.70 Drake took what he pleased of this cargo, but spared Zarate and his ship. In gratitude, the Spaniard presented him with a golden falcon with an emerald embedded in its breast. William Camden later wrote that Zarate also gave Drake some ‘faire Negroes’ for sparing his ship, but contemporary accounts agree that Drake took an African man and a woman, ‘a proper negro wench called Maria’, without invitation.71
These two Africans were not the first to come aboard the Golden Hinde as she made her way north along the coast of South America. Who was the other African man that Juan Pascual met, the one who had been ‘seized at sea’? He cannot have been the man taken from Zarate’s ship with Maria, as Pascual had come from the same ship and so would have known him. Another African was taken from a ship in Arica, in northern Chile, on 5 February 1579, but a month later he expressed his desire to return to his master ‘who was advanced in years’ and Drake let him go, saying, ‘Since thou wishest to go thou canst go with God’s blessing, for I do not wish to take anyone with me against his will’. The second African Pascual referred to must have either have been the one taken from Gonzalo Alvarez’s ship at Paita (north of Lima, in Peru) on 25 February 1579, or one of those taken from the ship of Benito Diaz Bravo, which Drake captured near Los Quijimes, Ecuador, three days later. Much to Drake’s delight, the man who joined the Golden Hinde at Paita said he had been a Cimarron in Panama. Drake had fond memories of working with the Cimarrons and repeatedly asked the man whether his countrymen were now at peace or still embroiled in war with the Spanish.72
Juan Pascual reported that Diego and the other African man he met ‘attended prayers’ with the ship’s company twice a day. By this time, Drake had taken the unusual step of officiating at these religious meetings, despite the presence on board of the ship’s chaplain, Francis Fletcher. The meetings took place before lunch and before supper. Drake knelt on a cushion behind a table, read psalms and preached a sermon. The crew then sang together, accompanied by viols. The Catholic prisoners on board, with the exception of de Silva, withdrew to the prow of the ship during these ceremonies.73 Diego’s participation in the Protestant rituals signalled his allegiance, and possibly a true faith. Doubtless he would have been exposed to Catholicism while enslaved by the Spanish, but it would have been difficult to retain such beliefs, or at least to practise them, through four years in Protestant Plymouth. His experience can be likened to that of Chinano, a Turk baptised in London in 1586, who had been enslaved for twenty-five years before Drake liberated him from Cartagena. According to Meredith Hanmer, the vicar of St Leonard’s Shoreditch, who preached a sermon at Chinano’s christening, the Spaniards had failed to convert him to Catholicism. Chinano had been repelled by their cruelty and idolatry. It was only after he received ‘love and kindness’ from the good Christians’ Francis Drake and William Hawkins that he was inspired to become a Protestant.74 This account is obviously propaganda, but it certainly shows the English enthusiasm for making converts. Diego would have been strongly encouraged to share Drake’s faith and it would have been politic for him to do so.
Juan Pascual and Diego shared further intriguing conversation. One day, at the prow of the ship, Diego ‘inquired of [Pascual] secretly’, ‘Where is the port of Colima?’ Pascual replied that it was beyond the Mexican region the Spaniards called New Galicia. ‘I think that we are going thither,’ Diego revealed. ‘Withdraw yourself from me. Do not let yourself be seen speaking to me.’75 This exchange was reported by the royal licentiate of Guatemala, Valverde, in a letter to King Philip II in April 1579. At this stage, the Spaniards were desperate to know the route by which Drake would return to England. They had suffered numerous injuries at Drake’s hands as he made his way up the western coast of South America, capturing unarmed Spanish merchant ships, plundering colonial ports and amassing huge amounts of treasure. The richest prize, taken in March off the coast of Ecuador, was the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción (nicknamed Cacafuego, ‘fire-shitter’), which was carrying 362,000 pesos in silver and gold.76
At one point a fleet had set out to catch Drake, but turned back. The next attempt headed south to find him when he had in fact gone north.77 In his letter, Valverde analysed Drake’s four options. He could return the way he came, through the Straits of Magellan, but this would mean sailing back down a coastline full of angry Spaniards alert to his presence. He could continue north and try to find the mythical strait of Anian, a north-west passage some geographers believed separated North America from Asia, but Valverde reasoned this would be impossible ‘because this is a strait which has never been navigated and is not known to exist’. Sailing west through the East Indies was a possibility, but this would be ‘long and troublesome, as he would have to pilot and coast the entire world in order to return to England’. The final option was for Drake to cross back to the Atlantic o
verland via the isthmus of Panama, with the help of the Cimarrons. He could then, suggested another official, ‘build launches and seize trading frigates so as to go with them to England.’78
Valverde believed that the presence of Diego ‘who must be a chieftain amongst the negroes of [Panama]’ under whose protection he could ‘carry his booty by land’, indicated that Drake had originally intended to take the overland route. But Drake would have learned from his captives that the Cimarrons had recently made peace with the Spanish authorities in Panama and that the area was well guarded.79 Therefore, Valverde concluded, Drake would return by the Straits of Magellan. Seeking greater certainty, the Spaniards continued to interrogate anyone Drake left behind in an effort to discover his plans, hence their interest in Juan Pascual’s conversation with Diego. If Drake were headed for Colima then he would be travelling to the north or west, rather than returning south or overland. Diego’s whispers to Pascual, reported by a third party, can hardly have been prompted by a sense of loyalty to the Spanish. More probably, they were an attempt to spread misinformation, perhaps at Drake’s direct request.
After releasing Zarate, Drake sailed on to the Mexican port of Guatulco, which he raided in mid-April. Here, Drake abandoned Nuño de Silva, who had been with him since his capture near Cape Verde fifteen months before. The Portuguese pilot did not face a warm welcome from the Spanish authorities, who were suspicious that he had been rather too cooperative in Drake’s endeavours and might even have converted to Lutheranism on the voyage. When pressed, de Silva reported that Drake aimed to sail home through the strait of Anian.80
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