On October the Twenty-third we sailed into Santa Cruz de Tenerife and anchored below the fort, having performed all the courtesies of the sea such as dipping our topsails and firing salutes. The great men of the island came aboard with some English merchants, and there was much banqueting and merriment while Mr Hawkins’ band played very sweetly.
Samuel was blown up like a pig, having eaten above forty of the fruit which the Spaniards call platanos. They are yellow and shaped like little curved cucumbers and the sweetest thing that ever I tasted. Thus with Samuel crying out that his end had come – for which I should not have shed a tear – it was I who served the wine, dressed all in blue velvet. When I first caught sight of myself in the cabin mirror I wondered who the boy was and where he had hidden himself during the voyage.
This was the first time I met Spaniards and heard their language. It seemed to me, being only a child, that there was trust and friendship between us. They treated Mr Hawkins as the great gentleman he was and laid their hands upon their hearts at the mention of Her Majesty. As for him, he always spoke of King Philip as his old master – having indeed done him some service when the King came into England to marry Queen Mary – and swept off his hat, bowing low. But I knew well that when he spoke of his old master to Robert Barrett he would give a wink and tip his hat over his eyes.
In spite of all this outward courtesy Mr Hawkins sent neither boat nor man ashore and chose to anchor with a scattering of Spanish ships between our three vessels and the guns of the fort. These ships they quietly moved during the fourth night, and we as quietly towed our own out of gunshot. Then there was much passing of letters and messages between the Governor and Mr Hawkins, each of them swearing that he had never doubted the good intentions of the other.
‘That is twice they have tried to stop me, Robert,’ I heard him say to Master Barrett. ‘But from now on they cannot, for they have no ships of war in the Indies.’
He was in good heart and twisting his moustaches, for news had come that Minion, Swallow and William and John were riding safe and sound off the island of Gomera. There we joined them, took on water and repaired the worst of the timbers. On shore I was merry with Paul Horsewell, being very glad to see each other again. We rode upon camels, which are not so fast as horses but better eating.
The fleet then sailed for Guinea and stayed between Cape Blanco and Sierra Leone for some twelve weeks. All that time I remained at my duties in the after castle, for Mr Hawkins would have no boys and weaklings ashore. Here and there were trading posts of the Portuguese, but they had never conquered and occupied the land as the Spaniards did in the Indies. So it was a land without law. French and English came and went as they pleased, trading for gold and ivory around Cape Blanco and for slaves farther to the south.
All I saw was the desolate, grey coast with the seas breaking on it, and the river mouths and islands all dark with forests, into which our boats and pinnaces would disappear. Days later they would return with a little gold, a few Negroes and half the men shivering with fevers and agues in the heat.
I myself nearly died of the fever, being two weeks tossing and turning on the hard boards, cared for by William Lowe who played the bass viol in the band. He was a red-haired dwarf with freckles on his face and as many jests in his mouth. He used to tell me that I must not die until I had seen the Indies and that afterwards I could do as I pleased.
Indeed, the ship was full of sick soldiers and seamen, not knowing what ailed them or why. Once the longboat returned with some of our men who had been hit by little arrows, laughing at their wounds which were no bigger than pin-pricks. But in two days their jaws were shut tight. They themselves boldly forced their mouths open with wedges, and then could talk and thought that they were cured. But all died.
By January we had only one hundred and fifty Negroes, most of them taken by force from the Portuguese. The fleet then sailed to Sierra Leone where two kings were at war. Mr Hawkins agreed with one of them to storm his enemy’s town on condition that we should have all the prisoners. But though our men had hard fighting before they could force the stockade and burn the town, the king played us false. Some of the prisoners were roasted and eaten in our sight, and most of the others were driven into the mud of the river where they stuck fast and drowned.
We left the coast with four hundred and seventy slaves in the holds; and whether this be honest trading or not I leave to the lawyers and churchmen. The Spaniards say that it is wrong to make slaves of the subjects of a Christian king. Therefore the Indians in New Spain are not slaves, though many of them are bound to the estates like the serfs in old England of whom we read in the histories. But the Negroes of Africa, they say, are in law wild men, and may be captured and sold as if they were lions or elephants.
For myself, I know that I was sorry for the poor blackamoors in the hold of the Jesus of Lubeck, chained and fed upon boiled beans, and I would not treat any human being so. Yet less of them died of fright than we of fevers and arrows, and those who lived were more fortunate than their fellows drowned in the mud or cut up as we do beef or mutton. These wild men are better treated by the Spaniards than by their own people, as I have seen, and after they have learned a Christian language and Christian prayers, which they do marvellously quick, they become grave and courtly men. When freed, as often they are, they may rise in New Spain to be overseers, merchants and even justices and may marry and meet with whomever they will.
Our fleet was now of nine sail. We had picked up an empty Portuguese fishing-boat on the coast, the crew of which had fled from French traders. Later we fell in with these Frenchmen, and two of their captains joined us. One was a stouthearted seaman of Dieppe, named Captain Bland. He commanded a fine Portuguese caravel. When Mr Hawkins asked him how he came by her, he answered, keeping a straight face, that she too had been empty, her crew having jumped overboard for fear of the English. We renamed her the Dei Gratia.
On the long voyage of the Middle Passage I found very true Master Barrett’s words to me: that I should be master of many trades before I came home to England. In the great cabin the gentlemen and the officers still dined off silver plate to the sound of music, but there were few platters to wash unless fresh fish were caught. All the good meat in the casks was finished, and the rest rotten. So the butler and Samuel took more work upon themselves – for the sake of the leavings from the table – and set me to cleaning the arms in the after castle and keeping them bright against the salt and damp.
Whenever the sails hung limp in the heat, the whole fleet practised at the guns. I learned to make up dry charges for the arquebuses and to load and care for the brass fowlers on the poop which were used to fire hail shot at boarders. This work of mine was daily inspected by Job Hartop, a master gunner though but twenty years of age, who, seeing that I loved his craft, taught me to load and aim the culverins and the big demi-cannon. Also I learned to use arquebus, pistol and cross-bow, so that by the time we reached the Indies I was on my way to become as good a ship’s soldier as my father before me. Though I had little in my belly, like the rest of us, my arms and shoulders were broadening into those of a man.
CHAPTER TWO
After a voyage of fifty-two days we sighted the island of Dominica and called for water. I wondered that the coasts and creeks and fair harbours should be so deserted, forgetting that only seventy-five years had passed since Columbus discovered the Indies, which now it is the foolish fashion to call America. Afterwards I found that there were Spaniards in great number but for the most part gathered in their noble cities.
Our first port of call on the Main was Margarita, where we found only fifty settlers who fled on our appearance, believing us to be no better than French pirates. Mr Hawkins sent letters on shore, as was his custom, saying that he only desired to be of service both to King Philip and Her Majesty. Thereupon the Governor asked him to dine, and agreed to deliver us sheep and oxen in exchange for our goods. But we on board were too hungry to wait. We rowed out to a rock which was covered
with birds as large as geese, and filled our boats with them and their eggs.
We sailed west along the coast, but everywhere trade was refused as if our fine fleet had been some thieving pedlar at a farmhouse door. It seemed to me great pity that these brave settlers who saw their own ships but once a year should not be allowed to buy from us cloth to clothe themselves and Negroes to ride after their cattle and work their land.
But some of them found a way to trick their Governors. They secretly invited Mr Hawkins to take their town by force and refuse to surrender it until he had leave to trade. Both sides profited from this play-acting, and we did no damage that we did not pay for except in the case of Francis Drake, who, having small patience with Mr Hawkins’ liking of the Spaniards, blockaded the harbour of Rio de la Hacha and put two cannon shot through the Treasurer’s house.
We came at last to Cartagena which was the first true city I had seen, with a castle and well-armed men upon the walls. They were too strong for us to compel them to trade without an act of war. This Mr Hawkins would not undertake since he flew Her Majesty’s flag.
Here we had good proof that he was trusted. Outside the harbour was an island, all laid out as a pleasure ground for the wealthy citizens. In the garden we found many barrels of good wine, as they must have known we would. Mr Hawkins took them and left in their place bales of English cloth, value for value, with enough over to pay the King’s customs duties into the bargain.
But it was not wine that we wanted. We had hoped to provision the fleet at Cartagena for the homeward voyage. Now there was nothing for it but to call in the Islands, though we would rather have sailed clear away. It was August, and if we delayed we might be caught by the deadly winds which the Spaniards call Huricanos before we could pass through the Florida Channel and out into the Ocean.
On a calm day the ensign of the Jesus of Lubeck was raised to summon a council on board. The captains decided to take all goods out of our Portuguese caravel and sink her. Captain Bland of the Dei Gratia was resolved to remain with the fleet, and the other Frenchman to sail off on his own. So we were reduced to seven ships. Of the four hundred and eight Englishmen who had left Plymouth, three hundred and twenty remained, the rest having died in Guinea or at sea; and that was less, old seamen said, than would have gone to their rest under any other general but John Hawkins. Of the Negroes we had sold all but fifty-seven and lost very few.
We sailed slowly, for after nine months in warm waters the ships were foul with weeds, worms and barnacles. All was well with us until we reached the westernmost point of the island of Cuba. Then a storm blew up from the south-east and drove us into unknown waters. The William and John we never saw again and believed her lost with all hands, but by God’s Providence she came safe to Ireland. As for the Jesus of Lubeck, the following seas opened up her planks as they had in the Bay of Biscay, and again we were pumping and stuffing the leaks with such cloth as we had left to keep out the fishes.
She was far beyond saving now, but John Hawkins saved her, mixing with the seamen, his shirt open to the waist and the salt crusting his hair. He ordered the carpenters to cut away all the highest parts of the after castle. So while they plied their saws, axes and crow-bars and hurled overboard the galleries and cabins, Samuel and the butler busied themselves with mirrors and chests as if they were moving house from Plymouth to London, and I helped Job Hartop to dismount the brass fowlers and set them up on the new poop deck. Then we rode more easily, though for four days we were in terror of our lives.
When the wind dropped we laid our course down the west of Florida, sending out boats to look for a creek where we might careen and repair the ships; but, finding only shoals and beaches, the boats were called in, and all the captains came aboard the Jesus of Lubeck. What passed between them I remember well, and I can still see John Hawkins sitting at the head of the table in his black velvet and gold chain, with his beard and moustache now trimly pointed as if he were in his brother’s counting house.
The captains begged him to shift the men, guns and cargo from the flag-ship and then sink her, but he would not.
‘If the Jesus of Lubeck is a total loss, you can only gain by it, sir,’ Master Barrett said to him. ‘But if you bring her home, you must repair her at your own expense before you hand her back to the Queen.’
‘That may be so, but still I will not sink her,’ Mr Hawkins replied.
‘You will get no thanks from Her Majesty,’ said Mr Francis Drake.
Mr Hawkins beckoned to me to refill the goblets.
‘When you come to know her, as one day you will, Francis,’ he said slowly, ‘you will find her cunning, mean, always preferring to do nothing at all rather than some act which can never be undone. Yet when you see her eyes smile and hear the love in her voice, you will forgive our Gloriana all her faults as you would to a wife, for she is married to England. And whether or not she keeps faith with me, I will keep faith with her. So I will not sink her ship.’
These words stayed in my mind; and when I was near dead with misery, I would tell myself that Gloriana was my Lady and I her Knight, and that I would keep faith with her though the raggedest rogue in the New World.
A day later it blew from the north-east, driving us away from Florida and into the Gulf. None of the masters knew the coast of New Spain, so that we might as well have been on the moon without any pilot to tell us where the fleet could refit and take on stores. Even when we left Cartagena we were short of food and now we had been beating about in the Caribbean Sea for near fifty days.
On September the Eleventh we hailed a small Spanish ship, and thanked God when her captain closed with us and came aboard. He was a good, rough seaman, trading between the Islands and New Spain, who knew the coast and was ready enough to tell us where we were. He said that he had ridden out the storm in Campeche, and that the only port to leeward which we could reach was San Juan de Ulua, whither he was bound himself.
Master Barrett, who spoke very good Spanish, thanked him and asked why he had not run from us, seeing that his pinnace was newly cleaned and could sail closer to the wind than we.
‘I was glad to see your worships,’ he replied, ‘for I believed you must be a squadron of the yearly fleet from Spain.’
‘Is it due?’ Master Barrett asked.
‘Any day now.’
‘And is it bound for San Juan de Ulua?’
‘Of course. There is nowhere else.’
‘And what sort of harbour is it, friend?’
‘It will do until we have more Negroes to make it better,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘On land everyone is a gentleman.’
The Spaniard was ordered to stay with us so that he could not give warning of our approach. We also fell in with three other traders whom we compelled to join us.
Four days later we made San Juan de Ulua and were greeted as if indeed we were part of the great fleet from Spain. Our colours were so faded by sun and sea that the Treasurer and Mayor of Vera Cruz, which is the chief town and not far from San Juan, had come aboard us before they saw that Jesus of Lubeck and Minion flew the Lions of England at the main top and not the Castles of Spain. So when we sailed in, the guns saluted us with blank charges instead of ball.
The harbour gave good shelter from the north winds, but was the worst that I ever saw. There was only a little island of shingle, three feet above water at low tide, with a channel between it and the mainland. This pebble bank was faced with stone blocks on the inner side, forming a quay to which ships were moored with anchors out at the stern and their fore castles overhanging the island. For defence there was a gun platform with two batteries of heavy cannon.
As soon as the people of the port saw our faces and heard the English words of command, there was panic. The crews of the few ships rowed ashore. The gunners deserted their platform. The King’s Negroes working on the shingle swam across the channel. Mr Hawkins then sent for the Captain of the Port and assured him that we had only put in to refit and buy stores. He promised to do
no harm to men or ships, not even if their holds were full of silver from the mines, and he talked as confidently of his old master as if King Philip and the Pope together had blessed his voyage.
On the evening of September the Sixteenth all was at peace and we were sure that we should be able to buy whatever we lacked. Boats came across the narrow channel to look at us, and the band of the Jesus of Lubeck played to amuse them. Fresh meat was roasting over the galley fires. The smoke hung over the decks in the hot dusk.
I was up early in the morning to lay the cabin breakfast when the watch reported that there were thirteen sail on the horizon. It was certain who they were: the Plate Fleet from Seville and Havana come to load the silver and gold of the Indies, and carrying on board the new Viceroy, Don Martin Enriquez.
When they saw our masts and pennants, they anchored off the island and sent the Admiral’s barge into the harbour with a high and mighty message from the Viceroy saying that if we dared to keep him out of New Spain by force, he had with him a thousand men who would see to it. To this John Hawkins replied that he himself was also a Viceroy since he represented his Queen, and that he cared nothing for a thousand men who could come no nearer than his cannon allowed.
That was true enough; so we had no fear of the Spaniards though we ourselves were less than three hundred. They still fought as in my father’s time, laying alongside the enemy and using their guns to kill men, whereas we shot low and used our guns to kill ships. Master Barrett was for defiance. It would be a fine stroke for the Queen and the Protestant religion, he declared, to send the dons packing. The Viceroy could land nowhere else but San Juan, as well we knew.
‘And for two years there would be no silver shipped to Spain,’ said Mr Hawkins. ‘But I fly Her Majesty’s flag, Robert, and therefore I must keep the peace if the dons will let me. She rebuked me for firing on them even in our own port of Plymouth where I had the right.’
Prisoner of the Indies Page 2
