A Family of Islands

by Alec Waugh

  Since the disasters of Hawkins’ third voyage, ‘his troublesome voyage’, as contemporary historians were to christen it, were to break this cordial atmosphere and to label Spain as the first enemy, it is pertinent to note the extreme caution that Hawkins displayed before making his first trip to the Antilles. For he suspected that his voyage would occasion complaints from several quarters, both Portuguese and Spanish.

  He set out from Plymouth in October 1562, with three ships – 260 tons – and a hundred men. The syndicate that backed this venture was based in London. He did not sail under the Queen’s commission, but he had the backing of solid city magnates.

  He paused at Teneriffe; a Spanish friend had sent news of his voyage to Hispaniola, and Hawkins was able to sail for Africa, fortified in the knowledge that he would be expected in Santo Domingo. He was to state in his subsequent report that he acquired three hundred slaves on the Guinea coast; the Portuguese claimed that he took on nine hundred; the Spanish estimate was four hundred. It was in no one’s interest to be precise. He probably took on around five hundred.

  From the Guinea coast, he picked up the north-east trades. He proposed to conduct his business in Hispaniola. Santo Domingo was the seat of government, and the officials and merchantmen of the city were awaiting him. But he knew that he would be likelier to sell his cargo away from the scrutiny of officialdom. He also knew that the planters on the north side of the island were in more urgent need of slaves. He sailed therefore for the minor seaports, Isabela, Puerto de Plata and Monte Cristi.

  He encountered there the chicanery and double-dealing that is usually attendant on a dubious enterprise. He had to have the coverage of a licence to trade. The colonists wanted his wares, but everyone insisted on his cut and a veneer of respectability had to provide an alibi for the bureaucrats of Seville, who would need to be persuaded that Hawkins’ concessions had only been granted at the pistol’s point. As a result of these negotiations, Hawkins agreed to send one of his caravels back to Lisbon, another to Seville.

  This curious conduct exemplifies his desperate anxiety to appear as an honest trader. He may have conducted business with a finger on the trigger, but he could produce bills of lading, and Negroes left in bond stood to his credit as a proof that he had paid customs dues. Moreover, he had had the good sense to store the most valuable part of his cargo in the ship in which he sailed back to England, so that even if the ships that he sent to Lisbon and Seville were confiscated by the Portuguese and Spaniards – as they were – the expedition would show a substantial profit. Hawkins was running a justifiable risk. Philip’s policy was not yet certain. And not only Hawkins, but the Queen was hoping to get his trade recognized as legitimate. If the cargo sent back to Seville had not been confiscated, a precedent would have been established. And indeed, seventy-odd years earlier, Henry VII and Ferdinand and Isabella had agreed that there should be free trade between their subjects and each other’s dominions. But that was three years before Columbus discovered the New World, and before England had renounced the authority of Rome. It was, legally, ‘a pretty point’.

  Hawkins returned to England in August 1563. In the following summer he began to fit out a second voyage. The success of his first voyage had increased his reputation. His first voyage had been sponsored by city magnates, but the court and ‘the establishment’ were concerned with his second. Leicester, Pembroke, and Clinton, the Lord Admiral, had shares in it. Sir William Cecil denied to the Spanish that he was an investor, but he was behind the scenes. Moreover the Queen herself was a participator, and allowed Hawkins the right by charter of one of her own large ships.

  Hawkins’ second voyage was of crucial importance in the relations between Spain and England, and it is reasonable to assume that, although it was a joint stock company venture which was expected to make a profit for its shareholders, it was also a ballon d’essai.Spain was having great difficulty with the French privateers in the Caribbean. She had more upon her hands than she could cope with. English seamen, if allowed to trade freely with the Spanish colonists, might solve many of her colonial problems. Hawkins’ voyage was, in part, an experiment to find out whether it was possible for England, which was Protestant, to do business with Catholic Spain on terms of mutual self-interest. Religion was the testing point. Philip had been instructed by his father to oppose heresy and to remain friends with England. Were these instructions contradictory? Hawkins’ second and third voyages resolved these questions.

  Hawkins started out with three Plymouth ships and the Jesus of Lubeck, seven hundred tons, one of the largest ships in the Royal Navy. She had been purchased by Henry VIII nearly twenty years earlier, but now, owing to neglect at the hands of Edward VI and Mary Tudor, she was barely seaworthy. The other three ships were of 130, fifty and thirty tons respectively. Of the 150 seamen who manned the expedition, eighty were in the Jesus. There were also some gentlemen adventurers and their servants, twenty or so in all. They set sail under Hawkins’ habitual instructions, ‘Serve God daily, love one another, preserve your victuals, beware of fire and keep good company.’ By ‘keep good company’ he meant ‘Don’t lose touch with your fellow vessels.’

  The journey was attended by the minimum of secrecy. He called at Teneriffe, to interview the friend there who would advise him as to his procedure and alert his friends in Hispaniola. He then moved down the Guinea coast, collecting slaves. To the Portuguese this was officially an act of piracy. The English excuse was the casual policing of the African coast and the readiness of the Africans to trade. We can assume that the Portuguese too welcomed the opportunity of profitable if surreptitious business, although they sent to Lisbon self-pitying dispatches explaining how the slaves had been taken from them at the pistol’s point.

  As always, Hawkins was careful at every stage to maintain the legality of his transactions, and formal bills of lading were exchanged. With a cargo of six hundred slaves, he sailed to Dominica, watered there and, crossing to Margarita, presented his compliments to the governor. The governor, who did not receive him, warned Hispaniola that Hawkins was on his way.

  The situations that proceeded to develop are complicated, and do not need to be recorded here in detail. Hawkins presented himself everywhere as a legal trader. He informed the Spanish authorities that his fleet belonged to the Queen, and that he was sailing under her orders. He further added that he was ‘a great servitor of the majesty of King Philip, whom I served when he was King of England’. He asked for a licence to trade, adding that if he did not receive the licence he would do as well as he could without it. He knew that the Spaniards were as anxious to trade with him as he was to trade with them.

  Luck was with him. Sailing along the Spanish Main, he traded as he went, selling Negroes, linen, wines and food, taking on gold, silver and various precious metals, and booking orders for a return visit; from the treasurer of one of the colonies he obtained a testimony to his good behaviour. He sailed northward on the best terms with the authorities, who proceeded in self-defence to draw up reports that they had been forced into this trade against their will.

  He had hoped to call in at Hispaniola and take on hides. But he was unlucky with his pilot. The weather was bad. He failed to find a satisfactory port in the Greater Antilles, and eventually landed in Florida, where the French had established a colony whose existence was causing the Spanish considerable concern, since it commanded the return route of the convoys. The colony was in a desperate condition and Hawkins hoped by persuading the Frenchmen to return with him that he would ingratiate himself with the Spaniards and encourage them to take a tolerant view of his activities, as indeed they might have done had he been successful.

  The presence of a French settlement on the east coast of Florida was a typical corollary to the Spanish system of colonialization, which needs to be included here, even if in a parenthesis. As it has been already pointed out, the Spanish noblemen and gentry, who found themselves at a loose end when the Moorish War was ended, were swordsmen and crusaders who
despised trade and labour. They crossed the Atlantic in search of gold that was to be won in battle. Let them conquer the chiefs and let the slaves work in the mines. In the early years of the immigration Florida had appeared to offer a tempting spoil. Rumours of the fountain of Bimini, whose waters restored youth to the aged bather, were in circulation among the Indians of Hispaniola and Cuba; and it was the legend of this fountain, as much as the lure of gold, that enticed Ponce de Leon thither. He launched two expeditions; from the first he returned looking much older than he had when he set out; from the second he returned wounded by the fierce Seminole Indians and on the verge of death. He did not find gold and he did not find the waters of Bimini, but he did discover the Bahama Channel which was later to provide the homeward route for the silver fleet. When he made his first expedition he believed that Florida was an island. He landed there in early April, 1513; took formal possession and christened it Florida, some say because it was covered with spring flowers, others because he landed on Resurrection Day, the Pascua Florida of the Spanish Catholics.

  Ponce de Leon’s expeditions failed, but the legend of Bimini and its surrounding gold mines lingered. Just as Pizarro and Raleigh were later to believe in an El Dorado and a golden lake, so did the early followers of Columbus believe that there existed somewhere beneath the sun a fountain of eternal youth. Where was it likelier to exist than in this magical universe they had discovered? Eighteen years later another expedition sailed, this time under Hernando de Soto. The news of the expedition fired the imagination of the Spaniards. Noblemen sold their estates and jewellery so that they could enrol, and there assembled in Seville many more volunteers than de Soto’s fleet of nine small vessels could accommodate. Eventually he set sail with six hundred hand-picked warriors.

  The campaign lasted for three and a half years; of the six hundred swordsmen who set out, barely three hundred returned; they bore neither gold nor jewels, they were blackened by the sun, they carried their packs, they were clothed in deerskins. De Soto was not one of the survivors. The story of their disastrous and courageous treks, ‘high failure towering o’er low success’, has been recorded by a contemporary historian, the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, and has been issued recently in an excellent translation under the auspices of the University of Texas. De Soto’s failure convinced the Spaniards that there was no point in attempting any further experiments in Florida. They did not realize that the deerskins which the survivors wore on their return, and the mantle of marten and beaver skin in which de Soto’s body was wrapped before being buried in the river, were evidences of a wealth no less great than that provided by the ingots of Peru. For more than two centuries, the fur traders of the Mississippi were to enrich the English and French markets.

  The Spaniards were prepared to dismiss Florida from their accounts, and in September 1561, Philip II definitely decided that no further attempt would be made to found a settlement, but he had not at that point reckoned with the menace that the French and later the English privateers were to present, and he was highly disconcerted to learn that a colony of French Huguenots under Jean Ribaut had been dispatched from Dieppe to the very spot, Port Royal in South Carolina, where a Spanish attempt had failed. He was even more put out, two years later, when Admiral Coligny, a Huguenot and a foe of Spain, founded a second colony on St Johns River at Fort Caroline, under René de Laudonnière.

  Ribaut’s first colony had failed, and Laudonnière’s was in a far from prosperous condition. He had not picked his men wisely; they were for the most part ex-soldiers, and as such, a mixture of Huguenots and Catholics who had recently been at war with one another. He had brought out no farmers; and his artisans could not overnight convert themselves into tillers of the soil; while the soldiers found employment not only more lucrative but far more in tune with their tastes and temperament in raiding the Spanish treasure ships in the Bahama Channel.

  This was the colony which Hawkins visited. It was in dire straits. Only ten days’ supply of food remained when his ships appeared on the horizon. Laudonnière must have been sorely tempted by his offer, but he was uncertain whether England and France were still at peace and doubted if he could trust the engaging slave trader; moreover, siren voices were whispering in his ears. One of his scouts had actually seen and talked with men who had drunk from the fountain of youth and were congenially enjoying their third century of existence. He decided to stay on, and he must have felt reassured when Ribaut returned from France with supplies and reinforcements to the extent of three hundred men. But in addition to supplies and reinforcements, Ribaut brought disquieting news. He had been warned by Coligny that Don Pedro Menéndez was leaving Spain for the coast of ‘New France’, and ordered ‘not to suffer him encroach upon you any more than he would you should encroach upon him’.

  Menéndez’s expedition was Philip’s retort to the establishment of a fort so close to Havana. His representative in Mexico had sent a serious warning: ‘The sum of all that can be said in the matter is that they put the Indies in a crucible, for we are compelled to pass in front of their port, and with the greatest ease they can sally out with their armadas to seek us and easily return home when it suits them.’ Philip was urged to take action before the colonists reached St Augustine.’ Seeing that they are Lutherans, it is not necessary to leave a man alive, but to inflict an exemplary punishment, that they may remember it forever.’

  Menéndez – the man whom Philip chose to expel the French and protect the Bahama Channel – was an aristocrat from Asturias, experienced in naval warfare. Menéndez was given what has been described as a typical conquistador’s contract. Apart from a small loan from Philip, he had to bear all the expenses of the venture. In return, he was allowed considerable privileges and the opportunity of making ample profits. He was given a grant of land and a couple of fisheries – one of pearls. He could draw a salary from the customs sheds. He could trade with the other islands. He was relieved of certain customs duties, and for five years he was allowed to keep whatever loot he might capture from privateers. His title of adelantado of Florida was hereditary. His fleet consisted of a six-hundred-ton man-of-war, six fifty-ton sloops and four small boats for the shallows. He took out a hundred soldiers, a hundred sailors, and three hundred officials, artisans and farmers, of whom two hundred had to be married. Four Jesuit priests and twelve friars were to complete the colony, along with five hundred Negro slaves, half of whom were to be women. He was instructed to divide the land between the settlers and to build two towns, each protected by a fort. Each town was to start with a population of a hundred citizens. The fact that he was able to invest such a large sum in the gamble of this new colony is a proof of the efficiency he had previously displayed in harrying pirates. The final roll call of his company was 2,646, and not a Jew, heretic or mendicant among them. He sailed from Cádiz two months after Ribaut had left France. He anchored on August 28 in a river’s mouth; he named it in honour of the saint whose day it was – St Augustine. It was destined to fill an honoured role in history.

  After a week’s pause he sailed northward in search of the French. Our knowledge of what transpired is mainly based on Woodbery Lowery’s ‘researches in Spanish settlements within the present limits of the United States 1513-1561’. Menéndez found four of Ribaut’s ships by the St Johns River; he directed his ships among them. It is reported that the following conversation ensued. The Spaniard addressed them with ‘courtly foreign grace’:

  ‘Gentlemen, whence this fleet?’

  ‘From France.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘We bring artillery, infantry and supplies for a fort owned by the King of France.’

  ‘Are you Catholics or Lutherans?’

  ‘Lutherans, and our General is Jean Ribaut.’

  Similar questions were set to the Spanish flagship.

  ‘I am the General,’ Menéndez answered. ‘My name is Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. This is the Armada of the King of Spain. I am instructed to burn and hang any Lutherans
who may be found here. In the morning I shall board your ships. If there are any Catholics among you, they will be respected.’

  Silence fell; then the French cut their cables and sailed through the Spanish ships. They were faster than the Spaniards.

  Next morning Menéndez returned to the river’s mouth. Three French ships were anchored within the bar, and soldiers were massed upon the bank. Menéndez decided to withdraw to St Augustine, where he converted a large Indian house into a fort. He now had a base for troops and for supplies. The French watched him from a distance and then returned to St Johns River. At this point the two French commanders disagreed. Ribaut was nominally in command and he decided to launch an attack on St Augustine with four hundred of his troops. Laudonnière argued that of the 240 men left behind in Fort Caroline many were sick, and that he would be helpless should Ribaufs ships be delayed at sea, thus giving the Spaniards an opportunity to attack by land. Ribaut refused to be deterred, but Laudonnière’s qualms were justified. Ribaut was held off by violent winds and Menéndez, guided by Indians and a French prisoner, surprised the Frenchmen at Fort Caroline in their sleep. Only twenty-six members of the garrison, including Laudonnière, escaped into the woods and were rescued by Ribaut’s ships.