Authors: Susan Ronald
The Pirate Queen (22 page)
Where Santa Marta had no hope of resistance, Cartagena was well fortified and, as a major trading port, well endowed with both European goods and slaves. There was a heated exchange of views between Hawkins and Cartagena’s governor as well as plenty of gunfire, but the result remained the same. Cartagena was having none of the queen’s slave trader. The English fleet weighed anchor on July 24, just before the beginning of the hurricane season. Despite all their difficulties, the adventure had been a financial success.
They set sail for home and entered the Florida Channel. It was there that the men claimed they could “smell” the hurricane coming. Powerless, they watched the clouds darken and swell. As the winds whipped up to hurricane force, they hoped against hope that they could outrun the storm. But on August 22, the storm hit and battered the fleet for several days, threatening to shipwreck them. As if experiencing déjà vu from the beginning of the voyage, Hawkins watched the
Jesus
begin to break up. She was “not able to bear the sea longer, for in her stern on either side of the stern post her planks did open and shut with every sea [swell], the seas being
without number, and the leaks so big as the thickness of a man’s arm, the living fish did swim upon her ballast as in the sea.”
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This was by far more dangerous than the first storm. Hawkins barked his orders to have the forecastle and the raised poop of the
Jesus
demolished. Anything to make the ship lighter in the turbulent sea. Mariners constantly manned the pumps, while others stuffed anything—and everything—into the gaping holes between her rotted planks to keep the sea at bay. Hawkins thought of giving the “abandon ship” order more than once, but was determined to hold out as long as he possibly could. The disgrace he would face back home for abandoning a royal ship at sea was too much for him to bear. Then, when the hurricane was at its most vicious, he saw that the
William and John
had disappeared, presumed sunk. They tacked round and scoured the coastline for her, and as they did, they also searched for a decent berth for themselves. When the wind died down, their worst fears became reality. Unless the
Jesus
had urgent major repairs, she would not be bringing them back home.
To make things worse, the fleet was running hopelessly short of food and water. They sailed on in light breezes for days on end, lost at sea. None of their pilots had been to these waters, and none knew the geography. It was on September 11 that they realized that they had entered the Gulf of Mexico and were drifting to some reefs off the Yucatán. It was a desperate situation.
Then, as if their prayers had been answered, two Spanish ships were spotted in the distance. Drake was sent in the
Judith
with the
Angel
to overtake them. The faster, sleeker English pinnaces outran the Spaniards with comparative ease, and despite one of the cargo ships escaping Drake’s clutches, the other one fortunately was carrying wine and, importantly, a captain who knew the waters well. The Spaniard was questioned and said he was heading for San Juan de Ulúa, the port of Veracruz, the main port in all the Gulf of Mexico. On the one hand, it was lucky that such a major port was within two hundred miles of them; on the other, it was two hundred miles in the wrong direction.
Still Hawkins had no choice, and set sail for San Juan de Ulúa. On their approach, he ordered the flag of St. George to be hauled down three miles from port. The queen’s colors on the
Jesus
and the
Minion
were so faded and fouled by the weather that they seemed a blank canvas. When the Spaniards realized their mistake in letting the Englishman approach, they immediately banished the tattered English fleet to an island offshore in the harbor. Hawkins tried to be indignant, but as he soon learned, the flota was expected at any moment.
They hadn’t long to wait. At first light on September 17, the lookout atop the
Jesus
called down that three sails were nine miles distant. It was the flota’s advance guard. By the time the flota was nearing the harbor, its commander, General Francisco de Luxan, could see readily enough that the
Luterano
corsair was blocking the roadstead. What made matters worse was that de Luxan had on board the newly appointed viceroy, Don Martín Enríquez de Almansa. The viceroy ordered that the ships be halted where they were so that the remaining ten ships of the flota could catch up to them while he pondered their predicament. Meanwhile, he arranged for his young son, a gentleman-in-waiting, a horse, and some of his valuables to be taken ashore out of sight of the English rovers.
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The situation was potentially explosive and put Hawkins in a “great perplexity of mind.” He was powerless to act as he usually did against such a force while his ship slowly sank. And yet his heart must have leapt—along with the hearts of his men—at the thought that the flota carried at least £2 million in riches in gold, silver, and precious gems. Equally well, Hawkins’s fleet had its own treasure to protect, and he dared not risk the queen’s wrath in such a weighty affair. But there was no time to mull things over. Like his queen, his first thought was of self-defense, and he ordered the Spanish soldiers on the island to sail back into port along with their African slaves. The last thing he wanted was for the “locals” to be at their backs while they faced off the flota. He then ordered the captain of the guard, Anthony Delgadillo, to advise the Spanish fleet of their honorable intentions, and that they simply needed around three weeks time to repair their ships before they could sail home. For once, Hawkins truly
had
been blown off course and was unable to maneuver. Delgadillo was sent like a dove from the ark to deliver the Englishman’s ultimatum: let the English fleet stay for repairs, and the flota will be allowed into harbor.
When Enríquez learned from Delgadillo that it was Hawkins who occupied the port, he was incandescent with rage. How dare this rover order
him
around? Hadn’t Delgadillo known that Hawkins had “committed serious ravages on these coasts and was…little better than a pirate and a corsair on whose word scant reliance could be placed?”
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Still, Delgadillo respectfully reminded the viceroy, the English fleet was bristling with heavy guns, demiculverins, and harquebuses, and each ship held the feared English archers in their rigging. There was no doubt that Hawkins had ordered his men to their battle stations. Enríquez agreed that it was an impressive array, and he decided to handle the matter as his king would have done. The flota needed to dock, load, and reach Spain before the weather deteriorated further.
When Delgadillo returned to Hawkins with the viceroy’s query as to what he proposed to do to unblock the stalemate, the Englishman was stunned. It was the first he had heard that Philip’s representative himself was on board the flota. He quickly clarified his terms:
The first was that we might have victuals for our money, and license to sell as much wares as might suffice to furnish our wants.
The second, that we might be suffered peaceably to repair our ships.
The third, that the island might be in our possession during the time of our abode there.
In which island, our General, for the better safety of him and his, had already planted and placed certain ordnance; which were eleven pieces of brass. Therefore he required that the same might so continue; and that no Spaniard should come to land in the said island, having or wearing any kind of weapon about him.
The fourth, and last, that for the better and more sure performance and maintenance of peace, and of all the conditions; there might 12 gentlemen of credit be delivered of either part, as hostages.
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Delgadillo carried on the shuttle diplomacy between the viceroy and the Englishman, and when Enríquez learned for certain about the sheer mass of arms the English carried, he knew that he had to agree
to the “pirate’s terms,” despite his fury. After some twenty-four hours of tinkering around the edges of Hawkins’s ultimatum, ten hostages were exchanged, a buoy was set afloat to mark the line beyond which neither party should go on pain of death, and the English agreed to pay a fair market rate for any goods or provisions received.
Hawkins played it straight, selecting gentlemen adventurers for the hostage exchange. Christopher Bingham, John Corniel, George Fitzwilliams, Thomas Fowler, William de Orlando, Michael Soul, Richard Temple, and John Varney were chosen for the honor. They were brought out to the Spanish fleet by Delgadillo on Saturday, September 18, at the same time that Enríquez and de Luxan perpetrated their fraud. The Spanish hostages would be random seamen who had been told to draw lots, and then were dressed up “as their betters.”
The viceroy, of course, had no intention of allowing a corsair who had ravaged the coasts of New Spain to dictate terms to him. And he certainly would not surrender ten of his gentlemen. But he needed to be in port to do something about the situation. It was only on the following Tuesday that the winds changed and allowed the flota into harbor. An audiencia was held on the Wednesday, and 10,000
pesos de oro
($1.19 million or £643,133 today) was handed over to raise an army to fight the
Luteranos
. Spanish horsemen rode up and down the coast, spreading the word to gather all able-bodied Spaniards, African slaves, and Indians to defeat the English upstart. Oblivious to the danger, Hawkins and his men busied themselves with their repairs.
When Hawkins awoke on Thursday, September 23, there was a whiff of treason in the air, as he later wrote, “The treason being at hand, some appearance showed, as shifting of weapons from ship to ship, planting and bending of ordnance from the ships to the island where our men warded [lived], passing to and fro of companies of men more than required for their necessary business, and many other ill-likelihood which caused us to have a vehement suspicion.”
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Hawkins sent his henchman Barrett to find out what was going on, and went below decks to have breakfast. The Englishman looked out of his cabin window and saw that a Spanish hulk was closing in on the
Minion
, crossing the line of separation marked by the buoy.
He sprang to his feet and saw that the other ships of the fleet were moving as well, and before he could do a thing, warning was given to the flota to attack.
The chaos of a full-scale battle in port ensued. An estimated three hundred Spaniards tried to board the
Jesus
, while others leapt across from the
Jesus
to the
Minion
, and grappled with the English in hand-to-hand combat. An order was given to cut the
Minion
’s head cables so that she could float free from the quayside. The
Minion
’s gunners struck the Spanish vice flagship with her first shot. The next shots ripped through the flagship’s broadside, shattering timbers just above the waterline. Seconds later, the ship exploded, taking twenty men with her to the bottom of the harbor. The Spanish vice admiral was in flames. It looked as though God would be Protestant that day.
But it was not to be. Two Spanish ships had grappled aboard the
Jesus
while quite a few of her crew desperately struggled to cut the admiral’s cable from the capstan. After nearly an hour, both the
Jesus
and the
Minion
had slipped free of their moorings and turned to fight. Amid the cannon fire, chaos, din, and stench of war, the English inflicted more than sixty direct hits, pummeling the Spanish fleet.
But as reinforcements from the island poured in, the tide of battle turned. The
Angel
was sunk, the
Swallow
and
Grace of God
(the captive Portuguese caravel) were overrun, and the
Jesus
was listing dangerously. Under heavy shore fire, the crew of the
Jesus
transferred as much of its plunder and treasure to the
Minion
as possible. Hawkins hastily ordered in Drake in the
Judith
to take on some of his men, slaves, and other goods. The order was then shouted to abandon ship. The Spanish fire ships were already in the English fleet’s midst, separating the
Minion
and the
Judith
from the
Jesus
. Hawkins was the last to climb aboard the
Minion
, only to turn and see the
Jesus
finally sink with much of her treasure still aboard.
To make matters worse, when the fog of battle cleared and the
Minion
had gone beyond the reach of the Spaniards, Hawkins noticed for the first time that the
Judith
had vanished. But that was the least of Hawkins’s problems.
England was well on the road to war with Spain.
