The Pirate Queen (28 page)

It was the first such massacre of Christian against Christian. Its suddenness, viciousness, and ferocity stunned all who witnessed it and all who heard about it. Elizabeth, after long, hard reflection, wrote to Walsingham in December 1572:

We are sorry to hear, first, the great slaughter made in France of noblemen and gentlemen, unconvicted and untried, so suddenly (as it said at his [the king’s] commandment), did seem with us so much to touch the honor of our good brother as we could not but with lamentation and with tears of our heart hear it of a prince so well allied to us…we do hear it marvelously evil taken and as a thing of a terrible and dangerous example; and are sorry that our good brother was so ready to condescend to any such counsel, whose nature we took to be more humane and noble.

But when was added unto it—that women, children, maids, young infants, and sucking babes were at the same time murdered and cast into the river, and that liberty of execution was given to the vilest and basest sort of the popular, without punishment or revenge of such cruelties done afterwards by law upon those cruel murderers of such innocents…And now since it doth appear by all doings, both by edicts and otherwise, that the rigor is used only against them of the religion reformed…that his…intent doth tend only to subvert that religion that we do profess and to root it out of this realm. At least, all the strangers of all nations and religions so doth interpret it, as may appear by the triumphs and rejoicing set out as well in the realm of France….
²⁰

No wonder Elizabeth called off wedding negotiations with Alençon further along in this same letter. What’s more, Elizabeth, from that moment, questioned who other than Burghley and her merchant and gentlemen adventurers she could count among her friends and allies.

A faint smile must have fleeted across her lips when she thought back to the spring of that year. The most audacious of her adventurers, Francis Drake, had set sail from Plymouth on Whit Sun Eve, May 24, 1572. He hadn’t merely been allowed by the queen and Admiralty to return to the Spanish Main to ransack the treasure house of the King of Spain. He was fulfilling her grand plan. Elizabeth of England had blessed him, and all others like him, in their quests for treasure and their annoyance of Catholics everywhere who would dare to steal her crown.

17. Drake at the Treasure House of the World

Some think it true to say he did it in the Devil’s name, And none ever since could do the like again; But those are all deceived, why should they doubt it, They know each year there’s some that go about it.

—ANONYMOUS, VERSE TO DRAKE C.
1619

I
t is well nigh impossible for us to imagine how brave, or foolhardy, Drake and his men were—sailing thousands of miles without reliable charts or accurate measurement of longitude into a vast ocean where, on the other side, only hostile forces of the King of Spain awaited them. It is even more impossible to imagine how this voyage eventually led to the hopes of England’s becoming a world power.

Nonetheless, as Drake’s two small ships left Plymouth Sound that balmy May evening, hope and expectation filled the air. Seventy-three mariners and boys had boarded the 70-ton
Pasco
¹
and the 40-ton
Swan
, each and every one of them a volunteer. Only one sailor was over fifty years of age. The rest were all under thirty. Some, like Drake’s younger brother, John, had invested their life savings—in John’s case, some £30 ($10,554 or £5,705 today). Aboard the
Pasco
, stored in precut sections, were three pinnaces for shallow, inshore work. Victuals and other provisions for a year were divided between the two ships. “Artificers” (carpenters) with their tools, musicians, and weapons for any eventuality Drake could then imagine were the final necessities added to their complement. Significantly, the
Pasco
had been registered as a Hawkins ship, and word was out that the queen’s slave trader had buried the hatchet with Drake and was an investor in the voyage.
²

According to Drake, they were favored with a “prosperous wind from God” and reached the island of Guadeloupe in twenty-five days, on June 28. On July 12, Drake’s ships approached Port Pheasant, the secret cove he had “found” in 1570–71. It was here that Drake had left tools and provisions for his return. Yet as his ship pulled into the cove, a wisp of smoke rose above the treetops near the site of his encampment the year before. Since Drake thought Port Pheasant was uninhabited, he led a small party of heavily armed men ashore at the ready to retake it, only to discover the remains of a smoldering campfire. Nailed to a tree trunk nearby was a lead plaque with its warning etched into it, especially for Drake’s eyes:

Captain Drake, if you fortune to come to this port, make haste away, for the Spaniards which you had with you here the last year have betrayed this place, and taken away all that you left here. I departed from hence, this present 7 of July, 1572. Your very loving friend John Garret.
³

Garret was a fellow West Countryman and ex-slaver like Drake. Obviously, he and doubtless many others had chosen Port Pheasant to emulate Drake’s first solo raid. But Drake sloughed off the warning. He ordered his men ashore with the pinnaces and set his carpenters to work on their assembly. His mariners felled trees and erected a huge stockade around their camp for added security—just in case Garret was right.

The following day, three small craft sailed over the horizon. The men were ordered to their battle stations, but they were soon stood down. The admiral, only a bark, had the flag of St. George hoisted on her mainmast, and her captain was none other than James Raunce—the captain of the
William and John
—which had been separated from the Hawkins fleet just before San Juan de Ulúa. Raunce had brought with him two Spanish prizes—one a tiny shallop, the other a caravel called the
Santa Catalina
. He was sailing, he explained to Drake, one of Sir Edward Horsey’s barks out of the Isle of Wight in search of treasure. The captured Spanish prize was the
aviso
bound for Nombre de Díos, whose purpose was to bring correspondence and news between the colonies. Raunce lost no time asking Drake
if they might not join forces. His old friend was welcomed, Drake said, especially since they had in mind to capture Nombre de Díos and the king’s treasure house.
⁴

Raunce’s captives, some poor slaves who were being freighted across the Spanish Main, happily told Drake and Raunce that they had heard reports that “certain soldiers should come thither shortly, and were daily looked for…to defend the town against the Cimaroons.”
⁵
While their intelligence was welcome, their news could not dissuade Drake from his course. He ordered the slaves released, since he wished to “use those Negroes well.”
⁶
Drake had no way of knowing that the slaves’ information was false.

By July 28, the three pinnaces—now baptized the
Lion
,
Bear
, and
Minion
—were ready to sail. It was agreed that Raunce would guard their position and keep his bark and the
Santa Catalina
, the
Pasco
, and the
Swan
with him. Drake and his seventy-three men sailed on in the three pinnaces and the shallop toward Nombre de Díos, heavily armed with six shields, six fire pikes (that could double up as torches by night), twelve pikes, twenty-four harquebuses, six spears, sixteen bows with arrows, two drums, and two trumpets. All Drake’s men had been briefed. They would sail to Nombre de Díos and attack at dawn.
⁷

At the fringes of the bay, Drake and his men lay in wait. They had been drilled and trained for what Drake imagined lay ahead. Nevertheless, they began to fidget and worry about the outcome while they were under strict orders to watch quietly and listen until dawn. Drake was a great observer of nature and men, and he knew that if he waited for daybreak, many of his men would lose their nerve. Fortunately, at some time between two and three in the morning, the clouds cleared, revealing a brilliant full moon. It cast silvery shadows from the masts and rigging onto the deck as if dawn had come early. For Drake it was a clear sign from God. Without hesitation, he gave the order to attack, claiming that dawn was upon them. Once on the move, their mutterings stopped.

As they stole out into the harbor, they saw a wine ship from the Canaries anchored in the bay. Its crew, meanwhile, had already spotted Drake’s men skulking in the shadows. Without hesitation, the Spaniards lowered a boat to warn the town, but Drake cut them off and drove them across the bay, where they could do no immediate
harm. Drake landed without further skirmishes, and seized the battery of six guns that defended the port. Its sole defender saw Drake approach and ran hell for leather to the town, saving his own life but risking the lives of his fellow Spaniards.

Drake’s success would depend solely on the element of surprise, and especially on the Spaniards’ belief that they were being attacked by several hundred men rather than several dozen. A few mariners were left in port to guard the pinnaces to secure their retreat, while Drake divided his other men into three groups to storm the town. John Drake and John Oxenham were each given sixteen men to go around the left and right flanks. Drake himself would advance along the main road with the rest. As they marched forward, Nombre de Díos began to stir. The lone sentinel from the battery had raised the alarm. The church bell pealed its anxious cry to the townspeople. Drums beat out an assembly order. Shouts in Spanish called out for every man to defend their town, while the women were begged to hide with their children.

In the midst of all this confusion, Drake advanced steadily, his fire pikes held high, their fierce glow dancing eerily along the walls of the settlement. His drummer and trumpeter heralded his arrival as if he were a caesar, at the head of a huge army. The
alcalde
had already grouped together his nervous militia at the southern corner of the market square when Drake came into view, and ordered his men to fire on the English corsairs. One bullet killed his trumpeter straightaway, the other struck Drake in the leg. All the other shots hit the dust in front of Drake and his men. Then Drake smiled and gave the order for his mariners to attack. The English lunged forward ferociously, waving their pikes, screaming a battle cry, and firing their own shots back at the Spaniards in among a hail of arrows from their crossbows.

Simultaneously, John Drake and John Oxenham arrived in the square with their company of men, brandishing their weapons and firing shot and arrows, too. Terrified, the Spaniards broke ranks and fled, many of them hurling their weapons to the ground behind them.
⁸
With only one fatality, the English commanded the town. But the Spaniards would soon figure out that they had been duped and would mount a counterattack. As they regrouped in the market square, Drake interrogated some Spanish prisoners, asking for them
to lead Drake and his men to the governor’s home. If they were intent on trickery, they would not live to tell the tale, he warned. While Drake had come to empty the King of Spain’s treasure house, the simple fact of the matter was, he couldn’t be exactly sure how best to approach it from shore. The governor would be the most reliable source of that information, Drake had decided. Besides, it may be that the governor himself would be in possession of treasure, too, he reasoned.

Drake would not be disappointed. When the door was pushed open at the governor’s house, a candle was lit at the top of the stairs and he saw:

a fair jennet [small Spanish horse] ready saddled, either for the Governor himself, or some other of his household to carry it after him. By means of this light, we saw a huge heap of silver in that nether room; being a pile of bars of silver of, as near as we could guess, seventy foot in length, of ten foot in breadth, and twelve foot in height, piled up against the wall. Each bar was between thirty-five and forty pound in weight. At the sight hereof, our captain commanded straightly that none of us should touch a bar of silver, but stand upon our weapons, because the town was full of people, and there was in the King’s Treasure House, near the water side, more gold and jewels than all our four pinnaces could carry; which we would presently set some in hand to break open.
⁹

As they were deciding if they should trouble with the silver or head onto the king’s treasure house for the gold, an escaped Negro slave, named Diego, rushed forward, begging to be taken on board with Drake and his men. As proof of his good faith the escaped slave claimed that their pinnaces were in danger from the king’s soldiers who had been sent to protect the town from the Cimaroons. Drake could ill afford to ignore the warning, and he sent his brother and Oxenham to check. While his cohorts secured the pinnaces, Drake started back into the town toward the king’s treasure house, which stood at the westernmost end of the settlement.

Just as they started out, the skies opened in a torrential, tropical, summer thunderstorm, and by the time the main force reached
the treasure house, they were soaked through. Worse still, their gunpowder was sodden, and the strings on their crossbows were too wet to use with any degree of accuracy. There was nothing left for them to do but wait. When the rain eased, John Drake, who had rejoined them from securing the pinnaces, was ordered to break down the treasure house door, while Francis and his men held the market square. But as their captain stepped forward, he swooned, and it was then that Drake’s men saw for the first time that he had been wounded in the earlier face-off. Blood streaked his footprints in the sand, and the lower part of his leg was stained crimson.