The Pirate Queen (32 page)

Where Columbus first sighted sugar sand beaches and swaying palms in his new world, Frobisher spied “a land of ice of marvelous great height.” This was “Meta Incognita”—the Limit of the Unknown. To Frobisher, it was Atlantis, the fabled Lost Continent. It was, in fact, the southern tip of Baffin Island. Threading their way through soaring icebergs, frozen seas, and heavy fogs, at around 63 degrees they found an inlet, and sailed into what is known today as Frobisher Bay. For another eight days the
Gabriel
wended its way through the ice blocks unable to see beyond the next bend or the towering ice floes. Finally, Frobisher went ashore, and claimed that,

there he saw far the two headlands at the furthest end of the straits and no likelihood of any land to the northwards of them and the great open [sea] between them, which…they judged to be the West Sea [the Pacific] whereby to pass to Cathay and to the East India.
¹⁷

While this picturesque scene may not have struck a familiar note to Elizabethans, with the benefit of four hundred odd years and twenty-twenty hindsight, Frobisher had intended his claim to rival
that of Drake.

But this voyage bore little resemblance to Drake’s escapades. They would turn endlessly back on themselves along the Canadian coast of North America with only the mysterious loss of five of his men and one hostile encounter with Inuit kayaks to show for their efforts. Frobisher had also lost two of his boats in the episode (one known to be sunk) and rightly felt that with a story as grand as Drake’s—that he had
seen
the passage to Cathay with his own eyes—his investors wouldn’t much notice that the only “riches” they were bringing back was the captured Inuit tribesman and a large hunk of black rock given to him by one of the missing mariners, Robert Garrard. At least the unusual rock proved they had hit land.
¹⁸

Frobisher was no Drake, but he knew what he was doing in bringing back the Inuit. The first North American to be paraded ignominiously through London made for great theater with the Elizabethans, who loved their theater. Their “strange man and his boat…was such a wonder onto the whole city and to the rest of the realm that heard of it, as seemed never to have happened the like great matter to any man’s knowledge.”
¹⁹
Frobisher was delighted that the Eskimo’s Tartar features were suggestive of the Orient, and that Lok and others had made the connection without too much prompting. But it was the mysterious black rock that would eventually cause the greatest stir.

Lok had it assayed by three different experts, each and every one of them declaring that it contained no metal or minerals of note. Finally, in January 1577, the determined Lok took it to an Italian goldsmith in London, who claimed (though how is not clear) that the stone was rich in gold ore. The “secret” of the ore was revealed to Elizabeth by Lok in a letter. When Walsingham replied on the queen’s behalf that it seemed odd, since none of the queen’s assayers had found any gold, Lok remained adamant that they had discovered gold in the frozen wastelands of Meta Incognita. Even Dee seemed to agree. When no arrangement had been made with the crown for a follow-up expedition, after three more months of negotiations, in March 1577, Frobisher’s and Lok’s news “bafflingly” leaked out. There was “the hope of more of the same gold ore to be found,” they declared, and that this “kindled a greater opinion in the hearts
of many to advance the voyage again. Whereupon preparation was made for a new voyage against the year following, and the captain more specially directed by commission for the searching more of this gold ore than for the searching any further of the passage.”
²⁰

Frobisher’s fiction—that he had seen the Pacific Ocean from the shores of eastern North America—had brought gold fever to London, and would soon bankrupt his friend and business partner, Michael Lok.

21. Dark Days at Rathlin Island

Great Framer and Preserver of Things, O God,…Free the country and kingdom most especially from all assault of war; keep us exempt from the internal and domestic tumults by which a good part of the Christian world is now disturbed…

—PRAYER BY ELIZABETH I, C.
1578

W
hile Michael Lok and Martin Frobisher were attempting to entice the great and the good of England to invest in their next Northwest Passage venture, Francis Drake was finishing his harsh service in Ireland under the erratic Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex. Devereux’s “plantations” were, like all Tudor projects in Ireland, bogged down in guerrilla warfare. Resistance this time was led primarily by the powerful lord of Tyrone, Turlough O’Neill. But the Scots who had been imported for decades as mercenaries to fight the English were also in revolt. They had decided to stay, and settled in the Glens of Antrim in lands that the O’Neill called their own. Their putative head, Sorley Boy MacDonnell, was the son of the Lord of Islay and Kintyre in Scotland, and had dug in against the English on the jagged L-shaped rock of an island called Rathlin, four miles long by three miles wide. This storm-swept rock in northeastern County Antrim was an oasis for seabirds—razorbills, cormorants, guillemots, puffins, and gulls. The avian population outnumbered the people sheltering there by at least a thousand to one. But its days as a wildlife sanctuary were numbered. In a land that abounds with legend, even a small, craggy outcrop like Rathlin had its moment in ancient lore. It was said that the great Scots king, Robert the Bruce, had centuries earlier taken refuge from the English in the stone castle there. Now, Sorley Boy MacDonnell had followed in the Bruce’s footsteps, and he brought his chiefs and their families to Rathlin and to safety.

Strategically, it was a sound move. Rathlin was only thirteen miles from the Scottish coast, and only three from Ireland. The waters surrounding the island had been notorious for centuries for their sudden whirlpools and deadly currents. Rathlin’s cliffs remain legendary for attracting shipwrecks over four hundred years on. It is no wonder that when Sorley Boy and his chiefs had retreated to Rathlin with enough food, seed, and animals to last them years, he had every reason to think that he was untouchable. But he hadn’t reckoned with Devereux and his new admiral, Francis Drake.
¹

Devereux had made a petition entitled “My Opinion for the Reformation and the Government of Ulster to the Privy Council” in 1574 to provide him with ships for just such an eventuality. Ireland’s coast is littered with thousands of safe havens and coves that can be approached only by an invading force by sea. It was Burghley who drafted the Council’s reply to Essex in his document “Doubts to Be Resolved by the Earl of Essex,” in which the fifteenth item listed queries, “What is to be thought requisite for the having of any shipping upon the sea, besides victuallers, to keep out the Scots, for that no mention is thereof made in the plot [plan]….”
²

Devereux gave his answer in early 1575, mentioning Drake as the cause for his change of tactic:

The shipping was not mentioned in the plot, but yet not unthought of, for I wrote unto my agents to write to my lord admiral [Clinton], that the shipping now here might be converted to buy certain frigates which one Drake brought out of [the] Indies whereof one is in possession of Mr Hawkins [and] one of Sir Arthur Champernowne…. They were bought at easy prices…. They will brook a sea well and carry 200 soldiers, as I am informed, and yet they draw so little water, as they may pass into every river, island or creek where the Scottish galley may flee, and are of better strength [and] stowage than others, for the galleys are made more slight and thin than the wherries upon the Thames. No shipping therefore [is] so good for this purpose in my opinion as the frigates…. Good choice must be made of mariners for these boats, for ordinary sailors love not to pull at an oar.
³

Essex’s reply lifts the veil of history momentarily. On his return from the West Indies, Drake had evidently sold on his Spanish prizes to Hawkins and Champernowne, who tried immediately to flog them on to Devereux. But ships without a daring captain would only partially fulfill Essex’s needs. He had heard of Drake, through the Leicester and Sidney connection, but hadn’t the means to attract him into defense of the Irish plantations. After all, Ireland was not Drake’s cause célèbre.

Fortunately for Essex, Leicester also took an active interest in Ireland and its affairs. Further ships were bought or leased, and by May 1575, Essex had a squadron with Drake as its admiral. Drake came to Ireland with his own ship, the
Falcon
(probably a frigate), and a pinnace. There were also eighteen mariners, a master, a pilot boatswain, a steward, a carpenter, and a gunner. His thirteen-year-old cousin, also named John Drake, joined the crew as its “boy.” Though Drake was the fleet’s commander, both he and a Captain James Sydae drew a salary of 42 shillings a month ($690 or £373 today). For the next four months, Drake saw active duty of a kind that was unlike any other he had experienced before. While he commanded the sea operations, he had little to do with land battles, and presumably he didn’t like what he saw.

In May 1575, Essex wrote to Burghley, “If the frigates come there shall not be a boat that remain in the Rathlins, or the Glens, or come up that coast.”
⁴
He clearly intended for his fleet to cut off the supplies and communications to Rathlin Island by using Drake. The frigates were ordered to assemble at Carrickfergus, while the Earl mysteriously withdrew toward the Pale around Dublin. Captain John Norris, veteran of the Huguenot civil wars in France, had volunteered with his three hundred foot soldiers and eighty horse to take the island by storm. Where Drake had already become known for his fair treatment of the enemy, and had even gone out of his way to protect the women at Ventas Cruces, Norris had earned a well-deserved reputation as a ruthless soldier who took no prisoners.

But why had Essex withdrawn before Norris had launched his attack? Had his experience of Ireland taught him that the wind had eyes, and that by his sleight of hand, the Scots wouldn’t be alerted to the attack? Or was he afraid that whatever brutality Norris would
mete out to the Scots might fetch some sturdy rebuke from the queen? Whatever the truth of the matter, Norris ordered Drake to take his army across to Rathlin on July 20.

True to its legend, the winds at Rathlin whipped up and the sea swelled almost immediately, dispersing the fleet. It was two days before they had regrouped and made the three-mile crossing, landing on the eastern side of the island. The troops were disembarked and marched northeasterly toward the castle with such speed that many of MacDonnell’s followers had been caught outside. In the inevitable skirmish, one of Norris’s men was killed before the Scots reached sanctuary. While Norris and his soldiers pursued them, Drake and his mariners landed two siege guns and brought them within firing distance of the castle. After three days pummeling the castle walls, they finally breached the Scots’ defenses. Yet despite this, and an attempted storming of the castle, it took another two days before the Scots asked for a “parlay.”

Meanwhile, Drake and his sailors were kept very busy blockading the island from relief vessels or escaping Scots. During the siege of the castle and the next few days, Drake captured and burned eleven Scottish galleys. Any survivors were taken aboard Drake’s ships, to be exchanged against English prisoners at a later date. What Drake didn’t know was that there would be no exchange.

At the castle, Norris was told by the surrendering Scots that they wanted only to return to Scotland. In the circumstances, their lives, they knew, would depend on Norris’s mercy. But they had put their lives into untrustworthy hands. Norris claimed that he would grant clemency to the constable of the castle and his family (who was the son of an Irish chieftain), but that for the Scots, their lives would depend entirely on the “courtesy of the English soldiers,” to use the euphemism of the day. What followed was the worst bloodbath in forty years since the Pardon of Maywood in 1535, when English soldiers butchered the garrison at Dengen after its surrender.
⁵

Every man, woman, child, and baby on Rathlin Island was slaughtered. More than one hundred horses, three hundred cows, and three thousand sheep were confiscated or killed, and the crops burned, and enough corn to feed two hundred men for a year confiscated. For days the English scoured the island looking in every cave, on every cliff face, in the ditches or undergrowth for any
survivors. Several hundred more Scots were brutally slaughtered where they were caught in the days following the surrender.

And yet, when the massacre was reported back to the Privy Council, there was no word of rebuke against Norris or Essex. In fact, the Privy Council congratulated Essex on a successful campaign. Still, it is strange; Elizabeth had expressly warned Essex when he set out for Ireland that he mustn’t shed blood unnecessarily. Drake’s official reaction is also unrecorded. Where Drake had shown his enemy compassion in the heat of battle, Norris had shown unabated cruelty. It most certainly wasn’t the way Drake would have handled things. But the admiral was not without power, as it happened. The events that followed tell their own tale.

When Sir Henry Sidney—a distant relation of Drake through Drake’s godfather, the Earl of Bedford—was brought across to Dublin for his renewed tenure as lord deputy, it was Francis Drake who piloted his ship. What words were exchanged between them we can only imagine. Sidney landed on September 7, and the entire English naval squadron in Ireland was disbanded twelve days later. Only Drake remained on the payroll until the end of the month. Essex raged at Sidney’s incompetence. After all, Rathlin could be occupied again. In support of Essex, and in a move that was tantamount to mutiny, John Norris complained to the Privy Council that