The Pirate Queen (51 page)

Cumberland and any other adventurer would have probably figured that Raleigh needed so many casks for his wine trade. This was not the case remotely. Raleigh earnestly put about the fact that having been prevented from reprovisioning his colonists (who had sailed to Virginia in April 1587), due to the Armada threat, he was absolutely determined to ensure their safety—and his grant of twelve hundred miles of North America—by supporting them with fresh supplies in 1588–1589.

Virginia was, after all, his best opportunity to find his own gold supply. And so, while Frobisher and the other disgruntled commanders from the Armada fleet argued with the Admiralty over the prizes and ransoms to be obtained for ships and men, Raleigh rose above the petty squabbling and stepped up his efforts for Virginia.

Raleigh had set up an innovative scheme to attract settlers in the third Virginia colony by offering them five hundred acres of land to farm on the strength of their signing up for the adventure. If they invested funds, then they would get more again. His Virginia company, unusually, was organized as one enjoying the right of self-government under their own officials, with representatives in England to ensure the chain of supply until they could provide for themselves in America.
²
Raleigh’s chosen governor and his twelve assistants were granted their charter on January 7, 1587, as “Governor and Assistants of the City of Raleigh in Virginia.” The charter did not delegate powers to the colonists, but merely made them paid servants of Raleigh and any other adventurers or promoters residing in England. After all, Raleigh’s planters were markedly “middle class.” Their only claim to any aristocracy, whatsoever, was the false coat of arms that Raleigh had bribed the chief officer of arms, William Dethick, to bestow upon White and each of his twelve assistants.
³

What Raleigh didn’t know, of course, was that all was not well. Only he would continue to employ Simon Fernandez, nicknamed “the swine” by other adventurers. Fernandez’s interest was plunder, and, as a former pirate, the temptation to revert to his old trade was far too great. Raleigh’s simple instructions to collect plants and water in the West Indies, then to purchase livestock for the colony, resulted in Fernandez going after Spanish prizes and ignoring the 110 men and women in his charge. If their captain acted like this in the West Indies, then how would Fernandez carry out his further orders to pick up the fifteen-man contingent left by Grenville at Roanoke in 1586, then drop the settlers off at the more fertile landing and good harbor of Chesapeake? Evidently this wasn’t a question that had occurred to Raleigh’s appointed governor, John White. White was undoubtedly a splendid artist but, as it turned out, a truly dreadful leader of men. Instead of asking himself some basic questions, White harangued and shamed Fernandez until they finally sailed north to Virginia.
⁴

By the time they reached Roanoke, Fernandez was spoiling for a fight. While White equipped a pinnace with forty of his best men to go search for the fifteen men Grenville had left behind, Fernandez hailed them from the
Lion
, shouting orders that he prepared to
abandon them. All the colonists were hastily ordered ashore. Only White and two or three others were allowed to return to the
Lion
to make the necessary arrangements to offload provisions.
⁵
Amazingly, White, though angry, was not unhappy. He knew Roanoke very well and, with anglicized Manteo as Raleigh’s personal representative at his side, most likely felt that they could not come to any harm. After some haggling, White finally agreed with Fernandez that the
Lion
should return shortly to take aboard the men left by Grenville, and that, in the interim, Fernandez would ensure that the fly boat carrying the rest of the “planters” would be able to disembark in safety.

Thus at the end of July the planters were reunited in Lane’s abandoned fort, having found no trace of Grenville’s men. When Manteo, recently converted to Christianity and dubbed Lord of Roanoke and Dasemunkepeuc, returned with the news from his own people at Croatoan that Grenville’s men had been driven off Roanoke by the hostile mainland tribes, razing the earthworks and fort in the process, White did nothing. A short while later, one of White’s assistants was ambushed while fishing for crabs. And still White did nothing.
⁶

Trusting that all would somehow be all right, White tried to make amends for the wrongs that Lane had committed, and to correct the label the previous planters had acquired of “stealers of corn.” When White failed to get the mainland chiefs and elders to come to some sort of accommodation with his settlers, the planters mistakenly ambushed the friendly Croatoans in their village, killing one native.
⁷
Relations between the Native Americans and planters were still strained when, on August 18, Virginia Dare, a healthy baby girl, became the first child born to Europeans in North America. She was also White’s first grandchild.

Meanwhile, Fernandez had returned and remained within sight of the colonists two miles from shore, waiting. Fernandez’s hovering offshore frankly unnerved the colonists. His sinister actions, combined with the repeated native attacks, made them doubt their ability to withstand the winter and the wisdom of planting any fields at Roanoke to harvest in the spring. Chesapeake had become a perceived haven in this hostile land in the colonists’ eyes, and White’s
resistance to any move there utterly undermined his authority. After a number of discussions, White was at last compelled to go by his assistants, and, on August 25, was given a certificate asserting that he had been selected to “the present and speedy supply of certain our known and apparent lacks and needs most requisite and necessary for the good planting of us, or any other in this land of Virginia.”
⁸

And so Raleigh’s governor left eighty-four men, seventeen women, and eleven children with Manteo and his assistant, Towaye. White understood that they intended to move fifty miles or so farther up into the mainland, where the land was fertile and the risk of hostile natives was lower. To this day, we are unsure if it was to the mouth of the Chesapeake or the Albemarle Sound. What we do know is that a pinnace and some boats were left behind with them. On August 27, White was allowed to board the fly boat, leaving behind his daughter, Elenora; her husband, Ananias Dare; and baby, Virginia, with the rest of the planters entrusted to his care. Before they had sailed over the horizon, a disastrous accident at the capstan injured most of the crew. Many died, and others became ill with fever and the bloody flux, reducing their number so dramatically that they couldn’t sail beyond Smerwick in southwest Ireland, where Raleigh had first made his name. White alone continued to London, arriving only in early November, three weeks after the
Lion
had returned from its fruitless privateering voyage.
⁹
Even White could not help noticing that the country was on a war footing, and that the queen wouldn’t allow any ships to sail that might weaken the defense of the realm.

For Raleigh it was a double disaster. He could not possibly lose face and do nothing. To do nothing would be to abandon his fellow “adventurers” who had invested their money alongside him. Yet all he could muster on behalf of White and the planters was for two pinnaces to sail—the 30-ton
Brave
and 24-ton
Roe
—from Grenville’s home port of Bideford. But the Atlantic was teaming with pirates, adventurers, and Spaniards all aching for a brawl, and the
Roe
’s captain decided to break off and join in. Alone now, the
Brave
was attacked by a Huguenot ship out of La Rochelle, and by the end of May 1588, White was back in Bideford. Raleigh tried time and time again to get Grenville to sea on his behalf to provide support for
the fledgling colony, but he was overruled by the Privy Council. It was this harsh and necessary decision in the face of the real threat to England that sealed the colonists’ fates.
¹⁰

Richard Hakluyt, in the meantime, had published his
Principall Navigations
at the beginning of 1590, stinging Walter Raleigh with his bitter preface that “the plantations were founded at the charges of Sir Walter Raleigh, whose entrance upon those new inhabitations had been happy, if it had been as seriously followed, as it was cheerfully undertaken.”
¹¹
The threat of the Armada had passed, yet throughout 1589, Raleigh, who himself had men-of-war in the Atlantic, made no effort to rescue his planters. His attention, like thousands of other adventurers, had been grabbed by the real chance for riches beyond even his greedy dreams, and the destruction of Spain’s empire. The casks that he had written to his half brother Sir John about would serve just as well aboard his men-of-war. The planters would simply have to wait.

38. The Last Gasp of the Early Roaring ’90s

Tis England’s honor that you have in hand,

Then think thereof, if you do love our land.

The gain is yours, if millions home you bring,

Then courage take, to gain so sweet a thing.

The time calls on, which causes me to end,

Wherefore to God, I do you all commend…

That Philip’s Regions may not be more stored,

With Pearl, Jewels and the purest Gold.

—HENRY ROBERTS, ADVENTURER POET,
The Trumpet of Fame

T
he only ones who could afford to continue the war against Spain were Elizabeth’s adventurers. Where they dreamed of riches and empire, Elizabeth longed to consolidate her England, and stop her ruinous expenditure in Ireland. Little did she realize then that the 1590s would see her spend £2 million ($480.63 million or £259.8 million today) in the defense of her postern gate. She had built her image of Gloriana on the peace and security of the realm, and continually hoped for the day when the myth would become a reality. It was precisely these desires that the adventurers pandered to throughout the 1590s. Under the guise of a new nationalism they would enrich themselves, leading the queen to believe that only by destroying Spain’s wealth could England ever find peace. But the queen was no fool. The death of her beloved “Robin,” Earl of Leicester, a month after the Armada was defeated in 1588 had left her personally rudderless. The advice of the equally aging Walsingham and Burghley may have seemed faint as the younger generation energetically pressed itself forward first at court, then in the Privy Council. Certainly, years of loyal service had worn them out. So when the queen’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, died in
April 1590, Elizabeth simply relied more heavily on Lord Burghley, and his chosen successor and second son, Robert Cecil. Only the two Cecils had the overview in the same way the queen had, and only
they
now shared her most intimate strategies. Cecil’s “hold” over the old queen became the source of tremendous friction between him and Robert, Earl of Essex, and Cecil’s appointment would prove to be one of the more controversial appointments Elizabeth would make.

But Robert Cecil did not necessarily mean “bad news” for the queen’s adventurers. When Sir John Hawkins came to the Council with his brilliant plan for a Silver Blockade of Spain, Cecil not only listened to him, Cecil believed he was right. The Hawkins plan was simple and cheap. Six major galleons would need to be maintained between Spain and the Azores, and kept at sea for four months. At the end of that time, they would be replaced with another fleet of the same strength. England had proved that it could keep ships at sea—so long as they were not heavily manned—in reasonable condition and “healthy and sweet-smelling” for that period. Young Cecil was still an unknown quantity beyond the dizzying heights of the queen’s personal company, despite his rapidly growing power. Perhaps it was for that reason that Hawkins had made no statement about commercial gain possible in his scheme. Whatever his reasons, the plan was, alas, never fully enacted. More is the pity, since it made complete sense. The best way to level the playing field would be for Philip to have access to the same amounts of gold—or preferably less—than Elizabeth. Only her adventurers could achieve that task, and both the queen and Cecil knew it.

There is also the possibility that the plan was put on hold with the first failure ever of Sir Francis Drake as commander of his own fleet. In 1589, Drake undertook to land Dom Antonio in Portugal to reestablish him on the throne, investing £1,000 himself in the adventure ($268,250 or £145,000 today) and “setting himself forth with twenty men and muskets.”
¹
The soldiers were led by the brutal veteran of the Irish and Dutch campaigns, Sir John “Black Jack” Norris, and the exuberant rising star Robert, Earl of Essex. Drake should have known better than to be associated with either, but he had had little choice. He also should have known better than to believe that the Portuguese would rise up spontaneously
for Dom Antonio after living peacefully under Philip’s rule for nine years. Notwithstanding all this, the 1589 voyage was doomed to failure for the same reason that most adventuring voyages in the 1590s failed: Elizabeth had sent adventurers to do the job of a professional, government-controlled Royal Navy, blurring her “war aims.” Granted, the queen did not have the money to develop a true Royal Navy, and so private adventurers who invested in ships and manpower for the queen (with their own commercial plans for plundering) ruined Drake’s chances along with Antonio’s overinflated view of his people’s love for him.
²
For Drake, the result was an apparent fall from favor.