The Pirate Queen (52 page)

Drake would spend the better part of the next six years in what many called his “disgrace.” But the term is inaccurate. A disgraced general is not constantly called upon by his political superiors for his advice and handling of matters ashore as Drake had been. By November 1590, the Privy Council commissioned Sir Francis as a justice of the Admiralty to help resolve regular episodes involving the plundering of neutral ships by English adventurers, and making an inventory of their proceeds. Since the bulk of adventurers or pirates were West Countrymen, and the lord admiral received a portion of all registered prizes, this was a position of extreme importance. Drake was also responsible for the safe stowage of the loot until the case could be heard in the High Court of the Admiralty. The job of recovering, securing, and handling the accounting for questionable cargoes and examination of these “foul outrages” became the mainstay of his work until 1596.
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And while Drake built up his fortunes ashore, Philip rebuilt his navy. English spies reported the king’s naval strength from Spain in 1591:

At Ferroll: thirty-two sail, ready, small and great.

At Santander: Eight new galleons, the least eight hundred tons.

Four already launched, four to be launched within a month.

At Bilbao: ten ships pressed for the king.

At the River of Portugal [Lisbon]: Nine new galleons and ships. Four about one thousand tons, the rest from eight hundred to seven hundred tons each. Eight already launched, the other to be launched in a month.

At Passages: Fifteen great ships of which thirteen were in the Armada of three hundred to five hundred tons.

In all about seventy-five to rendezvous at Ferrol.
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Raleigh, meanwhile, was back at his plantations in Ireland, making mansions for himself at Youghal and Lismore. Among his frequent houseguests were the out-of-royal-favor poet and neighbor Edmund Spenser, and Raleigh’s cousin Sir George Carew, who was also Ireland’s master of the ordnance. Unlike the queen, Raleigh saw adventuring only in terms of empire. And while in Ireland, he had taken to building his own personal empire, thanks in no small part to the queen’s extreme generosity of 42,000 acres of prime farmland at a rent of £233 6s. 3d. ($62,583 or £33,829 today) annually after the first three rent-free years.
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At Youghal he introduced novelty crops as early as 1595, planting potatoes and tomatoes—from the New World—around the same time. While it had been Drake who brought the first tobacco back to England from the West Indies (and Ralph Lane, an officer of Drake’s at the time, who would teach Raleigh how to smoke), it would be Raleigh who would popularize the habit of social smoking while drinking mugs of ale. An invitation to smoke and drink ale with Raleigh was the most welcomed of private male gatherings in the 1590s.
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Even so, while his smoking parties took place primarily at his London home, Durham House, Ireland remained the main source of his revenue. He had grand plans to import New World foods on a large scale and to commercialize the planting of tobacco. Still, as with so many things in Raleigh’s life, plans were all they would remain.

Elizabeth had also allowed Raleigh to muster an extra company of cavalry to help protect his intended “planters” there. But as in England, he quickly gained the reputation for being full of himself, falling out with Ireland’s lord deputy, Sir William Fitzwilliam, through an unnecessary lawsuit against Lady Stanley, wife of Sir William Stanley the traitor, but nonetheless a vastly popular figure in Catholic Ireland. Raleigh continued to alienate those around him who viewed him as a “pushing and selfish adventurer.”
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In a typical
fit of pique, Raleigh complained in a veiled threat to George Carew that, “if in Ireland they think I am not worth respecting, they shall much deceive themselves.”
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And while Raleigh played in Ireland, his ships still sailed under the command of his masters, enriching their owner.

It was said at the time by the queen’s intelligencers that “traitors murderers, thieves, cozeners, cony catchers, shifting mates, runners away with other men’s wives, some having two or three wives, persons divorced living loosely, bankrupts, carnal gospellers, Papists, Puritans, and Brownists,” all flocked in droves from England to Munster. In the hundred years between 1580 and 1680, over a hundred thousand English—though not all reprobates by a long shot—emigrated to Ireland. It naturally attracted those who had nothing to lose and pure adventurers. All of them were looking to pluck a prime piece of land from the Irish for themselves in the same way that frontiersmen of America did.
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At sea, the English adventurers were led by the queen’s “rogue” George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland, off the Azores in 1591, in what became known as the Islands Voyage. Cumberland and his squadron cruised that summer in the Azores aboard the queen’s
Victory
, plundering dozens of ships and netting tens of thousands of ducats (official reports varying wildly). Still, their aim wasn’t a blockade as Hawkins had suggested. It was a plunder mission. Had they adopted the Hawkins plan, they could have probably captured the passing Portuguese carracks laden with gold and precious gems, as well as several West Indiamen. Nonetheless, Cumberland was happy with his takings, and remained at sea through September when the queen sent out Frobisher with a small squadron to reconnoiter Seville and Lisbon. Frobisher took four prize ships, much to his own delight, but the bulk of the flota had arrived in port safely.

Yet, as expected, this did nothing to deter Philip in his determination to rebuild his fleet to use against England again. To make matters worse, a more concerted effort to blockade Spain had failed in 1590, with the East Indiamen this time eluding twelve of the queen’s ships under the joint command of Frobisher and
Hawkins. Reprisal ships still abounded, with John Watts’s ships in the West Indies making a killing in understated loot to avoid taxation.

Gold and silver was flowing into the queen’s and Admiralty’s coffers, but still, Philip’s rebuilding program remained on track. By the spring of 1592, Lord Admiral Howard finally managed to launch a squadron back to sea to meet up with other adventurers, including Cumberland. While details of their mission have not been preserved, it seems that suffered too from the double-headed coin of plunder to pay for the voyage while ensuring state security. Elizabeth certainly knew Philip well enough by now to be acutely aware that he would not take the defeat of the “Invincible” Armada lying down. What she didn’t know is that Don Alonso de Bazán’s fleet had been relaunched in the hope of catching John Watts’s fleet as it returned from its plunder operation in the West Indies.

The King of Spain had ordered that all Spanish ships remain in the West Indies until further notice, but, unknown to Philip, many had already stolen homeward and lay at anchor near Terceira in the Azores and cursed the English corsairs repeatedly for their misfortunes. Frobisher, Hawkins, and his son Richard were all under sail in different squadrons, all trying to encircle the Iberian coast like a school of sharks. And Philip was unable to send gold or reinforcements to Parma in the Netherlands. At last the English blockade seemed to be working.
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Still, Elizabeth wasn’t convinced. Reluctantly, she sent Lord Admiral Howard with Sir Richard Grenville as his lieutenant to Spanish waters. The Earl of Cumberland planned to join them to lead the “jackal” squadron that roved tightly against the Iberian coast. They were lucky in taking a Lubecker off the Finisterre coast with £10,000 worth of masts and timber ($2.41 million or £1.3 million today) destined to provision Philip’s new fleet.
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Their prisoners told them that the Indian fleet they were looking to plunder had arrived some weeks earlier at the Azores, and were out of their reach by now.

Howard wasn’t having any of that! The Lubecker was sent back to England while he headed the ships belonging to the queen and Raleigh to the Azores. Back home, the queen had received alarming reports of the Spanish king’s new naval strength, and the possibility of
a new Armada. Raleigh was ordered to hasten down to Plymouth to organize a fleet, while Cumberland sailed quickly out to rendezvous with Howard.

When Cumberland met up with some of his cruising ships along the Spanish coast, his worst fears were confirmed. The Marquis of Santa Cruz’s brother, Don Alonso de Bazán, had sailed to accompany the Indian fleet to safety from the Azores. Howard was in mortal danger. But with the luck of “the gifted amateur” that England spawned throughout its rise to empire, Howard remained blissfully unaware of the danger, claiming that he was “almost famished for want of prey, or rather like a bear robbed of her whelps.”
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Fortunately, a squadron of sixteen ships (including the
Bark Raleigh
) had met up with the lord admiral before he could come to harm. Don Alonso, however, was closing in with his fifty sail—thirty of which were great ships and galleons. Nonetheless, the English fleet was caught by surprise reprovisioning with water at Flores.

Orders were shouted to “heave ho!” by the English, but the Spaniards blocked the roadstead as their sails began to fill with wind. Still, Howard’s luck held, and despite most ships slipping their cables, they sailed away. That is, all except Sir Richard Grenville aboard the
Revenge
who resolved to stay and engage the enemy. It was an act of sheer madness. The
Revenge
, the queen’s pride and joy as her prototype for a sleeker, more yar vessel, was lost after twelve long hours of battle, and Grenville with many of his men were needlessly killed. All others were spared.

The loss of the
Revenge
was a harsh blow for the queen—until now (or
ever
, for that matter)—it was the only royal ship to be lost in the Spanish War.
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“Sir Richard utterly refused to turn from the enemy,” Walter Raleigh wrote in a scathing verbal attack against Grenville, “alleging that he would rather chose [sic] to die, then to dishonor himself, his country, and Her Majesty’s ship, persuading his company that he would pass through the two squadrons [of Spaniards] in despite of them: and enforce those of Seville to give him way.”
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But Raleigh had other motives for being so angry at the needless loss of life and property aboard the
Revenge
. Grenville was dead, and so were Raleigh’s dreams of sending him to Virginia to rescue his colonists.

Raleigh knew that he had to concentrate on either his quest for gold or his colony in Virginia, and so he agreed to terms with the London merchants Thomas Smythe and William Sanderson to send nineteen new colonists to Roanoke. In exchange for their investment of money, shipping, victuals, and so on, Raleigh relinquished some of his rights of trade. It seemed an ideal solution to the Elizabethan entrepreneur. When John Watts, the London merchant and greatest owner and promoter of adventuring ships, was involved by Sanderson, it looked as though White’s “lost colonists” would at last be rescued. But this was a false hope, since in the end the three ships were not allowed to sail, as the Privy Council expected yet another Armada.
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Undaunted, Raleigh used his famous charm with Elizabeth, and succeeded in obtaining a license for another private ship, the
Hopewell
, to sail with John White aboard, together with some more “western planters” and provisions.

When they anchored at last off Hatarask on August 15, 1590, they found the Roanoke fort three days later, deserted. Carved into one of the trees marking out the former fort was the word
CROATOAN
and another tree had “
CRO
” etched into its trunk. This was the agreed signal between the planters and White for his return. If the word of their destination also had a Maltese cross beneath, then that would mean that they had decamped under duress. White was overjoyed at finding “a certain token of their safe being at Croatoan, which is the place where Manteo was born, and the Savages of the land our friends.”
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The captain of the
Hopewell
began his run south to Croatoan but was taken by surprise in what must have been the beginning of a hurricane. They were unable to recover their water casks, and lost two anchors trying to clear the Outer Banks. With only a single cable and anchor, few victuals, and no pinnace in vastly deteriorating weather, the captain decided, with White’s consent, to head for the West Indies and outrun the storm. A few days later, after a further pounding, the
Hopewell
was forced to turn east toward the Azores and home. It proved to be the last real attempt to rescue the colonists at Roanoke.

By the time Howard and Cumberland were planning their mission against Spain, Raleigh had engrossed himself in his new role as the leader of Elizabeth’s adventurers, organizing Atlantic plunder on a
gigantic scale. Yet he never gave up hope of finding treasure in the New World, and had long dreamed of “El Dorado,” the mythical golden kingdom whispered in Indian folklore. In Hakluyt’s
Discourse of Western Planting
, he describes a tract of twenty-one hundred miles that “is neither Spaniard, nor Portuguese, nor any Christian man, but only the Caribs, Indians and savages. In which places is great plenty of gold, pearl and precious stones.”
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For years he had been querying explorers returning from South America about El Dorado, and particularly French corsairs who had traveled up the Amazon. He was so hungry for real knowledge about El Dorado that Raleigh exchanged with these men the intelligence they craved about Raleigh’s own difficulties in establishing colonies in Virginia for facts about Patagonia and the Spanish Main.
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