Caribbean (23 page)

At about this time a Cartagena poet summarized such rules of conduct in six sardonic lines: “My Spain against all other countries. / Her religion against all other religions. / My part of Spain against all other parts. / My colony against their colony. / My big family against all other big families. / And my wife and children against my brother’s wife and children.” As one of the most congenial practitioners of this art of personal and familial self-protection, the governor of Cartagena applied nine-tenths of his energies to finding jobs for his family and treasure for himself, one-tenth defending his Caribbean against intruders. But his victory against the Dutch proved that when aroused, he could be valiant. For in the Spanish society a man could be a peculator but not a coward.

On the day that John Hawkins and Francis Drake loaded the
Jesus of Lübeck
with the maximum number of slaves, Don Diego de Guzman, a Spanish spy at Queen Elizabeth’s court, drafted a note in code and hurried it to the Thames waterfront, where a swift ship was waiting to depart for Spain. At the Escorial Palace, a monstrous pile of
dark rock near Madrid, King Philip’s scribes made rushed copies of the orders he had drafted in cold fury, so that six hours after Philip received the news, a horseman was galloping down to Sanlúcar de Barrameda near the mouth of the Guadalquivir River. From there three small boats set sail on the tide for the island of Española, where the messages were delivered to the governor at Santo Domingo. He promptly dispatched a swarm of small, swift coastal frigates to speed the news to seven different Caribbean capitals, so that by 3 February 1568, when Hawkins left Africa, his target islands in the Caribbean were about to receive news that he was coming.

One of the Española frigates put into Cartagena’s well-protected harbor, where the messenger hurried to inform Ledesma: “Excellency, I hand you an ominous message. John Hawkins is heading this way, and Guzman in London has heard on the best authority, someone close to the queen, that he is heading for Puerto Rico, Río Hacha and Cartagena, with permission to land and destroy each place if we oppose him.”

Don Diego listened, nodded several times, and waited till he himself had read the instructions, then said in a judicial voice that betrayed no fear: “There are ways to handle Englishmen. They’re not like French pirates who slay and burn with no questions asked, nor the Dutch who flourish on sheer pillage.”

But then the messenger disturbed this tranquillity by revealing privileged information which had come by word of mouth: “Hawkins is sailing in a very powerful ship, the queen’s own
Jesus of Lübeck
,” and as the name of the famous warship hung in the air, Admiral Ledesma, as a well-informed navy man, could visualize that terror of the seas. To have the
Jesus
with its many guns bearing down upon smaller and poorly defended Spanish ships was not a happy prospect, but it was what the messenger added as his last bit of information that caused the governor his greatest worry: “Hawkins will bring with him a second major warship, the
Minion
, impossible to sink, and five lesser ships.
Swallow
, one hundred tons;
Judith
, fifty tons;
Angel
, thirty-three tons,” and as he ended the recitation he added: “In command of the
Judith
will be young Francis Drake, a kinsman of Captain Hawkins, on whom Hawkins will depend if fighting becomes necessary.”

At the mention of this name Ledesma flinched, for he had heard about the threat Drake had uttered when the Spaniards at Río Hacha stole the forty slaves from him the year before: “When I return to
these waters I will demand full payment for my slaves and burn Cartagena.”

That afternoon Ledesma issued a host of instructions for the further fortification of his capital. In the following days three more ships were sunk across Boca Grande to make it totally impassable and additional guns were emplaced to protect the entrance to Boca Chica. Each headland the Hawkins fleet would have to pass if it were to threaten the small inner harbor was given additional firepower, and troops were trained in tactics for driving English assailants back if they attempted to scale the battlements.

“Cartagena cannot be taken,” Ledesma announced when the work was finished, but a few weeks later a small boat scurried in from Río Hacha with the appalling news that not only had Hawkins returned to the Caribbean, but he had indeed brought the tough little fire-eater Drake with him.

“Excellency, my crew of three and I escaped miraculously from under the English guns, and I report only the truth, as these men will testify. On the fifth day of June, this year, Captain Hawkins, with a fleet of seven English vessels and some French acquired along the way, passed the salt flats of Cumaná without stopping, but he did sell some of his slaves at the pearl island of Margarita and at Curaçao, from where he sent ahead two of his smallest ships, the
Angel
and the
Judith
, the last under the command of Captain Francis Drake, to clear the way for his big ship, the
Jesus of Lübeck
.

“Drake was a reasonable choice for this mission, since he had visited Río Hacha last year, as you will remember. Immediately upon arriving he started hostilities, capturing the dispatch boat from Española and making the officials thereon his prisoners, something never done before. He then fired two shots at the town, not over the rooftops as the English are supposed to do when trading, but right at the house occupied by his great enemy, Treasurer Miguel de Castellanos, who took the slaves from him last year. And I am ashamed to say that one of Drake’s broadsides ripped right through the treasurer’s house and would have killed him had he been dining.”

“What did Castellanos do?” Ledesma asked, and the messenger replied: “For five days all he did was glare at those two little ships in his harbor, powerless to do anything against them but also strong enough to prevent Drake from landing with his soldiers.”

“You mean the assault on Río ended in such a stalemate? Doesn’t sound like Drake.”

“Oh no! On the sixth day Captain Hawkins arrived, bringing his great
Jesus of Lübeck
into the harbor. Now all was different. First thing Hawkins did, according to his custom of never making Spain angry, was give back the dispatch boat and its passengers as warrant of his peaceful intention. Then, to prove that he meant business, he marched two hundred armed men ashore, but as you know, the treasurer had long ago decided that if ever the English returned, he would oppose them to the death, and this he did, or rather, tried to do.

“A serious battle ensued, with two English dead, but their attack was so relentless that Castellanos’ troops fled, and Hawkins found himself possessor of a town containing no women, no gold, silver, pearls or objects of value. Hawkins gave the obdurate treasurer three days to bring back his people and his treasure, and when the man refused, Hawkins threatened to burn the place. Heroically, Castellanos said: ‘Rather than give in to you, I’ll see every island in the Indies ablaze,’ whereupon Drake, who heard the vain boast, started setting houses afire, but Hawkins stopped him, saying: ‘There must be a better way.’

“After five days of patient waiting, an escaped slave showed Hawkins where the treasure was hidden. And so Hawkins won everything he wanted.”

“What do you mean, he won everything?”

“He sold us two hundred fifty slaves at fair prices. He made us give him extra money for the families of the two English soldiers who were killed. And then he asked us to produce the women belonging to homes that Francis Drake had burned, and when they stood before him, tired and dirty from their time hiding in the jungle with our treasure, he said: ‘Englishmen do not make war against women. I give you each four slaves to recompense you for your loss,’ and he turned over sixty additional slaves at no charge.”

“Very generous!” the governor said sardonically. “But he did have our treasure, didn’t he?” and the messenger said: “Yes. All of it.”

“And how did Captain Drake behave when Hawkins did these things?” Ledesma asked, and the man said: “He bit his tongue and obeyed, that’s what he did. But I was at the shore when he departed, and he growled at me: ‘When I come back as captain of my own fleet, I shall burn every house in this godforsaken town.’ ”

The governor reviewed the humiliation that had been visited on one of his towns, the great loss of treasure and the peculiar behavior
of his Spaniards: “Our treasurer, he seems to have played the man.” The messenger nodded. “But our soldiers on the scene. Despicable.”

“Excellency, when the
Jesus of Lübeck
is in your harbor, assisted by six other English ships and two French, all guns pointed ashore, it can be terrifying.” He was about to add: “As you will learn in the next few days when Hawkins and Drake come into your harbor down there,” but he thought better of it and said merely: “As the English ships left us Drake shouted from the
Judith:
‘On to Cartagena.’ ”

On 1 August 1568 the English fleet swept down upon Cartagena. Hawkins wanted only to sell his remaining fifty slaves at customary profit and trade his ordinary goods for such food and pearls as the Spaniards might have, but Drake hoped to invade the town and hold it for ransom. But though the English had a horde of sailors, they had only three hundred and seventy trained fighting men, while up on his hillside Governor Ledesma had five hundred Spanish infantry, two companies of highly skilled cavalry and not less than six thousand trained and armed Indians. So when Captain Drake dispatched a messenger under a flag of truce to inform Ledesma of the terms under which the English proposed dealing with Cartagena, the governor refused even to open the letter, advising the messenger to tell Drake that no one in Cartagena cared a fig what the English did or did not do, and that the sooner they hied themselves off, the better.

When Drake heard this insulting reply, he sailed as close in as he could and ordered his guns to pepper the town, but since he was still not close enough, the cannonballs fell harmlessly and rolled about the streets. Ledesma, chuckling at the impotence of the braggadocio Englishman, signaled his heavy guns to fire back, not in salute but in earnest, but he too missed.

Hawkins, distressed that things were going so badly, landed on the barren islands south of the city, where nothing was found but some large casks of wine, which Hawkins ordered his men to leave untouched, saying: “We’re not pirates or thieves.” Thereupon Ledesma sent word that they should feel free to take the wine, since it was of such poor quality that only Englishmen would drink it.

Actually, the wine was a good vintage from Spain and the English reveled in it—Drake refused to touch it—and when Hawkins realized that he must leave Cartagena with nothing accomplished, he ordered his men to place beside the empty wine casks enough fine English
trade goods to match the value, “to prove that we follow the custom of gentlemen.” But as they took the ships back out of the big southern basin, Drake could hear Spaniards in the guard forts laughing at their departure, and his men had to restrain him from firing parting shots at them.

Ledesma and Drake had now had two confrontations without ever seeing each other, and although the rugged little Englishman was bold, the austere Spaniard was resolute and not easily frightened. His fortitude, and that of his agent in Río Hacha, had enabled the Spaniards to rebuff Drake, but the two adversaries knew that the next meeting could be bloody and decisive, though neither could guess where it might occur. Ledesma warned his men: “Drake will be back, of that we can be sure,” and Drake told his sailors: “One day I shall humiliate that arrogant Spaniard.”

Now that English ships roamed the Caribbean with impunity, trading where and how they willed, this body of water could no longer be considered a Spanish lake. It had become a public thoroughfare, but Don Diego, who had been commissioned to keep it Spanish, believed that if Drake and Hawkins could be lured into some major sea battle, English power might be broken, and he directed his waking hours to that strategy. He was therefore pleased when a dispatch frigate sped in from Sevilla and Española with these orders:

Swiftly assembling nine vessels led by the
Mariposa
, Admiral Ledesma sailed out of Cartagena with sails set to catch the wind that would speed him, he hoped, to Ulúa before Hawkins and Drake reached
there, if that was indeed their secret destination. Once again his two Amadór nephews were in charge of the port and starboard wings and his new son-in-law served beside him in the rugged
Mariposa
as vice-regent, a position still undefined. With these reliable aides, Ledesma was confident that he would be able to control the English pirates if they ventured into his lake.

On the voyage north to Mexico the newly empowered admiral assembled his captains and invited an officer acquainted with Ulúa to instruct the men as to what they would find when they reached that vital harbor.

The island of Ulúa, situated about a half-mile from the land-based Vera Cruz, served as protection for the mainland, where the riches of Mexico’s silver mines were brought together to wait for the king’s galleons from Sevilla to pick them up. Composed of solid rock and defended from the open sea by big reefs, Ulúa was also famous for its dungeon caverns where mutinous sailors and workers were imprisoned.

It was an exciting moment when Admiral Ledesma realized that he had beaten Hawkins north and brought his vessels into the spacious harbor of Ulúa: “There’s the great fort, absolutely impregnable. Out there, the protecting reef. Over there, the warehouses of Vera Cruz, crammed with silver bars, and gold ones too. And dead ahead the six ships from Spain always based here to fight off any pirates that might attack.” With Ledesma’s nine Cartagena vessels, the harbor now contained fifteen ships of war, but anchorages were so plentiful that the harbor seemed almost empty. Even so, innumerable cannon mounted on shore kept the various ships in their sights in case of unexpected trouble. Ulúa was invincible, and Admiral Ledesma, as the senior officer present, would be expected to assume command of its defenses until the empty treasure ships from Sevilla arrived.