The Pirate Queen (24 page)

De Spes was beside himself, sending a panicked missive to Alba on December 21:

As Benedict Spinola had put his own money in safety, he has been slack in the dispatch of these other ships, although he was authorised to spend a thousand pounds sterling in the transit. He thought this was inadequate, and sent for authority to spend a larger amount; which authority, he said, he expected hourly, although I believe it has been nothing but a subterfuge. I am now sending to give an account of the matter to the Queen and shall ask for audience in conformity with her reply…. It is not for me to advise you but to follow your orders, but I do not like this way of beginning here, and it is my opinion that all English ships and merchandise should be at once seized in the States, and particularly in Antwerp, news of it being also sent swiftly to Spain as there are valuable English ships at Bilbao and Laredo.
¹⁰

This was followed shortly after by another letter penned by de Spes—also not in code and also panic-stricken—and was received days later at Alba’s headquarters:

The Queen has taken possession of the boxes of money brought by Lope de la Sierra’s ship and 64 boxes from the cutters in Plymouth. She is going to do the same with the other two cutters in Falmouth, notwithstanding her promise and letters, besides the passport she gave. The duke of Alba has ordered all English ships and property to be seized, and informs me thereof in his letter of the 29th ultimo, which was brought by a special courier, who, however, was careless, as with him came four others dispatched by the English…. They also tried to raise the mob against foreigners, but the aldermen and constables acted well and took possession of the streets, so that the matter has ended in the seizure of property of Flemish and other subjects of your Majesty. All the Spaniards came to my house at night, where most of them still remain. The ports are closed and orders have been issued that no post-horses are to be given to anyone. Cecil was here during the disturbances and returned next day to Hampton Court, where councils are still being held, but nothing yet has been said to me…. These heretic knaves of the Council are going headlong to perdition, incited by Cecil, who is indescribably crazy in his zeal for heresy….

The sloops that these pirates have taken are four, with a Spanish ship, all very valuable. They (the English Government) have also seized the property of Portuguese. I send this enclosed in a letter from the French ambassador, with a letter for the Duke and another for Don Francés de Alava…. They [the Council] are in consultation every day, and I know not how it will end….
¹¹

Alba, the great soldier if not the great governor, followed de Spes’s ill-conceived advice, though not entirely without reflection. His soldiers hadn’t been paid in months, and Alba sensed mutiny in the air. If his men knew why there was further delay, it might stem the tide a while longer. And so, on December 19, 1568—the same day that de Spes officially demanded restitution of the treasure from the queen—Alba ordered all English property in the Low Countries sequestered. This flew in the face of all existing treaties with Spain, where it was clearly stated that no reprisals could be enforced without a distinct refusal or unreasonable delay in returning seized goods.
¹²

Elizabeth and Cecil—for once—couldn’t have been more delighted. Alba and de Spes had made a serious tactical error that would cost Philip dearly. In retaliation, the queen decreed,

Any merchants born or living under the allegiance of the King of Spain who may be found in towns, ports or other places under suspicion of hiding or disguise, or in any manner of fraud in order to prevent the detention of themselves and their goods, shall be called to account by the officers of justice of such places with the help of all justices of the peace, who shall inquire and examine the said merchants by all legitimate methods and cast them into prison, no matter to what nation they belong, including all those who may abet or help to hide those who practice such fraud…and especially those who may have concealed such persons or their property.

Her Majesty having also learnt from trustworthy sources that it was the intention to detain her subjects beyond the sea, under the pretext that the Queen had detained in one of her ports a certain ship and three or four small boats in which were certain sums of money, Her Majesty thinks fit to declare briefly the facts of the case, by which it will be seen that the detention of her subjects was unjust and without due cause.
¹³

With de Spes now under house arrest, Alba recognized that he would have to make the first move to defuse the situation. In early January 1569 he sent an emissary, Dr. Christophe d’Assonleville, who was a member of the Flemish Council of State, to mediate. Elizabeth had him arrested, too, since he had arrived without proper credentials from his king.

The country was in an uproar against the Spanish knaves. There was a rising murmur of war or retaliation on everyone’s lips in the streets. The merchants—sickened by the unending stream of disruptions to trade—longed for new markets, passages to Cathay, and a world without a dominant Spain.

A few days after the public erupted with indignation, on January 20, toward evening, the small weather-beaten 50-ton
Judith
limped into Plymouth harbor, alone. Francis Drake, overloaded with men from the
Jesus
, without an ample store of water or victuals, and with no order given for a rendezvous by Hawkins before he had been separated by a northerly gale from the
Minion
, had resolved to try to bring his ship and his men home safely.

13. The Cost of Failure

If all the miseries and troublesome affairs of this sorrowful voyage should be perfectly and thoroughly written, there should need a painful man with his pen, and as great a time as he had that wrote the lives and deaths of the Martyrs.

—JOHN HAWKINS, COMPARING HIS VOYAGE TO FOXE’S ACCOUNT OF PROTESTANT MARTYRS UNDER MARY I, MAY 1569

F
ive days later, the
Minion
careened into harbor at Mounts Bay in Cornwall. John Hawkins and a fraction of the crew had survived the nail-biting Atlantic crossing. Once out of danger from the Spanish fleet, it was a despondent Hawkins who headed for England. With the ship leaking badly and so dangerously overloaded, there was no way any of them could live to tell their tale, he believed, let alone return home. The English admiral had no choice but to take drastic action. More than a hundred men were set ashore in the Gulf of Mexico, never to be seen again. He then tried to head north, but sailed straight into the jaws of a tropical storm in the Bahamas Channel. As he plodded northward, Hawkins watched helplessly as his starving men grew sick and died, one by one. Nearly every rodent, dog, cat, parrot, or monkey aboard ship had long ago been eaten, and while they were still thousands of miles from home, their only sustenance was their leather fittings and abundant salt water.
¹
By the time they reached the coast of Galicia in Spain, they were desperate men. Hawkins, dressed in his finest scarlet cloak and doublet, edged with silver and wearing a great gold chain, told the port officials that if they didn’t allow him to buy food and wine, he would simply take what they needed without paying. Provisions were, of course, handed over at once, but not without a further cost. The starving mariners were unable to control themselves, and gorged themselves on the fresh food. The result was a spate of
further deaths from gluttony. To cover up, Hawkins ordered their emaciated bodies thrown overboard in the dead of night with stones tied to their feet.
²

When, at long last, they reached port in Mount’s Bay in England, word spread like a brushfire that the admiral and some more of his men had returned. In fact, there were only twelve mariners accompanying Hawkins, out of an original complement of four hundred men. William Hawkins, relieved, and fighting fit, quickly wrote off to Cecil demanding the queen issue “letters of reprisal” against the Spanish. Armed with his brother’s letter, John Hawkins set off for London. The residue of his entire takings from the West Indies was loaded onto a mere four packhorses for the journey.

But the queen and her councillors refused to be dragged into Hawkins’s personal vendetta against Spain. Indeed, though Francis Drake, too, pleaded for “justice,” the government was more deeply concerned—and rightly, too—with primary matters of state, which included, among other matters, granting asylum to a huge influx of Protestant refugees from the Netherlands; declaring of a “safe haven” for William of Orange’s Sea Beggars at Dover and other southern ports; trying to restore Mary Queen of Scots with some constraints onto Scotland’s throne; reconciling the French king to his Huguenot insurgents; negotiating with Alba over the standoff on Spanish and English seizures; fighting the “universal” rebellion in Ireland and the Northern Rising of the Catholic lords Northumberland and Westmoreland in England. Hawkins’s timing was, to say the least, poor.

Nonetheless, he persevered. He knew better than anyone else that, with each passing day, the hundreds of Englishmen captured or abandoned in the West Indies were being put to the most brutal torture that the Inquisition had to offer. By March 1569, he and many of the other survivors—save Francis Drake—made their declaration before the High Court of the Admiralty, outlining what had happened.

Drake’s reunion with Hawkins had taken place a month earlier, and though no specific record of that encounter survives, it could not have been an easy one. Drake had no formal education, no social standing, no social graces, no previous oceangoing experience as a
captain, and no money. But he had proved to both Hawkins and himself that he was one hell of a captain and navigator. Besides, Drake’s obvious “excuse” for heading home was a lack of clear orders from Hawkins to rendezvous somewhere. Drake’s first duty at that point had been to save as many men and goods as he possibly could. Still, it is intriguing to wonder why Drake never used this argument publicly in his defense. Hawkins, in the end, tempered his criticism of the clearly superior navigator and new captain by reporting only that “the
Judith…
forsook us in our great misery.”
³

By the time the High Court of the Admiralty met in March and April, Hawkins had compiled a detailed claim against the Spaniards for the treachery at San Juan de Ulúa, in the hope of negotiating for a letter of reprisal, and for the release of his men from Spanish captivity. His monetary claim was listed as:

1. First, the specified ship, called the
Jesus of Lubeck
With its equipment and accoutrements as sent out from England
£5,000

2. Item instruments of war, or guns of bronze and iron, which were part of the accoutrements, equipment, and munitions installed in the same ship called the
Jesus
and sent out from England
£2,000

3. Item gun powder, iron balls, arms and other instruments or guns installed in the same ship and dispatched from England
£2,000

4. Item two anchors and three anchor lines, called cables, from the equipment of the ship called the
Minion
, which were lost when the said ship escaped from forcible seizure by Spaniards
£200

5. Item the specified ship called the
Swallow
with its equipment, accoutrements, and munitions sent out from England, and the victuals and seamen’s goods carried in it
£850

6. Item the specified ship called the
Angel
, with its equipment, accoutrements, and munitions sent out from England, as well as the victuals and seamen’s goods carried in it
£180

7. Item the specified ship called the
Grace of God
, with its equipment, apparatus, and munitions, as well as the victuals and seamen’s goods placed in it
£400

8. Item in the specified ship called the
Jesus
, and the three other ships, or some of them, 57 black Ethiopians, commonly called Negroes, of the best sort and stature each of whom is worth gold pesos in the region of the West Indies
£9,120

9. Item in the said ship called the
Jesus
and the other three ships, or some of them, 30 bales of linen cloth, each worth 3,000 reals
£2,250

10. Item in the said four ships, or some of them, 1,000 pieces of dyed cloth, each of which is worth 15 shillings sterling
£750

11. Item in the said four ships, or some of them, 400 pounds of that kind of merchandise commonly called margaritas [trinkets], each pound of which is worth 5 shillings sterling
£100

12. Item, in the said four ships, or some of them, 300 pounds of pewter, each pound of which is worth 2 shillings sterling
£30

13. Item, a bale of cambric commonly called taffeta, containing 40
varas
[ells]
£40

14. Item four bales of woolen cloth called hampshires and northerns, each of which is worth £8 sterling
£340

15. Item six bales of cottons
£90

16. Item a chest containing 30 swords decorated in gold
£120

17. Item 12 quintals of wax
£120

18. Item seven tons of manillios, commonly 7 tons of arm and wrist bands [manacles] each of which is worth £50
£350