The Pirate Queen (29 page)

His men gathered around him and decided that they had to get their captain to safety. There would be other opportunities to get treasure, someday. So they bound his leg with one of their scarves and carried him back to the pinnaces, where they made good their escape to the Bastimentos Islands, or Isles of Victuals, about a league west of the town. Still, just so they wouldn’t leave empty-handed, they took the Canaries wine ship with them.
¹⁰

Meanwhile, the
alcalde
of Nombre de Díos counted his losses. Thirty-two were dead, according to one eyewitness,
¹¹
though the official complaint to the Queen of England two years later claimed a death toll of eighteen. More worrying to the
alcalde
were his wounded. Had these pirates used poisonous arrows? He needed to know the answer to this, and who these savages were. How else could he make an accurate report to the governor and the king? Since the English had only escaped to a nearby island, the
alcalde
sent a gentleman envoy to Drake to find out the answers to these questions. The English captain proudly told the Spaniard that they had come for the King of Spain’s treasure, that they were English and would never use poison arrows, and that his name was Francis Drake. Then, “he advised the governor to hold open his eyes, for before he departed,” and Drake nodded at him, “if God lent him life and leave, he meant to reap some of their harvest, which they get out of the earth, and send into Spain to trouble all the earth.”
¹²

With the “niceties” of the Spaniard’s mission completed, Drake ordered that the envoy be “burdened with gifts” as a sign of their personal goodwill.

18. From a Treetop in Darien

We came to the height of the desired hill…about ten of the clock; where the chiefest of these Cimaroons took our Captain by the hand and prayed to him follow him if he was desirous to see at once the two seas, which he had so longed for. Here was that goodly and great high tree…and from thence we saw without any difficulty plainly the Atlantic Ocean, whence now we came, and the South Atlantic,
¹
so much desired….

—
Sir Francis Drake Revived

W
hile Drake was recovering from his wounds during the course of the next few days, he certainly hatched a plan for his next raids. During this time, he became friendly with the former slave, Diego, who had begged to join their company when he warned them that the pinnaces had been in danger. Drake listened and learned from Diego. The plan was to involve the Cimaroons in their attacks, since they knew the jungle and the Spaniards so well. It took no time at all for Drake to grow to admire Diego greatly. The English and the Cimaroons had, according to Diego, common cause in their hatred for the Spanish, and he was sure that these former slaves turned raiders would prove stalwart allies with important local knowledge.
²

By the time they left the Isle of Victuals to rejoin forces with Captain Raunce, the terrified
alcalde
of Nombre de Díos had spread the alarm as far as Cartagena, Santa Marta, and Honduras. Earthworks were thrown up at great speed on the beach, and a new battery of heavy guns was installed to command the headland. The
alcalde
was certain that
El Draco
—the Dragon—or Drake would return. While Drake and his men had left Nombre de Díos virtually empty-handed, in Spanish eyes it was an audacious coup. No pirate had ever come to rob the King of Spain’s treasure in its repository.
It struck terror into the hearts of strong men to think that the gold that kept the empire afloat could have so easily been stolen by a mere
Luterano
.
³

Raunce, on the other hand, was not amused. He decried Drake’s antics, fearful that the Caribbean would be crawling with Spanish soldiers in no time at all. When he told Drake that he had had enough, Drake was more than happy to let him go. If Raunce were not made of sterner stuff, he would add nothing to the equation.

Again aware that Raunce’s departure might renew grumbling among the ranks, Drake suggested that he and his remaining men should strike while the iron was still hot, and attack the shipping at Cartagena. Though the town itself wasn’t particularly well protected, it did have a fortified tower and heavy gun battery in harbor. There would be risks. The crew agreed to give it a whirl, and they set sail. But word had already reached Cartagena that there was an English pirate in the vicinity, and the shipping had moved to the inner harbor. That is, saving one.

This lone ship lay at anchor out of range of the town’s great guns—a 240-ton vessel still laden with her cargo of munitions. According to the Spanish complaint two years later, Drake pillaged the prize and burned it.
⁴
While the attack terrorized the town, it showed Drake that word did indeed travel fast in that part of the world. It also demonstrated that the Spaniards, with all their guns and bluster, remained powerless to stop well-equipped, swift English pinnaces cruising inshore to pillage.

Despite the fact that Drake had sailed with Hawkins, it was rapidly becoming apparent that both he and his men not only valued and liked Diego, treating him as one of their own, but recognized that they were relying heavily upon his local knowledge for the ultimate success of their mission.
⁵
Diego was his fellow traveler, his friend, who had been sorrowfully mistreated at the hands of the Spanish, and who seemed to sense that Drake was the answer to not only his own, but also the
Cimarrones
’ prayers for revenge.

And yet, so far, the voyage had not been a success. Diego was certain that the
Cimarrones
would help Drake. They were, after all, fellow travelers, too. But it was only in his long talks by the campfire with Diego, John Oxenham, and John Drake, that Drake finally thought through a daring scheme where his partnership with the
Cimaroons would benefit them both. Since the Spaniards knew they were there, and were expecting them to raid the towns along the Spanish Main, the English could still have the element of surprise if they attacked the king’s treasure
before
it arrived at the treasure house at Nombre de Díos. Drake shared his thoughts with Diego, Oxenham, and his brother, and they all thought it was a brilliant idea.

But they would still need to wait awhile until Spanish vigilance lapsed. And so, Drake dug in for the long haul, allowing the Spaniards to drop their guard over time. With the invaluable assistance of Diego, his men were taught to build shelters and stockades, to make safe havens and depots in which to hide extra provisions along the coast. They would lay low, trim and careen their ships, and gather food and other provisions to place in their storehouses. Meanwhile, John Drake went with Diego to contact the
Cimarrones
in the jungle to ask for their help. It was agreed that they should meet Francis Drake personally, since they had already heard so much about his daring.

On September 14, they met aboard the
Pasco
, and two weeks later, a second group of blacks joined them to seal their bargain “to their great comfort and our content, they rejoicing that they should have some fit opportunity to wreak their wrongs on the Spaniards, we hoping that now our voyage should be bettered.”
⁶

The
Cimarrones
eagerly told the English that the plan could work by attacking the treasure trains in the middle of the Isthmus of Panama. After all, they had been evading Spanish capture for years in the jungles, and they knew each trail, each tree, and each hazard as their own home. The treasure, they informed the English, always moved after the rainy season, resuming only when the flota was either in port or approaching the port of Nombre de Díos. Drake reckoned that that gave them five months to prepare. He must have also realized at that point that the treasure house at Nombre de Díos had been empty when he first tried to rob it! Drake was always a good judge of men, and he immediately agreed to add the former slaves to his trusted inner circle of “Plymouth lads.” They shook hands on a deal and celebrated their partnership aboard the
Pasco
, while they plotted Spain’s downfall.

The
Cimarrones
helped Drake and his men to establish a forward base, just to the east of Nombre de Díos, where they built a fort in just over two weeks. Drake, meanwhile, left for Cartagena with two of the pinnaces to try to get more intelligence, victuals, and prizes, leaving his brother John in charge. Throughout October 1572, Francis Drake terrorized the city of Cartagena and nearly blockaded its port. He chased dozens of ships, seized others, taunted his pursuers, and always escaped unharmed. His impudence knew no bounds.

But Drake had had enough fun. They were in dire need of food and had to return to their base with enough to feed their swelling “army.” At last, fortune smiled on them when a 90-ton victualing Spaniard came across their path, and Drake found “her laden with victual well powdered and dried, which at that present we received as sent as of God’s great mercy.”
⁷

But their luck didn’t hold out. When Drake returned to base, he was told that his brother John had been killed in a skirmish with a Spanish ship. Two months later, his younger brother, Joseph, was the first to die of a mysterious disease that ripped through his crew like no other pestilence they had known before. When the epidemic was over, some 40 percent of the company had perished of yellow fever, and the English had renamed their haven Slaughter Island. While they tried to put their troubles behind them, bury their dead, and keep themselves alive, the
Cimarrone
scouts ran into camp one day to say that the flota had docked at Nombre de Díos.

Drake, seventeen of his remaining men, and thirty
Cimarrones
headed straightaway toward Panama. The dark and murky jungle floor was lit only by the occasional macaw on the wing or the tropical sun filtering through the canopy of trees. Sounds of their footsteps swishing through the undergrowth became their daily companion, while they kept on the lookout for poisonous snakes, anacondas, and lizards. Their aim was to cut off the
trajín
—or treasure train—near Venta Cruces, where the treasure was divided between the barges and the mule train. But something miraculous happened on their fourth day in the jungle. The leader of the
Cimarrones
, Pedro, pointed to a huge tree and asked Drake to go aloft. The captain and Oxenham
exchanged quizzical looks, but he complied. High above the tropical rainforest in the Bay of Darien, in the company of an escaped black slave named Pedro, Drake became the first Englishman to see the massive expanse of the Pacific as he turned his head to the west, and the Caribbean that he knew so well as he wheeled around to the east. Separating the two was a mere twenty leagues of rain forest. We can only imagine Francis Drake’s mind clicking into gear, the elation in his heart, and the foundations for his greatest adventure being laid. Later, Drake said that at that moment he “besought almighty God of his goodness to give him life and leave to sail once again in an English ship in that sea.”
⁸

19. Success at a Cost

The realm is at the present moment so terrified, and the spirits of all so disturbed, that we know not in what words to emphasize to your Majesty the solicitude we make in this dispatch…. These English have so shamelessly opened the door and a way by which, with impunity, whenever they desire, they will attack the pack-trains traveling overland by this highway.

—
MUNICIPAL COUNCIL OF PANAMA TO PHILIP II, FEBRUARY
24, 1573

D
rake knew from experience that a surprise assault was critical to their success. They laid in wait, crouching by the side of the jungle path for what must have seemed an eternity before the tinkling of mule bells rang sweetly in their ears. Suddenly, the gallop of a lone horse coming from the wrong direction warned Drake that all was not as it should be. Before the rider could be stopped he had alerted the muleteers to head back, and that the pirate Drake would pounce on them any moment.
¹
The Spanish cleverly separated out the silver shipment from the more valuable gold—estimated at some £35,000 ($12.32 million or £6.66 million today)—and sent the mules carrying the silver on into Drake’s arms. Realizing that they had been discovered, Drake and Pedro decided that it would be too risky to return to base the same way they had come, and opted instead to boldly take Venta Cruces. The raiding party marched through the town, burning and pillaging as they went. Any casualties incurred were in defense of property, not in brutal murder, according to reports both Spanish and English. Drake had also ordered his men that the women must remain “inviolate,” and he even entered homes to reassure the women personally that none of them would be raped.
²
While there is no excuse for the terror Drake and his raiders inflicted on their victims, this level of humanity in the sixteenth century—let alone in the twentieth or twenty-first—is remarkable.

Now that he had made his strike, Drake once again lay low, hoping to trick the Spaniards into believing that he had left the Caribbean with his paltry treasure. While his good “Plymouth lads” grumbled about the heat, humidity, and their ill-luck, the
Cimarrones
tended the sick and injured and made moccasins for the foot-sore rovers. Drake marveled at their strength, their courage, and above all their loyalty. “Yea many times when some of our company fainted with sickness or weariness,” Drake wrote later, “two
Cimarrones
would carry him [the sick] with ease between them two miles together, and at other times (when need was) they would show themselves no less valiant than industrious and of good judgement.”
³