The Pirate Queen (36 page)
Authors: Susan Ronald
Doughty had been well educated, had powerful connections at court, and was an insufferable snob—all things that Drake was not. It rankled with him that Drake, and men like Hawkins and Winter, used their sea captaincies as a means of stepping up the social ladder. Little else can explain his path to self-destruction, even his later assertion that he was secretly in the pay of Lord Burghley. He couldn’t fathom Drake’s strict discipline with his lawless mariners, nor why he, Doughty, had to abide by the same rules and play second fiddle to an uneducated sailor like Drake. But even Drake’s prisoners saw the point, and they remarked on the special relationships he had with his men. In a statement to Don Martín Enríquez from Drake’s former prisoner Francisco de Zátate, “He treats them [his men] with affection, and they treat him with respect.”
3
With Doughty aboard the
Pelican
and Drake now captaining the
Mary
, Thomas Doughty’s ego inflated beyond his ability to use any tact in his accusations against Drake. John Doughty, Thomas’s younger brother, boasted that both he and his brother could summon up the powers of witchcraft, and bring “the Devil to bear down upon the ship’s company” as a bear or a lion, if they so desired. The superstitious seamen were evidently in fear of their lives and dared not, at first, to tell their captain. But matters came to a head when Thomas Doughty sent a mysteriously threatening missive to Drake that he would shortly “have more need of me than I shall have of the voyage.”
4
Drake finally snapped. He sent his trumpeter John Brewer, Hatton’s faithful servant, to fetch Doughty back to the
Mary
.
5
When Brewer delivered the general’s message, Doughty started a scuffle
and refused. Brewer returned, eventually, without the reprobate in tow, so Drake beat the
Mary
round to join the
Pelican
, calling Doughty aboard. While Doughty climbed the ladder, Drake exclaimed “Stay there, Thomas Doughty! For I must send you to another place.”
6
The oarsmen were commanded to remove Doughty to the fly boat, the
Swan
, and he was compelled to go. Doughty complained bitterly to the
Swan
’s captain, John Chester, that he was being treated as a prisoner, but Chester—like Drake—made no reply.
With Doughty under wraps, the fleet slowly headed across the vast Atlantic on its southwesterly route. They would spend sixty days and nights without the sight or smell of land until on April 5, 1578, they breathed in the familiar “very sweet smell” at 31
o
30' south. At last, they had reached the coast of Brazil. They sailed straight past the well-trodden trading posts surrounding the River Plate, while Drake concentrated on the main task at hand—consulting Nuño’s charts and comparing them to the coastline. Only one European ship had ever passed through the Strait of Magellan before—fifty-eight years earlier—and Magellan, its captain, was killed before the circumnavigation voyage had been completed. Whether or not Drake had seriously intended to go around the world at this stage has been a subject of hot debate, but what was in no doubt was that he was planning to bring his personal war against Philip of Spain to the Pacific. Understanding Nuño’s charts, how the currents worked, the reversal of the magnetic pole in the Southern Hemisphere were all critical not only to Drake keeping himself and his crew alive, but also to eventual success.
As the Southern Hemisphere’s autumn gripped the tiny flotilla in its clutches, the seas swelled, and the likelihood of finding fresh supplies dwindled. The fleet was scattered, but Drake had appointed a rendezvous with Nuño’s help. When Drake’s ships reassembled at Bahia Nodales (Argentina) at 47
o
57' he learned that Doughty was still making mischief. One of Drake’s men, John Saracold, bluntly remarked to the commander in front of Doughty that there “were traitors aboard” and that Drake would do well to deal with them as Magellan had done, as an example to the others. Doughty cried out that Drake had no authority to hang him, or even put him on trial. But since Doughty had made it clear to the gentlemen adventurers aboard the
Swan
that mucking in alongside rough sailors was beneath
them, he left Drake with little choice as to the outcome. Mutiny was only a short step away.
Drake gave the order to break up the
Swan
to consolidate the fleet, ordering the Doughty brothers aboard the
Christopher.
When they refused to go, Drake cut their dramatics short by telling his men to hoist them aboard with the ship’s tackle. It was obvious to Drake that the men were beginning to take sides, and unless Doughty changed his ways immediately, his disobedience could no longer go unpunished. With the seas continually swelling the farther south they sailed, Drake realized that he would need to scuttle the
Christopher
as well, or else they would lose the weather, wasting time waiting to reassemble the fleet. He boarded the
Elizabeth
and warned his men that “a very bad couple of men” would be sent to them, “the which he did not know how to carry along with him…Thomas Doughty is a conjuror, a seditious fellow…and his brother…a witch, a poisoner and such a one as the world can judge of. I cannot tell from whence he came, but from the Devil I think.”
7
Then he reminded his men that they were on a quest for treasure beyond their wildest dreams. He could only hope they would remain focused on the last part of his message.
Not far north of the Strait of Magellan stood a ghostlike relic of doom and foreboding—the fifty-eight-year-old wooden scaffold erected by Ferdinand Magellan when he hanged one of his men for mutiny. Whether or not the eerie sight of Magellan’s gallows stirred Drake into action as they finally entered the harbor of Port St. Julian was never recorded, but the fact remains that at Port St. Julian, Thomas Doughty would be put on trial at last. But first Drake needed to secure their anchorage, for shortly after they arrived, a fatal skirmish with the local Indians saw two of Drake’s men killed. To avoid further attacks by the hostile natives, the Englishmen were ordered to pitch their tents on a rocky island in the harbor. And still, in the midst of grave danger, Doughty continually criticized their commander. The following day, they were all summoned before Drake. He was mightily fed up. Thomas Doughty would be tried for mutiny and witchcraft.
Doughty, a clever, trained lawyer, claimed that Drake had no jurisdiction to put him on trial and that he would answer only to the “Queen’s court” in England. He was, strictly speaking, right. Unless
Drake could produce a written commission signed by the queen herself, he had no authority to act
in loco reginae
. But how could Drake produce such a document when Elizabeth had sworn him to secrecy, even from Burghley? He, like so many “spies” and agents provocateurs before and after him, had no papers for the express reason that the queen could disown their actions if they were captured. All Drake carried with him was his written instructions, unendorsed by queen or council. Doughty must have known this, and his claim that Drake did not have a royal commission almost had the proceedings go his way.
Drake blustered that Doughty had poisoned the Earl of Essex, that he was poisoning his men against him, too. Doughty, instead of staying on strong ground, allowed himself to get diverted into a shouting match with Drake, claiming that he was in the pay of Lord Burghley, who had knowledge of the voyage from none other than Doughty himself. “Lo, my masters,” Drake declared, “what this fellow hath done! God will have his treacheries all known for Her Majesty gave me special commandment that of all men my lord treasurer should not know it, but to see his own mouth hath betrayed him!”
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Now it was made generally known to the sailors that Burghley disapproved of plundering and would have stopped their voyage from setting sail if he had known their true purpose. Drake produced some papers for his men, presumably his written instructions. They were, after all, now sworn in properly as jurors of the kangaroo court. Eventually, Drake prevailed, and they supported him in his assertion that he had the queen’s blessing. Witnesses for and against Doughty were heard. Then, Drake set out the alternatives to the jurors once all the evidence had been heard for and against Doughty:
And now my masters, consider what a great voyage we are like to make, the like was never made out of England, for by the same the worst in this fleet shall become a gentleman, and if this voyage go not forward, which I cannot see how possible it should if this man live, what a reproach it will be, not only unto our country but especially unto us, the very simplest here may consider of. Therefore, my masters, they that think this man worthy to die, let them with me hold up their hands.
9
The choices were stark. If they returned home to have Doughty tried, they would incur the wrath of the queen, who Drake maintained to his men, had ventured a thousand crowns. And that was before their other powerful backers like Hatton, Walsingham, and Leicester sank their teeth into them. To send Doughty back home with a ship, and in the company of some men (for Doughty was no sailor), would weaken the expedition too much and put their own lives at risk. To leave Doughty at Port St. Julian would guarantee him a slow and lingering death at the hands of hostile natives. The men voted unanimously to execute Doughty.
In the end, Doughty met his maker with great courage befitting an Elizabethan gentleman. He chose to die by the axe, and made his will. He shared the sacrament with Drake, and then they had a last dinner together. At the end, they had a few moments together, but their conversation was never recorded. He begged all the men to forgive him, and Drake promised that there would be no further reprisals—specifically against Doughty’s younger brother, John. Doughty’s head was severed in one blow then held aloft by Drake as the head of a mutineer.
Drake reminded his men of the huge task ahead of them. There would be no arbitrary class distinctions between them any longer. Each life would depend in future upon the goodwill of the others. Old wounds from the Doughty business could not be allowed to fester, and they must all work together for queen and country. If they failed to sail on, “what triumph it would be to Spain and Portugal, and again the like would never be attempted.” Having said his piece, Drake begged the men to take a vote on whether or not they wanted to continue. He had been relying on promise of Spanish treasure and plunder, of riches beyond their wildest imaginings, not upon any twentieth century notion of patriotism. They agreed to follow their commander to the ends of the world.
And so, on August 17, 1578, nearly two months to the day after they reached Port St. Julian, that desolate site of two executions for mutiny, Drake and his men burned the
Mary
to reduce the squadron to just the
Pelican
, the
Elizabeth
, and the
Marigold
, and sailed into the unknown.
But escaping from these straits and miseries, as it were through the needle’s eye…we could now no longer forbear, but must needs find some place of refuge…thus worn out by so many and so long intolerable toils; the like whereof, it is supposed, no traveler hath felt, neither hath there ever been such a tempest, so violent and of such continuance since Noah’s flood….
—SIR FRANCIS DRAKE, OCTOBER
1579
T
hree days later, the ships were confronted with the Cape of Virgins some four leagues off, rising sharply as sheer, gray peaks in the distance. These were the sentinels that guarded the entry to the Strait of Magellan “full of black stars against which the sea beating, showed as it were, the spoutings of whales.”
1
It was a terrifying and solemn moment, and breathtakingly momentous for Drake and his men. The seas swelled and rocked them off their feet, as if in warning that they should not dare to enter the forbidden territory. The moment of awe had to pass if they were to become masters of their destiny, Drake’s instinct told him, so he ordered the fleet to strike their topsails in homage to their Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth. Then in remembrance of Christopher Hatton, the
Pelican
was rechristened The
Golden Hind
.
2
With Doughty’s demise still fresh in his mind, it was a necessary demonstration of respect for his patron.
The ceremonies had the desired effect of whipping up the men’s lust for plunder and glory. But until they were favored with a good wind from the northeast, entering the straits would be impossible. And so they waited in the shadows of the Cape of Virgins beating back and forth against the current. And then they waited more. Finally, two long days later, the ships entered the yawning mouth
of the Strait of Magellan, which must have seemed biblical to the preaching side of Drake, reminding him of Jonah and the “great fish.” No one aboard any of the ships—including their Portuguese pilot, Nuño da Silva—had ever passed through the forbidding straits before. No one even knew that it was a three-hundred-mile-long twisting waterway. All charts were hopelessly inaccurate. All they knew is that it was riddled with false trails and turns and had claimed the lives of hundreds of sailors before them. They also knew—falsely, as it turns out—that the Strait of Magellan was the channel between the tip of South America and “Terra Australis.” They could only pray that the winds would remain at their backs, and the currents run steadily from east to west by northwest.
Drake ordered that they keep to midchannel to avoid any unknown shoals, which at first was relatively easy, for “the ebbings and flowings [there] being as orderly as on other coasts.”
3
The shores to either side were flat and low at this point, but the general knew better than to breathe any sighs of relief. On August 24, St. Bartholomew’s Day, they “fell with three islands bearing triangle-wise one from another; one of them was very fair and large and of fruitful soil, upon which, being next unto us and the weather very calm, our general with his gentlemen and certain of his mariners, then landed, taking possession thereof in Her Majesty’s name, and to her use, and called the same Elizabeth Island.”
4
They christened the other two islands St. George, after England’s flag, and St. Bartholomew, to mark the day. Since the weather was so good, Drake gave the order to reprovision and scavenge for food and wood. The discovery of a human skeleton on St. George’s drove home to them again the dangerous nature of their expedition.
