Under the Bloody Flag (21 page)

Frobisher’s piratical venturing was part of a wider problem of maritime disorder which was increasingly diverse in character. In August 1566 a merchant of Wexford complained of the spoil of his ship off Land’s End by a French vessel under the command of an English captain, and with a crew that included Irish kern (or soldiers). About the same time the council investigated an unusual case of suspected wrecking and spoil within Mount’s Bay, involving a Flemish vessel bound for Spain, as well as complaints of piracy along the coast on a Portuguese ship by a group of ‘certaine Frenchmen and a negro’.
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The activities of such mixed groups of rovers reinforced the growing international threat of piracy during the 1560s, as demonstrated in the cooperation between English and French Huguenot men-of-war, privateers and pirates. The French experience of Caribbean plunder served to broaden the horizons of the English, while promoting loose bonds and alliances that could be represented as part of the common cause of international Protestantism against the threat of Catholic Spain.

Despite repeated attempts to tackle maritime disorder and lawlessness, by the later 1560s the Elizabethan regime was faced with widespread overseas complaints against the activities of pirates and rovers. During 1567 the Portuguese complained of numerous piracies committed by the English during the previous decade. The following year they estimated their losses to English piracy at 600,000 ducats. During May 1568 the French King, Charles IX, sought restitution from the Queen on behalf of one of his subjects whose vessel had been seized by English pirates. The Spanish also complained of English rovers who ‘openly sail out of port, and having captured ships belonging to the subjects of the King … publicly sell the cargoes and detain the crews’. In addition, the French claimed that their shipping was plundered by groups of English and Huguenot rovers, with the continued support of the inhabitants of the coastal communities of south and south-east England. In one incident a vessel of Marseille, returning to the Mediterranean with a rich cargo from Flanders, was seized by a group of rovers and brought into Southampton. Although the pirates were arrested, they were subsequently released with their prize, allegedly on the orders of the mayor. Against this disturbed background, the regime enjoyed an important success with the arrest and imprisonment of Phetiplace in Chester Castle.
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Slave traders, pirates and privateers

The English attack on Iberian trade, which grew in intensity during the 1560s, seriously disrupted Anglo-Spanish relations. Grievances and mutual recriminations concerning commerce and plunder became entangled with political and religious divisions. At a time when the Spanish monarchy was challenged by wide-ranging problems, the spread of English piratical activity not only endangered Iberian coastal waters but also threatened commercial and imperial interests beyond Europe. Under these conditions the growth of English maritime enterprise in west Africa and the Caribbean, partly in competition and cooperation with French adventurers, contributed to a dramatic re-shaping of English depredation during the later 1560s and early 1570s, in which trade and plunder overlapped.

English commercial activity in Guinea originated during the 1540s. From the outset it took the form of an aggressive enterprise which was prone to violence and plunder. It was supported by a diverse group of powerful and well-connected promoters who were initially interested in the profitable trade in gold, ivory and pepper. These adventurers sent out substantial, well-armed vessels that were able to defend themselves against the threat of Portuguese attack, while carrying a sufficient company of men capable of surviving the hazards of long voyages into a deadly tropical environment. The attraction of the Guinea trade, for profit or plunder, appealed to certain types of seafarers, including sea captains such as Thomas Wyndham, who had extensive experience of disorderly and piratical venturing.
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The ambiguous relationship between commerce and plunder in the Guinea trade was demonstrated by William Towerson’s third and final voyage to west Africa during 1557. Towerson had already clashed with the Portuguese along the coast of Guinea in 1556. The following year, with a fleet of four vessels, he was involved in extensive pillage and plunder, tenuously justified by the war with France, which included setting fire to the African settlement of Shamma. Outward-bound Towerson and his company stopped and searched two vessels of Danzig on suspicion that they were carrying French commodities. Although Towerson and his officers did not want to delay the voyage, in response to demands from the company it was agreed that every man could take out of the vessels provisions and other necessities. In practice, as a subsequent account admitted, Towerson’s men ransacked the Danzigers ‘and spoiled them so much, that of very pity we gave them a compasse, a running glasse, a lead and a line, certain bread and candles, and what apparel of theirs we could finde’.
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A fortnight later Towerson encountered a Spanish naval expedition at the Canary Islands, bound for the Caribbean. Although the meeting between the two fleets was friendly, it threatened to turn violent after Towerson refused to lower his flag to the Spanish Admiral. Shortly after reaching the coast of Guinea the English skirmished with a Portuguese fleet of five vessels. Several days later they clashed with three French ships sailing together, in a determined attempt to stop their trade. The English seized one of the French ships, laden with fifty pounds of gold, but the others escaped. The activities of the French traders, who had acquired 700 pounds of gold by the time of Towerson’s arrival, limited the commercial opportunities for their rivals. After struggling to trade with various settlements along the coast, in the face of increasing African hostility Towerson and his men burnt and spoiled the town of Shamma. With disease ravaging the company, and the supply of provisions running out, the expedition returned for England in a desperate condition. One of the ships, the
Tiger
, with a crew that was reduced to six men, was so leaky that it was abandoned at sea. The survivors appear to have been transferred aboard Towerson’s vessel, the
Minion
. By the time it reached Cape Finisterre, however, there were only twelve healthy men remaining to complete the voyage.
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The predatory characteristics of the early English Guinea trade, which were amplified during the 1560s by a view among some traders of the Africans as prey, invited reprisals and strong diplomatic protests from Portugal and Spain. For the Iberian monarchies, who were concerned to protect their interests beyond Europe, commercial interlopers were corsairs or pirates, whose marauding activities threatened the integrity of vulnerable seaborne empires. As the author of the account of Towerson’s voyage of 1557 acknowledged, adventurers engaged in the Guinea trade anticipated retaliation from Portugal or Spain, notwithstanding peace with England.
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The condition of the Guinea trade grew worse during the first decade of the Elizabethan regime. Spanish and Portuguese complaints aroused the resentment of English adventurers who insisted on their freedom to trade in west Africa with the support of the Queen. The Spanish ambassador repeatedly tried to prevent English vessels from sailing to Guinea, but Elizabeth’s councillors, including Cecil, aggressively defended such voyaging. Although Elizabeth was more diplomatic in her response to Iberian complaints, she maintained the right of English adventurers to trade in the region. In November 1564 the Queen informed the Spanish ambassador that ‘she had ordered her subjects not to go to places where the King held sway, and if they contravened these orders she would have them punished, but that there was no reason why they should be forbidden to go where the French went every year’.
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In fact, leading members of the regime, as well as the Queen, were increasingly identified with the Guinea trade. While the Queen loaned ships to Guinea traders, in return for a share in the profits of the voyage, courtiers and councillors – including Elizabeth’s favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester – were members of trading syndicates which included city traders and naval officials.

The Guinea trade thus became an armed struggle, marked as much by plunder and reprisals as by peaceful commerce and exchange. The expedition led by George Fenner, in association with his brother, Edward, during 1567 underlines the unstable relationship between trade and plunder, and its broader implications for Anglo-Portuguese relations. The Fenners were of a Sussex family, who had acquired varied interests in trade and shipping, including naval experience. To some extent they were representative of a growing number of ambitious and aggressive provincial adventurers who were attracted by the profitable prospects of Atlantic enterprise. Like the Hawkins dynasty, they would have vigorously repudiated accusations of piracy, though their maritime ventures were often predatory in purpose and piratical in practice.

The expedition to Guinea left Plymouth in December 1566, made up of a fleet of three vessels, including the
Castle of Comfort
, a powerful and well-armed man-of-war. During a tense encounter with the Spanish at the Canary Islands they met Edward Cooke, an adventurer from Southampton, whose activities during these years aroused repeated suspicions of piracy. When the Fenners reached Guinea their trade was thwarted by hostility from the Portuguese and their African allies. Near Cape Blanco a trading party went ashore, but it was attacked by Africans who were armed with poisoned arrows. Four of Fenner’s men later died from their wounds. Two others were taken prisoner, evidently in retaliation for the seizure of three Africans by the company of another English vessel cruising along the coast. Sailing around the Cape Verde Islands, the expedition was welcomed by Portuguese renegades, but resisted by six Portuguese ships. On the return voyage to England it was attacked at the Azores by a Portuguese fleet of seven vessels. After a bloody conflict the Portuguese withdrew, allowing the English to repair their damaged ships and continue their homeward voyage. As the expedition entered the Channel, it unexpectedly met a Portuguese ship laden with sugar and cotton, from which the English acquired forty chests of sugar in exchange for five Africans. The conclusion to this transaction was threatened by the approach of two armed vessels, suspected of being rovers. In the face of English resistance, the pirates or privateers abandoned their attack, enabling Fenner to acquire ten more chests of sugar in return for protecting his Portuguese trading partner.
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Although the voyage underlined the inherent risks of the Guinea trade, it also confirmed the naval weaknesses of Portugal in the Atlantic, encouraging the ambitions of English adventurers, despite their limited knowledge of west Africa which left them heavily dependent on the assistance of Portuguese renegades or rival French traders.

In these circumstances English attempts to break into the transatlantic slave trade during the 1560s had far-reaching implications for the expansion of long-distance, organized plunder, as much as for commercial development. The ambivalent character of the voyages promoted by John Hawkins and his partners meant that aggressive commercial venturing and depredation reinforced each other. These ventures occurred at a time of growing hostility towards Spain which paved the way for the emergence of militant maritime and colonial venturing, while encouraging transatlantic piracy and privateering. The development of more ambitious and diversified forms of depredation was also influenced by French activity across the Atlantic, particularly the attempts of Huguenot adventurers to establish an outpost in Florida to serve as a base from which to plunder Spanish shipping leaving the Caribbean. The interest that Hawkins and others showed in the French settlement of Florida suggests a speculative approach to slaving, overlaid by the potential for hostile action against Spain, which may partly explain why the English withdrew so rapidly from the trade after the later 1560s.

Hawkins sent out four slave-trading expeditions to Guinea and thence to the Caribbean during the 1560s. The first voyage of 1562 made such a profit that the Queen acquired a stake in succeeding expeditions through the loan of the
Jesus of Lübeck
, a powerful but ageing naval vessel. The second voyage may have earned a profit of 60 per cent, reinforcing the suspicions of de Silva that the English were ‘waxing fat on the spoils of the Indies’.
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However, a third voyage, led by John Lovell, was probably unprofitable. Although the Spanish made a determined effort to stop further voyages to the Caribbean, a fourth and larger expedition was sent out in 1567. Its disastrous conclusion, when Hawkins and his company clashed with a Spanish fleet at San Juan de Ulua, effectively killed off serious interest in the slave trade. Hawkins and a number of survivors, including his younger kinsman, Francis Drake, barely escaped with their lives.

To a considerable degree the commercial success of Hawkins’ voyages depended on Iberian cooperation or collusion. During this early phase of venturing, Portuguese renegades were a means by which the English were able to establish limited trading contacts in west Africa, though African agency was also an essential characteristic of slave trading. During his last voyage Hawkins established an opportunistic alliance with an African leader in an attempt to procure slaves through a joint raid on a rival settlement. On the other side of the Atlantic, moreover, Hawkins was only able to dispose of his human cargo with the connivance of Spanish settlers or colonial officials in scattered markets, ranging from settlements along the northern coast of Hispaniola to the mainland of South America. Thus during his second voyage he relied on Cristobal de Llerena, ‘a negro … who had been brought up in Portugal’, to act as an interpreter and intermediary in negotiations with Spanish officials at Borburata for a trading licence. Evidently, Llerena was a trader of Jamaica who was probably involved in the slave trade. He was taken, or rescued, by the English in Guinea, where he was a prisoner of a group of Africans. Furthermore, on his final slaving voyage Hawkins received aid at Rio de la Hacha from two runaway slaves who offered to guide the English into the interior, where bullion belonging to the King of Spain was buried, in exchange for their freedom. Following negotiations with local officials, however, the runaways were returned for a ransom of 4,000 ducats. They were subsequently executed by the Spanish.
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