The Pirate Queen (16 page)

There is little doubt that de Granvelle was loathed by everyone in power except the king. Since Antwerp had closed its doors to English merchants on his insistence, the great merchant houses of Antwerp found themselves taken by surprise by the tightening of credit on the Bourse and the “deadness of trade.”
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Payments from the Merchants Adventurers, other English merchants—and even
Elizabeth herself—were suspended at that time, benefiting the English and devastating the Antwerp financiers.
¹⁰
What had begun as a punishment for English depredations in the Channel and the English adventure at Newhaven (which was seen as meddling in French affairs), was rapidly becoming a threat to Antwerp’s very existence as the main northern hub for the luxury trades.

And worse was still to come. Philip had not had word, as yet, that the trade war with England had escalated. A new “vent” for English cloth had been agreed the previous February at Emden, and when the regent found out and sent word to her brother, she was quick to ban all merchants from the States from trading there on Philip’s orders. Yet, from over a thousand miles away in Spain, the king couldn’t visualize the hardships at Antwerp, nor could he foresee its waning future. He did, however, take great comfort from Spanish intelligence that the main trading cities of the German Hanse refused to trade with the English at Emden that spring, and would continue to do so until their own ancient trading privileges in England were restored to their pre–1552 favorable status. As their ill luck would have it, the autumn harvest was poor, and the Queen of England decreed, in retaliation, a complete embargo on the shipment of grain from England via any means to the Low Countries.
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It was against this backdrop that Hawkins prepared his second voyage. Merchants and the queen who might have otherwise repaid their loans at Antwerp saw a good opportunity to invest in his scheme instead. Others, who had been caught in the wrong end of the financial cycle, having recently repaid their loans in the Low Countries, found themselves unable to sell their goods at the spring or summer markets at Emden, or anywhere else on the Continent. Trapped by the political circumstances, these merchants either went bankrupt or sought new credit and new vents of their own. Whatever their individual situation, Hawkins provided new hope to them all.

By August, de Silva had discovered the truth, and he warned the King of Spain that he had been unable to stop Hawkins sailing. His route had been confirmed by Spanish spies at Plymouth as heading for the Canaries, then on to Guinea and then the West Indies. There was ample time for Philip to intervene with a small squadron, either on the Spanish coast or in the Canaries, which were, after all, Spanish
territory. Yet he chose not to do so. For the man who was purported to have the “greatest brain in the world” this was no oversight, but seemingly a cruel calculation.

Philip had not yet become weary of his personal rule—far from it. But he had insisted on ruling his empire from Spain. He saw every missive, every order, every newsletter, and despite his plethora of “councils,” the King of Spain handled the details of all correspondence on his own. This meant that instead of direct action, he frequently chose to wield his mighty pen. When the king received word that Hawkins would sail regardless, he speedily wrote to Portugal’s boy king, Sebastian, warning him of the voyage to Portuguese-held Guinea. He notified his Council for the Indies in writing—only one of fourteen councils of state in existence at the time—when it met the next morning for its traditional three-hour session. The regent of the Low Countries was informed by letter, as was Cardinal de Granvelle. In fact, it was not uncommon for Philip to dictate and vet more than one hundred letters, licenses, or patents daily in the 1560s, and it was a well-bemoaned fact that no one beside the King of Spain knew for certain what was happening throughout his dominions.
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Philip often focused down on a single event, and frequently sacrificed the important for the insignificant, as would have certainly been the case concerning Hawkins’s fleet.

The Spanish king replied immediately to London to try to stop the voyage at all costs. Philip tempered his request to de Silva, who was, after all, new at his post, by stating that if he couldn’t stop Hawkins, the ambassador must at least keep him informed of his efforts at the English court. Interestingly, the intricacies of the financial cycle had dawned on the king. Philip asked de Silva to delve into the queen’s finances, and particularly whether she still owed money at Antwerp. On September 4, de Silva penned his reply:

I have tried to find out all I could about the finances and the state of the Queen’s treasury. She owes to private people in this country lent on her bills 240,000 crowns and in Flanders 200,000 to Belzares and Esquets with whom she ordinarily does business
[a total of $72.41 million or £39.14 million today]
. They tell me that the larger part of this money has been lent to her by the Germans at an interest of 14%, some at 15% and some at 13, according to the value of money when the advance was made. The City of London and certain private merchants guarantee the payment for her.
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This was not good news. Philip knew that all the penned protestations he could devise would never carry sufficient weight to stop Elizabeth if she had decided on a certain course. Indeed, what was worrying in the intelligence he was receiving was that Cecil—who had already declared his dislike for the new school of adventure, which risked replacing bona fide trade—had some sort of supervisory role in the Hawkins adventure. It also seemed that Cecil was somehow involved in another adventure undertaken at the same time to Guinea—but with a different purpose—by Hawkins’s backer and great London merchant, Sir William Garrard. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, too, had a foot in each camp. If Philip’s spies were right, there was a considerable shift in the tide of thinking in England, and Spain would undoubtedly be harmed.
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Yet still, no direct orders to physically intervene against the English were given.

Whether it was a cunning deceit to allow the English, through Hawkins, to steal from the Portuguese in order to provide Spain with much needed slaves to work plantations and mines in the New World is a rather tempting thought. It was, nonetheless, in many ways, Machiavellian. The Spanish king could not be seen to interfere in Portugal’s affairs even though he was second in line for the Portuguese crown. He may have been an heir to its throne, but unless or until he was king of that country, all he could do was covet Portugal’s wealth, navy, and territory while professing to be its closest ally. Through his failure to act and send a squadron to stop Hawkins, Philip had the perfect platform to use the English outrage to diplomatic advantage with both Portugal and England.

As for Hawkins personally, he fully expected his competent local governors in the West Indies to dispatch the troublesome captain from Plymouth on the spot. In the unlikely event that his governors failed him, Spain would still benefit from the slave trade; England would be shamed; Portugal would be thankful for his efforts; and a Spanish advantage in the Channel and the Low Countries could be achieved. For Philip, the exploits of a lone sea captain, who had not as yet achieved any measure of greatness, in Africa and the West Indies, was only a mild irritant. His main preoccupation remained Channel
piracy and the cessation of trade to the Low Countries. And it was this cessation of trade that would ultimately prove a catastrophe.

Naturally, the Portuguese king felt differently. Portugal had been defending its “colonies” in Africa from French and English interlopers since the 1520s, with the French becoming particularly active over the past ten years, with more than two hundred Portuguese ships seized by French corsairs in that time.
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These seized ships were stuffed to the gunnels with more than slaves; the Guinea coast of Africa represented wealth in gold and precious stones as well.

To make matters worse, Portugal’s hold on the region was tenuous to say the least. The would-be Lusitanian colonizers had already suffered, as well as profited, from African tribal warfare. The ferocious Sumba tribe from central Africa had been displaced westward to the El Mina and Malagueta coasts of Guinea due to drought, leading to the overthrow of smaller peaceful African tribal kingdoms, and the murder and enslavement of these tribes to the Sumba.
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When Martin Frobisher, who was already well known for his tall tales, was imprisoned in Sao Jorge (El Mina) in 1555–56 for piracy, he claimed that no Portuguese dared to go more than a mile from the forts without first obtaining a “passport” from the local rulers, the Sumba.
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Still, King Sebastian of Portugal, who loved more than anything else warring against the African infidel—be he black or Muslim—was more concerned for the time being with the English corsairs, and ordered Aires Cardosso to act as ambassador to London to demand satisfaction from the “heretic” English queen. He also alerted his local governors that Hawkins was on his way.

And so, amid all this animosity brewing and bubbling over in the courts of Spain and Portugal, on October 18, 1564, in the hope of prosperous winds, John Hawkins gave the order to weigh anchor from Plymouth. Yet before they had cleared port, the strong equinoctial gust lashed the
Jesus
around, and one of the ship’s officers was killed by the pulley of a sail in a “sorrowful beginning for them all.”
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But after all his planning, Hawkins couldn’t allow the incident to dampen his or his crew’s spirits, especially as he knew that there was another small fleet of Londoners also heading for the Guinea coast.

Thirty miles out to sea, the Londoners and Hawkins’s fleet met. The
Minion
, the
John the Baptist
, and the
Merlin
—captained by David Cartlet, on behalf of the joint stockholders Sir William Garrard, Benjamin Gonson, Sir William Chester, Thomas Lodge,
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and the Earl of Leicester—were intent on setting up a base in Guinea and mining for gold under the very noses of the Portuguese. Both admirals agreed that the seven ships should sail on together as a “combined” fleet for greater protection against pirates.

After three days of good progress and fair winds, the wind direction and speed changed. Clouds boiled up and the skies blackened, as a true equinox storm suddenly erupted. Waves battered the ships mercilessly for nearly twelve hours, scattering them. When the skies cleared and the sea swells died down, Hawkins saw that his own ship the
Swallow
, and the entire fleet from London, had been lost from sight.
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Since no obvious debris from sunken ships could be seen, Hawkins hoped that the ships—and especially the
Swallow
—had simply been separated. It is obvious from Hawkins’s distress at the time that he hadn’t issued any clear instructions to his company with regard to what they should do in the event of separation, and he blamed himself for this serious omission.

According to the chronicler of the voyage, John Sparke—a merchant and future mayor of Plymouth—there was “no small rejoicing” when they luckily stumbled upon the
Swallow
, becalmed some thirty miles north of Cape Finisterre off the northern coast of Spain. They waited for a wind to carry them around the Iberian peninsula and out into the Atlantic for two days, before turning into shore and sheltering in the Galician port of Ferrol, remembered by the men for its “bleak outlook.” There, Hawkins summoned the masters of all his ships and corrected his error. Naturally, there was no semaphore code as yet to ease communication between ships, nor any other sophisticated remote means of warning. Hawkins ordered that the smaller ships would lead the
Jesus
, staying up weather of her. Each ship was ordered to communicate with him twice daily on the
Jesus
without fail. If Hawkins raised his ensign over the poop of the
Jesus
—or lit two lights at night—they were to come in straightaway to “speak with her.” Three lights meant that the
Jesus
was casting about, and they were to keep the same distance from the lights. If the
bad weather returned, the smaller ships would make a formation tucked in alongside the
Jesus
, or, failing that for whatever reason, alongside the
Solomon
. They were to follow these instructions to the letter until they reached Tenerife. The other ships were also given their own signals: “If any happen to any misfortune, then to show two lights, and shoot off a piece of ordinance. If any lose company, and come in sight again, to make three yaws, and strike the mizzen three times.” Finally, Hawkins gave them his benediction order to “serve God daily, love one another, preserve your victuals, beware of fire, and keep good company.”
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It was the same benediction that Elizabeth had given Hawkins on the eve of his sailing.

Hawkins and his mariners had had a narrow escape in the storm. The same cannot be said for the Londoners. Shortly after their arrival in Ferrol, the
Minion
from the Londoners’ fleet docked with the dreadful news that the
Merlin
had had an explosion in its powder magazine, burst into flames, and sunk. Only a few mariners had survived in a small boat, and had been towed into port behind the
Minion
. Hawkins quickly added the order to his masters that they would need to put their brigantines astern.
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On November 4, the captain mistakenly thought he had reached the Canaries, but he soon realized his error. This was a common enough mistake without the benefit of longitude, even for a reasonably good pilot like Hawkins. Dead reckoning was the only means that Elizabethan sailors had at their disposal to determine longitude, and it would be more than two hundred years before John Harrison discovered an accurate mechanism for its calculation.
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