The Pirate Queen (34 page)

And now, the final factor came into play to clinch Elizabeth’s favor for Drake. Again, Burghley had been urging Elizabeth quite strongly to act at once and marry Francis, the Duke of Alençon. It was the last chance, he thought, for the queen to have a child. There was an edginess at court while power shifted again subtly in favor of Leicester and Walsingham, and away from Burghley. Christopher Hatton had joined ranks with Leicester, and it was their violent opposition to the marriage that won out in the end, temporarily unseating Burghley from pole position.
¹²

All this happened just as Drake made his appearance in court. He knew that Grenville had recently presented his own scheme for sailing into the Pacific to Burghley, and he also knew that, although Grenville was regarded as a renegade with little sea experience to cope
successfully with the difficult conditions in the Strait of Magellan, he talked a very good game. Drake’s old ship’s master, John Oxenham, had recently embarked, too, in April on a small voyage of his own—to carry a pinnace across the Isthmus of Panama and raid the Pacific. Oxenham had no means of garnering government support; and if Grenville did, Drake’s chances for a major plundering exploit would be at an end.
¹³

But the time “wasted” in Ireland had been worthwhile in finding him patronage among the gentlemen adventurers at court as his backers. It had cost him dearly, however, in being the second Englishman ever to reach the Pacific.
¹⁴
What Drake had been temporarily unaware of was the delicate change in court power that wafted on the air. When Drake delivered his letter of introduction from Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, to Sir Francis Walsingham, his timing proved superb.

What followed is shrouded in secrecy, as were all reports that later referred to Drake’s voyage of circumnavigation. Walsingham and Leicester were, however, his first and greatest promoters. This “triumvirate” embodied Philip II’s most entrenched enemies, and cleverest foes. Drake put up £1,000 ($341,621 or £184,660 today) himself to prove that he believed in his plan. John Hawkins followed with £500 ($170,811 or £92,330 today). William Winter, not to be outdone, contributed £750 ($256,216 or £138,495 today), along with the Lord Admiral Lincoln, Sir Francis Walsingham, the Earl of Leicester, and Christopher Hatton. George Winter, like Hawkins, invested £500. It was now up to Walsingham and Leicester to argue Drake’s case before Elizabeth.
¹⁵
From the makeup of his investors, it would certainly have been evident to the queen that Drake’s voyage had anti-Spanish—and not trading or imperialistic—motivations. In fact, when she met with Drake, she agreed to the captain’s terms,

that it might please her Majesty to grant…her ship the
Swallow
with her tackle, apparel, and only four culverins, with two falcons of brass [that] might be left to the said ship with the ordnance afore named might be valued by indifferent [independent] persons and that sum which the same shall amount unto her Highness to bear such portion as she shall like, and for the rest, the same to be born by the parties that shall be thought…Upon good assurances to be given to the Exchequer…

…that the Queen’s Majesty may be made privy to the truth of the voyage, and yet the color [cover] to be given out to Alexandria, which in effect is ready done by a licence procured from the Turks.
¹⁶

Burghley, though, worried Walsingham and Leicester. If he got wind of an expedition bent on plunder, he would surely persuade the notoriously fickle queen against “annoying the King of Spain.” And so, the solution to subvert Burghley was to put about—in a very convincing manner—that Drake’s destination was Alexandria, since trade to the eastern Mediterranean had been reopened once more. The queen herself was certainly in the know, for no pen was ever put to paper to confirm the nature of the highly provocative escapade other than what she wrote above, and she engaged Drake in the subterfuge by agreeing to invest on condition that Drake understood her “special commandment that of all men, my lord treasurer Burghley should not know about it.”
¹⁷

Finally, in July 1577, the queen decided. Drake could go to “Alexandria.” Had John Dee seen into the stars to tell her that the moment was right? Since Drake’s greatest voyage had begun as a state secret bent on plunder—and ended as a state secret for the achievements he made—we will never know. Only a remnant of Drake’s instructions and how he readied his fleet survive. The rest is lost in the fog of history.

What we do know is that on November 15, 1577, his tiny fleet comprising the 100-ton bark,
Pelican
; the 80-ton
Elizabeth
; the store ship
Swan;
the puny merchantman,
Marigold
; and the fleet’s scout and messenger ship,
Christopher
, set sail in Plymouth Sound. Drake and his crew of 164 men were sent almost like “doves from the ark” to perform miracles. The first miracle was to somehow beat the King of Spain in his own empire. The second was setting themselves against the vast and unknown expanses of sea. Despite being beaten back into harbor virtually straightaway, Drake waited out the Channel storms, and set sail again on December 13, 1577 on the historic voyage.

Elizabeth was no fool, and she knew that nothing could be kept a secret for long from Burghley, as he ran his own spy network within court. But she could hope that the dark secret that she, Drake, Leicester, Walsingham, and her main courtiers were going to raid Spanish shipping in the Pacific just might elude him for a time. By then, hopefully, Captain Francis Drake would have returned from the Pacific with his holds filled with gold. England was emerging—whether Elizabeth liked it or not—as the political leader of European Protestants, and a fledgling world power, fighting “old” Catholic Europe with any tools she had at her disposal. And Drake was the sharpest tool in the box.

23. The Northwest and the Company of Kathai

Ensnared by the enticements of this world or burning with a desire for riches…

—DR. JOHN DEE, C.
1560

D
rake’s success and his ability to fund his South Seas project was in small part due to the gold fever that had swept the court and London after Frobisher’s voyage. But who was the “leak” that began gold fever in the first place? There were many possibilities, with Michael Lok and Martin Frobisher at the top of the list. Fifty years after Elizabethan England, the Dutch suffered from Tulipomania, when a single rare tulip could fetch more than a fine home. While it’s expedient to blame Lok or Frobisher, their investor list for the second expedition—excluding Elizabeth and Burghley—would not have been above suspicion as perpetrators of the act. The likes of the Earls of Leicester, Warwick, and Sussex, any of the West Countrymen, or Walsingham himself could have been involved to a greater or lesser extent.

Whatever the truth of the matter, gold fever did hit London and the court—hard. Anyone who was anyone clamored for shares in the new joint stock company that Lok was rumored to be setting up. “Frobisher…has given it as his decided opinion,” wrote Sir Philip Sidney to his old friend and courtier Hubert Languet, “that the island is so productive in metals, as to seem very far to surpass the country of Peru, at least as it now is. There are also six other islands near to this, which seem very little inferior.”
¹

In response, a grateful Lok launched a new joint stock company in March 1577, called the Company of Kathai, or Cathay Company, to manage the discovery and exploitation of gold in North America.
Its chief subscribers were Elizabeth and her court, with a total investment of £5,150 ($1.77 million or £955,737 today). The queen also ventured her 200-ton
Aid
.
²
Unlike the earlier voyage, it was truly a royal expedition with Edward Fenton, the Earl of Warwick’s handpicked man, as captain of the
Gabriel
, and Gilbert Yorke, the lord admiral’s choice, commanding the
Michael
.
³
Frobisher’s lieutenant, George Beste, was Christopher Hatton’s representative. The chronicler for the expedition was Dionyse Settle, who was the secretary of George Clifford, the Earl of Cumberland.
⁴
The admiral, the
Michael
, carried 134 men in total, including 11 gentlemen, 3 “goldfiners” [gold refiners], 20 soldiers, 8 miners, and a number of convicts from the Forest of Dean, brought along as “expendable” colonists for Frobisher to land on the imaginary Friesland. Life in the bleak winter landscape was deemed a reprieve for criminals, and a way for them to redeem themselves back into society. This was the first hint of a policy of “transportation” that would blight the English Empire for forty years of the nineteenth century. Frobisher’s instructions regarding these poor souls was to land them on Friesland, and then—if possible—“to speak with them on your return.” Fortunately for them, Frobisher off-loaded the convicts at Harwich, claiming that his ship was overloaded.

The orders received in the name of the queen to Frobisher and the other shareholders in the Cathay Company were quite clear:

To have regard that there be no spoil of the provisions taken in the ships.

To dismiss, before departure or on the way, any that are mutinous.

To depart before 12 May and make way north or west to Meta Incognita and the Countess of Warwick’s island and sound in the Straight, which we name Frobisher’s Strait, having been discovered by yourself two years since. So to order your course that the ships do not lose each other, and if any wilfulness or negligence appear in any person in charge, to punish such offender sharply, to the example of others.

On arriving at the Countess of Warwick’s island and sound, to harbor your vessels, and repair to the mines and minerals where you wrought last year, and set the men to work to gather the ore, seeing they are well placed from danger and malice of the people and any other extremity.

If you find richer mines than those whence you had your last year’s lading, you shall remove and work them if convenient.

To search for and consider of an apt place where you may best plant and fortify the 100 men you leave to inhabit there, against the people and all other extremities.

To leave with Capt. Fenton the 100 persons, with orders to keep a journal of proceedings, noting what part of the year is most free from ice, and with him the
Gabriel, Michael,
and
Judith
with provisions &c.

To instruct all the people in any conference with the natives, to behave so as to secure their friendship.

After you have safely harbored your ships, set your miners to work, &c; if time permit, you are to repair with the two barks to the place where you lost your men the first year, to search for mines, and to discover 50 to 100 leagues further westward, as the opening of the strait by water will lead, that you may be certain you are entered the South Sea, called
Mer de Sud,
and in your passage to learn all you can; but not to tarry long, that you may be able to return in due time.

To consider what place is most convenient to fortify for defence of the mines, and possessing of the country, and to bring home perfect notes and maps thereof, to be kept in secret and so delivered to us.

Not to suffer any vessel laden with ore to set sail unto the day fixed in the charter party, except you see good cause, but keep all together till your arrival in the Thames…

We chiefly desire to know the temperature of these northwest parts, therefore you shall write an account of how any further discovery of the lands of seas lying within 200 leagues of the place fortified for our people may be achieved…

No person is to make an assay of metal or ore in Meta Incog. But those to whom the office is assigned, except yourself, your lieutenant-general, and substitutes; nor is any person to take up or keep for his private use any ore, precious stone &c. found in that land but deliver the same to you or your lieutenant, on pain of forfeiting treble the value out of his wages, and other punishment.

To keep a record of all ore and minerals found, as also specimens thereof in boxes, and the localities of discovery…the boxes to be delivered to the treasurer of the company of Merchant Adventurers for northwest affairs on your return…

To bring back 800 tons or more if possible of the said ore, and return into the Thames…

You shall have power to punish treason, mutiny, or other disorder among the persons employed.
⁵

Sailing on May 31, 1577, Frobisher once again reached the southern tip of the mythical island of Friesland, but was unable to make landfall due to the weather, rough seas, and ice. He plowed on in the icy waters to Little Hall’s Island and the southern tip of Frobisher Bay, where some highly unsatisfactory ore samples were taken. The voyage was beginning to look distinctly unpromising. Since his first Inuit captive had created such a sensation in London, Frobisher had in mind to bring others back home; and though it was clearly not a stated purpose of the journey, it would certainly deflect attention away from the possibility that they might not find gold. Despite Dr. Dee’s instruction, the statements and audit undertaken after the voyage show that neither Frobisher nor his gentlemen adventurers had the remotest inclination or understanding of how good relations with a native population could have helped make the expedition a success.