The Pirate Queen (39 page)

As they sailed around into the Celebes Sea, the warm green waters hid the last great danger that Drake would have to face—a long, steep,
coral reef only seven feet below the surface. The winds were driving them southward rather than west, and soon they found themselves lost in a maze of shallows and islands along the fingerlike east coast of the Celebes. Without any charts, maps, or personal knowledge, they had to navigate their way through—constantly beating back and forth—with “extraordinary care and circumspection.”
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Then, on January 9, 1580, at nine
P.M.
, the unmistakable and spectacular grinding of the ship’s wooden hull against the reef rocked the
Hind
. She had run aground and was listing perilously on the rocks.
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In that single moment, all could have been lost, and no one was more acutely aware of that fact than the commander. Drake and his men began bailing the water out of the hold to inspect the damage. Somehow, most of the timbers were still intact and able to be repaired, if only they could work the ship loose from the reef. Drake took soundings, and only a single length away from the ship, the sea was so deep that he could find no sea floor. There was, however, no safe ground for the men to stand upon to haul the
Hind
off, and the nearest land, by their reckoning, was almost twenty miles away. Their pinnace could take only a third of their crew.

In the morning, Drake took his soundings again with no better results. Then he prayed, and his recalcitrant preacher Fletcher gave them the sacrament. The only alternative left to them, Drake said, was to lighten the
Hind
’s load. Three tons of cloves, victuals, ammunition, and two pieces of artillery were eventually tossed overboard, yet still the ship held fast. Then, as if by divine will, in the late afternoon the wind changed, and the
Hind
slid like an ungainly whale into deep water.
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Understandably, the next leg of the
Hind
’s voyage is not easily decipherable since the geography was completely unknown to Drake. Nonetheless, the
Hind
found itself at sea again, and was able to refit and recover from their ordeal at an island, avoiding the Malacca Strait, somewhere south of Java. Drake, despite the Portuguese presence in the region, was the first European to navigate successfully Java’s southern coast, proving it was an island, separate from Terra Australis.

From the tip of Java, Drake and his men sailed out into the Indian Ocean on March 26, 1580, reaching the Cape of Good Hope in June. By the time they made landfall along the western coast of Africa
at Sierra Leone, their water supplies were dangerously low, with only a half a pint to share between three men. Amazingly this 9,700-mile stretch of the voyage—from the tip of Java to Sierra Leone—is barely documented, though it must feature among Drake’s greatest achievements, for even in the eighteenth century, it was “a thing hardly to be credited, and which was never performed by any mariner before his time or since.”
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His navigation of these waters in the tiny
Hind
without a safe base or any reliable map is tantamount to being launched to the moon out of a cannon, orbiting without instruments or ground control, then returning safely home.

Sierra Leone was no less spectacular a place to them than New Albion. The Englishmen were delighted and overawed at the sight of their first elephant, and the fabled “oyster tree” (the mangrove) of travelers’ tales. More important, fresh water abounded, as did lemons and other fruits. Though it would be nearly two hundred years more before citrus fruits would be credited with staving off the deadly swelling, extreme muscular distension, and weakness of scurvy, Drake intuitively knew that it was keeping him and his men healthy. There were no recorded deaths from scurvy on his voyage.

From Sierra Leone, the Cape Verde Islands were only a stone’s throw away comparatively speaking. As they headed on the final leg of their journey, Drake could but wonder if Elizabeth still was queen, or if Philip of Spain had at last succeeded in planting Mary Queen of Scots upon the English throne. Had the queen married? he wondered. Was the country at peace or at war? After all they had been through, he worried at last about what kind of reception they might receive at home.

On September 26, 1580, some local fishermen in the Channel spied a small, weather worn, heavily lying ship making her approach past them into Plymouth Sound. A stocky man with curly red hair hailed them and asked, “Is Elizabeth still queen?” Later they recalled that they thought it was a very odd question for an Englishman flying the flag of St. George to ask. One of them piped up proudly though in reply, “Aye, and in fine health, too!” Little did they know that they had been the welcoming party for one of the world’s greatest adventures ever recorded.
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27. The World Is Not Enough

Non sufficit orbis

—CONCEIT COMMEMORATING PHILIP II’S EMPIRE

W
hen Captain Winter had returned in June 1579 with the
Elizabeth
, there was more than a fluttering of butterflies’ wings at court and in the City of London. The country, then Europe, was thrown into utter disbelief. Bernardino de Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador to England, had been caught completely unaware. “The adventurers who provided money and ships for the voyage,” he blustered in a report to Philip, “are beside themselves for joy, and I am told that there are some councillors amongst them. The people here are talking of nothing else but going out to plunder in a similar way.”
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Only Burghley remained calm. What else could he do? The expedition had left without his express knowledge of its final destination, and whatever his relationship with Doughty had been, that was at an end as well.

Three weeks before Drake returned, news reached the City from Seville merchants trading with London in the new Spanish Company that Drake had captured several prizes and taken 600,000 ducats ($50.47 million or £27.28 million today). The investors in the voyage—including Elizabeth—waited expectantly, hoping for an enormous windfall. The Portuguese ambassador had already petitioned the queen for restitution to Nuño da Silva for his losses, and in June 1580 the lord admiral, an investor in the expedition, too, ordered that goods “piratically taken on the seas by Francis Drake and his accomplices to be restored to the Portuguese.”
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But the only person guilty of the crimes and capable of any restoration at that point was Captain Winter, who had returned to England, abandoning his commander.

But Philip II knew more than he was letting on to others. In August 1579, the letters began arriving, and they did not stop for over a year. The South Seas colonies had been ravaged by “the boldness of this low man.” The “Spanish Lake” that cosseted Philip’s western empire, he knew, had become a vast Pacific Ocean where any corsair could become “lost” from reprisals. Still, putting things into perspective, Drake’s thefts, though huge, were insignificant in the greater scheme of things. What mattered was that the navigational feat was colossal, and would not fail to inspire others. All Philip could do was to wait and see the extent of the damage before acting. In the meantime, he felt justified in the shift in his grand strategy by creating a Catholic League against England’s heretic queen.

Drake, too, waited. Plymouth had had an outbreak of the plague, and he was deeply unsure how matters would stand with the queen. All he could hope was that the vastness of the treasure would please her. He remained ignorant of any changes in the political, social, or economic landscape that might affect his reception, and until John Brewer, Sir Christopher Hatton’s trumpeter who had accompanied them on the voyage, returned, there would be no certainty. Drake’s wife, Mary, and the mayor of Plymouth, John Blitheman, rowed out to the
Hind
, but whether they had a grasp of international affairs, or the queen’s present frame of mind, is doubtful. And so Drake wrote to Leicester, Hatton, Walsingham, and the other backers to tell them he had safely returned with riches.

When Elizabeth learned that her pirate had returned with fabulous treasure, a quorum of privy councillors was immediately convened, but only the lord admiral was among the five members present who openly supported Drake. Burghley and Sussex concluded that Drake’s booty should be registered at the Tower of London in preparation for its return. When the restitution order was put before Leicester, Walsingham, and Hatton, they refused to sign it. Why should they lose a fortune to please Philip of Spain? And so, while the gentlemen argued, Elizabeth quietly sent word to Drake that he needn’t fear. She was summoning him to court and asked him to kindly bring her some samples from his great adventure.

Drake sprang into action, loading several packhorses with some gold and silver, and all of the precious jewels. When he arrived at
court at Richmond, he was admitted immediately to the queen’s privy chamber, where they remained quite alone for six hours. What was said between them was never recorded in full, but certainly the queen told Drake about the dreadful turn of events in Europe, while he pledged to do as she wished to help.

In 1579, the queen most likely explained, Philip had backed the papal expedition to Munster to foment an Irish uprising against England. An English expedition to Munster was under way, but the outcome remained uncertain. Charles IX of France had died, and his brother Henry was now King Henry III. The French king was under the influence of Henry of Guise who was both the uncle of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the puppet of Philip of Spain. Worse still, in January 1580, King Henry of Portugal had died, and Philip was claiming his right as heir to the Portuguese crown. The Portuguese wanted the natural nephew of King Henry, Dom Antonio de Crato, as their king, but Philip had successfully invaded Portugal both by land and by sea in the summer, and had declared himself king in Antonio’s place. The Spanish and Portuguese empires were now one, and Philip was king of the largest empire that the world had ever known. In a sound bite that Drake could readily comprehend, Philip now had twelve oceangoing galleons from the Portuguese Royal Navy, doubling the size of his Indian guard and ocean fleet. The total combined shipping that he now held exceeded 250,000 tons—over six times that of England—and his great admiral, the Marquis of Santa Cruz, had branded Elizabeth “the pirate queen.”
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In these circumstances, Drake’s adventurous tales and evident vast plunder would have been like “heaven’s dew” to the beleaguered queen. The Elizabeth Islands in the Strait of Magellan, New Albion in the South Seas, and a trade agreement with the Spice Islands would have made her recognize that there was no going back, no handing over, and certainly no abandoning her renegade captain. No matter what, Drake would not suffer, for he had served her loyally and extremely well.

While Drake left for home with orders to register the treasure aboard the
Hind
with Edmund Tremayne, clerk to the Privy Council and a former Member of Parliament for Plymouth, the court was electric with anticipation around him. Mendoza was outraged that
the queen had received the pirate. Would the queen send him to the Tower? Or would she reward him? Rumors of the spectacular hoard grew, and soon all London knew about the great adventure.

Back in Plymouth, Drake did as his queen had requested. He took £10,000 ($3.42 million or £1.82 million today) for himself and £14,000 ($4.72 million or £2.55 million today) for his men, though it is entirely likely that he took more. Then Tremayne and his assistant began the arduous task of counting the treasure for registration and eventual transportation by land to the Tower. Tremayne’s orders in the queen’s hand, “To assist Francis Drake in sending up certain bullion brought into the realm by him, but to leave so much of it in Drake’s hands as shall amount to the sum of £10,000, the leaving of which sum in his hands is to be kept most secret to himself alone” were carried out with part of the treasure remaining in custody in Plymouth, and the vast majority shipped overland to the Tower.
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In London, Elizabeth categorically refused to grant the Spanish ambassador an audience, writing instead to the outraged Mendoza that she had made a personal investigation of Drake’s voyage and had determined that no harm had been done to the King of Spain. While the victims of Drake’s depredations had begun submitting the dossiers relating to their losses, the alleged amounts pillaged skyrocketed. Many Spanish merchants had tried to avoid duties by shipping unregistered cargoes and blaming Drake for fictitiously high losses. English merchants in the new Spanish Company pressed the queen for restitution, fearing reprisals against their own businesses. Burghley complained bitterly to the queen that Drake had committed several acts of war. Elizabeth replied that so had Philip and Pope Gregory XIII in invading Ireland. The massacre of the papal troops at Smerwick had shown that Philip was garnering support against her, and she would not placate him by returning the treasure.

But why? Elizabeth was never so steadfast toward anyone except Leicester before this. The answer is simple really. After years of near-war with Spain, of balancing Spain’s power against that of France, of weighing the possibilities of one marital match against another to protect England, of protecting England’s borders from Scotland and Ireland while helping to support the Netherlanders in
their bid to return to their ancient rights, the queen’s coffers were emptying too rapidly for the continued security of the realm. Wars were “easily begun, but not so soon ended,” to use one of her favorite expressions, and yet for the millions that the queen had poured into securing the realm, it was all she could do to tread water and not drown. And now Drake—coupled with Antonio de Crato, who had brought her the fabulous Portuguese crown jewels to help pay for an English expedition to reclaim his country—offered the parsimonious queen a real opportunity to stop handling by half measures the most dangerous situation she faced. Spain needed to be checked, and by restoring Drake’s plunder, she would only succeed in limiting her possibilities to maneuver.
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