The Pirate Queen (44 page)

There was nothing more to lose. Any vestige of the old amity between Spain and England was in tatters, and for the queen, attacking Spain “beyond the equinoctial,” where she stood a good chance of enriching herself without risking outright war, somehow held out a perverse hope for the future. It also had the merit of being consistent with her foreign policy since the 1560s.

For Raleigh, it meant that he could better anything Drake had achieved so far.

32. Roanoke

No, no, my Pug, though Fortune were not blind,

Assure thyself she could not rule my mind.

Fortune, I know, sometimes doth conquer kings,

And rules and reigns on earth and earthly things,

But never think Fortune can bear the sway,

If virtue watch, and will her not obey.
¹

—ELIZABETH I TO WALTER RALEIGH, C.
1587

R
aleigh had manipulated the Elizabethan propaganda machine into working overtime. At his behest and specific commission, Hakluyt published his
Discourse of Western Planting
in 1584 in support of Raleigh’s Virginia project for the queen’s and Walsingham’s eyes only. His conclusion that “a brief collection of certain reasons to induce her Majesty and the State to take in hand the western voyage and the planting there” was clearly aimed at garnering crown support for the Raleigh scheme.
²
Hakluyt, as a practicing clergyman, doubtless wanted to save souls that had no hope of salvation through Christianity (the beginning of the misplaced British colonial philosophy of “White Man’s Burden”). Yet Hakluyt’s not-so-hidden message urged the queen to merge entrepreneurial activity with state sponsorship, harnessing her adventurers’ apparent boundless energy for the good of the realm.

What both Raleigh and Hakluyt failed to notice was that Europe was again in crisis, and where the crisis following the St. Bartholomew’s massacre in 1572 ended in peace, the crisis of 1585 would most assuredly end in war.
³
Elizabeth had to amass her ever-dwindling resources to address the Spanish threat closer to home. Naturally, Raleigh had her emotional support, and she gave him authority to impound shipping, supplies, and men in Devon, Cornwall, and in the Bristol Channel, but he would need to make
his own way in financing and provisioning his expedition.
⁴
Still, fortune smiled on the sweet-talking Raleigh, and his subscribers were drawn from the likes of Sir Francis Walsingham; the new lord admiral following Clinton’s death, Lord Charles Howard; Thomas Cavendish; and Sir Richard Grenville. His second expedition to Virginia would be the best-equipped voyage to North America so far.

In the end, the queen ventured her 160-ton ship the
Tiger
and ordered Sir Philip Sidney to release £400 ($119,510 or £64,600 today) worth of gunpowder from the Tower’s stores. Four other ships with two pinnaces for inshore work under Grenville’s command carried six hundred men in all. The seasoned Irish commander Ralph Lane was granted leave from Ireland to lead the soldiers who would form the mainstay of the Virginia settlement. Raleigh, of course, would be their armchair admiral, for the queen simply disallowed any talk of her favorite accompanying his men on their dangerous mission. Raleigh knew he was more than fortunate to have this level of support, given his jealous enemies at court. With the threat that loomed in the Low Countries (despite his political arguments in Hakluyt’s treatise that he could inflict a major blow against Spain with his colony), Raleigh was lucky to attract any finance at all.
⁵

He threw himself into the enterprise both financially and intellectually. His London home, Durham House, was turned into an alternative center of naval excellence to Dee’s Mortlake home, and Raleigh was rumored to have also put over £3,000 ($919,450 or £497,000 today) of his personal fortune toward the venture. But even this staggering sum meant little to the vastly wealthy Raleigh. The queen had been remarkably generous to her new favorite, and his income from various appointments far exceeded his lavish spending. Described as “very sumptuous in his apparel…he is served at his table [with] silver with his own [coat of] arms on the same. He has attending on him at least 30 men whose liveries are chargeable [paid for by Raleigh], of which half be gentlemen, very brave fellows, [with] divers having chains of gold.”
⁶

From his vantage point high atop his turreted study overlooking the Thames, Raleigh and his disciples plotted the voyage and
eventual settlement of Virginia. They pored over the existing sea charts, discussed the navigational aspects, and gleaned new ideas on how effectively to begin a nascent civilization. Anyone who Raleigh thought might be able to contribute to the body of knowledge to make the colony a success was called upon, irrespective of race or religion. Dutch émigrés were welcome, as were Jews and Catholics. In a largesse that was uncharacteristic of the age, Raleigh stressed that what mattered was their intellect and facts or skills at their disposal, not their beliefs. Foremost among Raleigh’s “savant disciples” was Thomas Hariot—a “white wizard” or conjurer expert in mathematics and algebra. Unlike Dee, Hariot didn’t dabble in the occult, but like Dee, he saw the world as a complex mathematical equation that held the secrets of God’s great design.
⁷

Whether Raleigh subscribed to Dee’s emphasis on mathematics, or felt that he had “reinvented the wheel” with Hariot’s system, matters little. Hariot, with the benefit of Raleigh’s munificent salary, threw himself into his work with vigor. He was responsible for teaching the mariners the art of navigation while Raleigh read anything he could relating to the Spanish conquest of America. Fortune smiled on him once again, since in the previous year
The Spanish Colonie
had been translated into English and published. It detailed the killing machinery of the conquistadors.

But for Raleigh, his first hurdle would be against time: the longer he waited to sail, the greater the risk would be of the queen changing her mind in light of the deteriorating political scene in Europe. The ships were well victualed (not only with meats and fish that could be stored for longer periods, but also with livestock), and ample supplies of ciders, beers, wines, and aqua vitae bought and loaded for the colonists’ unquenchable thirsts. Seeds for planting were stowed away carefully in the holds, and Raleigh and his captains prayed that the victuals would last until the first crops came in.

But Raleigh was naïve if he thought his adventure had escaped the ever-watchful King of Spain. Mendoza—even from his enforced exile in Paris—had managed to slip a spy in among the dockworkers, and he sent a factual and copious report to Philip relating the number of ships, victuals, guns mounted on deck, and mariners.
Again, Fortune played her part: Mendoza had wildly overestimated the number of ships and underestimated the number of men. This misinformation led the King of Spain to the slightly false conclusion that the primary purpose of the expedition was plunder.

And so, on April 9, 1585, Raleigh’s squadron sailed at daybreak of a fine spring morning. Ten days out to sea, the sky to the west darkened, and the sun was reduced to a thin sliver. The superstitious mariners hadn’t seen an eclipse before, and muttered that it was an omen of evil. Luckily, Hariot had accompanied the voyage, and he explained that it wasn’t an evil omen, but a near total eclipse of the sun, a natural and recurring phenomenon. Across the Atlantic in Virginia, though, the Native Americans at Roanoke saw a total eclipse, and definitely viewed it as the foreshadowing of a great disaster.

Then a storm blew up near the Canaries and the
Tiger
’s pinnace sank. Grenville tried to keep his squadron together, but in vain. Unlike Hawkins’s ill-fated voyage, Sir Richard had appointed a rendezvous at Puerto Rico for his dispersed ships, and spent no time looking for them. The crossing to the warm, welcoming waters of the Caribbean took only twenty-one days. But their victuals had become infected with weevils in the tropical heat, and the humidity encased most of the food in a thick, stinking, furry mold. They had failed to take on fresh fruits or food that had kept Drake’s men healthy on much longer voyages, and by the time they reached the rendezvous harbor at Guayanilla Bay in Puerto Rico, they had to go ashore—into hostile Spanish territory—to find food and clean water, or perish. The experienced soldier and future governor of the first Virginia colony, Ralph Lane, ordered a vast battlement to be built to protect the men, while they waited for the other ships to arrive. By the time the
Elizabeth
appeared over the horizon several days later, they were predictably fending off an attack of Spanish horsemen.

When the Spanish governor saw the second ship, he asked for a “parlay” which, thanks to Grenville’s arrogance, turned into a dangerous standoff. Despite this, the Spaniards promised to return with food, but when they failed to appear at the appointed time, Grenville ordered the men to cast off and sail. He smelled a trap, and
he was right. All they could do to relieve themselves from starvation and dehydration was to sink into piracy, and so they fell upon the first two prize ships they could master to relieve their plight. Nonetheless, other problems beset them. Lane’s and Grenville’s command structure was badly frayed, with Lane complaining of Grenville’s “intolerable pride and insatiable ambition.” Thomas Cavendish, captain of the
Elizabeth
, and Captain Clarke of the
Roebuck
agreed.
⁸
But things would deteriorate even further.

Toward the end of June, the fleet made landfall at the Carolina Outer Banks. When the
Tiger
tried to navigate her way through into the inner channel, she ran aground and was damaged. Much of the stores for the colony were destroyed by the seawater gushing through her torn planks. The ship’s master, Simon Fernandez, should have known better, since he was the expert navigator who knew those waters. What neither Grenville nor Lane had come to realize as yet was that Roanoke simply did not afford a safe anchorage for ships the size of the
Tiger.
⁹

Repairs to the damaged queen’s ship began, while the rest of the squadron pressed on with their settlement plan. By the end of July, the four ships and pinnace anchored at Port Ferdinando on Hatarask Island, opposite Roanoke. The two Native Americans whom Barlow had brought back to London, Manteo and Wanchese, returned with the second expedition acting as their interpreters. After the statutory exchange of gifts and other trading formalities were finished, the English were granted the right to build a fort and cottages at the northern tip of the island. Lane ordered that one hundred men make their settlement there while he and the others explored up-country for food and fresh water sources before winter closed in.

Sir Richard Grenville, to the palpable relief of the colonists, departed back to England in late August with a letter from Lane to Richard Hakluyt that belied any notion of hardship or friction:

If Virginia had but horses and [their] kind in some reasonable proportion, I dare assure myself being inhabited with English, no realm in Christendom were comparable to it. For this already we find, that what commodities soever Spain, France, Italy, or the East parts do yield unto us in wines of all sorts, in oils, in flax, in resins, pitch, frankincense, currants, sugars and such like, these parts do about with it growth of them all, but being Savages that possess the land, they know no use of the same. And sundry other rich commodities, that no parts of the world, be they West or East Indies, have, here we find great abundance of.
¹⁰

Raleigh couldn’t have written a better piece of propaganda himself.

Part Three

The Spanish War

And if you suppose that princes’ causes be veiled covertly that no intelligence may bewray [reveal] them, deceive not yourself: we old foxes can find shifts [cracks] to save ourselves by others’ malice, and come by knowledge of greatest secret, specially if it touch our freehold.

—ELIZABETH I, JULY
1585

33. The Queen Lets Loose Her Dragon

With this corsair at sea in such strength, we cannot protect any island or coast, nor predict where he may attack, so it is not clear what we can do to stop him.

—BERNARDINO DE ESCALANTE FROM SANTO DOMINGO TO PHILIP II