The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire (6 page)

Retaining Canada for the Empire was no mere consolation prize. The Canadians fought side by side with the British in both World Wars, more than 625,000-strong in the Great War and more than 1.1 million-strong in the Second World War. At the end of World War II Canada had the world's fourth largest air force and third largest navy—and we can only wish it had such military predominance today.

Canada became an independent dominion in 1931, and achieved complete independence, while remaining a constitutional monarchy within the British Commonwealth, in 1982. But the British Empire still retains a few outposts in the Americas: Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Falkland Islands, and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. In 1982, Argentina invaded the Falklands and South Georgia, and perhaps to the Argentines' surprise, Britain roused herself to defend her territories, even if they lay at the other side of the world. On 19 April 1982,
Newsweek
's cover story featured a picture of the aircraft carrier HMS
Hermes
and the headline “The Empire Strikes Back.”

The Argentines had jealously eyed the Falklands before. In 1833, they had actually snuck a garrison on the islands that the Royal Navy had to forcibly remove. In 1977, the British thought it prudent to park a nuclear submarine nearby. The islanders themselves were staunchly, resolutely British.

The Argentines gambled that the British lion was toothless, its incisors worn away by the sugary dispensations of the battening welfare state. It turned out they were wrong.

Argentine forces made their assault on the islands on 2 April 1982. The few Royal Marines were disarmed. The question now was: what was Britain going to do about it?

By all appearances, the Royal Navy was in no state to mount a campaign to retake islands 8,000 miles away. But within three days, a convoy had set sail. It took a month for the British fleet to cross to the South Atlantic, but it arrived on the scene with a bang. The Royal Marines, part of the South Georgia Force, struck first, retaking the island on 25 April: “Be pleased to inform Her Majesty that the White Ensign [of the Royal Navy] flies alongside the Union Jack in South Georgia. God Save the Queen.”
²³
The arrival of the main fleet was punctuated by the sinking of the Argentine cruiser the
General Belgrano
on 2 May
.

The Falklands War was no bloodless affair, the Royal Navy lost two destroyers, two frigates, and a cargo ship to Argentine air assaults. Britain's air support was limited to 34 carrier-based Harrier jump jets that had to neutralize 220 Argentine jet fighters. By the time the British forces had brought about the Argentines' surrender on the Falklands on 14 June (the British recaptured the South Sandwich Islands without incident on 20 June), 250 British soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines had been killed, along with three Falklands civilians. To some that might seem a high price to pay for the retention of distant islands inhabited by 3,000 fishermen and shepherds. But if their freedom was dearly bought, they know as well as anyone that British liberty is beyond price.

“I have brought you to the treasure house of the world.”

 

I
n Buckland Abbey, the manor house of Sir Francis Drake, there lies a snare drum. According to Henry Newbolt—whose poem “Drake's Drum” (1895) was memorized by generations of British schoolboys—it was left with these instructions:

The drum has allegedly sounded at various dramatic moments: during the Falklands War, the Battle of Britain, even during the launch of the
Mayflower
to the New World, making Drake a sort of patron saint of England—except that as a Protestant he disdained patron saints.

Drake's father, Edmund Drake, was a farmer and lay Protestant preacher. According to pious legend Edmund was chased into exile after a Catholic uprising in Devon. In fact, it appears he skipped town because he was a thief, though he was later pardoned so he could continue his holy work.

Francis, meanwhile, grew up in Plymouth, raised by his kinsman William Hawkins, and apprenticed to the sea. His guardian made his fortune on trading expeditions to Africa and Brazil, later becoming a king's pirate against the French. Drake imbibed from the Hawkins family its spirit of enterprise and the idea that piracy could be profitable and patriotic.

If he lacked formal education, Drake knew his trade, was a dedicated student of practical manuals like
The Art of Navigation
, and was a leader. As was common in his time, he ran a puritanical ship. Sailors were roughhewn men, but they were forbidden swearing, gambling, and shirking communal prayers. His favorite aid for communal prayer was John Foxe's
Book of Martyrs
, which kept his men at a fiery pitch of self-righteousness against the papist French and Spanish.

Drake accompanied William Hawkins's son John on several slave-trading voyages. On one of them, finding the slave pickings sparse, they joined two tribal chieftains in an attack on the barricaded village of an enemy tribe. The combined assault—the Africans attacking by land, the English deployed as a riverine force—was successful. Hawkins, however, was disappointed that the Africans retained most of the captured enemy for themselves—some as slaves, others to be roasted alive for a cannibal feast. The slaves given to the English were the lucky ones.

These slaves were not bound for English colonies, which did not yet exist, but for the colonies of hated Spain, which put Hawkins and Drake in a rather ironical position, though the irony seemed to have escaped them. They burned with patriotic, religious hatred against the Spanish and yet were insistent on trading with them—and trading with them at the point of a
gun, because the Spanish colonials were required to trade only with Spanish (or Spanish-licensed) ships. But the English sea dog method was to set off a few cannon and threats until the Spaniards agreed to trade; customs duties were of course ignored; and the English matched trading with raiding. It was an economic-moral system we might call “Whatever I Do Is Right.” The English did not lack self-esteem.

As a captain, Drake dabbled briefly in slavery, but his real interest was robbing Spaniards; and in this role Drake convinced himself that self-defense by the Spanish was not only perfidious but robbed him of spoils that were rightfully his. After a little practice in the West Indies, working with Huguenot pirates, he targeted the port city of Nombre de Dios in Panama. It was here that Spain exported the silver and gold that fed the treasury of the Escorial and kept its armies paid.

The port had few citizens and was poorly defended, but Drake's attack was inept: the treasure ships had already sailed away. His assault earned him a musket ball in the leg; and his only booty was a wine ship—enjoyable spoils certainly, but not gold or silver. Its capture was unlikely to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies.

Drake, however, was not done. He formed an alliance with the Cimarrones, black slaves who had escaped their Spanish masters and lived as highwaymen. The Cimarrones had no use for loot (so they buried it); they simply wanted to harass the Spaniards. Drake was canny enough to see the potential for a nice bit of double billing. With the help of the Cimarrones he might unearth some buried treasure and lay an ambush on a Spanish gold train. First he had to wait through the rainy season. During that time one of his brothers died attacking a Spanish ship and another died of what was likely yellow fever.