Hero Tales from History — Sir Francis Drake, England's First Great Sailor
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE, ENGLAND’S FIRST GREAT SAILOR
Among little Francis Drake’s earliest memories was his home in the hulk of an old ship near a navy yard in the south of England.
His father was a sort of chaplain to the fleets which kept coming and going there.
Francis heard the wild tales of seafaring men about pirates and Spaniards, and seafights, and the wonderful wealth in distant lands.
Young Drake’s soul was fired with a fervent longing for life and adventure on the high seas or the Spanish Main, as the region along the northern coast of South America was called, where wedges of gold and silver from Peru and pearls and precious stones were stored in treasure towns, waiting to be shipped to Spain.
But Francis was the eldest of twelve children and his father was poor.
So the lad was bound out till he was twenty-one to work for a skipper, or owner of a small trading vessel called a barque.
In his work there was plenty of lifting and lugging to do--moving baskets and bales on and off his master’s boat.
He had to work long hours--often at night.
His food was scarce and coarse and his pay was very small indeed, for his work was thought not worth much more than his learning the sailor trade.
Sometimes they sailed the barque across the Channel to France or Holland and brought back a cargo to England; but that was as far as such a small craft could be trusted to go.
Francis often saw great ships riding high on their majestic way to foreign lands, and he felt sure that those lucky sailors would have thrilling times with pirates and Spaniards, and come home loaded down with gold and silver, spices, precious gems, and thrilling stories.
Much as he yearned to go on a long voyage, the faithful fellow stayed by his master, worked hard, and learned all the ins and outs of sailing a ship, whether large or small.
Just before Francis was old enough to be his own man the good skipper died.
As he had never married and had no near relatives, he left his barque to his faithful apprentice.
Young Drake continued the business, running from port to port and market to market for about a year, when he saw a chance to sail on a longer voyage and engage in a larger enterprise.
He had a cousin, John Hawkins, who was captain of a vessel.
This cousin now had a little fleet of five ships and was about to engage in the slave trade.
As Francis had learned to manage a ship, Captain Hawkins offered to put the smallest vessel in his fleet under his young cousin’s command.
So Francis sold his barque and became captain of his cousin’s ship _Judith_.
Now, at the age of twenty-two, Francis Drake was embarking on the voyage of life with the prospect of great adventures, as he had always dreamed of doing.
Slave trading was not considered wrong four hundred years ago.
The ships would go to Africa and buy or carry off negroes and take them to some foreign country to work in fields and mines.
There the blacks would be sold for gold, silver, pearls and other things of great value.
Sometimes the owner of a fleet would make a fortune in a single adventure.
Of course, there was a great risk to run.
Although England and Spain were not then at war, the English and Spanish treated each other as enemies when they met on the high seas.
For this voyage, Captain Hawkins got leave of Queen Elizabeth “to load negroes in Guinea and sell them in the West Indies.
” As a sign that the hundred and seventy men on Hawkins’s fleet saw nothing wrong in stealing black men from their homes and selling them to be slaves, here is a motto which that captain had written to govern his soldiers and sailors: “Serve God daily, love one another, preserve your victuals, beware of fire, and keep good company.
” Hawkins and Drake seem to have had no trouble in seizing negroes on the coast of Africa, or in selling their human cargo in the Spanish ports of America.
But as these slavers were starting back to England they were caught in a storm and had to go into a harbor in Mexico for safety and to repair damages.
While they were there a Spanish fleet five times as large as theirs, loaded with gold and pearls, came in also for repairs.
The English agreed to leave the Spaniards without touching their ships if the Spaniards would let them alone.
But the Spanish captain did not keep his word and there was a fierce battle.
Hawkins and Drake did great damage to the Spanish fleet.
They reached England safely with two of their ships, though they had lost nearly all the treasure they had received as pay for the slaves.
Captain Drake complained to the queen of the way in which the Spaniards had deceived them, but she was afraid to go to war with a country which had such a powerful navy as Spain’s was then.
So the bold English captain took matters into his own hands.
He made one voyage after another, attacking Spanish settlements where gold and silver were stored, boarding Spanish vessels, killing the men or taking them prisoners, and bringing their rich cargoes to England.
Within a few years the Spaniards lived in terror of their lives when they heard that Francis Drake was near, and the king of Spain appealed to Queen Elizabeth to stop those attacks, calling Drake “the master thief of the western world.
” On one of these expeditions, Drake landed on the Isthmus of Panama, or Darien, as it was then called.
Some of the natives showed him the way across to the South Sea, or the Pacific Ocean, as Magellan had named it, and when they had ascended a mountain about half-way across, Drake climbed a tall tree from which he gazed upon the broad, unexplored ocean.
“May God give me leave and life to sail that sea but once!
” murmured Captain Drake to his companions.
But Queen Elizabeth had heard of the terror of the Spaniards and ordered him to stop, lest he plunge her kingdom into a Spanish war before England was ready.
So for a while Francis Drake stayed at home and suffered because he was not allowed to fight with the Spaniards.
About five years after his first sight of the Pacific, Captain Drake sailed away from England in command of a fleet of five vessels of which the flagship was the _Golden Hind_.
The object of the voyage was a secret.
This was about sixty years after Magellan, the Portuguese master-sailor, had discovered and passed through the straits named for him.
It took five months for the fleet to reach the eastern coast of South America.
In due time they found and passed through the Straits of Magellan; but the ocean beyond was more terrific than Pacific, for a fierce storm drove the _Golden Hind_ even farther south than Tierra del Fuego, so that Drake was first to land at Cape Horn, the southern-most point of South America.
At the place where the waters of the Atlantic meet those of the Pacific, Drake lay down and embraced the sharp point of rock and exclaimed: “I am the only man in the world who has ever been so far south!
” All the ships in Drake’s fleet but the _Golden Hind_ had either been sunk, broken, or scattered.
Now at last he had “leave and life to sail that sea but once”--with one ship alone.
The undaunted hero sailed up the western coast of South America to capture treasure from the gold mines of Peru.
When he came near Valparaiso, some Spaniards in a ship saw the _Golden Hind_ approach.
Never dreaming that an English ship could be in that ocean, they were astonished to see a gun presented through a porthole and to hear an English voice calling on them roughly to surrender.
So they stared and cursed under their breath while “the master thief of the western world” took charge of their ship with sixty thousand gold pesos, jewels, merchandise, and a stock of wine.
When the people of Valparaiso heard that the dreadful Drake was in their harbor, they fled from the city.
The little English crew entered the town, and stocked up with bread, bacon, and wine, which they enjoyed to the full after many months of famishing.
In a day or two the _Golden Hind_ sailed away northward toward Peru.
At another port they waylaid three unguarded barques and captured fifty-seven bricks of silver, each weighing about twenty pounds.
When they came to the port of Lima, there were seventeen vessels anchored in the harbor.
Not daunted by numbers, Drake sailed right into the harbor, captured them all with his one ship, and made their men prisoners while he plundered the whole Spanish fleet.
By this time the alarm had been spread along the coast that Drake was capturing everything in sight, and the [Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH KNIGHTING DRAKE ON BOARD THE “GOLDEN HIND”
_From the drawing by Sir John Gilbert, R. A.
_] governor of Peru with two thousand men was waiting for him at Callao.
Drake’s good luck seemed now to desert him.
In the presence of that waiting army the wind died down and the _Golden Hind_ was becalmed, helpless, and unable to move a yard.
The Spanish governor grinned as he went out in boats from the shore with four hundred soldiers, to take back all the precious cargo Drake had lately captured.
But before the armed men reached the English ship a gale blew up and Drake sailed away, laughing and waving farewells to his pursuers.
The cargo from the last ship they captured overloaded the _Golden Hind_ with tons of gold, silver and precious gems.
It was useless to overhaul any more galleons, for they now had all their ship could carry.
Their only thought was to get their treasure home safe and sound.
Sailing across the Pacific, they were sixty-eight days without sighting land.
The _Golden Hind_ began to show the strain of her long voyage; so they set up a forge on an island in the South Pacific and spent weeks in making repairs, so that the ship might complete her voyage around the world.
After they had sailed more than a month longer, the ship ran on a ledge of rocks.
Seeing that they could not get her off, they threw six cannon overboard, then the sugar and spices, then great fortunes in silver.
At last they managed to work her off the ledge into deep water.
Still it was nearly a year before they reached the harbor of Plymouth, England.
The wildest dreams of the boy Francis Drake were now more than realized.
All England buzzed with his astounding exploits.
The city bells rang and there was a general holiday, with feasting and dancing.
Queen Elizabeth came down from London and dined with the great captain on the _Golden Hind_.
Before she left the deck, the captain knelt before her and she tapped him on the shoulder with his sword, thus knighting him Sir Francis Drake.
After this the greatest of the English knights of the high seas made many voyages, dealing out destruction to Spanish galleons and treasure stores.
He attacked cities and burned fleets--reporting to the queen that he had just “singed the Spanish king’s beard.
” Drake was one of the four chiefs in command of the English ships that destroyed the Spanish Armada.
No one did more than he to take the sea power away from Spain and give it to England, and thus make it possible for the English to begin the settlement of our country.
