Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
And they blessed him in their pain, that they were not left to
Spain,
To the thumbscrew and the stake for the glory of the Lord.
Drake knew many men who had suffered at the hands of the
Spaniards and, in 1568, he experienced at first hand the perfidy and
brutality of Philip's agents. He was sailing with his relative, John
Hawkins, when the fleet, badly storm-battered, was forced to put in
at the Caribbean island of San Juan de Ulua. While Hawkins's men
and ships were recuperating, a Spanish fleet arrived. The English ad-
miral negotiated for permission to stay in port until his vessels were
ready for sea and then to depart peacefully. The Spanish officials pre-
tended friendship to lure the 'heretics' into a sense of false secur-
ity, then massacred all the English sailors ashore and opened fire on
their ships. Hawkins eventually escaped, to return home with two
of the six ships and fifty of the four hundred men he had led out of
port months before. That fearful day remained forever vivid in Fran-
cis Drake's memory. Hatred of Spain and desire for revenge were,
thenceforth, his overmastering passions.
By 1577 he had perfected in his own mind a scheme that would
strike a terrible blow at Spain and pour rich booty into the coffers
of his avaricious queen. He would do what no other privateer-cap-
tain had ever attempted: he would lead an expedition through the
Straits of Magellan and fall upon the unguarded and unsuspecting
Spanish settlements along the Pacific seaboard. Having loaded his
ships with loot, he would either return the way he had come or sail
on along the American coast until he discovered the 'Straits of Anian',
the north-west passage which, geographers insisted, lay to the north
of the continent. The plan was presented to the queen and backed
heavily by Drake's friends at court. Elizabeth hesitated. For months
she would neither forbid the enterprise nor sanction an expedition
