SHAKESPEARE AND THE NEW WORLD 97 for the groundlings. They would doubtless be puzzled by Gonzalo's quizzical sketch of a New World Utopia: no kind of traffic Would I admit, no name of magistrate, Letters should not be known, riches, poverty, All things in common Nature should produce And only merchants and gallants would see in it a skit on the fiasco of the first Virginia settlement. But then there soon comes in the arresting figure of Caliban, with whose ultimate fate the audience would be in full sympathy. Imaginative in regard to pictorial details, Shakespeare was a realist respecting the social destinies of the New World. But his plays unquestionably quickened the Wanderlust of the average healthy young Englishman. In the new centrifugal phase of national life west-countrymen took the lead. Now that the New World offered a golden lure, trade with the Easterlings seemed commonplace. For years the men of Devon and Cornwall had sallied forth to help Huguenots and Dutch "Sea Beggars" harry the Spanish convoys which lumbered up Channel towards Dunkirk; and this profitable privateering emboldened the men of Plymouth and Fowey to take wider flight. Years before, a Cornishman, Sir Richard Grenville, had sung: Who seeks the way to win renown Let him go range and seek a new. His father had gone down in the Mary Rose off Spithead in 1545; and in 1591 his grandson was to win immortal fame in the Revenge. Other Cornish seamen were the Carews, Tremaynes and Killigrews; while from across the Tamar Devon sent forth Wilford, the two Hawkins, Drake, Davis, Gilbert and Raleigh. Of most of these leaders we know comparatively little; for, with the exception of the two last, they wrote little. Speaking generally, the love of adventure, which has counted for so much in the spread of our race, has left few records like those of the methodical much-writing merchant class. Therefore the romantic side of British expansion now bulks small by comparison with the commercial which left behind masses of documents. Nevertheless, the Empire was made largely by restless spirits who felt the call of the sea or the wild, by landless younger sons or yeomen ejected by the enclosures, by discharged sailors and soldiers-in short by Esaus CHBE I 7 and Adullamites of all kinds. Usually they failed, as Esaus do, but sometimes they pointed the way for the Jacobs. Primogeniture has played no small part in driving our people overseas; and it would be curious to speculate how far the independent colonial spirit sprang from the discontent felt by landless younger sons. A dispossessed Orlando goes forth from home embittered against a bullying Oliver, who bids him beg his way. Nay, it appears that before the time of colonies Orlandos often took up piracy, "the profession of the sea"; for the Venetian ambassador at London reported on 10 August 1620 (one month before the sailing of the Mayflower from Plymouth), that "the younger sons here, as opposed to the first born, being deprived of property by the laws of the realm have taken to the profession [of piracy] from necessity and an evil disposition". As they slew or drowned all whom they met, including Englishmen, the Royal Navy was to show them no mercy.1 By degrees the colonies opened out a new sphere for all such; and who can measure the gain to civilisation when by degrees they took up war against the wilderness in place of war against man? On the other hand, their adventurous and often aggrieved spirit greatly increased the difficulties of the early settlements, besides implanting the seeds of dissidence. But the British Empire was not the outcome of a vague swarming impulse: it was the work of born leaders of men, who were resolved that England's overseas domain should rival that of Spain; and their rugged personality and daring deeds were potently to influence our future. Foremost stands Francis Drake. Born and bred near Tavistock in Devon, he grew up at a time when the privateering spirit was sending forth many a vessel from Plymouth or Bideford to prey upon the Spanish transports and traders. His early experiences toughened a firm thick-set frame and sharpened a mind naturally keen and masterful. Chased with his family from their home by a local Catholic rising in 1549, the boy early imbibed hatred of that faith, and, when settled near Chatham, took to the sea. During hard experiences in the Channel he learned the seaman's craft, and the seaman's virtues, obedience, fidelity and utmost hardihood. Destiny soon called him to wider scenes. Probably his detestation of Spain quite as much as his relation to the Hawkinses of Plymouth turned him from the North-Eastern quests then foremost, and inclined him towards America. Before 1567 Drake seems to have sailed to the West Indies with one Captain Lovell, and with him to have suffered from Spanish treachery at Rio de la Hacha. Sailing with Hawkins to the West Indies in 1567-8, he experienced the perfidious assault at San Juan de Ulua, which increased his desire for revenge; but this feeling was never glutted by the plunder which he amassed in his next 1 Cal. St. Pap. Venetian, 1619-21, p. 357. * Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy, 1, 94. three raids (1570-2) on Spanish domains. Rather did it incite him to larger and yet larger designs. Thus, in 1572 he relied partly on escaped negroes and "maroons" to effect the capture of the Spanish treasure city, Nombre de Dios. He failed only because a wound laid him low at the crisis of the fight. It is a sign of the affection which he inspired that his men bore him to the boats, preferring to save him rather than master the wealth of the Indies. Undaunted, he withdrew with his company to a fertile island for rest and recovery, and while there swore "to reap some of the Spaniard's harvest which they got out of the earth and sent to Spain to trouble all the earth". Soon he came to terms with the "maroons" and planned to plunder the convoy of treasure-laden mules on the mountain track between Panama and Nombre de Dios. With marvellous control over his brown allies he threaded his way across the isthmus, and at the summit ascended a lofty tree whence he beheld far below the glittering expanse of the South Sea. The spectacle, never yet seen by an Englishman, marked another stage in his mental development. From private plunder he had risen to the design of ham-stringing the Spanish giant; and now he caught a vision of an English Empire. To his comrade, John Oxenham, he signified his earnest desire that some day he might sail on that sea. Compared with that vow the final plunder of the Spanish mule-train near Nombre de Dios is mere buccaneering, significant only because the booty swept in there and afterwards at sea rendered possible his dream of a voyage into the Pacific. Soli Deo gloria ends the narrative of the Nombre de Dios venture. The phrase is not mere cant, but the expression of thanks of hard-pressed Protestants that they had found a means of sapping the world supremacy of Spain. The discoverer of the new policy was well fitted to be its executant. “A man of about thirty-five years" (thus a Spanish captive described Drake), "short, with a ruddy beard, one of the greatest of mariners, alike from his skill and his power of command." Knowing well his craft, and aware of the careless ease of the Spaniards in the Pacific, he trusted to overpower their scattered settlements by means of that most potent of all tactics, surprise. It was long before his friends at court could persuade Elizabeth to abandon her policy of cautious balance and loose him against the Spanish preserves; but in the spring of 1577 that champion of a forward policy, Secretary Walsingham, procured him an interview with her in which he broached his Pacific plan. The Queen, then smarting under Philip's affronts, liked well the design, but is said to have warned Drake to keep it secret, above all from the cautious Cecil, Lord Burghley. She promised to subscribe 1000 crowns for this joint-stock venture, the prize at stake being Spain's New World tribute of over £3,000,000. For her, so long as Drake kept silence, the risks were small, the profits enormous: as for Drake, he risked his neck and his all in the venture; but he merged his desires for profit, strong as they were, in the resolve to tap the sources of Spain's political power. At last, in November 1577, he put forth from Plymouth in the Pelican of over 100 tons, carrying eighteen guns. With her sailed the smaller Elizabeth, and the tiny Marigold and Swan, the crews in all numbering 150 men and a few boys. Serving with Drake were about ten gentlemen adventurers, whom on occasion he consulted, the chief among them being Sir Christopher Hatton and his friend Thomas Doughty. Difficulties soon arose with the last named and came to a head as they neared St Julian's Bay in Patagonia. Headstrong, ambitious and masterful, Drake accused Doughty of mutiny-and therefore of high treason; and in the trial the accused admitted betraying the secret of the venture to Cecil, then an opponent of all such enterprises. This and his other acts sufficed to procure Doughty's condemnation, and Drake executed him in that bay. Then, as if to wipe out the past before they neared the dreaded Straits of Magellan, Drake changed the name of his ship to the Golden Hind, the family crest of Hatton. Further, in order to regain unity both in spirit and in action he made an urgent appeal for an ending to all class distinction: "My masters I must have it left. For I must have the gentleman to haul and draw with the mariner and the mariner with the gentleman. What! let us show ourselves all to be of one company and let us not give occasion to the enemy to rejoice at our decay and overthrow. I would know him that would refuse to set his hand to a rope, but I know there is not any such here". The appeal struck home; for it breathed the true sea spirit, which minimises class distinctions and unites all true sons of the sea in a freemasonry of adventure. The Nelson of that age clinched these homely words (his testament to the Royal Navy) by reminding officers and men that they served not him but the Queen, whose glory they must advance. Then, entering the dreaded narrows, he halted at one of the larger islands, which he annexed, calling it "Elizabeth Island". After seventeen days of difficulty and danger Drake saw the South Sea open before him, only to be driven to and fro by terrific storms, in one of which the little Marigold foundered. Finally a series of northwesters drove him back to the neighbourhood of Cape Horn. Near that promontory he found shelter, and, on putting out, claimed to have found signs of the existence of open sea to the southward, in fact, of the great Southern Ocean (October 1578). Such is the gist of the narratives of this voyage. Though marred by vagueness and several discrepancies, they bear the signs of an almost childlike simplicity and their general purport is convincing.1 Therefore we may conclude that Drake discovered the southernmost of that group of islands, which he named "Elizabethides". His chaplain, Fletcher, termed them collectively Terra australis nunc bene cognita. Drake in fact 1 But see Wagner, H. R., Drake's voyage round the World (1926), pp. 88–96. DRAKE IN THE PACIFIC ΙΟΙ surmised that the Terra australis of sailors' talk was non-existent, and that a group of islands bordered the Straits of Magellan. Only by creeping through those dreaded straits had the Spaniards first reached the Pacific-a route which they had abandoned as too dangerous, in favour of the overland route via Panama. It was long before Drake's discovery of an open sea route to the Pacific was utilised, doubtless because of the prevalence of terrible storms which he reported; but ultimately his discovery and that of Dutch voyagers opened the Pacific to all the world. During these long buffetings the Elizabeth parted company, and her captain, Wynter, very tamely made for home. Nevertheless, Drake determined to push on northwards with the Golden Hind in the belief that swift action and surprise would gain him success everywhere among the scattered Spanish settlements. His confidence was justified. Seventy years of security had bred laxity and sloth. Their unarmed posts and ships offered no resistance. At Lima Drake ran in his little craft by night and anchored amidst seventeen ships, and departed unscathed. Everywhere he met with the inertia of sheer bewilderment; and his men lightened ships and carriers of their burdens with a humorous good nature that half excuses the piracy, as when Fletcher describes the robbery by a watering party of thirteen bars of silver from a Spaniard who lay asleep-" and so left him to take out the other part of his sleep in more security". Drake filled the hold with precious metals, and seems throughout the voyage not to have slain a single Spaniard.1 With one exception his Spanish prisoners stated that he treated them humanely, even with courtesy.2 The Golden Hind being richly freighted, Drake held on northwards "along the back side of America" towards "the Californias... 1400 leagues in all". Fletcher describes him now as bent on "the discovery of what passage there was to be found about the northern parts of America from the South Sea into our own ocean", so as to benefit England by finding a short northern passage to the Indies. He also informed his Spanish prisoners that he came in the service of his Queen, and for a greater purpose than plunder; that he meant to return home by a strait in latitude 66°, and if he could not find it he would return by China; for she had sent him to encompass the world.3 As to his run far northward, his buffetings by bitterly cold winds from about latitude 48°, and his return landwards to the bay which is now named Drake's Bay, it is well to reserve judgment. Fletcher's insistence on the continued bitter cold and gloom at midsummer in lat. 38° excites question. The trees (it seems) had no leaves and the birds dared not leave their nests after the first egg laid". The 1 The World encompassed, ed. Temple (1926), pp. xliv-li, 42. 2 Nuttall, Z., New Light on Drake (Hakluyt Soc. 1914), pp. xxiv, 139, 151, 166, 196– 210, 420-3. Ibid. pp. 317-20. |