it was not piracy. The means employed to assist the voyagers, however, were.
Reaching the coast of Sierra Leone, Hawkins seized his first slaves from several Portuguese vessels which he captured. And along with those four hundred slaves came a by-cargo of cloves and ivory which was sent home in a ship commanded by Hawkins’s cousin, the young Francis Drake. Hawkins himself sailed to Hispaniola where he arrived having lost about half of his slaves, but getting a good price for the survivors. With an eye to the even greater profit the sale could make, Hawkins bought all the sugar, hides, pearls and ginger available in the warehouses of Isabella. His eyes were larger than that which his ships’ holds could stomach, as a result of which he had to load two Spanish ships with the overflow and dispatch them back to Spain, with instructions to offload them through an English factor in Seville. That this arrangement would work was a naive assumption, for the cargo of both ships was impounded as contraband, one at Lisbon and one at Seville. Hawkins did not receive compensation and thus made merely a good profit rather than an extraordinary one from his voyage. The reduced return was, however, sufficient to interest the avaricious queen, who became a major partner in Hawkins’s next voyage through the loan of two of her own ships.
As his flagship Hawkins would now sail in the elderly, but capacious, 700-ton Jesus of Lubeck, purchased from Hamburg by Henry VIII in 1545. Aged she might be, but she represented the queen’s willingness to approve and invest in a voyage, the purpose of which was very apparent: the capture and illegal trading of slaves. Moreover, both the procurement and the disposal of this human cargo would involve her directly in the breaking of internationally recognised trading embargoes held by Portugal in West Africa and Spain in the West Indies. The vessel thus represented a significant shift in the move from royal indulgence of wayward seamen to royal involvement in illegal trading – the first step to the approval of piracy.
Yet outwardly the queen was still active in her pursuit of pirates, if only to calm down the exasperated and protesting ambassadors from her aggrieved European neighbours. In November 1564 she asked the Admiralty Court judge, David Lewes, to carry out an investigation into the complaints by the Spanish ambassador about piratical depredations committed at sea on the subjects of the king of Spain. As the inquiry was to involve the county commissioners against piracy, many of whom were well-known supporters of the trade, a disinterested report was most unlikely.5 She had also allayed the fears raised by the Spanish ambassador, Guzmán de Silva, about Hawkins’s intentions by telling the incredulous gentleman that Hawkins, far from being a pirate, was just an honest and wealthy trader, to which de Silva retorted that if this were so, he failed to see why the ships were carrying so many armed men.
In company with the creaking Jesus of Lubeck were Solomon and Swallow, as well as a 50-ton vessel, Tiger. Francis Drake was included in the crew of just 150 men, but still only as an ordinary seaman. Stopping to call on his friends in the Canaries, the refreshed Hawkins sailed on to the Guinea coast where he committed the first piratical act of the voyage by capturing and de-storing a small Portuguese fishing fleet. His second was the capture of some larger vessels along with their slaves and other valuable cargo, all of which was recorded by their aggrieved owners, who petitioned the Privy Council, more in hope than expectation of restitution. Further slaves, to a total of about four hundred, were captured after some severe skirmishing ashore.
This time the Atlantic crossing proved not so deadly for the slaves, possibly because the larger Jesus of Lubeck allowed for less cramped conditions below decks and the freer circulation of air. Even then, about thirty died before landfall. There just remained the problem of disposing of the remainder at a good price. To achieve that profit from communities who were well aware that they were forbidden to trade with the English required the repetitive use of a tactic, the purpose of which was well understood by both sides. First, Hawkins would state his innocence in that he had been forced westward by strong winds and now very much needed a licence to trade to obtain fresh victuals. This the local magnate would refuse to grant. Hawkins would then threaten violence, even landing an armed party to look sternly at the locals who, subdued by such a threat, would reluctantly trade, simply to spare their town and to rid themselves of the pestilent foreigner. Honour satisfied and excuses provided, an amicable exchange ensued. Once that charade was complete, trade was brisk and very, very profitable.
Guzmán de Silva reported home that Hawkins had returned with gold, pearls, hides and sugar to the value of 50,000 ducados, which, if it were so, represented a profit of 60 per cent. With such a profit available, it was worth the queen regarding the source with a merry myopia and the protestations of the Spanish and Portuguese ambassadors with a selective deafness. Hawkins could gain no more obvious approval than from her continuing to loan him her ships. Yet this time strange auguries might have been seen as prophesying doom.
In September 1567 Hawkins’s fleet of six ships was anchored in the shelter of the Cattewater below Plymouth town, waiting for a fair wind to waft them southwesterly. But even at this stage in the preparation, Hawkins was aware that the queen might be tempted to prevent his departure or to insist on certain caveats which would impinge on his profits. Chief amongst these was her usual desire to placate the Spanish, in the person of de Silva, by assuring him that Hawkins would observe the embargoes of which he was fully aware. Indeed, in a way her loan of both Jesus of Lubeck and the smaller Minion was a guarantee of Hawkins’s good behaviour, a fact about which the fleet admiral sought to reassure her, writing from the anchorage: ‘I do ascertain Your Highness that I have provision sufficient and an able army to defend our charge and to bring home (with God’s help) forty thousand marks gain without the offence of the least of any of Your Highness’ allies or friends’ – which if true would hardly have necessitated the shipping of ‘an able army’.
Hawkins’s letter-writing was interrupted by an urgent summons to come on deck. A lookout had sighted a squadron of seven Spanish warships heading down Plymouth Sound, making towards their own fleet anchorage. Hawkins took one look and ordered his crew to action stations, secure in the knowledge that the guns he had mounted could do grave damage to any vessels closing with hostile intent. At the time England and Spain were at peace but, as with rival football teams, it was not the management, but the fans that could cause trouble to erupt.
Hawkins gazed at the mast tops of the steadily approaching fleet to see if, as custom dictated, they would dip their ensigns as a token of respect and a signal of peaceful intent. The ensigns remained close up, while there was neither a slackening of speed nor an indication of an intention to anchor in the outer harbour so, once Hawkins was sure that the insolent foreigners were within range of his guns, he fired a warning salvo in their direction. When that failed to stem the oncoming fleet or cause them to dip their ensigns, Hawkins ordered his crews to lower their sights and the second salvo hit the hulls. That was warning enough: the foreign fleet went about, dipping its ensigns as it did so, and anchored out of range of the irritated English. From their admiral an envoy was soon dispatched to voice the protests of the Spanish commander, the aristocratic Alphonse de Borgogne, at their rough reception. Hawkins countered by claiming that the insult to the Crown which the brazen entry of the foreign fleet had caused required a stern response.
Shortly after this incident Hawkins received a letter from the queen, fully endorsing his mission. Unfettered by any of the restraining caveats he had anticipated, his third and final slaving voyage got underway.
Great storms soon scattered the fleet and showed up the crankiness of the leaky and aged Jesus, but Hawkins, by dint of his carefully worded sailing orders, managed to reunite his ships in the Canaries before descending to Cabo Blanco, the landfall for all Guinea voyages, and thus the site of a small Portuguese fort. Treating the garrison with disdain, Hawkins surveyed four abandoned Portuguese ships and selected the most seaworthy to sail with him, cheekily accepting a promissory note for the sale of two of the others back to the legal owner.
After one botched slaving raid secured far fewer captives than they wished for, the English sailed on to Cabo Rojo for supplies, much of which were seized from seven Portuguese ships. A few more slave raids were
