Francis Drake was born near Tavistock, Devonshire, where a colossal statue of the great navigator now stands. The date of his birth is uncertain. By local tradition it is given as about 1545, and this is generally accepted by his later biographers, but some authorities place it five years earlier. Authorities also differ as to his parentage. Some contemporary writers aver that his father was Robert Drake, first a sailor, afterward a preacher; according to others he was Edmond or Edmund Drake, also a sailor turned preacher, who, in 1560, became vicar of Upchurch in Kent, and died there in 1566. The second Sir Francis Drake, nephew of the navigator, related of the father that he suffered persecution, and “being forced to fly from his home near South Tavistocke in Devon unto Kent,” was there obliged “to inhabit in the hull of a shippe, wherein many of his younger sonnes were born.” He had twelve sons in all, “and as it pleased God to give most of them a being on the water so the great part of them dyed at sea.” William Camden, the contemporary historian 228and antiquarian, recorded that the father, after coming to Kent, earned his living by reading prayers to the seamen of the fleet in the River Medway.

When yet a boy Francis Drake was a trained sailor. He was early apprenticed to the master of a bark employed in a coasting trade, and sometimes carrying merchandise into Zealand and France. The youth’s industry and aptness in this business, says Camden, so “pleased the old man,” his master, that, “being a bachelor, at his death he bequeathed his bark unto him by will and testament.” At twenty, assuming the true date of his birth to have been about 1545, he joined with one Captain John Lovell in a trading voyage to Guinea and across to the West Indies and the Spanish Main. The next year, 1566, they made a second voyage to the same points, and on the Spanish Main, at Rio del Hacha, they suffered losses through the Spaniards. Doubtless the knowledge gained in these two voyages made him particularly serviceable to his kinsman, John Hawkins, and brought him the command of the “Judith” in their fatal voyage of the following year. He is said to have invested in this disastrous venture the whole of his little property acquired in his previous voyages and in the earlier coasting trade, and to have lost it all through the affair at San Juan d’Ulloa.

SIR FRANCIS DRAKE.

Upon reaching home with the “Judith,” bringing the first news of the fate of this expedition, he was immediately, on the very night of his arrival, despatched to London by Hawkins’s brother William, at that time governor of Plymouth, to inform the privy 229council and Sir William Cecil, then the secretary of state, “of the whole proceedings,” "to the end that the queen might be advertised of the same." Thus he was brought to the attention of the influential minister and, indirectly, to the favour of the court. At least he was given the support of letters from the queen in the move that he at once instituted for recompense from Spain for his losses. When at length he had become satisfied that nothing could be obtained through diplomatic councils, he determined to “use such helps as he might” to redress by ravaging the Spanish Main on his own account. Accordingly he first made two voyages in succession, the one in 1570 with two small ships, the “Dragon” and the “Swan,” the other in 1571 with the “Swan” alone, particularly to obtain “certain notice of the persons and places aimed at.” These reconnoitring expeditions convinced him that the towns would fall an easy prey to a small armed force, and were also gainful in plunder taken off the coast along the way. Thereupon he promptly arranged for his freebooting voyage, to avenge not only the San Juan d’Ulloa affair but the earlier one at Rio del Hacha.

For daring and audacity this voyage was astonishing, and its results were quick wealth to Drake and renown as a masterful man of the sea. Two ships, the “Swan” of the previous voyages, and the “Pasha,” a larger vessel, of seventy tons, with three “dainty” pinnaces in parts, stowed in the holds of the ships to be set up when occasion served, comprised the equipment. 230Drake sailed the “Pasha” as the “admiral,” while one of his brothers, John Drake, was captain of the “Swan” as “vice-admiral” of the fleet. Another brother, Joseph Drake, went along as a sailor. The company numbered in all seventy-three men and boys. All were volunteers, and all were under thirty years of age, excepting one who was not over fifty. The ships were well provisioned for a year, and they were fully armed, each like a man-of-war of that day. Although the enterprise was ostensibly Drake’s alone, it had a substantial backing furnished by influential silent partners.

The expedition set sail from Plymouth on Whitsunday eve, the twenty-fourth of May, 1572, with intent first to raid Nombre de Dios, on the north coast of the Isthmus of Darien, then “the granary of the West Indies wherein the golden harvest brought from Peru and Mexico was hoarded up till it could be conveyed into Spain.” On the sixth of July the high land of Santa Marta was sighted, and six days later the ships were anchored in a secret harbour within the Gulf of Darien, framed in a luxuriant mass of trees and vine, which Drake had discovered on his second reconnoitering voyage, and called “Port Pheasant,” "by reason of the great store of these goodly fowls which he and his company did then daily kill and feed upon" here. It is supposed to have been the Puerto Escondido, or “Hidden Haven” of the Spaniards. Upon entering it was seen that the nest had very recently been occupied, and, landing, Drake found nailed to a great tree 231a lead plate upon which was posted a warning that their rendezvous had been discovered by the Spaniards, signed John Gannet, and dated five days before. Gannet was presumably the former master of the “Minion,” of Hawkins’s ill-fortuned fleet. He had come out to the Spanish Main on a voyage of his own shortly before the sailing of Drake. Undisturbed by this warning Drake put his carpenters to work at setting up the pinnaces, and the rest of the company at fortifying the place with ramparts of trees. In the meantime there sailed into the snug harbour another English bark. This was captained by James Rouse, the former master of the lost “William and John” of the Hawkins expedition. He also had sailed on a part trading and part buccaneering voyage before Drake had left Plymouth. His company numbered thirty men, some of whom had been in Drake’s second reconnoitring voyage. They brought in two small prizes, one a caravel of Seville, a despatch boat, bound for Nombre de Dios, which they had captured the previous day, the other a shallop taken at Cape Blanc. Rouse joined forces with Drake.

Having got the pinnaces and all things in readiness within a week’s time, the fleet was off for their first foray. Coming to the Isla de Pinos (Isles of Pines), a group at the mouth of the Gulf of Darien (called by them “Port Plenty”), they found here two frigates for Nombre de Dios lading planks and timber, with a number of black men on board at work. These blacks were half-breeds, belonging to a local tribe sprung from 232self-freed Negro slaves and native Indians, known as “Cimaroons,” or “Maroons,” as the English sailors termed them, enrolled under two chiefs, and constant enemies of the Spanish. The frigates were seized, and the black men were taken to the mainland and set ashore to join their tribe and gain their liberty if they would, or, if they were disposed to warn Nombre de Dios, to make the troublesome journey overland, which they could not finish before the Englishmen could reach the place by sea. Then leaving the three ships with the prize in charge of Captain Rouse, and taking fifty-three of his own men and twenty of Rouse’s band, and adding Rouse’s shallop to his fleet of pinnaces, Drake “hastened his own going with speed and secrecy.” Five days later they had arrived at the island of “Cativaas” (Catives), off the mouth of the St. Francis, to the westward of which Nombre de Dios lay. Here they landed and spent part of a day making ready for the assault. Drake distributed the arms among the men and delivered a heartening speech setting before them the “greatness of the hope of good things” in this store house of treasure which might be theirs for the taking. That afternoon they again set sail and at sunset they were alongside the main. Keeping “hard aboard the shore” that they might not be “descried of the Watch House,” they made their cautious way till they had come within two leagues of the port. At this point they anchored till after dark. Then again “rowing hard aboard shore,” as quietly as they could, they attained a sheltered place in the harbour under 233high land, where they lay “all silent,” purposing to make the attack at daylight. When, however, talk of the “greatness of the town” and of its strength for defence, based upon stories told by the blacks at the Isles of Pines, was found to be spreading among the men, Drake “thought it best to put these conceits out of their heads,” by prompter action, taking advantage of the rising of the moon that night which he would persuade them “was the day dawning.” By this strategy the advance was begun at three o’clock, a “large houre sooner than first was purposed.”

The surprise of the town was complete. As the four pinnaces were sailing forward, the rowers noiselessly plying their oars, a Spanish ship laden with Canary wines, newly arrived in the bay, espied them, and immediately sent off one of her boats townward, evidently to give an alarm. But Drake dexterously checked this move by cutting “betwixt her and the Towne forcing her to goe to the other side of the bay.” At the landing place a platform was found fortified with “six great pieces of ordnance mounted upon the carriages,” but only a single gunner on guard. The gunner fled to arouse the town, while Drake’s men dismantled the guns. Then Drake marched his men up a neighbouring hill, where he had heard that ordnance was to be placed that night, to dismantle it if found. But none had yet been set, and he hurried back now to make direct for the town’s treasure. Leaving a guard at the platform to secure the pinnaces, and a trumpeter to sound his trumpet at intervals 234while the other trumpeters were sounding theirs in other parts, to give an impression of a large force of besiegers, Drake divided his men into two companies. One, of sixteen men, under his brother John, was to execute a flank movement upon the King’s Treasure House near by; the other, led by himself, was to march up the broad main street to the Market Place, where the two were to come together. Meanwhile the alarm-bell of the church had been set a-ringing by an official of the town, drums were beating, and the startled people were mustering in the Market Place, their first thought being that their common enemy, the Cimaroons, were upon them.

Drake led his men with trumpets playing and drums beating, and their “firepikes” lighting the way, into the Market Place, and were here “saluted” by a body of Spanish soldiers and people lined up near the Governor’s House, with a “jolly hot volley of shot.” The Englishmen returned this “greeting” with a flight of arrows. Then they brought their firepikes and their short weapons into effective play, and soon routed the town’s defenders, who fled out of the gate—the only gate of the town—leading toward Panama. In this skirmish Drake received a painful wound in the leg. But he valiantly concealed his hurt, “knowing if the generall’s heart stoops the men’s will fail.” Now making their stand in the Market Place, Drake commanded two or three Spaniards whom he had taken prisoner in the flight to conduct him with a detachment to the Governor’s House. It was here that the long 235teams of mules bringing the king’s treasure from Panama were unladen and the silver placed, while the gold, pearls, and jewels were deposited in the stronger-built (of lime and stone) King’s Treasure House. The door of the Governor’s House was found open, and before it a fine Spanish horse, ready saddled. Entering, by means of a lighted candle on the stairs, they saw a vast heap of silver in the lower room. This consisted of silver bars piled up against the wall, some “seventy feet in length, ten in breadth, and twelve in height, each bar between thirty and forty pounds weight,” as they calculated, about the value of “a million sterling.” Drake ordered his men not to attempt to take any of this plunder, for the town was so full of people that it would be impossible to remove it; but at the King’s Treasure House, near the water side, he told them there was “more gold and jewels than all of” their “four pinnaces could carry away”; and he would presently send out a force to break it open.

Accordingly they returned to the Market Place, thence to go for the Treasure House. Back in the Market Place they received a startling report that their pinnaces were in danger of capture. John Drake was hurried to the landing with a guard to meet this emergency. He found the force there much alarmed by a report of a Negro spy that the Spanish soldiers which the blacks at the Isles of Pines had told them had been ordered from Panama, to defend the town from an expected attack of the Cimaroons, had arrived. John Drake quieted their fears. Now a new trouble arose. 236A “mighty shower of rain” with a “terrible storm of thunder and lightning” burst upon the town. Drake and his men sought shelter near the King’s Treasure House. But before they had got under cover some of their bow-strings were wet, and their match and powder hurt. Some of the men began “harping on the reports lately brought” and “muttering of the forces of the town.” Thereupon Drake exclaimed that here he had brought them to the “mouth of the Treasure of the World,” and if they did not gain it they “might henceforth blame nobody but themselves.” So soon as the fury of the storm had abated Drake ordered John Drake and John Oxenham, another officer, to break open the Treasure House, the rest to follow him to “keep the strength” of the Market Place till their work was done. But as he stepped forward he suddenly fell prone in a swoon from loss of blood from his wound, which to this moment he had successfully concealed. This produced consternation among the band. Upon his revival his scarf was bound about the wound, and he was entreated to go aboard his pinnace to have it dressed. He persistently refused, and finally, “with force mingled with fair entreaty” he was seized and borne to his boat. Then all hurriedly embarked and got away, with what little plunder a few had managed to pick up.

So was abandoned “a rich spoil for the present,” but “only to preserve their captain’s life.” It was afterward admitted by the Spaniards that but for the mishap to Drake necessitating their precipitate departure, 237the buccaneers would have fully succeeded in sacking the town.

It was but daybreak when they left. They had besides the captain “many of their men wounded, though none slain but one trumpeter.” On their way out of the harbour they tarried long enough to capture, “without much resistance,” the Spanish ship lying there with her cargo of wines, “for the more comfort of the company.” Before they had quite cleared the haven the Spaniards on shore had got one of the great guns into play upon them. But the shot fell short of their boats. They landed with their prize at the Isle of Bartimentos, or, as they called it, the “Isle of Victuals,” westward of Nombre de Dios. Here they stayed through the next two days to “cure their wounded and refresh themselves” in the “goodly gardens” they found “abounding with great store of all dainty roots and fruits, besides great plenty of poultry and other fowls no less strange and delicate.” Return was then made to the Isles of Pines, where Captain Rouse with their ships was joined.

Thus the incident of the famous raid upon Nombre de Dios, the first object of the expedition, closed with small gain. Hakluyt gives a brief and incomplete account of it, written and recorded, as his title relates, by “one Lopez Vaz a Portugall, borne in the citie of Elvas, in maner follow: which Portugale, with the discourse about him, was taken in the River of Plate by the ships set foorth by the Right Honourable the Earle of Cumberland, in the yeere 1586.” The larger account, 238which Drake himself is said to have “reviewed,” or edited, was not published until more than half a century after the event. It then appeared in a history of the expedition, brought out in 1626, under this inspiriting title: Sir Francis Drake Revived; Calling upon this Dull or Effeminate Age to follow his noble steps for Gold and Silver, By this Memorable Relation of the Rare Occurrences (never yet declared to the world) in a third voyage made by him unto the West Indies, in the years 1572 & 1573 when Nombre de Dios was by him, and 52 others only in his company, Surprised.

Subsequent exploits made up for the failure to loot the “Treasure of the World.” Shortly after the return to the Isles of Pines Captain Rouse parted company with the expedition and went his own way, while Drake continued his enterprise alone, as he had originally planned. His next assault was to be against Cartagena. Toward this port he at once sailed his own fleet, the two ships and the three pinnaces. Arriving in the harbour he found here a “great ship of Seville” making ready to sail for San Domingo. This he took in sight of the town, but beyond the reach of its “great guns,” which opened upon him. The next morning he captured two frigates from Nombre de Dios for Cartagena, on board of which were two “Scrivanos” (escribano, a notary), with letters reporting his attack on Nombre de Dios and his continued presence on the coast, warning the Cartagenians to “prepare for him.” From them ascertaining that he was now discovered to the chief places along the main, he made no further advance 239upon Cartagena, but sought instead a good hiding-place till the “bruit” of his being here “might cease”; intending later to make an alliance with the Cimaroons and raid the treasure route between Panama and Nombre de Dios. Meanwhile the “Swan” was scuttled in order thoroughly to man the pinnaces, and the “Pasha” was utilized as a storehouse. During the next two months roving the coast with the pinnaces, many Spanish ships were seized and relieved of their cargoes, mostly provisions for “victualling” Nombre de Dios and Cartagena, and also the fleets to and from Spain. Such quantities of provisions of all kinds were thus obtained that the company built and stocked at different points, on islands and on the main, four storehouses; and there was sufficient as the season advanced to supply besides themselves, the Cimaroons, and also two French ships that fell in with them in “extreme want.” Later their rendezvous was at the mouth of the Rio Diego, where they built a fort which they called “Fort Diego.” In October, while attempting to take a frigate, John Drake was killed. Early in January the “calenture,” or hot fever, broke out among the company, and several died, among them Drake’s younger brother Joseph.

On the third of February the land journey across the isthmus toward Panama was begun. At that time twenty-eight of the company had died, and several were yet ill. Since it was necessary to leave a few sound men with the sick ones, the number that made this march was only eighteen. The rest of the band were 240Cimaroons, thirty in all. The highest point of the dividing ridge was reached ............