Three years later Drake had begun his preparations for his crowning exploit in the voyage round the globe. In the interim he had served voluntarily in Ireland (1573) under the Earl of Essex, furnishing at his own expense three frigates, with their equipment of munitions and men. This service brought him a strong friend and ultimate patron in Sir Christopher Hatton, then vice-chamberlain. And by Hatton he had been favourably presented to the queen, who received him most flatteringly, and is said to have encouraged him to follow up his attacks upon the colonies of Spain, her bitterest enemy, though yet nominally at peace with her.

This voyage was planned with the utmost secrecy and its real object was carefully concealed. Even when the fleet had actually set sail the company on board were not aware of their true destination; and the mystery enveloping the enterprise most fascinated the bold and daring spirits enlisted in it. The statement had been given out that Constantinople was the goal of the voyage, but it was pretty generally felt that sooner or 254later the Spanish American possessions would be reached. Spain, which at length had been apprised by her envoy of Drake’s movements, shrewdly suspected that his aim, as before, was the Spanish Main; and it was the Spaniards’ belief that he particularly contemplated a fresh attack upon Nombre de Dios and the “Treasure of the World.” To prey upon Spanish ships and loot Spanish possessions was indeed an uppermost purpose with him, but his scheme involved a far greater sweep of operations than the Spaniards imagined. He meant, above all, to accomplish his ardent desire expressed on that tree top on the Isthmus of Panama, to sail an English ship into and to explore the Pacific, and incidentally to harass the Spanish colonies on the Pacific Coast, which from Patagonia to California was then under Spanish rule. The encompassing of the globe, however, was an afterthought growing out of the circumstances in which he found himself on the western North American coast.

The fleet assembled for this voyage were five small ships, the largest of only one hundred tons, the smallest of fifteen, and the average of the whole lot fifty-five tons. They comprised: the “Pelican,” the flag-ship, and the largest, with Drake in command; the “Elizabeth,” eighty tons, Captain John Winter; the “Marigold,” thirty tons, Captain John Thomas; the “Swan,” a flyboat, fifty tons, Captain John Chester; the “Christopher,” a pinnace, fifteen tons, Captain Thomas Moon. And in the holds of the larger ships were stored four pinnaces in parts, to be set up when needed. The vessels 255were stocked and provisioned for a year or more. Some of them, at least Drake’s ship, were luxuriously furnished. We are told of his rich tableware embellished with silver, presumably some of it prizes taken on his previous voyage; of silver pots and kettles in the cook-room; and of other sumptuous fittings. “Neither,” says the historian, “had he omitted to make provision also for ornament and delight, carrying to this purpose with him expert musicians,” a band of fiddlers to play for him at dinners; “and divers shews of all sorts of curious workmanship whereby the civility and magnificence of his native country might amongst all nations whithersoever he should come, be the most admired.” The company comprised, according to the account which Hakluyt gives, one hundred and forty-six men, gentlemen and sailors; another puts the number at one hundred and sixty-three “stout and able seamen.”

They sailed out of Plymouth on the fifteenth of November, 1577. But this proved to be a false start. The wind falling contrary they were forced the next morning to put into Falmouth, where a furious tempest struck them and nearly wrecked the whole fleet. So they were obliged to return to Plymouth for repairs. The second start was made successfully, on the thirteenth of December. Twelve days later they were off the coast of Barbary, and on the second day they called at Magador, where they tarried long enough to put together one of their pinnaces. While at this work they entertained some of the natives, who promised to 256bring them choice provisions in return for gifts of linen cloth, shoes, and a javelin. But the next day an unlucky incident changed the aspect of affairs. A group supposed to have come with the provisions appeared at the water side and a shipboat was sent out to meet them. As the boat touched the shore a sailor sprang from it with outstretched hand to give a hearty sailor’s welcome. He was instantly seized, flung across a horse’s back and galloped away. It was afterward learned that this violent act was committed only to ascertain to whom the ships belonged. It was feared that they might be Portuguese ships, and these Moors were then at war with the Portuguese. The captured sailor was brought before a chief, and when this chief found out that the ships were English, the sailor was hurried back with apologies and loaded with presents. But the fleet was then gone. The sailor was returned to England at the first opportunity, none the worse for his experience.

From Magador the fleet coasted the shore and put next into port at Cape Blanco. On the way down their first captures were made. These included three Spanish fisher boats, “canters,”—or canteras, they were termed—and three Portuguese caravels, the latter bound to the Cape Verde Islands for salt. At Cape Blanco a ship was found riding at anchor with only two “simple mariners” aboard her. She was promptly taken and her cargo added to their spoil. In this harbour the fleet remained four days, during which time Drake mustered his men on land and trained them 257“in warlike manner to make them fit for all occasions.” Before departing he had shifted such things as he desired from the captured canters and returned them to their owners save one, for which he gave in exchange one of his little barks, called the “Benedict,” or the “Christopher,” which name the canter afterward bore. Only one also of the captured Portuguese caravels was retained. Next the Cape Verde Islands were reached, and a landing made at Mayo (Maio), where luscious fruits were added to their stock of provisions. Drake sent out a company of his men to view this island, and they feasted on “very ripe and sweet grapes,” and cocoa which was new to them. Next the fleet sailed by St. Jago [San Thiago], but far enough off to escape danger from the inhabitants whom they mistrusted: and properly, for the latter discharged three pieces at them as they passed by, the shot falling short of them. Off this island they took their richest prize thus far. She was one of two Portuguese ships to which they gave chase. They boarded her, when overhauled with a shipboat, without resistance. She yielded them with other valuable articles a good store of wine. Her pilot, one Nuno da Silva, was retained for service, which proved to be excellent, through a considerable part of the voyage, while the rest of her crew and her passengers, of whom there were several, were sent off in the newly set-up pinnace, graciously provided by her captors with a butt of wine out of their booty and some victuals. She was added to the fleet, with the name of “Mary” bestowed upon her, and put under 258the charge of Master Doughty, a volunteer and perhaps investor in the expedition, and a personal friend of Drake. Doughty was not a seafaring man, and he seems to have got into difficulty with his crew soon after taking command of the prize. Within a few days complaints of his conduct of her coming to Drake, he was called to the “Pelican,” and the captain’s own brother Thomas Drake (another younger brother) appointed to his place, the captain accompanying Thomas Drake on the prize. In the “Pelican” Doughty had no better luck, for complaints of abuse of his authority here soon arose. Accordingly he was deposed and sent to the “Swan” in no post of command. Farther along on the voyage he came to a tragic end, the central figure of a dramatic scene, as will appear later in this narrative. Next after San Thiago, Fuego (Fogo), the “burning island,” then throwing out volcanic flames, and lastly “Brava,” found in contrast a “most pleasant and sweet” isle, were passed.

Then they “drew towards the line,” where they were becalmed for three weeks, but yet “subject to divers great stormes, terrible lightnings, and much thunder.” Along with this “miserie,” however, they enjoyed an abundance of fish, as “Dolphins, Bonitos, Flying fishes,” some of the latter falling into their ships. It was now known to the company that their next destination was America, at Brazil.

From the moment of leaving the Cape Verde Islands, they sailed fifty-four days without sight of land. On the fifth of April the Brazilian coast presented itself to 259view. In the distance they saw fires on the coast. These they afterward learned were set by the natives when their ships were sighted, as a sacrifice to “the devils about which they use conjurations.” The custom of these natives, it seemed, whenever a strange ship approached the coast was to perform weird ceremonies to conjure the gathering of shoals and the outbreak of tempests by which the ship would be cast away. Two days afterward there actually came upon them a “mightie great storme both of lightning, rayne, and thunder,” during which they lost the “Christopher,” their captured canter. While sailing southward, however, they found her a few days later, and the place where she was met Drake called the “Cape of Joy.” Landing, they found no people, but the footprints they saw in the clay ground led them to believe that the inhabitants were “men of great statute,” if not giants. On or about the twenty-seventh of April they were at the great river La Plata. They merely entered it, and finding no good harbour bore to sea again. In bearing out the “Swan” was missed. They next made harbour in a fair bay where were a number of islands, on one of which were seen many “sea wolves” (seals). In early June they were anchored in another harbour, farther south, which they called “Seal Bay” because of the abundance of seal here. They killed from two hundred to three hundred of them, the chronicler averred, within an hour’s time. Again the “Swan” was found, and having become unseaworthy, she was stripped of her furnishings and burned. A few days 260later the “Christopher” was also discharged for the same reason. On the twentieth of June the fleet came to anchor at Port St. Julien, Patagonia, above the Strait of Magellan, giving entrance to the Pacific.

St. Julien was the original winter port of Magelhaens, so named and established by him, and whence he sailed to his discovery of the mysterious strait. Drake similarly made it his port for recuperation and preparation before attempting his passage of this strait to the goal of his ambition. Here two months were spent, while the ships were put in thorough condition,—three only, now, the “Mary,” the Portuguese prize, having been broken up on her arrival because leaky,—and the company disciplined for the better conduct of the adventures before them. The stay was most dramatically and painfully marked, however, by the trial, conviction, and beheading of Drake’s friend, the unfortunate Master Doughty, on the charge of inciting a mutiny in the fleet. The sight of a gibbet set up, as was supposed, seventy years before by Magelhaens for the execution of certain mutineers in his company, may have suggested this inexplicable proceeding, which has been the subject of much speculation by historians and of condemnation by Drake’s harsher critics. The affair is thus vividly reported, with careful particularity, by Hakluyt’s chronicler:

“The Generall began to inquire diligently of the actions of M. Thomas Doughtie and found them not to be such as he looked for, but tending rather to contention or mutinie, or some other disorder, whereby (without 261redresse) the successe of the voyage might greatly have been hazarded: whereupon the company was called together and made acquainted with the particulars of the cause, which were found partly by master Doughtie’s owne confession, and partly by the evidence of the fact, to be true: which when our Generall saw, although his private affection of M. Doughtie (as hee then in the presence of us all sacredly protested) was great, yet the care he had of the state of the voyage, of the expectation of her Majestie, and of the honour of his countrey did more touch him (as indeede it ought) then [than] the private respect of one man: so that the cause being thoroughly heard, and all things done in good order as neere as might be to the course of our lawes in England, it was concluded that M. Doughtie should receive punishment according to the qualitie of the offence: and he seeing no remedie but patience for himselfe, desired before his death to receive the Communion, which he did at the hands of M. Fletcher our Minister, and our Generall himselfe accompanied him in that holy action: which being done, and the place of execution made ready, hee having embraced our Generall and taken his leave of all the companie, with prayers for the Queenes majestie and our realme, in quiet sort laid his head to the blocke, where he ended his life.”

Whether he were guilty or not, Doughty’s fine courage and manly bearing throughout his ordeal calls only for admiration.

The execution over, Drake made a speech to the assembled 262company, persuading them to “unitie, obedience, love, and regard of” their voyage: and “for the better confirmation thereof” he “willed every man the next Sunday following to prepare himselfe to receive the Communion as Christian brethren and friends ought to doe.” This, the chronicler concludes, was done “in very reverent sort, and so with good contentment every man went about his businesse.”

St. Julien was left on the seventeenth of August, and on the twentieth the mouth of the Strait of Magellan was reached. At the entrance, Drake, as another chronicler recorded, caused the fleet, in homage to the queen of England, to “strike their topsails upon the bunt as a token of his willing and glad mind to shew his dutiful obedience to her highness, whom he acknowledged to have full interest and right” in his discoveries; and he formally changed the name of his own ship from the “Pelican” to the “Golden Hind,” in remembrance of his “honourable friend and favourer,” Sir Christopher Hatton, whose crest bore this design. Then the chaplain delivered a sermon and the ceremonies closed.

The passage of the strait was successfully made in the remarkable time of sixteen days, and on the sixth of September the little fleet emerged in the sea of their desire on the “backside” of America.

Instead, however, of the tranquil ocean that Magelhaens had named the Pacific, because of its serenity when he first saw it, they encountered a rough and turbulent water; and no sooner had they cleared the 263strait than a great storm arose by which they were driven some two hundred leagues westward, and separated. The “Golden Hind” was struggling against the almost continuous tempest for full fifty-three days. From the west she was carried south as far as fifty-seven degrees, and Drake was enabled to see the union of the Atlantic and the Pacific, and by chance to discover Cape Horn. He sighted numerous islands, and gave the name of the “Elizabethides” to the whole group of Tierra del Fuego. While beating about west and south the fleet came together again, but only soon to be parted forever. In the middle of September a harbour was temporarily made in a bay which Drake called the “Bay of Severing Friends.” Working northward again they stood in a bay near the strait. The next day the cable of the “Golden Hind” parted and she drove out to sea. Thus she lost sight of the “Elizabeth,” and never saw her more. It was supposed that she had been put by the storm into the strait again, and that she would ultimately be met somewhere above. The first part of this supposition was correct. She had recovered the strait. But instead of returning to the Pacific course Captain Winter made the passage back to the Atlantic, and so continued his voyage homeward, reaching England on the first of November. Captain Winter prepared an account of his companionship with Drake from the start, and of his experiences after parting with him, which Hakluyt reproduced. On the second of October the “Marigold,” in trying to regain lost ground, fell away from the “Golden Hind” and 264afterward (though Drake was not aware of her fate) foundered with all on board.

Now the “Golden Hind” was left alone with a single pinnace. Subsequently the pinnace with eight men in her separated from him and was seen no more. Her crew, as was some years after related by the single survivor, had marvellous adventures, which included the return passage through the strait; a voyage to the River La Plata; fights with Indians in woods on the shore; escape of those left alive to a lone island, where the pinnace was dashed to pieces on the rocks; two months on this island by the survivors, now only two, who subsisted on crabs, eels, and fruits with no water to drink; and final escape to the mainland by means of a raft of plank, where one of the two died from over-indulgence in the sweet water of a rivulet.

At length after her wanderings southward the “Golden Hind” with a favourable wind got fairly off on a northwestern course. Again coming to the height of the strait she coasted upward, Drake always hoping to meet or hear of his missing consorts. Through the inaccuracy of his charts he was carried more to the westward than he intended, and on the twenty-ninth of November fell in with an island called la Mocha. Here he came to anchor in the hope of obtaining water and fresh provisions, and of recuperating. Taking ten of his men he rowed ashore. The inhabitants were found to be Patagonians, who had been compelled by the “cruell and extreme dealings of the Spaniards” to flee from the mainland and fortify themselves on this 265island. They thronged down to the water side with “shew of great courtesie,” and offered potatoes, roots, and two fat sheep, Drake in return giving them trinkets. A supply of water was also promised by them. But the next day when the same party rowed to the shore and two men were put on land with barrels to be filled, the people, mistaking these men for Spaniards, seized and slew them. Another account says that in attempting to rescue their comrades the party were assailed, and Drake was wounded in the face by arrows. The ship then at once weighed anchor and got off.

Drawing toward the coast again, the next day anchor was dropped in a bay called St. Philip. Here an Indian came out in a canoe, and taking the “Golden Hind” to be Spanish, told of a great Spanish ship at a place called “S. Iogo” (Valparaiso), laden from Peru. For this exhilarating news Drake rewarded the canoeist with divers trifles, and under his pilotage straightway put off for Valparaiso to seize the prize if there. True enough, she was found in that harbour riding quietly at anchor, with only eight Spaniards and three Negroes on board. They also supposing the new comer to be Spanish, welcomed her with beat of drum and made ready a “Bottija [a Spanish pot] of wine of Chili to drink” to her men. So soon, however, as the craft was come up to, one of Drake’s impatient men began to lay about him, and striking one of the Spaniards cried “Abaxo Perro, that is in English Goe downe dogge!” This, in modern parlance, gave the “Golden Hind” away. But not a moment was lost in parley. “To be short,” 266says the chronicler, “wee stowed them away under hatches all save one Spaniard, who suddenly and desperately leapt over board into the sea, and swamme ashore to the towne ... to give them warning of our arrival.” There were then in Valparaiso “not above nine households,” and it was instantly abandoned. Drake proceeded to rifle the place. A lot of Chili wine was taken from a warehouse, and from a chapel a silver chalice, two cruets, and an altar cloth were carried off. All of the pious spoil was generously given by Drake to his chaplain, Master Fletcher. This business done, all of the prisoners were freed with one exception, John Griego, a Greek, whom Drake held to serve him as pilot to the haven of Lima, and the “Golden Hind” set sail again with the Spanish prize in tow. She was rifled leisurely when at sea, and produced “good store of the wine of Chili, 25,000 pezoes of very pure and fine gold of Baldivia, amounting in value to 37,000 ducats of Spanish money or above.” This was reckoned a pretty fine haul for the first one on the Pacific coast, but greater were to follow.

The voyagers still kept in with the coast and next arrived at “a place called Coquinobo” (perhaps Copiapo). Here Drake sent fourteen of his men to land for fresh water. They were espied and a body of horsemen and footmen dashed upon and killed one of them. Then the attacking force quickly disappeared. The Englishmen went ashore again and buried their comrade. Meanwhile the Spaniards reappeared with a flag of truce. But they were not trusted, and as soon as his 267men had returned Drake again put to sea. He now had a new pinnace, having at this place set up another of the three brought out ready framed. The next place at which a landing was made was Tarapaca. On the shore a Spaniard was found lying asleep with thirteen bars of silver beside him. Drake’s party took the silver and left the man. Not far from this place a boat’s load going ashore for water met a Spaniard with an Indian boy driving eight “llamas,” sheep of Peru, as “big as asses,” each carrying on its back two leather bags, together containing one hundred pounds’ weight of silver. They took the sheep with their burdens, and let the man and boy go. Still coasting along the buccaneering voyagers came next to the port of Arica. In this haven lay three barks well freighted with silver. They were instantly boarded and relieved of their cargoes. From one alone were taken fifty-seven wedges of silver, each of “the bigness of a brickbat,” and of about twenty pounds’ weight. They were unprotected, their crews having fled to the town at the approach of the Englishmen. Drake would have ransacked the town had his company been larger. As it was, the spoil of the barks so easily taken contented him. Now he was bound for Lima. Along the way he fell in with a bark which, being boarded and rifled, produced a good store of linen cloth. When as much of this stuff as was desired had been taken the bark was cast off.

Callao, the port of Lima, was reached on the thirteenth of February, and entered without resistance. 268A dozen or more ships were met in this haven, lying at anchor, all without their sails, these having been taken ashore, for the masters and merchants here felt perfectly secure, never having been assaulted by enemies and fearing the approach of none such as Drake’s company were. All were held up and rifled. In one were found fifteen hundred bars of silver; in another a chest of coined money, and stocks of silks and linen cloth. Drake questioned the crews as to any knowledge they might have of his lost consorts, for which he had kept up a continual lookout; but he could learn nothing from them. He learned something else, however, which hastened his departure. This was that a very rich Spanish ship, laden with treasure, had sailed out of this port just before his arrival, bound for Panama. She was the “glory of the South Sea,” named the “Cacafuego,” in English equivalent the “Spitfire.” Drake was soon in full chase of her, and to prevent himself being followed from Callao he cut all the cables of the twelve ships, letting them drive as they would, to sea or ashore.

DRAKE OVERHAULING A SPANISH GALLEON.

On this run he paused long enough to overhaul and loot a brigantine, taking out of her eighty pounds’ weight of gold, a gold crucifix studded with emeralds, and some cordage which would come in handy on his ship. Drake promised his men that whichever should first sight the “Cacafuego” should be rewarded with the gold chain he wore. It fortuned that his brother John, “going up into the top,” spied her at three o&r............