Spanish Main

As soon as diplomacy had removed the embargo, he had sailed as purser of a ship belonging probably to William Hawkins to the Biscayan province of Spain, and once more it seems as though the finger of destiny had beckoned him there to show the work he was born to do.

st sebastian was the chief port of biscaia and there at this moment were creeping from the pestilential dungeons of the inquisition the remnants of a plymouth crew who had been seized when the embargo was first proclaimed in six months half of them had rotted to death and it may even have been that his ship brought home the broken wretches that survived so successful was john hawkins's second voyage and so alarming the activity had bred in the english ports that spain began to tremble for her monopoly of the western trade she had absolutely forbidden her american subjects to traffic with foreigners and particularly in negro slaves and so indignantly did the ambassador protest against hawkins's conduct that the council still ignorant of their strength felt themselves obliged to bind him over the following year not to go to the indies but if he did not go an expedition went it was under the command of a captain lovell one of the forgotten pioneers of north america and with it sailed francis drake it was his first sight of the fabled indies and one he never forgot for in attempting to set the prohibition at defiance in the port of la hacha on the spanish main they found themselves the victims of some treacherous stratagem which sent them home with the loss of all their venture end of section one it was a blow drake never forgot nor forgave but in the following year the attempt was not repeated and he sought to recoup his shattered fortunes by serving in a voyage to guinea It was probably that under Captain George Fenner, and if so, he must have witnessed that brilliant engagement in which for two days with his own single ship and a pinnace, Fenner fought and finally drove off a great Portuguese galleass and six gunboats.

It was the first action of a long and glorious series, and the news of it came most timely to add its inch to the lengthening stride of the epic.

for the netherlands were sullenly turning upon their spanish governor the english catholics were staring dumfoundered at the blackened relics of darnley's murder and elizabeth felt she could for the present snap her fingers at the spanish ambassador and indulge in a little more buccaneering it was her favourite investment for her the risk was small and the hopes of profit too rosy to be resisted it seems strange conduct for a great queen but she had to encourage adventurous commerce on which in those days of a half-established navy england's maritime position depended the royal ships were merely a nucleus round which armed merchantmen gathered in time of war it was as natural for the queen to employ her ships in commerce while the realm was at peace as it was for shipowners to accept a charter party from the admiralty at the outbreak of a war the mercantile marine then formed what we should now call the naval reserve The situation was perfectly understood and recognized by both government and ship owners.

The Jesus, the Minion, and the little Judith were all that got clear, and Drake himself, it is said, only escaped by swarming on board along a hawser.

the rest of the ships were lost and so shattered was the jesus that she had to be abandoned with all the immense proceeds of the voyage crowded with the crews of the lost ships riddled with shot and only half victualled the minion and the judith began to stagger homewards while the spaniards enjoyed their ill-gotten success In all those wars, it was by far the richest victory which the Spaniards gained over the English, and of all, the most dearly purchased, for not only did it win for Philip and his perjured viceroy the mortal enmity of John Hawkins and Francis Drake, but it showed them the path to their revenge.

CHAPTER II THE SPANISH MAIN PART I in england the news of the disaster produced a profound sensation it may be fairly said to mark the opening of a new book in the great epic of the reformation for the first time the long commercial intimacy between england and spain received a rude shock and from that shock it pined and died Hitherto the party and the council that believed England's true policy to be a policy of alliance with Spain had more than held their own, but on January 23, 1569, a weather-beaten man was riding post from Plymouth along the London Road with the tidings which were destined at last to turn the scale.

That man was Francis Drake.

But the whispers had come up from the coast.

They had pillaged and murdered along the Outer Banks and the Spanish Main.

There were fugitives from the scaffold.

The dour Scots didn't want pirates to contaminate their sacred burial ground.

Oh, yes, I see them.

What about these? The Lore of Piracy and Rascals of the Spanish Main.

Where'd you get these?

I don't really know, Charles.

As Oman just said there, they considered you an intruder and a pirate and an enemy and a criminal.

It was their ocean, it was their land, the Spanish main.

So it's quite a dangerous thing if you got caught.

If Spanish or Portuguese ships found anyone else's ships, not just English, French, Dutch, in the seas that they considered theirs and theirs alone, granted to them by God and the Pope, well, they were within their rights to take you out, take you down.

1588 is the big year so you can see all the events that are leading up to it year after year after year becoming more and more a big war with Spain becoming more and more inevitable okay so English and Spanish troops actually fighting each other albeit in Holland the Netherlands the low countries in 1586 Oman goes on saying, Far more important than the fighting in the Netherlands were the maritime exploits of the English seamen.

The moment that they were let loose upon the Spaniards, they asserted a clear supremacy at sea.

Drake took and sacked Vigo, a great port of northern Spain, and then crossing the Atlantic, captured the chief cities of the West Indies and the Spanish Main, Santiago, Cartagena and San Domingo.

That again was in 1586.

It is a type that did not endure in the north of Europe under former agricultural conditions, nor is it suitable to the farming districts and frontiers of America and Canada.

It is adjusted to subtropical and tropical countries better than any other European type, and will flourish in our southern states and around the coasts of the Spanish Main.

In France it is well known that members of the Mediterranean race are better adapted for colonization in Algeria than are French Alpines or Nordics.

This subspecies of man is notoriously intolerant of extreme cold, owing to its susceptibility to diseases of the lungs, and it shrinks from the blasts of the northern winter in which the Nordics revel.

Seven, the European races in colonies.

For reasons already set forth, there are few communities outside of Europe of pure European blood.

The racial destiny of Mexico and of the islands and coasts of the Spanish Main is clear.

The white man is being rapidly bred out by Negroes on the islands and by Indians on the mainland.

I- in 1701, war breaks out in Europe, a war called the War of Spanish Succession.

In that time, from 1700, in fact, from, from slightly before that time, to 1708, there had n- not been a single treasure fleet coming from the Spanish Main back to Spain.

And so you can imagine the accumulated wealth that the Spanish king was incr- increasingly desperate for to pay for the war and, uh, and the many debts that, uh, Spain was saddled with.

The San Jose was the flagship of the treasure fleet that came in 1708 that was 17 ships strong but only two galleons, the San Jose and the s- her sister galleon, the San Joaquin, among the most magnificent Spanish galleons ever built.

Introduction.

There is no more entrancing body of water in either the Western or Eastern Hemisphere than the Caribbean Sea, with a fringe of lovely tropical islands on one side, and on the other the Spanish Main and its picturesque centuries-old towns and fascinating sights.

Aside from its beauty, its delightful climate, and its ever-shifting scenes, the Caribbean and its shores are redolent of romance.

It was the starting point of those brave though ruthless adventurers who carved a new world for Castile and Leon.

Across this sapphire sea sailed the caravels of Columbus, the Golden Hind of Drake, and the stately plate-laden galleons of Spain.

And across the same sea coursed those fierce sea rovers, the buccaneers.

Of all the daredevil spirits who sailed the Caribbean and ravaged the Spanish Main, the buccaneers were the most picturesque and romantic.

Villains though they were, reddened with the blood of the innocent and helpless though their hands, black-hearted cutthroats beyond denial, yet there is something about them that appeals to all, and that, despite their ill deeds, fills one with admiration.

By and by, however, there was a change in the stranger's habits.

He spent less time in his room and more downstairs with the rest of the company, telling them wonderful stories of the pirates in the Spanish Main.

Indeed, so well did he describe the adventures that his listeners were not slow in guessing that he himself had taken the chief part in them.

One evening the talk happened to turn on the famous Captain Kidd, most celebrated of buccaneers.