Sir Francis Drake

Oh thou who wast the greatest scourge of Spain, and who

To Philip’s self wast source of fear and terror on the seas.

FORTY-EIGHT MEN TOILED through the tropical rain-forest of the isthmus of Panama. Eighteen of them were English. They carried their weapons, but were otherwise less heavily burdened than their comrades, the black cimarrones who marched with them, laden with victuals which they supplemented by the spoils of hunting. The forest was dark and quiet, only illuminated high in the tree tops where brilliant macaws flitted among sunlit branches. In the gloom below it was cooler. Lianas crawled up the thick, high boles, striving to reach the light. Lizards scuttled in the undergrowth and wild pigs foraged among the ferns and palms. Of fruit there was plenty, including lemons, mammee and palmetto.

The travellers marched purposefully, keeping where possible to the cool uplands or the shade of the trees, but also sluicing across swift streams which gushed on beds so stony that they cut shoes to pieces, or through tall and thick grasses which lay open to the burning sun. Each day the march began at sunrise. After some four hours the men rested until noon, and another camp was established at about four o’clock. Then the cimarrones would fashion rude shelters, thatching plantain leaves between palmetto poles, and securing the dwellings from water and the cold air which distinguished nights in the hills. During the day four cimarrones broke trail ahead, while twelve acted as an advance to the main party and another twelve formed a rearguard. The two remaining cimarrones, one of them their leader, Pedro, accompanied the Englishmen in the centre.

Drake had acted quickly after learning of the arrival of the flota. He had sent a pinnace towards Nombre de Dios to confirm the news, which it did, taking two barks laden with provisions into the bargain. Then Drake had struck into the interior, leaving his ships, the sick, and the new Spanish prisoners (who needed protecting from the fury of the cimarrones) under the charge of Ellis Hixom at Slaughter Island. By so doing he had already outwitted the Spaniards, for none of them expected the corsairs to attack the isthmus highway close to Panama and their eyes were seawards, not to the land. Diego Flores had been received at Nombre de Dios with reports of Drake’s activities, but he instinctively created a convoy system for the barks plying between the town and the Chagres River, fitting out a brigantine and ordering the building of another oared vessel. Unfortunately for Flores, Drake was not interested in the barks this time; he intended to cut the land highway between Panama and Venta Cruces and to intercept the treasure-laden mule-trains as they plodded across the isthmus.

On the third day of their march Drake’s party entered a cimarrone town, situated on a hillside by a river and protected by a ditch and a mud wall about 10 feet high. The villagers furnished the corsairs with maize, fruit and meat, and regaled them with stories of Spanish atrocities, of how the year before the town had been sacked, and black men, women and children had been slaughtered or captured. In return the English captain could not resist proselytizing, as he had with that Welshman years before on Lovell’s voyage. He encouraged the cimarrones to set aside their Catholic crosses and to embrace the ‘true worship’, evidently with some success.

Another four days brought Drake to ‘a very high hill, lying east and west, like a ridge’, and upon its summit an enormous tree into which the cimarrones had cut steps that they might ascend to the top, where a viewing platform had been established. The captain accompanied Pedro to the bower to behold a sight few Englishmen had yet seen. Lying to the west in the clear light, across the tree tops, was the mighty Pacific Ocean itself. Twisting round, Drake could see in the opposite direction the Caribbean that he knew so well. History and art have often dwelt upon this moment, sensing its significance and the inspiration with which it filled the English commander. Perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight, commentators have exaggerated the episode, but it was notable nonetheless. Drake saw a vision of the future here, the basis of another adventure. Just as he had led the corsairs to the isthmus highway, so he now grasped the possibility of unlocking the door to the Pacific, where none but the Spaniards and the occasional Portuguese had gone from Europe before, and which was still largely a mystery even to them. There and then Drake ‘besought almighty God of his goodness to give him life and leave to sail once in an English ship in that sea.’ And when he reached the ground John Oxenham, the Plymouth man who now stood as Drake’s second-in-command, clambered up the tree to partake of the same exhilaration. A brave and respected man, but stern and grave, he seldom gave way to emotion, but now ‘protested that unless our captain did beat him from his company he would follow him by God’s grace.’¹ Both men would fulfil their pledge to furrow the Pacific, but, while to one it would bring glory, to the other it would bring death.

Soon after this incident Drake and his men reached the grassy hills about Panama, and working along the crests they gazed down at the city sitting on the edge of the greatest of oceans with the ships that passed to Peru nestling in its anchorage. About a day’s journey from Panama the raiders found a grove in which to camp, remote enough to be secure from the casual Spanish traveller. Drake had penetrated a region unknown to other corsairs, and he did not intend that his presence should be discovered prematurely. At dusk he sent a cimarrone into Panama to gather information, and heard what he wanted. The treasurer of Lima himself, with his family, was due to leave the city with a mule convoy bearing gold and jewels bound for Nombre de Dios, while behind them would travel two more mule-trains laden with silver and victuals. After the news was confirmed by a Spanish prisoner, also brought in by the cimarrones, Drake set up an ambush.

He chose a spot just south of Venta Chagre, a riverside hamlet above Venta Cruces, and secreted half of his men in the long grass about fifty paces from one side of the mule path and the other half, commanded by Pedro and Oxenham, on the other side, further from Venta Chagre. So that they might be distinguished in the dark the Englishmen wore white shirts on the outside of their clothing. According to Drake’s plan, Oxenham was to allow the mules to pass his party. When the leading animals reached Drake’s position he would rush forward and seize them while Pedro and Oxenham swooped on the rear of the train. Once the first and last mules had been forced to lie down the others, if they obeyed their training, would follow suit.

The next half-hour must have seemed longer than that to the men crouching by the wayside, wondering if all their travail was at last to be made worthwhile. Eventually, sure enough, the sound of the mule bells was heard in the still night, and the hooves of the animals struck sharp on the hard ground. The train was coming. But then there came another sound, not from Panama, but from Venta Chagre, in the opposite direction – the unmistakable hoof-beats of a single rider at a trot, with a page running at his stirrup. Drake trusted that his men would have the sense to keep their positions, and to allow this rider to pass, but as he listened he heard the Spaniard suddenly spur his horse forward in a gallop towards Panama and the oncoming mule-trains. Had Drake’s ambush been discovered? He could only wait for the answer.

His suspicions were well founded. The fault lay in one Robert Pike, apparently a seaman of Oxenham’s party. He had been drinking ‘too much aqua vitae without water’, in the words of the narrative, and stole close to the roadside in his eagerness to attack. Worse, when the Spanish rider approached from Venta Cruces, Pike rose from the grass in his white shirt like some dreadful spectre and was spotted before a cimarrone could pull him down and sit on him to prevent further disturbance. It was at this point that the rider broke into a gallop to warn the mule convoys ahead. He informed the escorts that he thought the pirate Drake was waiting for them along the path, and the Spaniards immediately turned back the mules carrying the treasure, which, it was said, was worth some £35,000. To engage the attention of the corsairs, however, the Spaniards sent forward the animals laden with silver and victuals so that the English would not suspect that their ambush had been discovered.

Thus it was that when Francis Drake’s men leaped from their hiding places to secure the mule-train searches revealed no more than two horse-loads of silver and some food. A few bold Spanish drovers had volunteered to ride forward into the ambush, a sure indication that the Spaniards were convinced that it was Drake and not the cimarrones, whose savagery they feared, who lay ahead. From one of the prisoners the English learned how their plan had been frustrated, and black must have been the name of simple Robert Pike. Months of waiting and two weeks of stumbling across the isthmus had merely culminated in more bad luck, which now seemed inseparable from the expedition.²

The soldiers of Panama were sure to be told, and Drake had to get his command away before it was destroyed. He consulted with his men and with Pedro, and decided not to retrace the route by which they had come across the isthmus, but to take the shortest way to the Caribbean, even though it passed through the small town of Venta Chagre. Drake reasoned that if he moved quickly he could capture it before its defenders could assemble. Addressing his men and the cimarrones, he convinced them of the necessity for the attack, and once they had replenished their provisions from the mules and released the animals and their drovers, the English plunged into the thick woods down a path that led to Venta Cruces.

As they approached the settlement they encountered a party of Spanish travellers, most of them Dominican friars on their way to Panama under military escort. Drake had been alerted by a few cimarrones in the advance party, and was able to issue a few brief orders before a Spanish voice called out, ‘Que gente?’

The Spaniard ordered Drake to surrender in the name of Philip of Spain, to which insulting demand Drake answered, ‘that for the honour of the Queen of England, his mistress, he must have passage that way,’ and so saying he discharged a pistol in the direction of his enemies. There was a return volley from the Spanish soldiers, and Drake and some of his men were wounded, one of them fatally, but the captain blew his whistle as a signal to his men to fire. They delivered both arrows and shot, and then charged forward, the cimarrones bounding lustily to the assault with ferocious cries that sounded to the English like ‘Yó pehó, Yó pehó!’ In the brief skirmish that ensued a Spaniard skewered a cimarrone on a pike, three or four of the Spanish soldiers and a friar were killed and others wounded, and the rest of Drake’s opposition fled.³

The raiders then swept into Venta Chagre and quickly made themselves masters of the small settlement, which consisted of no more than fifty houses, some storehouses, a commander’s residence and a monastery. In one of the houses three women were convalescing after childbirth. Not unnaturally they were alarmed by the sudden appearance of the English, and more particularly by the cimarrones, nor were they reassured by the words of some of Drake’s men that they would be safe. The captain understood the bitterness of the Negroes, but he endeavoured to curb their ferocity, enjoining them to harm no one who did not resist. It had been his aim to give the English a better reputation than the French enjoyed, for ‘of all the men taken … we never offered any kind of violence to any, after they were once came under our power, but either presently dismissed them in safety or, keeping them with us some longer time … we always provided for their sustenance as for ourselves, and secured them from the rage of the cimarrones.’⁴ However reprehensible the raids Drake was conducting, and whether it was patriotism, religion or the memory of Spanish treachery that was used to legitimize the violence, the causalties were those who resisted, and Drake waged his war with more humanity than anyone familiar with the barbarity of the religious conflict in Europe might expect. Now, when he learned of the apprehensions of the Spanish women, Drake visited them himself to convince them of their safety.

Guards were posted at the approaches to the town while the English and their allies refreshed themselves and added a little booty to the silver they had taken from the mules. Some buildings containing merchandise were burned some time before early the next morning, when the raiding party were marched out. The attack probably turned the men’s minds from their disappointments, and as they retired to the coast Drake strode cheerfully forward, rebuilding the morale of his followers and assuring them that notwithstanding all the defeats they would not leave the Caribbean uncompensated. Once again Drake’s fortitude and resourcefulness were on trial, as he must have known. If Nombre de Dios, Cartagena and the ambush outside Venta Chagre had spelled failure, he must think of some new audacity to retrieve their fortunes.

Jaded and footsore, the men force-marched towards the sea, tumbling into a village that the Negroes had newly established close to where Drake’s ships were to call. Amid his tribulations, Drake must have taken consolation from the unswerving loyalty of the cimarrones, for those unusual men seemed equal to every situation. As the exhausted Englishmen rested at the village, the Negroes made new shoes for them and tended those who were sick. The English account of the voyage remembered it this way:

These cimarrones, during all the time that we were with them did us continually very good service, and in particular in this journey, being unto us instead of intelligencers to advertise us; of guides in our way to direct us; of purveyors to provide victuals for us; of housewrights to build our lodgings; and had indeed able and strong bodies carrying all our necessaries, yea many times when some of our company fainted with sickness or weariness, two cimarrones would carry him with ease between them two miles together, and at other times (when need was) they would show themselves no less valiant than industrious and of good judgement.⁵

A cimarrone it was who now went ahead to signal to Drake’s vessel that they could contact their captain at a nearby river. When the two parties of Englishmen met the one must have seemed strange to the other, for Drake’s expeditionary force was gaunt and weak, and some of the men had been left behind to recover at the Negro town. The whole company was eventually reunited in 23 February, 1573, and embarked, still far from the riches they had sought with such ardent hopes. A few of the blacks left for home, but others were so enamoured of their new role that they accompanied Drake aboard the ships.

Drake knew that he must now mark more time to allow the Spaniards to think that he had abandoned his attempts to capture the treasure-trains for more lucrative activities elsewhere. Then he planned to return, and to strike again at a place where vigilance would be lax. Discussing the problem with his comrades he found considerable disagreement as to which was the best course, and so divided his command to meet two of the proposals. Oxenham took the Bear eastwards in search of victuals, and Drake cruised in the other direction, hoping to snap up a prize or two among the treasure barks shuttling between Nombre de Dios and the mouth of the Chagres.

His own operation was not a success. Drake may have sailed as far as the mouth of the San Juan River and taken four vessels, but he acquired only a little gold and failed to surprise the harbour of Veragua. However when he rejoined Oxenham he was cheered to learn that the Bear had met with better fortune, and had secured a prize well-supplied in maize, hogs and hens, and stout and big enough herself to manage the Atlantic crossing home when the time came. The vessel was cleaned and fitted with guns and loaded with supplies, and for the time being Drake kept her crew prisoner. The raiders then repaired to Slaughter Island for an Easter feast during which they were cheered by the food they now had at their disposal and Drake’s cavalier talk of further enrichment.

The twenty-third of March saw Drake with his new ship and the Bear off Cativas Headland hunting for more prizes. When a sail was seen to the west, he bore down upon it, merely to discover that the quarry was a Frenchman. Indeed, her captain was a Huguenot privateer, bent upon raiding the Spaniards, and he was out looking for Drake, for he was short of water and needed the support of an ally. Guillaume Le Testu explained that he had cider and wine aboard, but little water, and that some of his men were sick. Drake immediately sent some provisions across, and then bade Le Testu follow him to one of his depots where the French could be fully replenished. At anchor the Huguenot captain graciously sent Drake a case of pistols and a gilt scimitar that had been the gift of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the leader of the French Protestants. Not to be outdone by this Gallic charm, Drake awarded Le Testu a gold chain from his own collection.

Then there was serious talking. From Le Testu and his men the English learned the blood-curdling story of the massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day in France. In August the previous year, the notorious Catherine de Medici, the queen-mother, frantic as she saw her son King Charles IX become the puppet of the Huguenot Coligny, and another son, the miserable Alençon, going in the same direction, had arranged for the assassination of Coligny. The assassin had botched the job, and Coligny was wounded, but not killed. Catherine became desperate; she persuaded King Charles that Coligny was a traitor, along with all Protestants, and prepared a death-list of the Huguenot leaders, including Coligny. But the political purge became mass-murder, and thousands of Protestants, in Paris and throughout France, were butchered in one of the bloodiest episodes of the period. Once again France was tortured by religious civil war. Drake must also have been stirred by news of the revolt in the Netherlands, where the Dutch, inspired by the capture of Brielle and Flushing by the so-called Sea Beggars, among whom were many recruits from the Netherlands, had at last broken into outright rebellion against Spain. Both tidings, indicative of the tensions developing between Rome and Geneva and between Spain and northern Europe, may have encouraged Drake as he chewed at the margins of Philip’s empire.

Le Testu and Drake respected each other. The Frenchman had heard of Drake’s exploits on the Spanish Main, and Drake would quickly have realized that Le Testu was no ordinary corsair: he was a middle-aged man of a seafaring family from Le Havre and had studied navigation at Dieppe; nor was he a stranger to American waters. Between 1550 and 1556 he had made three voyages to the New World with the monk André Thévet and had explored the Brazilian coastline; on the last of these occasions he had acted as pilot of a French expedition that had planted a small colony in Brazil and returned to Europe with tobacco, which Le Testu may be credited with having helped introduce to France. He demonstrated that he was no mean cartographer by producing a folio atlas of fifty-six maps, Universal Cosmography, based on his own experiences and completed in 1556; he dedicated it to Coligny. After further voyages to Africa, Brazil and North America and the revision of some of his cartography, and having received an appointment as Royal Pilot at Le Havre, Le Testu was drawn into the privateering that was unleashed by the wars of religion, cruising in the Huguenot interest. He was soon captured at sea, and imprisoned by the Duke of Alba at Middleburg in Flanders. Not until January 1572 was he freed, on the intercession of Charles IX to Philip II. Obviously, Le Testu had powerful friends – Coligny, André Thévet (then chaplain to Catherine de Medici), and possibly Philippe Strozzi, an important army officer who was planning a French expedition to the West Indies.⁶

Conceivably, it was Strozzi who was responsible for Le Testu’s arrival in the West Indies. Possibly the seaman had been charged with reconnoitring for Strozzi’s project. When Drake met Le Testu, although he could call upon the Negroes, his own force had shrunk to thirty-one, and his ships were small. The Spanish vessel that Drake was currently using was only about 20 tons’ burden, and the tonnage of his pinnaces was not more than 10 each. Le Testu, on the other hand, had seventy men and a ship of over 80 tons. Drake may have viewed him as a potential threat, so superior was he in strength, or he may have regarded the Frenchmen as welcome reinforcements at a time when his own manpower was so depleted. Anyway, he struck a bargain with Le Testu. The two would join forces. Drake’s plan of campaign would stand, and the corsairs would march inland to attack the isthmus highway using twenty Frenchmen, fifteen Englishmen and some cimarrones. Drake’s Bear and Minion would land the raiders at the River Francisca, five leagues east of Nombre de Dios, while the rest of the ships would remain secluded in some quiet anchorage. It was agreed that the plunder taken would be shared equally between the French and English, half to each party; the cimarrones had little use for treasure and apparently supported Drake purely as another opportunity to strike their enemies.

This time Drake planned to cut the isthmus treasure route at a different place. Some of the bullion from Panama was loaded on to barks at Venta Cruces to be transported the rest of the way by river, but part of it continued by mule-train to Nombre de Dios. Drake reasoned that after so long and dangerous a journey the mule drivers and their escorts would begin to relax as the train approached its destination, and so he would intercept it at the Campos River, only two leagues from Nombre de Dios. He gave instructions to his pinnace captains to return to the Francisca River on 3 April to take off the expeditionary force.

On 31 March, 1573, the corsairs filtered into the woods, heading for the highway, a shorter march than that gruelling hike to Panama. The French were impressed both by the order and silence exhibited by the English and Negroes as they passed through the forest, and by the relationship that Drake had cultivated with Pedro and his followers. The raiding party arrived within a mile of Nombre de Dios, and were so close that local carpenters could be heard labouring in the port’s shipyards. After a brief refreshment, the corsairs took up their positions on the Campos River and waited while some of the cimarrones crept towards the mule-path to watch. After so many disappointments the waiting was tense, but this time the discipline and determination of the men were rewarded. The following morning, 1 April, the Negroes reported that three mule-trains, nearly two hundred heavily laden animals in all, were coming along the path under an escort of forty-five soldiers. With the cimarrones, Drake probably outnumbered the Spaniards, and he had the advantage of surprise. He was also, it seems, better armed. Only some of the mule-train’s escort carried arquebuses, and others bows, but some were so badly equipped that they marched barefoot. They hardly looked formidable opposition to men of the stamp of Drake, Oxenham, Pedro and Le Testu. As the mule convoy moved easily along the trail, with Nombre de Dios close by, the Spaniards had no suspicion that they were about to be attacked.

When it came the assault was sudden and swift. Drake’s men bolted from the foliage and seized the first and last mules in the line, driving away the soldiers with surprising ease. A Negro arquebusier with the Spaniards discharged his piece at Le Testu, wounding him in the stomach, and a cimarrone was killed, but the escort was soon in flight. Greedily the corsairs leaped upon the baggage, and found an enormous prize in their hands, for the mules were carrying treasure worth more than 200,000 pesos belonging to both the king and private individuals. It was impossible to carry all of it away. According to what the French later told André Thévet some Negro drovers captured with the train told Drake where the more valuable treasure, the gold, was packed:

Those who accompanied … Captain Testu took as much as they could carry; even the slaves leading the charges encouraged them to do so, through hatred of the Spaniard, showing them where the gold was so that they should not play around with silver. There were plaques of gold like two kinds of seals from the High Chancellery of France, some of Castillian ducats, others of pistoles.⁷

About 15 tons of silver were hastily buried, in burrows made by landcrabs, under fallen trees, and in the sand and gravel of the bed of a shallow river. The French interred some of it on a tiny island. More than 100,000 pesos in gold were actually carried back to the ships by the corsairs, including 18,363 pesos that were being shipped to the king from Colombia. This booty amounted to about £40,000 in Elizabethan money, equal to perhaps a fifth of the queen’s annual revenue, and, according to the agreement made between Drake and Le Testu, half of it belonged to the English.

But first they had to escape, and here the disadvantage of striking so close to Nombre de Dios made itself felt. It would not take long for the routed gold escort to reach the town and declare their misfortune, and a posse of enraged Spaniards would soon be forming to pursue Drake’s men. After two hours of looting, sorting, burying and packing treasure, the corsairs struggled into the deep woods with their winnings. Captain Le Testu’s wound was a severe one, however, and he could not keep up with the retreat. Chivalrously, he remained behind, hoping to recover some strength, with two Frenchmen who elected to stay with him, while Drake led the rest of the party towards safety. The only other loss suffered by the party during the flight was that of a drunken Frenchman, Jacques Laurens or Lores, who wandered away from the march and was lost in the trees.

Burdened as they were with treasure, Drake’s men pressed forward quickly for they knew that a determined pursuit might overtake them, or that the Spaniards could cut off their retreat by sea. In Nombre de Dios the alcalde, Diego Calderon, and Captain Hernando Berrio were indeed beating an alarm about the town and gathering soldiers for that very purpose. Drake’s party marched for two days over difficult ground, enduring the intervening night when the forest was punished by a fearful storm. On 3 April they reached the mouth of the Francisca, the appointed rendezvous for the pinnaces, but it was not the welcome sight of their ships that greeted the weary travellers. The English pinnaces were nowhere to be seen. Instead, riding quietly off shore, were seven oared Spanish shallops with artillery and manned by eighty-five musketeers.

This was a desperate moment for the corsairs, and among them a sickening logic revealed what must have taken place. That drunken Frenchman they had lost must have been captured by the Spaniards and compelled to disclose where Drake was expecting to embark. The English pinnaces had been captured by this superior Spanish force, and Drake was now surrounded, by the shallops at sea and the pursuers behind. The imagination of the men dwelt upon one terrifying prospect after another. If the pinnaces had been taken it was only a matter of time before the Spaniards would learn where Drake kept his base. Even now Diego Flores might be on his way to destroy the Pasco, Le Testu’s ship and Drake’s Spanish prize, and with them any chance of returning home. Of what use was the treasure to them now, with their enemies on all sides and no means of escape?

It was a bad situation, but Drake’s resource, resolution and equipoise did not fail him. Addressing his men, he reminded them that even if the pinnaces had been taken, as was supposed, it would be some time before the Spaniards could obtain the information about the base and mount an expedition against it. There would be a delay, and during that interval Drake must reach his ships and bring them away. But how, without the pinnaces? An overland march along the coast would have taken too long and was out of the question, so Drake set his men to make a small raft. They hauled fallen trees together, trimmed off their branches and bound them to each other; then they fitted a crude mast to the timbers and equipped it with a slashed biscuit sack as a sail. A rudimentary oar was fashioned from a branch. The craft was a crazy structure, large enough for only a handful of men, a fragile instrument to launch into the surf for a madcap voyage in a storm-prone, shark-infested sea. At least two men were required to manage her, and Drake declared that he would fill one place and called for a volunteer to accompany him.

John Smith offered himself, and two Frenchmen who were strong swimmers were also so insistent that Drake agreed to take them. Pedro, the cimarrone leader, begged that he might go too, but Drake would not have it so; he had too many for his raft already, and Pedro was not a good seaman. The captain and his three men waded out with their ridiculous craft, bent upon what must have seemed a forlorn adventure, a wild errand against Spaniards and the sea in which the chances of survival were not high. Yet every man there depended upon its succeeding. Drake knew that many doubted that he would make it or that they would ever see him again, and that they needed any reassurance his words could offer them. As he departed he turned to the solemn companions remaining on the shore, and ‘comforted the company by promising that if it pleased God he should put his foot in safety aboard his frigate, he would, God willing, by one means or other get them all aboard, in despite of all the Spaniards in the Indies.’⁸

Fortune had so often defeated Drake, but this time she shone upon him brightly. The raft sailed three leagues, with the waves sweeping across it and surging up to the men’s armpits. The salt on their bodies and the burning sun began to peel away parts of their skin, but a remarkable sight presently met their eyes – the pinnaces, the Bear and the Minion, which they had supposed had been captured. The Englishmen on board the ships did not see the tiny raft wallowing in the waves, and they put before a freshening wind into a cove for the night. Drake had to put his raft ashore and lead his companions across the point by land to advance from the trees towards the anchored pinnaces. At this moment his cheerful disposition found time for a joke. When the startled seamen recognized their captain among the four dishevelled men moving unevenly towards them their hearts sank, for it surely betokened another disaster, and as Drake climbed aboard one of the ships his grim aspect sustained their apprehension. Then, suddenly, he broke into a smile, and removed from his clothes a quoit of gold. Their voyage, he said, was ‘made’.

Drake never pieced together the whole story of what had happened. The pinnaces had been prevented from reaching the Francisca River by a powerful westerly wind, and it was a Spanish force from Nombre de Dios that had arrived at the rendezvous instead. When news of the robbery first reached Nombre de Dios a party of foot soldiers had left for the Campos River, where they came upon the broken boxes that had contained the treasure. Some of the Spaniards under Diego Calderon remained to forage and discovered most of the loot hidden by the corsairs, while a small party under Captain De Berrio attempted to follow Drake’s trail. In the woods they came upon Captain Le Testu and his two comrades. One of the Frenchmen fled, but the other, along with his gallant commander, was slain, and Le Testu’s head was struck off that it might be displayed in the market-place of Nombre de Dios. Despite this success, the Spaniards gave up the chase before reaching the Francisca River because the storm on the night of 1–2 April wiped out the trail. Captain De Berrio’s men therefore returned to the scene of the robbery where they busied themselves rooting for further caches of plunder.

If the land pursuit fizzled out, another by sea was soon under way. Two prisoners were eventually brought in by the Spaniards. One was the Frenchman who had wandered from Drake’s party. He had been seized by some Negroes working on a dam and turned over to the Spaniards, who summarily executed and quartered him. The other prisoner, a cimarrone, was forced to reveal Drake’s destination. This information reached Nombre de Dios in the late afternoon of 1 April, and Diego Flores fitted out seven shallops, commanded by Captain Cristóbal Monte, and sent them to intercept Drake at the Francisca River. The vessels reached their station at dawn the next morning, and explored the lower reaches of the river without finding the corsairs. In fact, the Spaniards had arrived too early, for Drake was then still marching towards the Francisca. Had Monte’s force remained in the river longer there might have been a skirmish. As it was, the Spaniards withdrew to stand off shore, preparing to leave, and were thus positioned when Drake arrived at the mouth of the Francisca to see them. Good luck was indeed with Drake upon this adventure. On 2 April a second posse of soldiers was led out of Nombre de Dios by Captain Antonio Suarez de Medina to renew the land pursuit, but whereas Monte’s shallops had moved too quickly, Medina was too late, for he found that his quarry had escaped.

The night Drake found his pinnaces he had his men picked up, and their treasure was safely stowed aboard. Then he retired to the Cativas Headland to consolidate his position. The riches met all their expectations, and were divided between the French and English; the former then took their leave and sailed away after what had been an unusually profitable voyage. Drake prepared his Spanish prize for the journey home, and gave the old Pasco to his remaining prisoners to enable them to make their way to safety. After about two weeks he also judged it safe to return to the scene of his triumph for the unfinished business. He knew nothing of the fate of Le Testu and his two comrades, and wanted to try to pick them up, and there was the matter of the treasure that had been left hidden. The captain planned to send sixteen cimarrones and twelve Englishmen to retrace the line of their former retreat until they reached the scene of the robbery.

This expedition was not wholly fruitless. When the English reached the estuary of the Francisca and landed their party (commanded this time by Oxenham and Thomas Sherwell) it was hailed by a lone figure – the Frenchman who had remained with Le Testu until the Spaniards had arrived. He was able to tell Drake about the death of his captain and so to satisfy, if sadly, one of the mission’s objectives. As for the other, a group of Englishmen did visit the site of the attack on the convoy and saw there the signs of the thorough searches the Spaniards had made. Nonetheless, thirteen bars of silver and a few quoits of gold repaid the men for their trouble and left them with but one remaining task, the voyage home.

Drake made a final cruise, taking a ship east of Cartagena, and both this and his own ship were then careened for home. They were tallowed and their rigging repaired, and the little pinnaces that had served them so well were burned and their ironwork turned over to the Negroes. The alliance of white and black must now come to an end. It had been the instrument of Drake’s success and the aspect of his expedition that most troubled the Spaniards, who now feared that this intrepid Englishman would recruit an army of blacks and sack Nombre de Dios and Panama. None of Drake’s fellow raiders, French or English, satisfactorily exploited the potential of the cimarrones, and for years Pedro and his followers remembered the little English captain. At their parting Drake invited Pedro and three other Negro leaders to rummage aboard his ships to choose gifts for themselves. As Drake was pulling out some silk and linen for the chiefs’ wives, Pedro’s eyes lighted upon the gold scimitar which Captain Le Testu had given his ally. Drake would rather have kept it, but the cimarrone deserved no less, and Pedro received his sword.

More than a year had passed since seventy-three hopefuls had left Devon filled with dreams of Spanish bullion. Most of them were now dead, testimony to the dangers inherent in the game they had played. Two of Drake’s brothers lay buried within the sound of the sea, on the small island in the Gulf of San Blas. But finally determination, audacity, careful planning and resourcefulness had been rewarded, and Drake was returning with wealth few Englishmen could have amassed in a lifetime. In value it may have been less than the plunder he had brought home in 1571, but this time the holds were filled with treasure, not merchandise, and their cargo had an immediate purchasing power.

Behind him Drake left a coast in great distress, and ringing again with tales of his exploits. Enormous as Drake’s booty had been, it was only a minor loss in the totality of Spain’s transatlantic trade, equal to only a twentieth of the annual value of the exports from Spain to the West Indies. But this corsair was not pottering haphazardly about the Caribbean; he was severing the artery through which the riches of the empire passed. He had captured two of the towns on the isthmus highway, Venta Chagre and Nombre de Dios, and threatened the third, Panama, and he had twice intercepted the mule-trains. Far more ominously, he had treated with the cimarrones, who provided both the knowledge of the bush and the manpower that the corsairs lacked. If Drake armed the Negroes the treasure flow might be stopped. As the Municipal Council of Panama told Philip of Spain:

This realm is at the present moment so terrified, and the spirits of all so disturbed, that we know not in what words to emphasize to your Majesty the solicitude we make in this dispatch, for we certainly believe that if remedial action be delayed, disaster is imminent … These English have so shamelessly opened the door and a way by which, with impunity, whenever they desire, they will attack the pack-trains travelling overland by this highway.⁹

While Nombre de Dios clamoured for galleys to protect its coast, and Philip II, contemplating the insolence of this obscure corsair, instructed his Indies fleet to defend Darien, other Englishmen were following in Drake’s wake. John Noble, Gilbert Horseley, Andrew Barker and John Oxenham would soon be exploring the Caribbean in quest of treasure. Oxenham, like Drake, had glimpsed something else too – the great Pacific Ocean and its totally undefended coasts from which the riches of South America were being shipped. As the King of Spain looked to improve his ravaged defences in the Caribbean, Drake was already ahead of him, dreaming of another and even more sensational stroke, where no corsairs had yet penetrated. A new phase of Drake’s war was now in the making.

Plymouth, Sunday 9 August, 1573. The day had been quiet, as befitted the Sabbath, but a tremor of excitement shortly rippled through the congregation of St Andrew’s church at an interrupting word from the harbour. Before long the preacher was watching his flock desert the sermon to stream towards the waterfront. Francis Drake had come home.

² The date of the attack is uncertain. Spanish accounts place it in the last days of January, hut the English narrative has Drake leaving Slaughter Island on 3 February, viewing the Pacific from the tree in Darien on 11 February, and attacking the mule-train in the middle of that month.

³ Once again the Spanish casualties are given differently in the various accounts. The Municipal Council of Panama informed the Crown on 24 February, 1573 (Wright, Documents Concerning English Voyages to the Spanish Main, 48–51) that three Spaniards and a friar had been killed and five others, white and Negro, were mortally wounded. Depositions sent from Nombre de Dios indicate that three Spaniards and a friar were killed and others wounded. These depositions may be the basis of the Panama account (Miguel Ordoño to the Crown, 26 February, 1573, Ibid, 52–3). Lopez Vaz in the account published by Hakluyt in 1589 confused this attack on the mute-trains with Drake’s later capture of a convoy outside Nombre de Dios.

⁶ Lemonnier, Sir Francis Drake, 76–80, gives details of Le Testu’s career from French sources.

⁷ Translated from Lemonnier, 85. Lemonnier quotes a French manuscript by André Thévet, who claimed to have interviewed Le Testu’s men (‘as some of them have confessed to me’). The details are broadly compatible with those given by the English and Spanish records, but seem erroneous in some respects.

⁹ Municipal Council of Panama to Philip II, 24 February, 1573, Wright, 48–51