Sir Francis Drake

Nor can it be in vain that Francis Drake,

Your noble hero, recently sailed round

The vast circumference of Earth (a feat

Denied to man by many centuries),

To show how Father Neptune circumscribes

The continents, and wanders in between

To keep two worlds apart.

THE CAPTAIN OF the Pelican, the General of the expedition that forged into the English Channel that night, had cause to ponder the questions hanging over his voyage. As well as the problems of finding and navigating the Strait of Magellan and the uncertainty of whatever might await him beyond, an enormous discipline problem confronted him. The men happily believed themselves on their way to Alexandria, and what would happen when they learned that Drake was taking them to the edge of the known world was anybody’s guess. Far from land and the restraint of authority back home, discipline in those small ships sitting upon a gigantic empty ocean would rest heavily upon the General’s shoulders. Deep-sea voyages, especially ones as fraught with danger as this one, invariably tried the tempers of crews and tested the firmness of command, and in this case Drake had not even his queen’s commission to underwrite any action he might be compelled to take.

For the moment other problems were more immediate. Atrocious weather forced the expedition to retire first to Falmouth and then back to Plymouth for repairs. There, amid embarrassed reunions, recriminations flew about, and Drake, in some way dissatisfied with the provisioning of the voyage, dismissed Sydae. Not everyone was pleased. Walking with a carpenter named Edward Bright in Drake’s garden, Thomas Doughty complained that Sydae had been essential to the success of the expedition. According to Bright, Doughty went even further. He began bragging about his own importance, and claimed not only that he had been instrumental in gaining Drake the command but also that the backers expected Doughty to share the General’s authority. Drake, he said, had been ordered to consult Doughty on all matters. As Bright later reported it, Doughty began speaking obscurely. He told Bright that he would choose twelve men aboard ‘that should carry the bell away, swearing that I should be one, and that he … would make me the richest man of all my kin if I would be ruled by him.’¹ Did the simple ship’s carpenter consider that Doughty, one of the General’s closest friends, was trying to raise a faction against the commander? If he did, Ned Bright said nothing to Drake about the matter, and held his peace, but he remembered Doughty’s words and was to recall them another day.

On 13 December the expedition made its second start, and it was soon running south-westerly along the coast of north-west Africa by a shoreline of fine white sand fringing a rugged interior. By then it was plain that Drake was not interested in the Mediterranean, now rapidly being left behind. There was some discontent, and one mariner later complained to Captain Winter that ‘Mr Drake hired him for Alexandria, but if he had known that this had been Alexandria, he would have been hanged in England rather than have come in this voyage.’² Still, the narratives of the voyage record no undue resentment at this time, and Drake steered for the Cape Verde Islands, his mind possibly on the extra provisions he might find there. They were occupied by the Portuguese and used as a source of fruit, vegetables and livestock and as a base for longer voyages to and from West Africa, the East Indies and Brazil.

Drake had no doubt about how he would obtain what he needed from the islands. England and Portugal had long fallen to blows in these waters, and Drake resolutely upheld the tradition. On the African coast he had already seized half a dozen Spanish and Portuguese vessels, and arriving in the Cape Verdes he sent a pinnace in pursuit of a ship off Santiago, capturing her despite a ragged fire from an onshore battery. The Santa Maria was a pleasing prize, for she yielded victuals and various other everyday commodities, an astrolabe, sailing directions for Brazil, and – more valuable still – a Portuguese pilot, Nuño da Silva, experienced in the voyage between Europe and South America and the owner of several nautical charts. Great navigator as Drake was, he knew there was no substitute for men schooled in the waters ahead, and he took not only the ship, putting her crew into a pinnace and bidding them farewell, but also Nuño himself. It was piracy, without a doubt, but Drake was not troubled. He needed the victuals to maintain a vigorous company free from scurvy, and Nuño would help him on the coast of Brazil. Captain Winter of the Elizabeth, Drake’s immediate subordinate, was less accustomed to the informal warfare of West Africa, and when he later made a report he was careful to establish that he had acted only in accordance with his commander’s instructions.

As it happened, the prize, now renamed the Mary (possibly after Drake’s wife), brought with her the first flicker of the discontent for which Drake was ever on the watch. He appointed Thomas Doughty to captain the ship, but, soon after coming aboard, that gentleman was involved in a dispute with some of the men. Two accounts of it survive. John Cooke, a partisan of Thomas Doughty who has little to say in Drake’s favour, has it that Doughty discovered the General’s brother, Thomas Drake, had broken open a chest to forage through the Portuguese booty that it contained. Doughty declared that he would have to report the incident to the General, and so he did, the next time that Drake came aboard the Mary. By this version, Drake flew into a rage, and accused Doughty of undermining him by attacking his brother; he would hear no more of it. The tempers of both men flared, and Doughty’s friend, Leonard Vicary, had to intercede to smooth the matter down.

So wrote John Cooke, Drake’s enemy and Doughty’s friend. But his story may be doubted, not only for its partiality but on account of its inherent implausibility. If Drake turned so vigorously against his comrade, it is strange that he next moved Doughty to the command of the Pelican, the flagship of the expedition itself. A more convincing account of the difficulty was provided by the preacher, Francis Fletcher, himself no friend to the General, and it puts a new complexion upon the affair. Soon after taking charge of the Mary, Fletcher relates, Doughty was accused by a few of the sailors aboard the prize of purloining some of the captured goods. Drake investigated, as he was bound to do in a matter so relevant to the maintenance of harmony and order, and found Doughty in possession of some gloves, a ring and a few coins. Doughty explained that Portuguese prisoners had given them to him, and we must presume that the General chose to believe the story because he demonstrated his continuing faith in Doughty by transferring him to the command of the Pelican. Drake himself took over the Mary, and no doubt hoped that the trouble would blow over.²

It did not, for now Doughty, perhaps upset by his experience on the prize, began sowing discontent on board the flagship. He worked on the master, Thomas Cuttle, and the carpenter, Ned Bright (the same we met in Plymouth), promising to reward them if they would do his bidding, and he seems to have hinted that whatever they did Doughty could square in England by bribing the queen and Privy Council. Doughty’s will reveals that he was a considerable investor in the voyage, but his stake amounted to no more than £500, and there is no doubt that Doughty exaggerated both his authority in the expedition and his influence at home. For what purpose? He seems to have been trying to raise a party among the men, and there is a suggestion that he proposed abandoning Drake and taking the Pelican on a raid of Spanish or Portuguese possessions. If so it was at best desertion, and at worst mutiny.

How much of this came back to Drake in the Mary is not known, although it would be surprising if his friends on the flagship left him in complete ignorance of Doughty’s activities. The latter’s cause does not even appear to have been promoted with much tact. John Doughty, Thomas’s younger brother, was alleged to have boasted that the brothers commanded powers of witchcraft, and that they could bring forward the Devil in the form of a lion or a bear, or poison their enemies by supernatural means. If these remarks were made they were injudicious in the extreme, because the Elizabethans credited and feared witchcraft, and in no community was that abhorrence more acute than among superstitious sailors. Equally tactless was a mysterious message Thomas Doughty sent to Drake, to the effect that the General would shortly ‘have more need of me than I shall have of the voyage.’⁴

It was a small matter that finally snapped Drake’s patience. He had sent his trumpeter, John Brewer, to the Pelican, and there an argument ensued between Brewer and Doughty. Shortly after the trumpeter’s return to the Mary, Drake sent his boat to the Pelican to fetch Doughty. As Doughty prepared to climb aboard the Mary, Drake himself appeared at the side. ‘Stay there, Thomas Doughty!’ he called, ‘for I must send you to another place.’ And with that he commanded the oarsmen to take Doughty to the Swan flyboat, a storeship under the charge of John Chester.⁵ There was no explanation, simply the stark demotion that said everything. When Doughty came aboard the Swan, he complained that he was being treated as a prisoner, distrusted as a conjuror and traitor, but that he would refute every charge in England.

As the Doughty affair unfolded the expedition picked its way across the Atlantic, travelling south-westerly for more than sixty days without sight of land and crossing the line on 20 February, 1578. On 5 April they breathed the ‘very sweet smell’ of land at 31°30′ south and reached the coast of Brazil.⁶ Drake’s instructions probably directed his attention to the area of the River Plate, reputedly rich and possibly the source of respectable trading prospects. But as the English crept southwards, with Drake scrupulously comparing the coastline with Nuño’s maps, the General’s interest was as much upon finding shelter from the turbulent weather now gracing their progress and places where supplies might be replenished and the ships repaired. Nearly two weeks were spent in the river mouth, killing seals for fresh meat, refilling water casks and reconnoitring. Then Drake was at sea again, investigating bays, noting landmarks, searching for ships that had got separated, beating out to sea in foul weather to avoid shipwreck, and making contact with Indians. In an anchorage in 47°57′ (Bahia Nodales, Argentina) Drake eventually reassembled all of his squadron except for the Mary. The Swan, which had also parted company with the other ships for much of the time, had rejoined, and Drake was disappointed to learn that all had not been well aboard her. The trouble was Thomas Doughty.

He had been singing his familiar song, promoting his own authority at the expense of Drake’s. Drake, he said, owed his advancement to Doughty, and even Lord Burghley himself had sought Doughty as his secretary. In England, indeed, Doughty’s influence was such that the power to reward followers or to punish enemies would be his. Now after dinner one day, talk had fallen upon the rising discontent that Doughty’s ramblings had encouraged, when John Saracold bluntly observed that if there were traitors aboard Drake should deal with them as Magellan had done, and hang them as an example to others. Saracold did not name Doughty, but the gentleman was plainly alarmed at the suggestion. ‘Nay, softly!’ he replied. ‘His authority is none such as Magellan’s was, for I know his authority so well as he himself does. And for hanging, it is for dogs, and not for men.’⁷

Doughty’s pretensions had not been the only source of difficulty on the unhappy Swan, for the gentlemen on board were also manifestly failing to carry their share of the hard work, considering it beneath their station and dignity. In an expedition of this kind every hand was needed, and there was no place for the distinctions of rank of the Tudor class system. But as the mariners heaved upon ropes and scrambled about the rigging, the gentlemen idled. The divisions deepened, between supporters of Drake and supporters of Doughty, between mariners and gentlemen. It was the custom of the ship’s officers to dine with the gentlemen, but so inflamed was the master, a man called Gregory, that one day he declared that he would no longer mess with Doughty and his friends but would rather eat with the common sailors. And he did so. What was worse, he used his authority to have the best victuals delivered to the mariners rather than to the gentlemen and other officers. Doughty complained to the captain, John Chester, expressing his surprise that Gregory’s conduct was allowed, but when he got no satisfactory response he confronted the master himself. The argument blazed anew, with Gregory angrily telling Doughty that ‘such rascals as he should be glad to eat the tholes when he would have it.’ In other words, the gentlemen might eat the ship’s boat for food. Blows were exchanged, and Doughty again appealed to the captain. ‘Master Chester,’ he said, ‘let us not be thus used at these knaves’ hands. Lose nothing of that authority that the General hath committed unto you. If you will we will put the sword again into your hands, and you shall have government.’⁸

The most bloodcurdling of Doughty’s innuendoes indicated that he was fomenting mutiny. He told four people, including Fletcher the preacher, that he would make the company cut one another’s throats. The context of his remarks is unclear, but they clearly boded ill for the conviviality of the expedition. Whether Drake took up these matters while in the anchorage is not known, but certainly an argument occurred, and a furious one, for the General lost his temper. He struck Doughty and ordered him to be bound to the mainmast of one of the ships, a not uncommon punishment of the time. It was fortunate, perhaps, that the men had much else on their minds in the fortnight they spent in the bay, but as they butchered more seals and fowls for meat, loaded fresh water, and transferred stores from the flyboat, which Drake intended to break up, many of them must have sensed that Drake and Doughty would have to settle their differences soon. The quarrel had been afoot for more than four months and the dangers of the Magellan Strait and the South Seas, which now seemed the undoubted object of the voyage, lay not far ahead.

The Indians may have been a welcome diversion. They visited daily, growing friendlier the more they learned to trust the English. Drake’s method of establishing rapport with the natives was the same used only a few years ago by the famous Villas Boas brothers in their historic efforts to contact remote tribes of the Brazilian rainforest. Presents were left on rods so that the Indians might approach them at their leisure and leave in return their own offerings. Then, gradually, relations were intensified. The native men proved to be ferocious-looking fellows, though hardly the giants depicted in Spanish myth. They wore their hair long, painted themselves red, white and black, and if they went largely naked they smeared their bodies with oil to keep out the cold. Bones or wood were thrust into their noses or lips. They fascinated the voyagers, who noted the Indians’ love of music (especially the English drums and trumpets), their ability to produce a fire from two pieces of wood, their dances (in which, to the immense satisfaction of his men, Captain Winter participated) and their jollity. Amiable the Indians were, but the English also found them opportunist thieves, and one day as Drake was ashore an enterprising native snatched away his cap, a scarlet one with a golden band, and dashed away with it in triumph. The General understood the importance of good humour and patience in situations like this, and, in the words of a mariner, Edward Cliffe, ‘would suffer no man to hurt any of them.’⁹

Drake’s relative humanitarianism has been met before, and we have seen how he attempted to set better standards than the French in his dealings with Spanish prisoners in the West Indies. Likewise, he had learned much from the cimarrones – learned that they, like him, had suffered by the Spaniard, and that if their friendship was cultivated they made good allies. Fellow-feeling and self-interest alike dictated Drake’s attitude to blacks. So now he approached the Indians of South America in a spirit of forbearance and friendship, hoping to give them an impression of the English that was better than the one they had of the Spaniards, and to prepare the way, if necessary, for any future relationships in trade. We cannot suppose that Drake believed their religion equal to his own. He shared with other Europeans the assumptions of Christian moral superiority, and beneath his kindness lay thoughts of eventual profit. But there was, too, a genuine respect for peoples of another culture and colour that was absent in so many of the great discoverers, in Columbus, Pizarro, Da Gama and Hawkins. He constantly spoke of the cimarrones. One of Drake’s men later told a Spaniard that ‘those Negroes were the brothers of Captain Francis, who loved them dearly.’ And a Spanish prisoner of Drake’s remarked that ‘he had heard Captain Francis say that he loved them, and that he spoke well of them, and every day he asked if they were in peace.’¹⁰ This was an attitude, alas, that few of the English were prepared to live up to. Compare, for example, Richard Grenville’s destruction of an Indian village as punishment for the theft of a silver cup at the landing of the first colonists in Virginia in 1585.

On 3 June the English at last quit the bay, having broken up the Swan in the interests of consolidating the squadron. Again there was an unpleasant scene, for when Drake ordered the Doughty brothers to ship aboard the Christopher Thomas refused. The General was now thoroughly tired of Doughty’s behaviour, and cut the nonsense short by ordering Doughty to be lifted aboard with the ship’s tackle. But he could also see the seeds of mutiny spreading among the men. Thomas Cuttle seized his arquebus and waded to the shore, turning in the shallows with the sea lapping around him to declare that he would not return to see Doughty treated in such a fashion. Rather, ‘I will yield myself into cannibals’ hands, and so I pray you all to pray for me.’¹¹ Cuttle’s bravado was only a temporary phenomenon: after the other men had been embarked Drake sent a boat ashore and the indignant mariner was persuaded to return. Nevertheless, it was a display of disobedience Drake could have done without.

The General’s conviction that the Doughtys were fomenting disorder was plainly demonstrated shortly afterwards, when Drake disposed of the Christopher and transferred the brothers to the Elizabeth, where his vice-admiral might keep an eye towards them. Before the Doughtys came aboard Drake himself visited the Elizabeth and delivered a stern warning to her crew. He was sending them, he said, ‘a very bad couple of men, the which he did not know how to carry along with him.’ Continuing, he described Thomas Doughty as ‘a conjuror, a seditious fellow and a very bad and lewd fellow, and one that I have made that reckoning of as of my left hand; and his brother, the young Doughty, a witch, a poisoner, and such a one as the world can judge of. I cannot tell from whence he came, but from the Devil I think.’ If the men stood by Drake, he promised them wealth beyond their dreams, but they must neither speak to nor communicate in writing with the two troublemakers.¹²

Port San Julian stood in 49° south, a little north of the Magellan Strait, its anchorage flanked on the south side by pillars of black rock and sprinkled with small islands. Ashore stood a grim relic of fifty-eight years’ standing, braving the powerful winds of these wild regions: the wooden gallows upon which Ferdinand Magellan had hanged one of his men for mutiny. As the Pelican, Elizabeth, Marigold and Mary stood into the anchorage on 20 June Drake was steeling himself for a more timely and no less decisive resolution to the disaffection within his own ships. He had now reached a critical stage of his journey. His ships were further south than any English vessel had been before, and he could not afford to take on the formidable Strait of Magellan and the South Seas with his command torn by dissension. If there was to be a final confrontation with Thomas Doughty, it had to be here.

As if to proclaim the dark doings of Port San Julian, an unfortunate episode marked Drake’s landing, two days after his arrival. The English hoped that their amicable relations with Indians would continue, but such was not to be the case. Drake and six men had rowed ashore. They were under-armed, having brought, apart from swords and bucklers, only one arquebus and bow between them. On the face of it this seemed perfectly adequate; only a few Indians appeared and their demeanour was reasonably friendly. It was one Robert Winter who haplessly transformed the scene. He was demonstrating the English bow to the Indians, matching it against their weapons, when the string broke. One of the aborigines, under the notion that the English were now devoid of fire-power, then fired an arrow into Winter’s lungs, fatally wounding him. As Winter tumbled to the ground, a sailor named Oliver, who carried the only arquebus, discharged it at the offending warrior, but the powder was damp and the weapon misfired. The Indian slotted another shaft to his bow, and as Oliver fumbled with his priming the arrow smashed into his chest at close range with such force that the point protruded from his back.

Two of the English had been killed with impunity, and the Indians were now inflamed, shouting exultantly. From a distance they began to shower the remaining five white men with arrows. Drake was now fighting for his life, and he instantly took command of the situation. He ordered those of his men with shields to form a defence before the others, and as the arrows fell about them he had them broken into halves so that they could not be reused. Gradually, the fire slackened, as the Indians ran short of arrows. At this point, Drake snatched up Oliver’s fallen arquebus, recharged it and turned it upon the Indian who had murdered his comrades, blasting ‘his guts abroad’, as Fletcher vividly put it.¹³ At this reverse the Indians fled, and although Drake used the anchorage for a month they troubled him no more.

To protect his men from possible retaliation, Drake had them pitch their tents on a low stony island in the bay, and amid his final preparations for the voyage to the Magellan Strait he attended to the problem of Thomas Doughty. On 30 June every man in the squadron was summoned to the island, where they found their leader in a grim mood and beside him, acting as clerk, Captain Thomas of the Marigold. Drake went straight to the point. Thomas displayed papers containing testimony to Doughty’s mutinous talk throughout the voyage, and then Drake addressed the accused: ‘Thomas Doughty, you have here sought by divers means … to discredit me to the great hinderance and overthrow of this voyage, besides other great matters wherewith I have to charge you withal, the which if you can clear yourself of, you and I shall be very good friends, where to the contrary you have deserved death.’ The reference to the ultimate penalty so early in the proceedings was a spine-chilling indication of Drake’s determination, and Doughty immediately denied the allegations. The General asked how he would like to be tried.¹⁴

‘Why, good General, let me live to come into my country, and I will there be tried by Her Majesty’s laws,’ Doughty replied. He knew that if he could delay the trial any number of events might prevent it ever taking place, and if he had to answer the charges it was better that he did so before an impartial judge, and where influence might be brought on his behalf.

But Drake was having none of this. He could not continue his voyage with Doughty’s mutinous influence festering aboard the ships, nor could he spare men to conduct the prisoner home. ‘Nay, Thomas Doughty,’ he said. ‘I will here empanel a jury on you to inquire further of these matters that I have to charge you withal.’

Now, Doughty was not only an educated, articulate gentleman, but a lawyer, such a lawyer as few could master, according to Parson Fletcher. Having failed to delay his trial, he played his top card immediately and struck at Drake’s weakest spot. Guessing that the General had no written commission from the queen, he questioned Drake’s right to preside over the trial. ‘Why, General,’ he said pointedly, ‘I hope you will see your commission be good.’

Drake began to bluster his way out. ‘I warrant you my commission is good enough,’ he said tersely.

‘I pray you let us then see it,’ Doughty chimed. ‘It is necessary that it should be here showed.’ If Doughty had any doubt about Drake’s authority, he must have swallowed hard at this point.

Drake, however, had no answer; instead, he imperiously swept away the objection. ‘Well, you shall not see it. But well, my masters, this fellow is full of prating. Bind me his arms, for I will be safe of my life.’ And as some of Drake’s men obeyed one wonders how impressed they had been with what had scarcely been one of their General’s better performances. As for Doughty, he now knew that while he might possess greater knowledge and a sharper wit than Francis Drake, he had underestimated his ruthlessness and resolution in the face of danger.

In a brief altercation that followed, Drake accused Doughty of poisoning the Earl of Essex (for it had been rumoured, falsely, that he had so died) while Doughty replied with no greater accuracy that he had served the earl well, and that it was even Doughty who had introduced Drake to Essex. But now the lawyer was making a mistake. As long as he dwelt upon Drake’s authority and the legality of a trial he could outfence the General, but once he began lying about simple facts within Drake’s knowledge he was asking for defeat. The General merely repudiated Doughty’s falsehood, adding that Essex had held Doughty in small esteem, ‘for I that was daily with my lord never saw him there above once, and that was long after my entertainment with my lord.’

A jury was sworn, with Winter as its foreman, and Thomas read out the charges. Members of the company recalled Doughty’s words, and he denied none of it until Ned Bright stepped forward and described how Doughty had tried to enlist Bright in his party, and how aboard the Pelican Doughty had hinted that he had a mind to break away from Drake and to use the plunder he obtained to bribe the government at home and earn indemnity for his conduct.

‘Why, Ned Bright,’ protested Doughty. ‘What should move thee thus to belie me? Thou knowest that such familiarity was never between thee and me, but it may be I said if we brought home gold we should be the better welcome, but yet that is more than I do remember.’

In the ensuing banter Doughty suddenly let out something that told significantly against him in Drake’s eyes. He said that Lord Burghley, the Lord Treasurer, had knowledge – a ‘plot’ – of the voyage. Now, Burghley had not been involved in preparing for Drake’s expedition, and apparently had been kept ignorant of it deliberately. Probably he would have disapproved of the venture as unnecessarily provocative, for he was neither militant nor fervoured. Drake’s voyage bore the stamp of Walsingham and Leicester, not Burghley, and the queen, unusually, had taken their part without conferring with her most trusted public servant. Doughty had perhaps spoken innocently of the expedition to Burghley, unaware that so important an official had not been privy to the plans, but Drake did not interpret it so. As far as he was concerned Doughty had betrayed his voyage to the Lord Treasurer. When Doughty mentioned that Burghley had ‘a plot’ of the expedition, Drake denied it. Doughty insisted it was true, and Drake asked, ‘How?’

‘Lo, my masters,’ exclaimed Drake, ‘what this fellow hath done! God will have his treacheries all known, for Her Majesty gave me special commandment that of all men my Lord Treasurer should not know it, but to see his own mouth hath betrayed him.’

Realizing that he was treading into deeper water, Doughty tried to revert to the earlier debate about the legitimacy of the proceedings, and repeated his request to be tried in England. His friend and fellow lawyer, Leonard Vicary, pronounced Drake’s actions illegal, but the General dismissed him peremptorily. ‘I have not to do with you crafty lawyers, neither care I for the law, but I know what I will do.’ He ordered the jury to deliberate upon the charges written down, and while they were talking he sifted through his papers to find material that would add colour to his authority.

After due consideration, the jury returned a verdict of guilty, although they remarked that Bright’s character led them to doubt his particular evidence. It probably made little difference, for the tendency of Doughty’s alleged remarks to Bright was similar to that others claimed to have heard. Drake accepted every word of the testimony, and waived the reservations about the carpenter (‘Why, I dare to swear that what Ned Bright hath said is very true’). He then strode to the waterside, calling all but Doughty to accompany him, and there foraged through his papers. If Drake had a commission from the queen he would have produced it then. Instead, after searching, he exclaimed, ‘God’s will! I have left in my cabin that I should especially have had.’ In lieu of the commission he displayed documents that established that it was one of the Hawkins brothers, not Doughty, who had recommended him to Essex; that it was through Essex and Walsingham that the present voyage had been organized; that he had the backing of Christopher Hatton, who had enjoined him to take aboard John Thomas and John Brewer; and that the queen had invested 1,000 crowns in the expedition.

And the sentence? ‘My masters,’ said Drake. ‘You may see whether this fellow hath sought my discredit or no, and what should hereby be meant but the very overthrow of the voyage, as first by taking away of my good name and altogether discrediting me, and then my life.’ It was obvious the General believed that Doughty was hatching a plot to kill him. ‘And now, my masters,’ he continued, ‘consider what a great voyage we are like to make, the like was never made out of England, for by the same the worst in this fleet shall become a gentleman, and if this voyage go not forward, which I cannot see how possible it should if this man live, what a reproach it will be, not only unto our country but especially unto us, the very simplest here may consider of. Therefore, my masters, they that think this man worthy to die, let them with me hold up their hands.’

Drake had set out the alternatives. He could not go forward upon so dangerous an adventure with Doughty aboard to multiply the risks to its prospects. Nor could he return to England, and squander what had already been achieved and the goodwill and hopes of his promoters. Nor, for that matter, could he weaken his expedition by sending one of his ships home with Doughty. He had made up his mind: Doughty had to die, for the sake of the voyage, the safety of the company, the satisfaction of the backers, and perhaps the name of England itself. The argument evidently went home, for the men voted for Doughty’s execution, and those who opposed it dared not advertise their dissent.

It was a hard decision, and Drake seemed to prevaricate, stating that if any could devise a means by which the voyage could be preserved without Doughty’s life being forfeited he would listen. After Doughty had received the death sentence, he again added that ‘if any man will warrant me to be safe from your [Doughty’s] hands and will undertake to keep you, sure you shall see what I will say unto you.’

Doughty cast an appealing glance at Captain Winter, with whom he was apparently friends. ‘Master Winter, will you be so good as to undertake this for me?’ he asked.

Winter readily offered to keep Doughty safe aboard the Elizabeth and to guarantee his conduct, but Drake only pondered a short time. He would not do it. He could not risk Doughty, even through casual conversation aboard the Elizabeth, poisoning a ship’s company against him, nor could he permit the Elizabeth to return to England with the prisoner and weaken the squadron. Doughty was told that he must prepare for death the day after next, on 2 July.¹⁵

The man met his end with dignity and courage. He chose to die under the axe, as a gentleman would die, and added a codicil to his will, dividing the money he had set aside for funeral expenses among his friends, of whom the principal beneficiary, Leonard Vicary, received £40. Before his execution, Doughty shared the sacrament with Drake, and then the two dined together, perhaps reaching some kind of reconciliation in these final moments of Doughty’s life. They spoke alone for a few minutes, and then Doughty strode unfalteringly to the block and knelt before it in prayer, entreating God to protect the queen and grant success to the voyage. He prayed for his friends at home, and then begged the company to forgive himself and those of his associates on board. Drake promised that there would be no further reprisals. Then Doughty rose to embrace his General, called him his good captain, and bade him farewell – moments recalling the friendship that had bound them in better days. But the die was cast, and when Doughty’s head was struck off, Drake had it held up in the manner of the time and called, ‘Lo! This is the end of traitors!’ Thomas Doughty was buried on the small island, close to the remains of Robert Winter and Oliver, far away from his home and the sheltered portals of the Inner Temple in which he had shone so brightly.

After more than four hundred years the motives that impelled Doughty to his miserable end remain a mystery. Why should a man who held so exalted a station in the expedition, whose money had been invested in its success, follow so destructive a course? What had he to gain by Drake’s discomfiture? The question seems to have confounded contemporaries and historians alike, if we can judge by the marvellous theories it has inspired. Shortly after Drake’s eventual return to Plymouth, local gossip averred ‘that Thomas Doughty lived intimately with the wife of Francis Drake, and being drunk, he blabbed out this matter to the husband himself. When later he realized his error and feared vengeance, he contrived in every way the ruin of the other, but he himself fell into the pit.’¹⁶ Yet this hardly fits the manner in which the quarrel developed. Drake’s Victorian biographer, Julian Corbett, speculated that Doughty had been employed by Burghley to sabotage Drake’s mission, but it seems unlikely that so loyal and solid a servant of the queen would have stooped to the undermining of her policies by the incitement of mutiny on the ships of her followers. Nor, for that matter, does Doughty appear to have shared Burghley’s supposed pacific persuasion; the reverse, he seems to have been as bent upon plunder as Drake himself. Perhaps the best answer should be sought in Drake’s style of command and Doughty’s own complex personality.

Drake never enjoyed rigid command structures, in which orders passed strictly from superiors to subordinates. As long as he remained in control, he was apt to bypass key officers in order to instruct or enlighten the men below directly. Perhaps this informal management was not untypical of men who rose from the more egalitarian camaraderie of life aboard trading ships, and it was certainly attuned to Drake’s readiness to pitch into the humblest tasks and labour beside the lowliest of sailors. But it carried the danger of upsetting officers accustomed to more formal methods of command, and what was worse, of making inferiors more acquainted with the leader’s intentions than their superiors. Nor was this looseness in the chain of command the only difficulty experienced by Drake’s officers, for at the very top the leader reserved and regularly exercised the right to plan and decide without or against the advice of his juniors, as he saw fit. On Drake’s ships there could be no doubt whose voice held sway. Such practices had their advantages, but they were also capable of creating resentment in proud officers who felt their services or opinions undervalued.

Such a man was Thomas Doughty, whose inability to rescue his old companion from Ireland, Sydae, from dismissal at the beginning of the voyage has been noticed. Eager to make his way in the world, unscrupulous, fraternizing with the powerful, the conceited and the arrogant, he was, perhaps, jealous of Drake, a man he considered to be a social inferior, and hoped to wrest from him control of the voyage, or part of it, to reap the glories for himself.

If such was the case he misjudged Drake, whose easy affability masked an iron resolution. It is easy to blame Drake for the cold barbarity with which he removed Doughty. The trial was possibly illegal and certainly unfair; the accused was almost ‘railroaded’ to the block. But Drake’s position must be taken into consideration. He was not at home and secure, in England. He was in regions unknown to himself and his countrymen, about to hazard his followers in waters of fabled treachery, and to beard the Spaniards in territory they claimed as their own. It was a project of supreme daring, and one Drake was unsure he could complete. Perils enough taxed his men, perils that called for unanimity and co-operation, not division and dissension. Doughty was agitating the men, and probably plotting mutiny. On deep-sea voyages, in which ships were remote from the common instruments of justice, mutiny was the most feared and extreme of offences. The service was hard, men were cramped in damp and miserable quarters for months on end, and discontent, frustration and anger were never far away. Tudor seamen were habitually quarrelling about victuals, plunder and the shares of work. In circumstances like these mutinous spirits soon infected others, and the history of the sea is full of the murders and strifes that ensued, and of the weak and irresolute captains like Dampier, Kidd and Bligh who succumbed to them. Drake’s decision was a hard one, but it was the right one, the decision of a great commander. If Doughty’s death is held against Drake, he must equally be credited with having taken men, ostensibly recruited for a pedestrian Mediterranean cruise, across the world in adverse circumstances without subjecting them to the agonies of a mutiny. That prospect he exorcized in a most timely fashion in Port San Julian bay.

Nor had Drake finished his task. Doughty was dead, but there were others aboard, his friends, who nursed additional grievances. There was John Doughty, the dead man’s brother; Leonard Vicary, his companion; and Thomas Cuttle, Hugh Smith, John Cooke and other Doughty supporters who were unreconciled to Drake’s dramatic reaffirmation of his authority. And there remained, too, the bitterness between the mariners and gentlemen engendered by the latter’s failure to shoulder a fair share of the workload. Drake let it be known that old quarrels must be set aside and on 11 August assembled the whole company before him. Parson Fletcher made to give the customary sermon, but Drake motioned him away. ‘Nay, soft Master Fletcher,’ said he. ‘I must preach this day.’ Then he addressed the men:

My masters, I am a very bad orator, for my bringing up hath not been in learning, but what so I shall here speak, let any man take good notice of what I shall say, and let him write it down, for I will speak nothing but I will answer it in England, yea and before Her Majesty.

He then called for unity in the face of the dangers ahead, impressing upon them what amounted to a social revolution, a demand that birth should carry few privileges in this service, and that none could be passengers:

Thus it is, my masters, that we are very far from our country and friends. We are compassed in on every side with our enemies, wherefore we are not to make small reckoning of a man, for we cannot have a [nother] man if we would give for him ten thousand pounds. Wherefore we must have these mutinies and discords that are grown amongst us redressed, for by the life of God, it doth even take my wits from me to think on it. Here is such controversy between the sailors and the gentlemen, and such stomaching between the gentlemen and sailors, that it doth even make me mad to hear it.

But, my masters, I must have it left, for I must have the gentleman to haul and draw with the mariner, and the mariner with the gentleman. What, let us show ourselves all to be of a company, and let us not give occasion to the enemy to rejoice at our decay and overthrow. I would know him that would refuse to set his hand to a rope, but I know there is not any such here. And as gentlemen are very necessary for government’s sake in the voyage, so have I shipped them for that, and to some further intent, and yet though I know sailors to be the most envious people of the world, and so unruly without government, yet may not I be without them.

Also, if there be any here willing to return home, let me understand of them, and here is the Marigold, a ship that I can very well spare. I will furnish her to such as will return with the most credit I can give them, either to my letters or any way else. But let them take heed that they go homeward, for if I find them in my way I will surely sink them. Therefore, you shall have time to consider her of until tomorrow, for, by my troth, I must needs be plain with you. I have taken that in hand that I know not in the world how to go through withal. It passeth my capacity. It hath even bereaved me of my wits to think on it.

Drake was relying upon the lure of Spanish gold, and perhaps the danger of a journey home without him, to keep most of the men with him when he made what he must have regarded a dangerous offer, threatening as it did the force at his disposal. However, the men agreed to continue. After some further ceremony, in which the General reminded all to whom they owed loyalty, he recounted for all how the voyage had been conceived and prepared.

And now, my masters, let us consider what we have done. We have now set together by the ears three mighty princes, as first Her Majesty, [then] the Kings of Spain and Portugal, and if this voyage should not have good success, we should not only be a scorning or a reproachful scoffing stoke unto our enemies, but also a great blot to our whole country for ever, and what triumph would it be to Spain and Portugal, and again the like would never be attempted.

He had reminded them of the magnitude of their task. He had disposed of the arbitrary distinctions of birth and privilege, and enjoined the gentleman to haul upon the ropes beside the common mariner. He had summoned them to their work in the name of queen and country and their own well-being. When they were dismissed, he willed them to be friends once more. And, throughout, he had created a basis upon which the venture could continue. For there was urgent work to be done. The Mary was burned, to reduce the size of the squadron and therefore the risk of the company being separated in storms, and on 17 August the Pelican, the Elizabeth and the Marigold quit Port San Julian and bravely stood towards the open sea on their way to the feared Strait of Magellan.

¹ Evidence of Bright, in Vaux, ed., The World Encompassed, 172. The principal documents relating to the voyage are found in this volume and in Penzer, ed., The World Encompassed; Taylor, ‘More Light on Drake’; Nuttall, ed., New Light on Drake; and Wagner, Sir Francis Drake’s Voyage Around the World. Wallis, Sir Francis Drake, is a valuable pictorial account.

³ John Cooke’s narrative, preserved by the antiquary John Stow, is published by Vaux, 186–218. Cooke returned to England on the Elizabeth, and his account ends with the passage of the Strait of Magellan. Only the first part of Fletcher’s account survives, although he completed the voyage with Drake and spent his later life in Yorkshire, where he died about 1619. This account is given fully by Penzer.

⁶ Narrative of Edward Cliffe, Ibid, 274. Cliffe served aboard the Elizabeth under Captain Winter, and his account, like that of Cooke, extends only to Drake’s entry into the Pacific.

¹⁰ Statement of San Juan de Anton, April 1579, Wagner, 365; deposition of Nicolas Jorje, 28 March, 1579, Ibid, 352.

¹⁴ The only full account of the proceedings in Port San Julian is given by Cooke. Despite his partiality and the fact that the words he ascribes to his actors can only have been approximations of the original statements, the source is convincing, and is supported in places by the other narratives. See also the examination of Nuño da Silva, 1 June, 1580, in Nuttall, 377–80.

¹⁵ The World Encompassed, published by Drake’s nephew in 1628, is the most extensive account of the voyage. It is highly favourable to Drake, and appears to have been prepared as a companion volume to Sir Francis Drake Revived. The date of its composition is unknown, although Quinn, ‘Early Accounts of the Famous Voyage’, has argued for an origin before 1589. It may be that it was drawn up at the instance of Drake himself. The World Encompassed depends upon Fletcher’s full narrative, only part of which has survived, upon Cliffe’s account, and perhaps also upon a log of Nuño da Silva. It contains a description of Doughty’s trial and execution which is at variance with that of John Cooke, stating, for example, that Doughty himself chose to be executed, rather than to be set on the mainland or taken to England. I have followed Cooke as the more probable version, and that which is partly corroborated by Winter’s report.