Hawkins and the French colonists. Founding of St. Augustine, and destruction of the French fleet and colony, 1565. America, II, 131-150. The English seamen. August, 1565, saw the gallant English seaman, Sir John Hawkins, voyaging homeward from the West Indies (p. 41). He, too, had heard of the coming of the Frenchmen, and entered the St. John's River to see how his fellowProtestants were getting on. Pitying their misfortunes, he sold them one of his four vessels at their own valuation, and took in payment their heavy guns, no longer of use to them, as they were determined to abandon the fort. Hawkins then sailed away, and the colonists were to follow in a short time. Before the day of their departure arrived, however, Ribault entered the river's mouth with reinforcements and supplies. This was on the 28th or 29th of August. For a moment all seemed bright at Fort Caroline; "but, how oftentimes," wrote Laudonnière, "misfortune doth search. and pursue us, even when we think to be at rest." On the 4th of September, Menendez, with the leading portion of his fleet, sailed into the anchorage of Ribault's vessels at the mouth of the river. Uncertain as to the strength of the French, he passed out to sea again; soon Ribault followed him with nearly all the vessels and found the Spaniard landing his colonists and stores at St. Augustine on a lagoon not far south of the mouth of the St. John's. Ribault failed to seize this opportunity to attack him and sailed away to await a more favorable occasion. A hurricane drove his fleet to the southward and cast his vessels on the sandy shores of Florida. Menendez, on his part, used his advantages to the utmost. Marching overland, he surprised and captured Fort Caroline with most of its inmates, and returning to St. Augustine intercepted the bands of shipwrecked and starving French seamen as they were proceeding along the shore to their countrymen. In a short time nearly all the Frenchmen were dead or on their way to Spanish prisons. 30. The Elizabethan Seamen. The discoveries of the Cabots appear to have aroused little interest in England at the time. English fishermen still frequented the fishing stations off Newfoundland; and in the years 1530-40 1578] Drake's Voyages 41 William Hawkins and other English mariners made several slave-trading voyages to the western world; but it is with the reign of Queen Elizabeth that modern English maritime enterprise really begins. Hawkins's voyages, The earliest of this new race of English seamen was John John Hawkins of Devonshire, one of the extreme western counties of England, and noted for the hardihood and good 1562-67. fortune of its mariners. In 1562 he sailed with three ves- Winsor's sels for the Guinea coast of Africa. There he procured America, III, 60-64; three hundred negroes, most of whom he carried safely to Hart's ConSanto Domingo; the Spaniards were glad to secure slaves temporaries, I, No. 29; at reasonable rates, and Hawkins returned to England with Higginson's valuable cargoes. The venture was so profitable that in Explorers. 1564 he again set forth. On this second voyage he had four vessels: the Jesus, Solomon, Tiger, and Swallow. The first of these names seems to be a curious one for a slaver; but in those days men saw no evil in the slave traffic. Hawkins was a man of religious instincts, he directed his men "to serve God daily," and had religious services twice each day on his own ship. This second voyage also proved very profitable, and it was on his homeward way that he called at Fort Caroline and succored the French colonists. His third voyage (1567) was not so fortunate: such vengeance as few men John Hawkins have ever had on their enemies; for a hundred years he was known to Spanish writers as "The Dragon." Drake in the Winsor's America, III, 1570-73. 65-73: Hart's Contemporaries, I, No. 30. 31. Drake's Voyage around the World. - Drake made Pacific, 1578. three plundering voyages to the West Indies in the years In 1577 he sailed from Plymouth with four vessels on a more adventurous cruise than any Englishman had hitherto undertaken. His destination was apparently Egypt; in reality he had conceived the daring project of sailing through the Strait of Magellan to attack the unprotected Spanish settlements on the western shores of America, and perhaps to capture a treasure ship on its way from Peru to Panama. Three of his vessels were either wrecked before he reached the Pacific or were carried home to England by their faint-hearted crews. In the fourth vessel, the Pelican, he entered the Pacific Ocean in October, 1578. Sailing into the harbors of Chile and Peru, he gathered an immense booty from the vessels at anchor in the several harbors, and from the terrified people on shore; from one vessel he took fifteen hundred bars of silver. He then sailed in pursuit of a treasure ship, the galleon Cacafuego, of whose recent departure some unwitting Spaniard had told him. He came up with her before long and secured twenty-six tons of silver and eighty pounds of gold, besides coined money and plate; he returned the captain of the galleon "a little linen" and a few necessaries and let him go. It was out of the question to return home by the route by which he had come; the Spaniards would carefully guard the Strait of Magellan. Drake therefore sailed northward along the western shores of North America, until the ropes of his vessel's rigging became stiff with ice in the month of June. From this high northerly latitude he turned back and cleaned and repaired his vessel at some port of California not far from the Golden Gate, which forms the entrance to the Bay of San Francisco. He then sailed for England by the way of the Cape of Good Hope. The Pelican was the first English vessel to enter the Pacific, and Drake was the first commander to carry his ship around the world. 32. Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Drake's voyage was the most daring adventure of the time; but there were many 1584] The Ralegh Colonists 43 Gilbert, 1583. Higginson's 169-174. other fearless English mariners. Among other adventurous Sir spirits were Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his kinsman, Walter Humphrey Ralegh. Gilbert sailed three times for America, but ill fortune attended him. On his third voyage (1583), he Explorers, landed on the shore of Newfoundland, but his attempt to reach the mainland was disastrous; and on his return home the vessel in which he embarked went to the bottom with all on board. Our poet Longfellow has immortalized this incident: He sat upon the deck: The Book was in his hand. "Fear not," he cried, "Heaven is as near By water as by land." Sir Walter his colonies. 1584. Hart's Con 33. The Ralegh Colonists, 1584-90.- Gilbert's patent was transferred to his half-brother, Sir Walter Ralegh, now high in Queen Elizabeth's favor. Ralegh himself never Winsor's visited the shores of the United States, but these expedi- America, III, tions are rightly associated with his name, as he planned ch. iv. them and furnished a large part of the funds to fit them out. The first expedition (1584) was designed for ex- Amadas and ploration with a view to ascertaining the suitability of the Barlowe, American lands for settlement by Europeans. The leaders were Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, who explored the temporaries, I, No. 32: sounds of North Carolina, where the Indians cordially welHigginson's comed them. They speedily returned to England and Explorers, reported the new land to be "the most plentiful, sweet, fruitful, and wholesome of all the world." The natives they described as "void of all guile and treason, and such as live after the manner of the Golden Age." This wonderful region was named Virginia, and Ralegh was knighted for his trouble and expense. 177-189. under Lane, 1585. In 1585 Ralegh fitted out seven ships under the com- The colony mand of Sir Richard Grenville, who fought the gallant fight in the Revenge" of the one and the fifty-three," splendidly turned into verse by Lord Tennyson from Ralegh's graphic description. He landed Ralph Lane and one hundred com Drake succors the settlers, 1586. "The Lost Colony," 1587. Winsor's Amer ica, III, 113116; Higginson's Explorers, 189 200. Cause of the contest with Spain. panions on Roanoke Island and then sailed for England. The explorers soon aroused the anger of the natives, who refused longer to supply them with food. Starvation stared them in the face, when Sir Francis Drake, voyaging homeward from one of his later expeditions to the West Indies, visited the settlement and carried them home with him; this was in the summer of 1586. Not many weeks afterwards, Grenville again reached Virginia with recruits and supplies. He found Roanoke Island abandoned and returned to England, leaving fifteen men, with two years' provisions, to hold the post for England's queen. Ralegh's means were insufficient for these continual demands; he summoned to his aid a body of merchants and men of influence, some of whom belonged to the later Virginia Company. They fitted out a large expedition to make a settlement on the shores of Chesapeake Bay, as Roanoke Island seemed to be an undesirable spot (1587). Disaster attended the colonists from the moment they reached America. For some unexplained reason they were landed on Roanoke Island instead of on the shores of Chesapeake Bay, and John White, the governor of the colony, returned to England in the vessel which had brought him over. The need must have been urgent, since White left in Virginia his daughter and his little granddaughter, Virginia Dare, the first child born of English parents in America. He again reached Roanoke Island in 1590 and found scarcely a sign of the colonists, — only the abandoned houses and a word cut in the bark of a tree. They were never seen again, and all attempts to account for their disappearance have been unsuccessful. 34. The Spanish Armada, 1588.-The Spanish government had good reason to be anxious. For years the mariners of England had attacked her colonies at a time when the two countries were at peace. Spain's existence as a sea power depended in great measure on the supply of treasure which she received from the mines of Peru and Mexico; English seamen were yearly becoming more and |