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Sir Francis Drake
by
Drake’s reputation was now sufficiently advanced to incite detraction and opposition; and it is easy to imagine, that a man by nature superiour to mean artifices, and bred, from his earliest years, to the labour and hardships of a sea-life, was very little acquainted with policy and intrigue, very little versed in the methods of application to the powerful and great, and unable to obviate the practices of those whom his merit had made his enemies.
Nor are such the only opponents of great enterprises: there are some men, of narrow views and grovelling conceptions, who, without the instigation of personal malice, treat every new attempt, as wild and chimerical, and look upon every endeavour to depart from the beaten track, as the rash effort of a warm imagination, or the glittering speculation of an exalted mind, that may please and dazzle for a time, but can produce no real or lasting advantage.
These men value themselves upon a perpetual skepticism, upon believing nothing but their own senses, upon calling for demonstration where it cannot possibly be obtained, and, sometimes, upon holding out against it, when it is laid before them; upon inventing arguments against the success of any new undertaking, and, where arguments cannot be found, upon treating it with contempt and ridicule.
Such have been the most formidable enemies of the great benefactors to mankind, and to these we can hardly doubt, but that much of the opposition which Drake met with, is to be attributed; for their notions and discourse are so agreeable to the lazy, the envious, and the timorous, that they seldom fail of becoming popular, and directing the opinions of mankind.
Whatsoever were his obstacles, and whatsoever the motives that produced them, it was not till the year 1577, that he was able to assemble a force proportioned to his design, and to obtain a commission from the queen, by which he was constituted captain-general of a fleet, consisting of five vessels, of which the Pelican, admiral, of a hundred tons, was commanded by himself; the Elizabeth, viceadmiral, of eighty tons, by John Winter; the Marigold, of thirty tons, by John Thomas; the Swan, fifty tons, by John Chester; the Christopher, of fifteen tons, by Thomas Moche, the same, as it seems, who was carpenter in the former voyage, and destroyed one of the ships by Drake’s direction.
These ships, equipped partly by himself, and partly by other private adventurers, he manned with one hundred and sixty-four stout sailors, and furnished with such provisions as he judged necessary for the long voyage in which he was engaged. Nor did he confine his concern to naval stores, or military preparations; but carried with him whatever he thought might contribute to raise in those nations, with which he should have any intercourse, the highest ideas of the politeness and magnificence of his native country. He, therefore, not only procured a complete service of silver, for his own table, and furnished the cook-room with many vessels of the same metal, but engaged several musicians to accompany him; rightly judging, that nothing would more excite the admiration of any savage and uncivilized people.
Having been driven back by a tempest in their first attempt, and obliged to return to Plymouth, to repair the damages which they had suffered, they set sail again from thence on the 13th of December, 1577, and, on the 25th, had sight of cape Cantin, in Barbary, from whence they coasted on southward to the island of Mogador, which Drake had appointed for the first place of rendezvous, and on the 27th, brought the whole fleet to anchor, in a harbour on the mainland.
They were, soon after their arrival, discovered by the Moors that inhabited those coasts, who sent two of the principal men amongst them on board Drake’s ship, receiving, at the same time, two of his company as hostages. These men he not only treated in the most splendid manner, but presented with such things as they appeared most to admire; it being with him an established maxim, to endeavour to secure, in every country, a kind reception to such Englishmen as might come after him, by treating the inhabitants with kindness and generosity; a conduct, at once just and politick, to the neglect of which may be attributed many of the injuries suffered by our sailors in distant countries, which are generally ascribed, rather to the effects of wickedness and folly of our own commanders, than the barbarity of the natives, who seldom fall upon any, unless they have been first plundered or insulted; and, in revenging the ravages of one crew upon another of the same nation, are guilty of nothing but what is countenanced by the example of the Europeans themselves.