Chapter IV

THE SECOND ENGLISHMAN WHO CIRCUMNAVIGATED THE GLOBE.

In the time of Queen Elizabeth it was not unusual for men of the highest rank to devote their private fortunes and their personal services to the advancement of what were considered national interests, with the tacit understanding that the adventurers should consider themselves at liberty to engage in operations fitted to serve their own private interests, concurrently with those of the State. The morals of the time were somewhat lax, and “sea divinity,” as Fuller terms it, was taken to sanction extraordinary transactions in the appropriation and treatment of property, especially such as was owned by the State or the subjects of Spain. To spoil the Spaniards by all and every possible means, seems to have been esteemed an object of honourable and patriotic enterprise, in which Sir Francis Drake distinguished himself, as he did also by much nobler and more disinterested service. Thomas Cavendish was a contemporary of Drake, and in his wake plundered the Spaniards, and he also followed him in circumnavigating the globe,--the second Englishman who achieved that feat.

Thomas was a descendant of Sir William Cavendish; he was born at the family mansion, Trimley, Suffolk, about the year 1560. His father died while he was still a minor. Trimley, his birthplace, is situate on the river Orwell, below Ipswich. The locality in which he spent his early days probably induced a liking for the sea.

In April 1585, Cavendish accompanied Sir Richard Grenville in an expedition to Virginia, its object being the establishment of a colony as designed by Sir Walter Raleigh. The colony was a failure, and Drake, as we have related in another place, subsequently brought home the emigrants sent out to form it. Cavendish accompanied the expedition in a ship that had been equipped at his own cost, and acquired considerable nautical experience in the course of the voyage.

On his return to England, Cavendish applied such means as he could command to the equipment of a small squadron with which to commence business as a buccaneer. He diligently got together all the existing maps and charts accessible, and, through the influence of Lord Hunsdon, he was so fortunate as to obtain a queen’s commission. The “flag-ship” of Cavendish, admiral and commander, was the _Desire_, of only 120 tons burthen; the others were, the _Content_, of 60 tons, and the _Hugh Gallant_, a barque of 40 tons. The crews consisted of 123 officers, sailors, and soldiers, all told. The expedition sailed from Plymouth on the 21st July 1586. The squadron first touched at Sierra Leone, where they landed, and plundered and burned the town. Having obtained supplies of water, fish, and lemons, the squadron sailed for the coast of America, and reached in 48° S. a harbour on the coast of Patagonia, in which they anchored, and which, in honour of the admiral’s ship, they named Port Desire. Here the crews were enabled to make an agreeable change in the ship’s dietary, by slaughtering the sea-lions and the penguins that abounded on the coast; the flesh of the young sea-lions, after a long course of salt junk, seemed to the sailors equal to lamb or mutton. Towards the end of December the squadron sailed southward for Magellan’s Straits, which were entered on the 6th January 1587. At a short distance from the entrance, lights were seen from the north shore that were supposed to be signals, and on the morning following a boat was sent off for information. Unmistakable signs were made, as the shore was approached, by three men waving such substitutes as they could find for flags. It was found that they were the wretched survivors of one of the colonies that the Spaniards had attempted to plant, in order to intercept Drake on his expected return, and to prevent, in the future, any buccaneer from ravaging the coast as he had done. The crops of the perishing colonists had all failed; they were constantly harassed by the natives, subject to unspeakable hardships; out of four hundred men and thirty women landed by Pedro Sarmiento, about seven years before Cavendish’s visit, only fifteen men and three women survived. He offered the poor creatures a passage to Peru. They at first hesitated to trust themselves with the English heretic, but, after brief reflection on the misery and hopelessness of their situation, eagerly accepted the offer,--but unhappily too late. A favourable wind sprang up, of which Cavendish took advantage, and set sail. Concern for the safety of his crew, desire to escape as speedily as possible from the perilous navigation of the Straits, and probably eagerness to make a beginning with the real objects of the expedition--the acquisition of plunder--overbore any pity he may have felt for the wretched colonists, whose heartless abandonment to hopeless misery attached shame and infamy to the Spanish Government responsible for sending them thither, rather than to the bold buccaneer, with no humanitarian pretensions, who had come upon them accidentally. He brought off one Spaniard, Tomé Hernandez, who wrote an account of the colony.

On the 24th of February the squadron emerged from the Straits and sailed northwards, reaching the island of Mocha about the middle of March, but not before the little ships had been much knocked about, by weather of extreme violence. The crews landed at several points, and laid the natives under contribution for provisions. They were mistaken for Spaniards, and were in some cases received with undisguised hatred, in others with servility. On the 30th they anchored in the Bay of Quintero, to the north of Valparaiso, which was passed by mistake, without being “tapped.” Notice of the appearance of the suspicious squadron seems to have reached some of the authorities. Hernandez, the Spaniard, was sent ashore to confer with them. On returning, he reported that the English might have what provisions they required. Remaining for a time at their anchorage here, parties were sent ashore for water and such provisions as could be obtained. In one of these visits, the men were suddenly attacked by a party of two hundred horsemen, who cut off, and took prisoners, twelve of the Englishmen. Six of the English prisoners were executed at Santiago as pirates, although, as has been said, with somewhat arrogant indignation, “they sailed with the queen’s commission, and the English were not at open war with Spain.”

Putting again to sea, the adventurers captured near Arica a vessel laden with Spanish treasure. The cargo was appropriated, and the ship--re-named the _George_--attached to the squadron. Several other small vessels were taken and burned. One of these from Santiago had been despatched to the viceroy, with the intelligence that an English squadron was upon the coast. Before they were taken, they threw the despatches overboard, and Cavendish resorted to the revolting expedient of torture, to extort their contents from his captives. The mode of torture employed was the “thumbikins,” an instrument in which the thumb, by screw or lever power, could be crushed into shapeless pulp. Having got what information he could wring out of his prisoners, Cavendish burned the vessel and took the crew with him. One of them was a Greek pilot, who knew the coast of Chili, and might be useful. After a visit to a small town where supplies were obtained--not by purchase--of bread, wine, poultry, fruit, etc., and some small prizes taken, the adventurers proceeded to Paita, where they landed on the 20th May. The town, consisting of about two hundred houses, was regularly built and very clean. The inhabitants were driven out, and the town burned to the ground. Cavendish would not allow his men to carry away as much as they could, as he expected they would need a free hand to resist a probable attack. After wrecking the town and burning a ship in the harbour, the squadron again sailed northwards, and anchored in the harbour of the island of Puna. The Indian chief, who lived in a luxuriously furnished palace, surrounded by beautiful gardens, and the other inhabitants had fled, carrying as many of their valuables with them as possible. The English visitors sank a Spanish ship of 250 tons that was in the harbour, burned down a fine large church, and brought away the bells.

On the 2nd June, before weighing anchor at Puna, a party of Cavendish’s men, strolling about and foraging, was suddenly attacked by about one hundred armed Spaniards. Seven of the Englishmen were killed, three were made prisoners, two were drowned, and eight escaped. To avenge this attack, Cavendish landed with as powerful a force as he could muster, drove out the Spaniards, burned the town and four ships that were building; he also destroyed the gardens and orchards, and committed as much havoc generally as was in his power. Again proceeding northwards to Rio Dolce, he sent some Indian captives ashore, and sank the _Hugh Gallant_, the crew of which he needed for the manning of the other two ships. On the 9th July a new ship of 120 tons was taken; the sails and ropes were appropriated, and the ship burned. A Frenchman, taken in this vessel, gave valuable information respecting a Manilla ship, then expected from the Philippines. The record of the proceedings of the squadron continues most inglorious, including the burning of the town, the church, and the custom-house of Guatulco; the burning of two new ships at Puerto de Navidad; capturing three Spanish families, a carpenter, a Portuguese, and a few Indians,--the carpenter and the Portuguese only being kept for present and future use. On the 12th September the adventurers reached the island of St. Andrew, where a store of wood and of dried and salted wild-fowl was laid in, and the sailors, failing other supply, had a fresh meat change in cooking the iguanas, which were found more palatable, than inviting in appearance. Towards the end of September the fleet put into the Bay of Mazattan, where the ships were careened, and water was taken in. During October the fleet cruised, in wait for the expected prize, not far wide of Cape St. Lucas. On the 4th November a sail was sighted, which proved to be the _Santa Anna_, which was overtaken after some hours’ chase, and promptly attacked. The Spaniards resisted with determination and courage, although they had no more effective means of defence than stones, which they hurled at the boarders, from behind such defective shelters as they could improvise. Two separate accounts of the action have been preserved, both written by adventurers who were present. After receiving a volley of stones from the defenders, one narrator proceeds: “We new-trimmed our sails and fitted every man his furniture, and gave them a fresh encounter with our great ordnance, and also with our small-shot, raking them through and through, to the killing and wounding of many of their men. Their captain, still like a valiant man with his company, stood very stoutly in close fights, not yielding as yet. Our general, encouraging his men afresh, with the whole voice of trumpets, gave them the other encounter with our great ordnance and all our small-shot, to the great discouragement of our enemies,--raking them through in divers places, killing and wounding many of their men. They being thus discouraged and spoiled, and their ship being in hazard of sinking by reason of the great shot which were made, whereof some were made under water, within five or six hours’ fight, sent out a flag of truce, and parleyed for mercy, desiring our general to save their lives and take their goods, and that they would presently yield. Our general, of his goodness, promised them mercy, and called to them to strike their sails, and to hoist out their boat and come on board; which news they were full glad to hear of, and presently struck their sails and hoisted out their boat, and one of their chief merchants came on board unto our general, and, falling down upon his knees, offered to have kissed our general’s feet, and craved mercy.” It is satisfactory that this craven submission was not made by the commander of the _Santa Anna_, who must have been a noble hero to stand out, almost without arms of any kind, against the “great ordnance and small-shot” of his enemy for five or six hours. The narrator proceeds: “Our general graciously pardoned both him and the rest, upon promise of their true-dealing(!) with him and his company concerning such riches as were in the ship, and sent for their captain and pilot, who, at their coming, used the like duty and reverence as the former did. The general, out of his great mercy and humanity, promised their lives and good usage.”

Cavendish and his crews must have been getting rather disgusted with their hard and bitter experiences up to the time they fell in with the _Santa Anna_. They were about sixteen months out from Plymouth; had been much knocked about; had destroyed a great deal of property, but had acquired very little. The _Santa Anna_ compensated for all their hardships and disappointments. It was a ship of 700 tons burthen, the property of the King of Spain, and carried one of the richest cargoes that had ever floated up to that time. It had on board 122,000 pesos of gold, _i.e._ as many ounces of the precious metal, with a cargo of the finest silks, satins, damasks, wine, preserved fruits, musk, spices, etc. The ship carried a large number of passengers, with the most luxurious provision for their accommodation and comfort. The captors entered with alacrity upon the unrestrained enjoyment of luxuries such as many of them had never known before. Cavendish carried his prize into a bay within Cape St. Lucas, where he landed the crew and passengers,--about one hundred and ninety in all. He allowed them a supply of water, a part of the ship’s stores, some wine, and the sails of the dismantled prize to construct tents for shelter. He gave arms to the men to enable them to defend their company against the natives. He also allowed them some planks wherewith to build a raft, or such craft as they might be able to construct for their conveyance to the mainland. Among the passengers were two Japanese youths, both of whom could read and write their own language. There were also three boys from Manilla, one of whom, on the return of the expedition to England, was presented to the Countess of Essex,--such an attendant being at that time considered evidence of almost regal life and splendour. These youths, with a Portuguese who had been in Canton, the Philippines, and Japan, with a Spanish pilot, Cavendish took with him.

Much anger and discontent were excited in connection with the division of the spoils, especially among the crew of the _Content_, who thought Cavendish took more than a fair share for himself and the company of the _Desire_--his own ship. The threatened mutiny was, however, suppressed, and a grand gala was held on the queen’s day--17th November, with eating and drinking, firing of guns, and a display of fireworks, with as a grand set-piece the blazing _Santa Anna_, with all of her precious cargo on board that the captors could not carry away with them. They left the ship burned down to the water’s edge. After they left the burning ship, the fire providentially freed the wreck from the anchors, and the flood-tide carried her still burning into the bay. The abandoned company were happily enabled to extinguish the flames, and to save so much of the hull as with some fitting furnished them with a means of escape from the inhospitable shore upon which they had been cast.

After leaving Cape St. Lucas, the _Content_ fell behind, and was never again seen by Cavendish, who set sail to cross the Pacific by a course not very widely different from that taken by Drake.

In January 1588, Cavendish reached the Ladrone Islands, a few miles from which an incident occurred that does not redound to his credit. A fleet of fifty or more canoes surrounded the _Desire_ with cargoes of fish, potatoes, plantains, etc., to exchange them, as they had been accustomed to do with the Spaniards, for pieces of iron. The islanders were importunate and rather troublesome, and, to get rid of them, “our general” and five of his men fired a volley into them. The savages were so expert as divers and swimmers that the sportsmen could not tell how many they killed. These natives were of tawny colour, tall, stout, and naked. Their canoes, six or seven yards in length, but very narrow, were admirably made, and had carved figureheads. They had square and triangular sails of a cloth made from rushes.

On the voyage, while in the vicinity of the Philippines, an important secret oozed out. The Portuguese taken from the _Santa Anna_ let it be known that the Spanish pilot had prepared a letter to be secretly conveyed to the governor at Manilla, explaining how the _Desire_ might be surprised and overpowered. The Spaniard was summarily hanged for his patriotism. The further course of the homeward voyage was from Manilla to the Moluccas, passed about the middle of February; Java; the Cape of Good Hope; St. Helena, in June; to Plymouth, which was reached on the 9th September 1588; Cavendish’s circumnavigation of the globe--the third that had been accomplished--having been made in two years and fifty days, a considerably shorter time than had been occupied by either Magellan and his successors or Sir Francis Drake,--but mere speed in getting back to a home port had not been an object with either of the three distinguished navigators.

Accounts differ as to the style in which Cavendish made his return entry into Plymouth. According to one account, he encountered, for four days, a violent storm in the Channel, from which the tempest-tossed adventurers happily escaped, and, says N. H., “on 10th September 1588, like wearied men, through the favour of the Almighty, we got into Plymouth, where the townsmen received us with all humanity.” Anyway, his arrival, like that of Drake before him, caused a great sensation at Plymouth.

Cavendish was received as a hero, and appeared to consider himself worthy of his fame and the honours conferred upon him. He had acquired great wealth, albeit dishonestly, and his exploits had been distinguished in many instances by wanton outrage and gratuitous destruction of life and property. He, however, appeared to be unconscious of having done anything to be ashamed of, and probably held in accord with those avowed by the Rev. Dr. Thos. Fuller, prebendary of Sarum, who, as apologist for Sir Francis Drake’s piratical performances, considered that “his case was clear in sea divinity; and few are such infidels as not to believe doctrines which make for their own profit.” In a letter to his patron, Lord Hunsdon, he writes: “It hath pleased Almighty God to suffer me to circumpass the whole globe of the world, entering in at the Strait of Magellan, and returning by the Cape de Buena Esperança; in which voyage I have either discovered or brought certain intelligence of all the rich places in the world, which were ever discovered by any Christian. I navigated along the coast of Chili, Peru, and New Spain, where I made great spoils. I burned and sank nineteen ships, small and great. All the villages and towns that ever I landed at I burned and spoiled; and had I not been discovered upon the coast, I had taken great quantity of treasure. The matter of most profit unto me was a great ship of the king’s which I took at California, which ship came from the Philippines, being one of the richest of merchandise that ever passed those seas. From the Cape of California, being the uttermost part of all New Spain, I navigated to the islands of the Philippines, hard upon the coast of China, of which country I have brought such intelligence as hath not been heard of in these parts; the stateliness and riches of which country [China] I fear to make report of, lest I should not be credited. I found out by the way homeward the island of Santa Helena; and from that island God hath suffered me to return unto England. All which services, with myself, I humbly prostrate at Her Majesty’s feet, desiring the Almighty long to continue her reign amongst us; for at this day she is the most famous and victorious princess that liveth in the world.” Although Cavendish contributed comparatively little to the sum of geographical knowledge by accurate reports of any original discoveries he had made, apart from the moral aspect of the principal incidents in his career, he was indisputably a remarkable man, and rarely since the world began has a young man of only twenty-eight years achieved such a record as he had done, at the end of his circumnavigation, illustrative of daring bravery, indomitable perseverance, and manly endurance.

The wealth with which Cavendish returned was considered sufficient to have bought “a fair earldom”; but it was not to his taste to settle, or found a family. His expedition had been undertaken to repair his shattered fortunes, and had done so satisfactorily, but it was probably “light come, light go” with him. The treasure of the _Santa Anna_ had been put into “a bag with holes,” and what did not run through was providently applied by Cavendish to fitting out another expedition on an extended scale, which it was expected would do a much larger business, and prove even a more pronounced success than the last. The new squadron consisted of “three tall ships” and two pinnaces,--the galleon _Leicester_, in which Cavendish sailed; the _Desire_, his old ship, commanded by Captain John Davis; the _Roebucke_, the _Black Pinnace_, and the _Daintie_. The expedition sailed from Plymouth on 26th August 1591, which was from the beginning a series of dreary, unrelieved misery and disaster. The Straits of Magellan were reached in April 1592, and passed through about half-way. Disagreements arose among the crews, and Cavendish seemed to have lost his power of command. He determined to return to Santos. The ships parted company, and the last notice of Cavendish in the homeward voyage of the _Leicester_ is his own notice of the death of his cousin John Locke in 8° N. latitude. Cavendish is supposed to have died on board a few days later, the victim of grief and disappointment. While tossed about in the _Desire_ after the ships had parted company, Captain Davis was, on the 14th August 1592, “driven in among certain islands never before discovered by any known relation, lying fifty leagues or better off the shore, east and northerly from the Straits.” These were the Falkland Islands, of which Captain Davis has certainly the honour of being the original discoverer, although the discovery has been claimed by Sir Richard Hawkins, and certain foreign navigators.[1] Several more or less complete accounts of this last disastrous voyage of Cavendish have been preserved; one of them, drawn up at sea by himself, is a most affecting and depressing narrative. In this account he writes: “We had been almost four months between the coast of Brazil and the Straits, being in distance not above six hundred leagues, which is commonly run in twenty or thirty days; but such was the adverseness of our fortune, that in coming thither we spent the summer, and found the Straits in the beginning of a most extreme winter, not endurable for Christians. After the month of May was come in, nothing but such flights of snow, and extremity of frosts, as in all my life I never saw any to be compared with them. This extremity caused the weak men to decay; for, in seven or eight days in this extremity, there died forty men and sickened seventy, so that there were not fifteen men able to stand upon the hatches.” Mr. John Lane, a friend of Captain Davis, writing of their experiences in the middle of “charming May,” says: “In this time we endured extreme storms, with perpetual snow, where many of our men died of cursed famine and miserable cold, not having wherewith to cover their bodies nor to fill their stomachs, but living by mussels, water, and weeds of the sea, with a small relief from the ship’s stores of meal sometimes.” He makes the shocking disclosure that “all the sick men in the galleon” (Cavendish’s ship) “were most uncharitably put on shore into the woods, in the snow, wind, and cold, when men of good health could scarcely endure it, where they ended their lives in the highest degree of misery.”

[1] Captain John Davis achieved in this early age deserved
celebrity as a navigator and discoverer. He made three
voyages, under the sanction and authority of the English
Government, in search of a North-West passage to the
Pacific. In the first, in 1585, he pushed his way round
the southern end of Greenland, across the strait that from
then until now has borne his name--Davis Strait--and along
the coast of what is now known as Baffin’s Land, to the
Cape of God’s Mercy, which he thus named in the belief that
his task was virtually accomplished. In the second voyage,
1586, he made little further progress; in the third, 1587,
he reached the entrance to the strait afterwards explored
by, and named after, Hudson. Davis, after other important
nautical services, was, when on his return from the East
Indies, killed by pirates off the coast of Malacca. Davis
was an author as well as a navigator.

Anthropology, natural history, or other scientific subjects, had no attractions for the adventurers, whose attention, and such powers as were left with them, were absorbed in their conflicts with storm and tempest, cold, hunger, and nakedness. After parting company they never again reunited, or in any of the separated ships made any attempt to carry out the objects of the expedition. Almost all perished miserably. It is stated that Davis, whom Cavendish charged with treachery and desertion, did all that was possible to find and rejoin his leader, but without success. Long after the separation of the fleet, Davis returned to Port Desire, and three times attempted unsuccessfully to pass through the Straits in search for Cavendish. Davis and a few more survived their terrible hardships. Out of a crew of seventy-six men who sailed from England, only a remnant of fifteen lived to return with Davis, in misery and weakness so great that they could neither “take in or heave out a saile.” Davis, with the distressed survivors, arrived off Bearhaven, Ireland, on 11th June 1593, fully a year after the death and burial of Cavendish at sea.

Cavendish was far from faultless. He was passionate and impetuous, and was still young at the end of his adventurous life. He was a University man, a bred aristocrat, a courtier, with a contempt for humanitarian doctrines and practices. Society, as it was constituted then, has to share the blame of his excesses, and especially his recklessness of human life. It was a comparatively venial offence in those days to fire into a crowd of South Sea Islanders with as little hesitation as if they had been a flock of wild ducks. His high spirit, courage, and intrepidity are, however, indisputable.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH,

QUEEN ELIZABETH’S FAVOURITE MINISTER.