POLICY OF QUEEN ELIZABETH—THOMAS CAVENDISH—HIS FIRST VOYAGE—EXPLOITS UPON THE AFRICAN AND BRAZILIAN COASTS—PORT DESIRE—PORT FAMINE—BATTLES WITH THE ARAUCANIANS—CAPTURE OF PAITA—ROBBERY OF A CHURCH—REPEATED ACTS OF BRIGANDAGE—CAPTURE OF THE SANTA ANNA—THE RETURN VOYAGE—CAVENDISH'S ACCOUNT OF THE EXPEDITION—THE SPANISH ARMADA—PREPARATIONS IN ENGLAND—THE CONFLICT—TOTAL ROUT OF THE INVINCIBLES—PROCESSION IN COMMEMORATION OF THE EVENT.

Queen Elizabeth had found it to her advantage to encourage displays of public spirit in private individuals, and to excite the nobles and persons of fortune who were ambitious of distinction, as well as the indigent in search of employment, to hazard, the one their wealth, the other their lives, in the national service. She thus derived benefit from a class of people who had been of little use in any other reign. Many gentlemen of rank and position devoted a portion of their means to harassing the Spanish at sea, to prosecuting discovery in distant quarters, and to planting colonies upon savage coasts. Among the most distinguished of these was Thomas Cavendish, of Trimley, near Ipswich.

This gentleman was of an honorable family, and possessed a large estate. He equipped, in 1586, three ships of the requisite burden,—the largest, the Desire, being of one hundred and forty tons, the lesser, the Content, being of sixty, and the least, the Hugh Gallant, a bark of forty tons. He provisioned them for two years, and manned them with one hundred and twenty-three officers and men, some of whom had served under Sir Francis Drake. His patron, Lord Hunsdon, procured him a commission from Queen Elizabeth, thus assimilating his vessels to those of the navy, and rendering his contemplated piracies legitimate. Cavendish sailed from Plymouth on the 21st of July, directing his course to the south and touching upon the coasts of Guinea and Sierra Leone. Here the crew destroyed a negro town, in revenge for the death of one of their men, whom the inhabitants had killed with a poisoned arrow. Their course across the Atlantic to the Brazilian shore offers no remarkable features. They erected their forge upon an island, where they healed their sick and built a pinnace. Anchoring in a harbor on the Patagonian coast, Cavendish named it Port Desire, after his flag-ship,—a name which it still retains. He seems to have considered the savages to be giants, and asserts that he saw footprints eighteen inches long. He entered the Strait at the commencement of January, 1587, and soon discovered a miserable and forlorn settlement of Spaniards. These numbered twenty-three men, being all that remained of four hundred who had been left there three years before, by Sarmiento, to colonize the Strait. They had lived in destitution for the last eighteen months, being able to procure no other food than a scanty supply of shell-fish, except when they surprised a thirsty deer or seized an unsuspecting swan. They had built a fortress, in order to exclude all other nations but their own from the passage of the Strait, but had been compelled to leave it, owing to the intolerable stench proceeding from the carcasses of their unhappy companions who died of want or disease. Cavendish took the survivors on board, and named the spot upon which the fortress was built Port Famine.

Cavendish entered the Pacific late in February, after a tempestuous passage from the Atlantic side. Landing upon the Chilian coast, in the country of the Araucanians, he received a warm reception from the natives, who mistook his men for Spaniards, by whom the territory had been repeatedly invaded in search of gold. He afterwards undeceived them, and found them willing to satisfy his wants when convinced that they did not belong to that avaricious and cruel people. In another place, inhabited by a Spanish colony, he fought a pitched battle with two hundred horsemen, driving those who were not slain back to the mountains. At another spot farther north, the Indians brought him wood and water on their backs. In May he captured two prizes, taking out of them twenty thousand pounds' worth of sugar, molasses, calico, marmalade, and hens, and then burning them to the water's edge. He seized upon the town of Paita, which he ransacked and burned, carrying off a large quantity of household goods and twenty-five pounds' weight of pieces-of-eight, or Spanish dollars. Off the island of Puna he fell in with a ship of two hundred and fifty tons; but, being disappointed at finding her empty, he sank her out of sheer spite. The inhabitants of Puna were Christians, having followed the example of their cacique, who had married a Spanish woman and had thereupon made a profession of her religion. They were rich and industrious. Cavendish pillaged the island, burned the church, and carried off its five bells. Being attacked by the Spaniards and natives combined, he fought a long and bloody battle, after which he ravaged the fields and orchards, burned four ships on the stocks, and left the town of three hundred houses a heap of rubbish. He took a coasting-ship, rifled and scuttled her, and compelled her captain to become his pilot. He continued this course of brigandage and piracy all along the South American and Mexican coasts, destroying towns, pillaging custom-houses, and burning vessels.

Early in November, Cavendish, who had been told by the pilot he had taken that a vessel from the Philippines was expected, richly laden, at Acapulco, lay in wait for her off the headland of California. She was discovered on the 4th, bearing in for the Cape. She was the Santa Anna, of seven hundred tons, belonging to the King of Spain, and commanded by the Admiral of the South Sea. Cavendish gave chase, and, after a broadside and a volley of small-arms, boarded her. He was repulsed, but renewed the action with his guns and musketry. The Spaniard was soon forced to surrender, and her officers, going on board the Desire, gave an account of her contents,—which they stated at thirty thousand dollars in gold, with immense quantities of damasks, silks, satins, musk, and provisions. This glorious prize was divided by Cavendish, a mutiny being very nearly the result: it was, however, prevented by the generosity of the commander. The prisoners were set on shore with sufficient means of defence against the Indians; the Santa Anna was burned, together with five hundred tons of her goods; and Cavendish then set sail for the Ladrone Islands, five thousand five hundred miles distant.

He arrived at Guam, one of the group, in forty-five days, and from thence prosecuted his homeward voyage, through the Philippine Islands and the Moluccas, to Java. He passed the months of April and May, 1588, in crossing the Indian Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope. He touched at St. Helena early in June, and, when near the Azores, in September, heard from a Flemish ship the news of the total defeat of the great Spanish Armada. He lost nearly all his sails in a storm off Finisterre, and replaced them by sails of silken grass, which he had taken from his prizes in the South Sea. The voyage of Cavendish was the third that had been performed round the world, and was the shortest of the three,—being accomplished in eight months' less time than that of Drake.

Cavendish at once wrote a letter to Lord Hunsdon, in which occurs the following brief relation of his achievements:—"It hath pleased the Almighty to suffer me to encompass all the whole globe of the world. I navigated along the coasts of Chili, Peru, and New Spain, where I made great spoils. I burned and sank nineteen sail of ships, great and small. All the towns and cities that ever I landed at I burned and spoiled, and, had I not been discovered upon the coast, I had taken a great quantity of treasure.... All which services, together with myself, I humbly prostrate at her majesty's feet, desiring the Almighty long to continue her reign among us; for at this day she is the most famous and victorious prince that liveth in the world. Thus, humbly desiring pardon for my tediousness, I leave your lordship to the tuition of the Almighty."

Cavendish spent his immense wealth in equipping vessels for a second voyage, which ended disastrously, and in which, after being beaten by the Portuguese off the coast of Brazil, he died of shame and grief. He ranks as one of the most enterprising, diligent, and cautious of the early English navigators, though, of course, he must be regarded as an arrant buccaneer.

From what we have said of the piracies of the English, and of their encroachments upon the domain of the Spanish, and of the ardent desire of the latter to retain the monopoly of the trade with the natives of America and to hold the exclusive right to rob and slay them at their pleasure, the reader will be prepared for the imposing but bombastic attempt made by Spain against England in 1588. Philip II. determined to put forth his strength, and his fleet was named, before it sailed, "The most Fortunate and Invincible Armada." It was described in official accounts as consisting of one hundred and thirty ships, manned by eight thousand four hundred and fifty sailors, and carrying nineteen thousand soldiers, two thousand galley-slaves, and two thousand six hundred pieces of brass. The vessels were named from Romish saints, from the various appellations of the Trinity, from animals and fabulous monsters,—the Santa Catilina, the Great Griffin, and the Holy Ghost being profanely intermixed. In the fleet were one hundred and twenty-four volunteers of noble family, and one hundred and eighty almoners, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Jesuits. Instruments of torture were placed on board in large quantities, for the purpose of assisting in the great work of reconciling England to Romanism. The Spaniards and the Pope had resolved that all who should defend the queen and withstand the invasion should, with all their families, be rooted out, and their places, their honors, their titles, their houses, and their lands, be bestowed upon the conquerors.

Elizabeth and her councillors heard these ominous denunciations undismayed, and adequate preparations were made to receive the crusaders. London alone furnished ten thousand men, and held ten thousand more in reserve: the whole land-force amounted to sixty-five thousand. The fleet numbered one hundred and eighty-one vessels,—fifty more in number than the Armada, but hardly half as powerful in tonnage. Eighteen of these vessels were volunteers, and but one of the one hundred and eighty-one was of the burden of eleven hundred tons. The Lord High-Admiral of England, Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham, commanded the fleet, with Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher in command of the various divisions. A form of prayer was published, and the clergy were enjoined to read it on Wednesdays and Fridays in their parish churches. In this, Elizabeth was compared to Deborah, preparing to combat the pride and might of Sisera-Philip. The country awaited the arrival of the Spaniards in anxiety, and yet with confidence.

The Armada sailed from the Tagus late in May, with the solemn blessing of the Church, and patronized by every influential saint in the calendar. A storm drove it back with loss, and it did not sail again till the 12th of July. It was descried off Plymouth on the 20th, "with lofty turrets like castles, in front like a half-moon; the wings thereof spreading out about the length of seven miles, sailing very slowly, though with full sails, the winds being as it were weary with wafting them, and the ocean groaning under their weight." The English suffered them to pass Plymouth, that they might attack them in the rear. They commenced the fight the next day, with only forty ships. The Spaniards, during this preliminary action, found their ships "very useful to defend, but not to offend, and better fitted to stand than to move." Drake, with his usual luck, captured a galleon in which he found fifty-five thousand ducats in gold. This sum was divided among his crew. Skirmishing and detached fights continued for several days, the Spanish ships being found, from their height and thickness, inaccessible by boarding or ball. They were compared to castles pitched into the sea. The lord-admiral was consequently instructed to convert eight of his least efficient vessels into fire-ships. The order arrived as the enemy's fleet anchored off Calais, and thirty hours afterwards the eight ships selected were discharged of all that was worth removal and filled with combustibles. Their guns were heavily loaded, and their sides smeared with rosin and wild-fire. At midnight they were sent, with wind and tide, into the heart of the invincible Armada. A terrible panic seized the affrighted crews: remembering the fire-ships which had been used but lately in the Scheldt, they shouted, in agony, "The fire of Antwerp! The fire of Antwerp!" Some cut their cables, others slipped their hawsers, and all put to sea, "happiest they who could first be gone, though few could tell what course to take." Some were wrecked on the shallows of Flanders; some gained the ocean; while the remainder were attacked and terribly handled by Drake. The discomfited Spaniards resolved to return to Spain by a northern circuit around England and Scotland. The English pursued, but the exhausted state of their powder-magazines prevented another engagement. The luckless Armada never returned to Spain. A terrific storm drove the vessels upon the Irish coast and upon the inhospitable rocks of the Orkneys. Thirty of them were stranded near Connaught: two had been cast away upon the shores of Norway. In all, eighty-one ships were lost, and but fifty-three reached home. Out of thirty thousand soldiers embarked, fourteen thousand were missing. Philip received the calamity as a dispensation of Providence, and ordered thanks to be given to God that the disaster was no greater.

A day of thanksgiving was proclaimed in England, inasmuch as "the boar had put back that sought to lay her vineyard waste." Some time afterwards, the queen repaired in public procession to St. Paul's. The streets were hung with blue cloth; the royal chariot was a throne with four pillars and a canopy overhead, drawn by white horses. Elizabeth knelt at the altar and audibly acknowledged the Almighty as her deliverer from the rage of the enemy. The people were exhorted to render thanks to the Most High, whose elements—fire, wind, and storm—had wrought more destruction to the foe than the valor of their navy or the strength of their wooden walls.