Two essential elements in this enterprise were converging by the mid-1570s. Francis Drake had established himself as an outstanding seaman and commander; and, although the most famous northwestwards voyages were yet to come, this approach was relatively losing ground. Expert opinion, which had begun by seeking northern ways into the South Sea, was now paradoxically swinging round to southern approaches to a Northern Passage. With Richard Grenville's project of 1573–4, the wheel had turned: where Barlow had told Henry VIII that to discover ‘this waie of the northe onlie … resteth unto your graces charge’, Grenville, leaving that route to the French, tells Elizabeth that ‘the fourth [way] to the south is by God's providence left for England’.^[16]

Gilbert's discourse seems to have been the first proposal for an English settlement in the Mar del Sur, ‘about Sierra Nevada’, that is in our California, Drake's Nova Albion. From the generally assumed lie of the Strait of the Three Brothers, and from experience of its ice-ridden eastern approaches, it seemed fair to reckon that a Pacific entrance at say about 44°N, or even down to the Tropic, would be easier to find and negotiate; and indeed Gilbert tells a circumstantial story of having himself been told by a gentleman of New Spain that sometime before 1560 Urdaneta in person had come from the Mar del Sur to Germany by the Northwest Passage.^[17] A new factor enters with the first reports of Mendaña in the Solomons: these reached England not later than 1572,^[18] and appear to have inspired, at least in part, the project of Grenville and his friends for ‘the discovery, traffic and enjoying … of all or any lands … southwards beyond the equinoctial’, not being already in the possession of any other Christian Prince in Europe. Such lands, beneath the Pole Antarctic and to be reached through the Straits of Magellan, imply the great Terra Australis of Mercator and Ortelius.

The antithesis between the two approaches is sharpened by a later version (c. 1575–6) of Grenville's project, made apparently with direct reference to Gilbert. Admitting the Northwest Passage exists, Grenville asks whether it is better to seek it by ‘passing under the congealed Arctic circle, for so high the main of America reacheth’, or by Magellan's way—a longer course, but over known seas with better weather, so that full sail could be carried night and day- 233 -until the Strait of Anian was approached, and moreover passing by regions likely to be in all respects much richer than the boreal lands (this was before Frobisher had returned from the north with his fool's gold). The Magellanic tract might be searched to discover sites for fortifying the Straits ‘if need were’; in effect, England might secure both the austral and the boreal approaches to the South Sea.^[19] Terra Australis now seems not altogether ignored, but to have slipped out of focus. A grandiose plan, and so much would surely be too much for the canny Gloriana.

Yet the reception of the first project was initially favourable, though it might well be doubted (and it probably was) whether Richard Grenville was the man to respect the more distant bounds of any Christian Prince. According to John Oxenham's deposition to his Spanish captors, the plan included a settlement at La Plata (obviously a sensitive spot) and then passing the Straits to ‘establish settlements wherever a good country for such could be found.’^[20] A patent for the voyage was drawn up, but this provisional approval was withdrawn for fear of consequences: while in the early seventies Anglo-Spanish relations were at a nadir (with the seizure of the silver for Alba's troops, San Juan de Ulua, and the Ridolfi Plot), by 1574 a new understanding had been reached by the Convention of Bristol, and this ‘was the reef upon which Grenville's project foundered’. An expedition into the Spanish Mar del Sur, with its standing temptation to treasure-raiding, would be a provocation which Elizabeth could hardly afford as yet.^[21] But clearly South Sea venturing was in the air, and Grenville's plan remained in effect a blueprint for Drake's performance. Already indeed the aftermath of Spanish foul play at San Juan de Ulua had brought Englishmen, armed, across the Isthmus to the Mar del Sur: John Oxenham briefly on to its very waters, Francis Drake as yet only to a peak in Darien, a Pisgah-sight of the Ocean, a glimpse which led him to a longer voyage than Magellan's.

The hero of the Spanish Main, romantic theatre of Kingsley's schoolboy fiction and Froude's scarcely less impressionistic essays,^[22] was born in the early 1540s, of a strongly Protestant Devonshire family, forced by the Catholic rising of 1549 to fly to more congenial Kent, which became four years later the very hearth of Wyatt's rebellion against Queen Mary's marriage with Philip of Spain.^[23] The boy thus grew up in an atmosphere compounded of Protestant Hot Gospelling and the maritime activity of the Medway estuary. A family relationship with John Hawkins gave him a post with John Lovell, who in 1566 took four of Hawkins's ships on the almost routine run to Guinea for slaves (as often as not seized from Portuguese ships) and across to the Indies, where these and other commodities would be disposed of in flagrant breach of Spanish law. Often there was a hint of force, just sufficient to give the labour-hungry Spanish colonists an excuse to ‘submit’ to the exchange:

Scruples were not nice on either side in such a trade, and at one of the tiny ports of Tierra Firme the Governor refused to pay for ninety Negroes already landed; twenty-five years later Drake was still recalling ‘the wrongs received at Rio Hacha’, the beginning of his personal war with King Philip and his officers.^[25]

In October 1567 Drake sailed on Hawkins's ‘third troublesome voyage’, and was sent ahead in the 50-ton Judith to Rio de la Hacha. Here he was fired on and replied in kind, blockading the port until Hawkins arrived with superior force; after some violence, trade proceeded amicably. Now the troubles began: Hawkins was forced by storm damage to put into San Juan de Ulua, the port of Vera Cruz, to refit; his entrance was unopposed as the fleet was mistaken for the expected flota. When this did arrive a few days later, with the new Viceroy Don Martin Enriquez, Hawkins controlled the harbour mouth with a battery and was able to make terms before permitting its entry. Once in, however, Enriquez covertly prepared to attack, indubitably in gross and premeditated breach of faith.^[26] After hard fighting only two of the five English ships got away—the Minion with Hawkins himself, and the Judith. Drake reached England in January 1569, a few days ahead of Hawkins, who had a nightmare voyage in the overcrowded and under-rationed Minion, even though half her crew had voluntarily taken their chances ashore in New Spain; and an ill chance it was. Hawkins wrote that the Judith ‘forsooke us in our greate miserie’, and he cannot be blamed for taking hard the apparent desertion by a young relative whom he had advanced; but then Drake may well have thought that his first duty was to bring his own tiny vessel safely home. It was not a brilliant start in command, though the estrangement from Hawkins does not seem to have remained serious for long.

For a time Drake returned to an obscurity from which he had only begun to emerge. In 1570, however, he made the first of three definitely known annual Caribbean voyages, probably largely financed by Hawkins, which brought him to the portal of the Pacific. Little is known of the first; on the second he went up the Rio Chagres as far as Cruces, and at the eastern end of the Isthmus marked down a well-hidden cove as a base for next year's voyage.^[27] These forays were simply freebooting—if Drake had a commission at all, it would probably have been a Huguenot one, of doubtful avail against non-French Catholics.

The objective of the third voyage was far more than the usual snapping-up of coastal traders and raiding of undefended coastal towns; Drake had determined to seize the Peruvian treasure itself, by a surprise raid with only two small ships (70 and 20 tons) and seventy-three men. He had now a close acquaintance with the coast from the Chagres to Cape Tiburon, on the present Panama/Columbia border; but, strangely, he seems to have had only imperfect intelligence on the seasonal flow of traffic across the Isthmus. This was active only when the galeones were in, during the first four or five months of the year; for the remainder, the silver of Peru piled up in Panama City, but naturally was- 235 -not portaged to the vulnerable northern shores until its onward shipping was becoming available. Since Drake left Plymouth on 24 May 1572, he was far too late to intercept treasure for that year's Seville fleet. In a more general view, however, the timing for a real blow at ‘old Philip's treasury’ was appropriate, since in January the Spanish Ambassador had been expelled for involvement in the Ridolfi plot against Elizabeth's crown and life. A damaging unofficial counterstroke was not likely to be frowned upon.

The magnificent adventure story of the Isthmus raid can be only outlined here. Although he found that his hidden Port Pheasant was no longer a secret to friend or foe, Drake assembled there his three pre-fabricated pinnaces, and at the end of July took them into Nombre de Dios at moonrise. Brilliantly successful at first, the surprise lost impetus, and when Drake himself fainted from an early wound, the seventy-odd assailants took to their pinnaces in some disorder.^[28] This first attempt was a failure, though hardly a fiasco; and from the Cimarrons or Bush Negroes with whom contact was now made, it was clear that there would be no point in a second try until silver again began to move over the trail, in about five months' time. Apart from an outbreak of yellow fever, this interval was filled in agreeably enough by minor feints and forays, playing havoc with the cabotage carried on by the scores of small ‘frigates’ of the coast, and planning the next attack with the Cimarrons, who proved admirable allies, intelligent, born to the bush, physically tough, valiant and loyal.

The galeones arrived in January 1573, and Drake immediately set out with John Oxenham and sixteen others, accompanied by thirty Cimarrons, to ambush a requa near Casa de Cruces. On the way the guides took Drake to a look-out in a tall tree, whence he could see at once both the Caribbean and the South Sea, begging ‘Almightie God of his goodnesse to give him life and leave to sayle once in an English Ship in that sea’; and Oxenham ‘protested…that he would follow him by Gods Grace.’ The prayer was granted, but it was Oxenham who led, to his own destruction.

The ambush was set, but one Robert Pike ‘having drunken too much Aqua vitae without water…unadvisedly he rose up’, and although ‘the Symeron (of better discretion) puld him downe, and lay upon him’, the alarm had been taken. The loot of the little village of Cruces was poor consolation for being ‘defeated of our golden Recoe’; so far the voyage had been only modestly successful, and the company had dwindled to thirty-odd. They now fell in with a Huguenot party under the cartographer Guillaume Le Testu (Tetu), who brought news of the Massacre of St Bartholomew and proffered alliance: Drake was wary, but had little choice save acceptance, since the French had more than double his resources.^[29] A new ambush was set near Nombre de Dios, this time successfully, though Le Testu was killed. Little of the massive haul of silver could be carried off, but gold to the value of 80–100,000 pesos was taken away: after the disappointments of Nombre de Dios and Cruces, ‘our voyage was made.’

There was a last wild adventure, a raft voyage to regain the pinnaces, driven- 236 -off by a storm; then an emotional leave-taking from the Cimarrons, whose leader Pedro was given the gilded scimitar, once owned by Henry II of France, which Le Testu had presented to Drake. On 9 August, 1575 a Sunday, Drake reached Plymouth ‘about Sermon-time …very few or none remained with the Preacher. All hastning to see the evidence of Gods love and blessing towards our Gracious Queene and Countrey …’ More to the point, Drake had exposed Spanish weakness, not least to the Spaniards themselves, and had pioneered a long series of attempts against the Isthmian node, the ‘door of the seas, the key of the universe’:^[30] by Oxenham, Parker, Morgan and later buccaneers, Paterson, Pointis, Vernon.