The mass of literature surrounding the second circumnavigator seems proportionate to the loot he brought back; some of it seems bad Hollywood, though one- 238 -contemporary account—Cooke, on the trial of Thomas Doughty—provides a tense and authentic court-room scene.[38] On the vexed question of Drake's aims and motives, the trend is to accept K. R. Andrews's closely argued position, but it would perhaps be premature to claim a consensus;[39] and there will probably always be obscurities about the Doughty affair, Drake's movements is Magellanic waters, his Californian landing, his ‘Island of Thieves’.
Concerning the objectives, it would be as well to recall Williamson's remark that Drake combined ‘all aims and all motives’ of the 1570s—not perhaps in the planning, but in the event;[40] there was undoubtedly an element of on s'engage, et puis on voit. Precisely because the question of the plan gathers together so many strands—political, exploratory, economic, psychological—it transcends such matters as Cape Horn or the Plate of Brass, and indeed lies central to any discussion of the gathering stand against Habsburg dominance; even though the voyage itself, in its immediate political effects (not its long-term economic results) was no more than a foray, Corbett leads up to it under the significant heading ‘Drake and the War Party’. Zelia Nuttall took this line of thought to an extreme, suggesting that ‘the present occupation of the North American Continent by the Anglo-Saxon race is, after all, but a realisation of what may be called Drake's Dream’; but the evidences she cites are at times misinterpreted and in any case cannot bear the weight of the colonising designs she infers.[41] This enthusiastic vision received severe, though not short, shrift from H. R. Wagner, who saw the expedition as a trading venture to the Moluccas, and possibly China, diverted by Drake to plundering Peru. His massive study might have settled the issue for decades, had not Eva Taylor, only three or four years later, signally refuted his forecast that ‘no other document of real value’ was likely to be found—by turning up a draft plan for the voyage.[42]
The important points in the draft (some words in which are conjectural) are that Drake is to enter the South Sea by the Straits of Magellan and then sail north as far as 30° ‘alonge the saeied coaste’, where there should be countries not subject to any Christian Prince but offering great hope of profitable commodities; and having gone to 30° or as close as he thinks fit, he is to return the same way as he went out. Nothing on Anian, nothing on the Moluccas, a general resemblance to Grenville's first project. The immediate questions are: which is ‘the said coast’ and which ‘the other coast’ associated with it? Andrews argues that there are simply the west and east coasts of South America respectively. To Taylor, followed by Williamson, the latter merely suggests some earlier reconnaissance, but ‘the said coast’ is Terra Australis as shown on the standard Ortelius/Mercator maps (Figure Plate XVI, “DRAKE'S PACIFIC: ORTELIUS 1570. ”), trending from Tierra del Fuego towards the Spice Islands, the intended term of the voyage: ‘Clearly its objective was not the American coast already under the obedience of Spain’ as far south as Valdivia (39° 46′S), founded in 1552. So far Taylor; but for the Moluccan aspect—which is to the fore in his version—Wagner relies on statements by Francis Fletcher, chaplain to the expedition: a man with a good gift of phrase, often a good observer- 239 -
- 240 -(he even gives an inventory of the ‘furnishings’ of a Fuegian hut), but pedantic and quite often muddle-headed: a minor Shakespearean character, comic but unpleasant, one moreover on bad terms with Drake. Andrews is quite warranted in dismissing such a witness on such a point.
Taylor bases herself rather on the seemingly more respectable evidence of John Winter, who as Drake's second should have known the real objective. His statement is self-exculpatory, to explain away what looks like desertion with his ship the Elizabeth; he gives no indication of a definite rendezvous, but says that after an accidental separation he tried to get his crew to sail for the Moluccas, but was overborne—and then, most revealingly, he ‘despair[ed] utterly of the favourableness of the wind for to go to the Peru.’ Edward Cliffe, one of his company, denies that the crew wished to give over the voyage but confirms that Winter ‘alleged, he stood in dispaire, to haue winds to serue his turne for Peru’. According to John Cooke, Doughty pleaded with Drake ‘I pray yow cary me with you to the Perwe’, and Fletcher himself (or The World Encompassed, based on his notes) says that after the separation they sailed ‘to coast alongst the parts of Peru…that we might fall…with the height of 30 deg., being the place appointed for the rest of oyr fleete to reassemble.’[43] Against all this stress on Peru, there is nothing in Winter's statement to indicate the Moluccas as an original objective.
Taylor's insistence that ‘the said coast’ was that of Terra Australis thus seems odd, quite apart from the fact that on current maps this supposed coast trended not north but initially south, then west swinging round to northwestwards. As for Anian, Taylor thinks that under John Dee's influence this was added as a possible objective, before the sailing. She makes much of a passage in one of Dee's manuscripts (mid-May 1577) which speaks of a great exploring expedition to be carried out ‘presently’ (i.e. immediately) by a British subject who has ‘se[cret]ly’ undertaken this exploit for God, Queen, and Country; she takes this to refer to Drake, since the objective of Frobisher, who was to sail in a week or two after Dee's writing, was perfectly well known to be the Northwest Passage. As Andrews points out, ‘presently’ could well mean Frobisher, but not Drake, since he was not to sail for six months; ‘secretly’ could suggest Drake but not Frobisher—‘but the middle four letters of this word are putative. In effect there is room for doubt about Taylor's inference.’[44] Indeed, there is, for what if we read ‘se[cure]ly’, in its older sense of ‘assuredly, of a certainty’? This would fit the Frobisher context, and it seems to have a good Elizabethan ring. The fact that Drake did make a move towards Anian and did go to the Moluccas is explicable by events: there was no other way for him to go. The Magellanic waters had proved highly hazardous by nature, and by the time that ‘the voyage was made’ nothing would seem more likely than an attempted Spanish interception at the Straits, only twelve degrees south of Valdivia, of whose existence Drake was now aware.
But if not Terra Australis nor the Moluccas nor Anian, what then? In- 241 -Andrews's opinion, the voyage was really to explore the commercial opportunities (plunderage not excluded) of South America beyond the Spanish limits: a trade reconnaissance in some force, but hardly a trading voyage, since there were no letters for foreign princes (surely essential for the Moluccas?) and scarcely any trade goods. One need not take too seriously the pious preamble about places not under the obedience of any Christian Prince; although Andrews says that the English might reasonably think the coast would be unoccupied by Spaniards south of 30°S, one must agree with Williamson that such ignorance would be remarkable, since Santiago in 33° 30′ had been founded for over thirty-five years, and Ortelius's map of 1564 shows several towns between 30° and 35°, including ‘[Val]paraiso’. However, the draft is careful to allow Drake the option of turning back before 30°; very possibly this clause was to facilitate a royal disavowal if need be. Nevertheless, even with this safeguard, the promoters must have known that to Philip of Spain an exploration from La Plata to Chile would appear a wanton provocation. Hence the cover stories: there was a rumour, doubtless leaked, that ‘Drake the pirate’ was going to Scotland to kidnap the little James VI; the official destination was Alexandria for currants,[45] a commodity in which Captain Drake had so far shown little interest. It is not very likely that many of the complement were fooled by this tale, though later on it suited some of them to say they were.
Wagner and Taylor regard the project as basically a peaceful venture: this is difficult to square with Drake as leader and (at this stage of his career) John Hawkins as a principal backer. Other supporters included Leicester, Walsingham, Hatton, the Navy's Master of the Ordnance Sir William Winter and his brother George; Drake himself subscribed £1000. The draft says that the Queen should be ‘made pryve to the trewthe of the viage’ and asked to contribute a royal ship; this she did not do, but very probably she did invest in the enterprise. It is scarcely possible to believe, however, that Drake held any formal commission from the Queen; though he assiduously spread around this impression, no reliable document was ever produced, even when Doughty—on trial for his life—directly asked for it, nor was one used to quash the ‘appeal of murder’ brought against Drake by Doughty's brother.[46] That the plan existed on paper before the Queen had been informed of its real object tells strongly against Drake's claim that Elizabeth had directly and spontaneously incited him to reprisals against Spain; an unlikely story, produced with splendid bravura at a crisis in the voyage.[47] Francis Drake was a great man; he was also a great con man or, if you prefer it so, a master of psychological warfare.
On the peaceable view, we have to explain a ‘trading’ voyage carrying only one identifiable merchant and a few presents, and with no mercantile element amongst its backers, all of whom ‘were associated with maritime enterprise of a predatory kind, and all, with the exception of the Queen, advocate[s of] a vigorous anti-Spanish policy.’[48] It is significant that what in the last resort seems to have cost Doughty his head was the admission that he had revealed- 242 -the true ‘plott of the voyage’ to Burghley who, if not the appeaser he is often made out to be, disapproved of plundering to the extent of refusing a proffered share of Drake's booty. As a reconnaissance for future operations, and perhaps for political benefits from contacts with Indians beyond the Spanish limits (a concept which certainly appealed to Drake),[49] the plan makes sense. But it is unlikely that its Court backers would have seen much sense in a reconnaissance which did not meet expenses; and who more likely to make it pay its way than the captor of the Nombre de Dios treasure train?