The fleet which Drake took out of Plymouth late in 1577 consisted of the Pelican of over 100 tons; Elizabeth of 80, under John Winter; Marigold of 30, a storeship and a pinnace, not to mention the taken-down parts of four more pinnaces, hardly needed for peaceful trade.^[50] The complement of at least 160 was also a heavier man/ton ratio than usual for trading voyages, though ‘normal for a long-distance plunder cruise.’^[51] Ten were gentleman-adventurers, not one of whom, despite Spanish fears, was to profit by this sea-cadetship to become a leader in naval affairs. The most notable of them was Thomas Doughty, a client of Hatton's with a rather ambiguous record in the past and a very ambiguous position now. Like Juan de Cartagena, he has been suspected by some scholars of being a spy (for Spain) or a secret agent (of Burghley's),^[52] and he clearly regarded himself as an equal to his commander, or more; in a ‘Society’ sense he was Drake's superior, and though he seems to have had no definite posting on the staff, this higher social standing would have entitled him, by normal Elizabethan notions, to a major say in the direction of the undertaking. Such rule by committee was not Drake's way, and while Doughty was not Spain's man, and probably not Burghley's man in any sinister sense, he was surely Thomas Doughty's man; and that proved enough to chafe the latent ill-feeling between gentlemen and common mariners into a flame.

The Alexandrian story was soon exploded, for the fleet sailed down the Moroccan coast, robbing stray Iberian fishing smacks and coasters of their provisions.^[53] At the end of January 1578, when off Santiago in the Cape Verdes, they took and retained a Portuguese ship laden with wines, cloth, and other goods for Brazil. This was significant in several aspects. First, it was naked piracy: there could be no question of reprisals, the islands had been Portuguese for over a century, and it was only two years since Elizabeth had signed a treaty to stop English incursions in these parts.^[54] Second, while Drake released the rest of the company, he took good care to keep Nuño da Silva, a pilot highly experienced on the Brazilian coast. Finally, it was here that serious friction began, with charges and counter-charges between Doughty and Drake's brother Thomas over the pilfering of prize goods.

As the ships crawled slantwise and slowly through the Doldrums, friction grew into disaffection: there were petty squabbles, crude horseplay, arrogant or ironic- 243 -speeches, ostentatious avoidances between gentlemen and mariners, and Drake's attempts at alleviation by shifting commands were unsuccessful. Early in April they saw land somewhere in the modern Rio Grande do Sul; the next ten weeks

- 244 -were spent in reconnaissance almost to the Straits. After the equatorial heats and calms, they now had to contend with storm, fog, and cold, and tensions worsened: according to Cooke, Drake called Doughty ‘a coniurer and witche, and, at eny time when he had any fowle wethar, he … wolde say that it came out of Tom Dowghty's capcase, and wold avouch the same with greate othes.’ No suitable wintering-place was found, and the little fleet turned north to enter, on 20 June, Magellan's Puerto San Julian. The ill omen of the place—they found his gibbet, ‘with mens bones vnderneath’—was soon fulfilled. Hitherto contacts with the Patagonians had been friendly, if uncomprehending, on both sides; now a small shore party was attacked, and two killed by arrows. ‘This bloudy Tragedie being ended another more greivious ensueth … more grevious because it was among ourselves begunn contrived & ended’.

The ‘authorised’ narrative (as Wagner says, ‘the most untrustworthy of all’) draws the Plutarchan parallel between Magellan and Drake, Cartagena and Doughty—but doctors Fletcher's notes to the extent of omitting Doughty's name; the ‘famous voyage’ version in Hakluyt mentions Doughty by name but is if anything even smoother. Cooke's account is a passionate brief in Doughty's defence and for Drake's conviction of judicial murder. (It is also one of the most vivid and ‘immediate’ things in Elizabethan prose, an artless masterpiece of reportage.) It is impossible now to unravel the truth from the tangle of charges, ranging from slander to high-level political betrayal; there seems to have been no question of real principle involved, such as a stand by Doughty against plundering. Through the confusion we can at least see that Doughty was at the head of a dangerously strong trend towards insubordination amongst the gentlemen-adventurers, and from Drake's point of view this put the whole voyage at hazard—and with it the whole career, if not the life, of Francis Drake.

Some of the large jury empanelled were clearly most ill at ease, and Drake forced a decision with a high hand: it was a kangaroo court, its proceedings full of challenges, sudden shifts of mood, catastrophic admissions. In the event, according to Cooke (who despite his obvious bias tells a much more likely tale than the smooth and sanctimonious official version), the jury, under pressure, answered for a verdict of guilty, Drake undertaking to answer for the sentence. He made an unconvincing show of reprieve, but decided (and from a realist point of view, almost certainly correctly) that after what had happened, it would be too dangerous to hold Doughty prisoner, to be a continuing centre of disaffection. To him, his problem was the same as Magellan had faced in this very port, and his solution also had to be Magellan's: Stone dead hath no fellow. Only the mode differed, not the end. It is an ugly episode, lightened only by the Elizabethan genius for the great gesture: the die once cast, Drake and Doughty took Communion together, dined at the same table, and then took their leave in the high manner of the age, ‘by drinking each to other, as if some journey oneley had beene in hand.’^[55]

The troubles were not yet over. Drake had asserted his authority, but there- 245 -were still murmurings sufficient to account for the scene a few weeks later when he discharged all his captains and masters, only to reinstate them after some remarkable justificatory speeches. Beginning conventionally ‘My mastars, I ame a very badd orrator’, he gave his version of the Queen's initiative in setting out the venture, and played on patriotism and greed, hopes and fears, as cunningly as that other poor orator Mark Antony. It was now that he spoke the famous words that in Williamson's opinion marked ‘the beginning of a new tradition in English leadership,’^[56] and ironically are recorded by his bitter enemy John Cooke: for the controversy and ‘stomakynge between the gentlemen and saylars … I must have it lefte, for I must have the gentleman to hayle and draw with the mariner, and the maryner with the gentleman …’ If at Port St Julian he has seemed almost paranoid, or else acting a magnificent but unscrupulous bravura role, from now on we shall see Francis Drake at his best, superbly in command of himself as well as of his company.