Black Tudors Page 8
The English felt it was worth waiting till spring for the opportunity to seize the treasure Diego had told them about under the expert guidance of the Cimarrons. Departing with two more of their new allies aboard, they agreed to a rendezvous at Rio Guana, where they would also meet another company of Cimarrons who lived in the mountains. After a few delays, they met again on 23 September and the next day the Cimarrons helped the English set up a new camp on an island in the Gulf of San Blas. Like Diego, they were expert builders. They built two large lodging houses and a 13-foot high fortress, which was named Fort Diego, after the author of the alliance.26
The autumn and winter passed, with a few largely unsuccessful attacks on other Spanish ports and ships, and various deaths, including those of Drake’s two brothers, John and Joseph. One ship the English captured near Cartagena had five or six Africans on board, who were all set ashore, except for one ‘young Negrito of three or four years old’, of whom there is no further mention.27 Over the weeks and months, Diego began to pick up a smattering of English. Any lingering fears he had that the Cimarrons wanted him dead abated. Indeed, bringing them new allies in their struggle against the old enemy may well have wiped the slate clean. All were focused on their shared goal, and they waited for the time to be right.
At the end of January, Cimarron scouts brought word that the Spanish fleet had arrived in Nombre de Dios. The allies began making plans for an attack on the mule-train that would soon be arriving. Pedro, the Cimarron leader, advised Drake and his company as to the weapons, food and clothing they would need for the expedition. In particular, he insisted that they take as many shoes as they could carry because they would be worn out by the gravel in the many stony rivers they would have to cross.
On Shrove Tuesday (3 February), thirty Cimarrons and eighteen Englishmen set off across the isthmus. It was a hard journey, and the better part of a fortnight passed before they caught sight of Panama City. Along the way, on 11 February, Pedro took Drake to a tall tree from which he could see both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. This was the first time an Englishman had set eyes on the Pacific. Drake was greatly inspired, and ‘besought Almighty God of His goodness, to give him life and leave to sail once in an English ship, in that sea!’ This wish would be granted in time, and when it was, Diego was by his side.
Without the Cimarrons, the expedition would not have been possible. Not only were they able to guide the party through the terrain they knew so well, but they also carried provisions, considerably lightening the Englishmen’s load. They supplemented their supplies with animals hunted along the way, including an otter, which it took a little persuasion to induce Drake and his men to taste. Pedro showed no compunction in ridiculing Drake’s reluctance, demanding of him: ‘Are you a man of war, and in want; and yet doubt whether this be meat, that hath blood?’28
The Cimarrons erected lodgings or else led the English to camps they’d built before. At one point, the party stopped at a pleasant Cimarron town of some fifty-five houses where the English admired the ‘fine and fitly’ clothing of the inhabitants, ‘made somewhat after the Spanish fashion’.29 When an Englishman fainted from sickness or weariness, two Cimarrons carried him with ease for two miles or more. They were also excellent scouts. When they reached Panama City, a Cimarron was sent into the town to find out exactly when the mule train was going to depart. The chosen man had previously been enslaved in Panama, and, dressed in the usual clothing of a slave of that city, was able to pass unnoticed through its streets.
Once they had ascertained the movements of the train, the party split into two groups to lie in wait either side of the road. All wore white shirts over their clothing so they could identify each other ‘in the pell mell in the night’. Within an hour, the ringing of the bells around the mules’ necks could be heard. The treasure for which they had waited so long was almost within their grasp.30
Then, in a moment, all was lost. Robert Pike sprang forward, and before the Cimarron by his side was able to pull him down again, a Spaniard spotted his white shirt and galloped off to warn his countrymen. The bulk of the treasure train turned back, leaving only two horse-loads of silver to be seized in the ambush. The careful planning, the hard weeks of marching across the isthmus, had all been for nothing thanks to one man who had consumed so much aqua vitae without water that his excitement got the better of him. The disappointed party had no choice but to make their way back to Fort Diego by forced march, raiding the small Spanish settlement of Venta Chagre on the way, but finding little of value there.31
It took time for the men, ‘strangely changed in countenance’ by ‘long fasting’, ‘sore travel’ and worst of all the ‘grief’ of returning without the hoped-for gold and treasure, to regroup and gather their strength after this humiliating episode.32 Towards the end of April they set out to ambush the Spanish treasure train once more. By this time they had also allied with some French corsairs led by Guillaume le Testu, who had come in search of Drake and his well-stocked storehouses. The Captain, a skilled cartographer from Le Havre, brought news of the horrific massacre of Huguenots orchestrated by Catherine de Medici on St Bartholomew’s Day the previous summer. Both the French and the Cimarrons expressed some reluctance about working together, which was hardly surprising given that two years earlier another French pirate had relied on Cimarron help and been betrayed. Their guide, a man named Pedro Mandinga, had double-crossed them by warning the Spanish, who granted him his freedom in return. If this Pedro Mandinga was the same man as the Pedro who now led the Cimarrons allied with Drake, then the mutual suspicion is all the more understandable.33 Drake did his best to reassure both parties, and they set their sights on besting their mutual enemy.
This time the plan was to set upon the mule train as it approached Nombre de Dios. The allies camped overnight a mile from the road, and awoke to the welcome sound of ringing bells. As the train got closer, they counted one hundred and ninety animals, each bearing 300 lbs of silver. When the attack came, the forty-five soldiers guarding the convoy were taken completely by surprise. One Cimarron was killed and le Testu ‘sore wounded with hail-shot in the belly’, before the Spanish retreated in search of reinforcements. The combined Cimarron, English and French force found themselves with more treasure than they were able to carry. They took what they could, burying the rest in land crabs’ burrows, under fallen trees and in riverbeds. The injured French leader was left behind. He eventually died of his wounds and was decapitated by the Spaniards, who put his head on display in the marketplace of Nombre de Dios. Another Frenchman, who’d overloaded himself with treasure, got lost in the woods and was captured. The Spaniards tortured him until he revealed where the rest of the treasure had been hidden. Despite having to leave so much behind, the Cimarrons, the English and the French escaped with more than 150,000 pesos of gold and silver.34 The voyage was made. Diego’s promise had been fulfilled.
Drake invited Pedro and three of the ‘chiefest’ Cimarrons to choose anything they liked from the treasure haul to keep. But Pedro caught sight of a scimitar that had once belonged to Henri II of France. Drake had been given the curved sword the month before by his French ally, le Testu. Despite Drake’s initial reluctance to part with the weapon, Pedro insisted on buying it from him for four pieces of gold. He, in turn, intended to present it to his King, ‘who would make him a great man, even for this gift’s sake’.35 Before they left, the English tore their pinnaces to pieces and burnt them, so that the Cimarrons could have the ironwork. They had learnt that their allies valued iron above gold, skilfully using the metal to make four different types of arrow head: the smallest for hunting little animals, the largest for fighting Spaniards.
Parting from the Cimarrons with ‘good love and liking’ the English set sail for home. Diego went with them. It could be that he did not trust the Cimarrons to treat him well without Drake’s protection, but he also had good reason to hope for a better life in England.
In 1588, Queen Elizabeth presented a remarkable jewel to
Francis Drake. He wears it prominently, on a chain around his waist, in his 1591 portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger.36 The successful alliance between the Cimarrons and the English casts new light on the symbolism of the Queen’s gift. The so-called ‘Drake Jewel’ is a pendant, the lid of which has the bust of a black man, superimposed on a white figure, carved upon it in onyx stone. Inside is a miniature of Elizabeth by Nicholas Hilliard with a picture of a phoenix on the reverse. The meaning of the image of the African man that dominates this jewel has long been a subject of discussion. One explanation is that the nature of the onyx stone, with its black and white layers, made the ‘blackamoor’ a convenient emblem to carve from it. Another expert sees a black emperor, representing Saturn, an imperial ruler of the Golden Age. The woman in profile behind him is the imperial Virgin Astraea who will restore Saturn’s reign. In light of what we know of Drake’s alliance with the Cimarrons, a new interpretation emerges. The black and white busts symbolise how the forces of Englishmen and Africans united are powerful enough to liberate the world from the power of Spain. It was Drake’s success in 1573 and the treasure he returned home with that first made his name and recommended him to his sovereign. This feat would not have been possible without the Cimarrons. And when Elizabeth gave Drake the jewel, in the aftermath of the defeat of the Armada, Spain was still their main adversary.37
It was hoped that the Cimarrons would continue to aid the English in their struggle. When Drake and Hawkins set out on their last voyage in 1596, they aspired to ally with the Cimarrons once more. However, when Sir Thomas Baskerville, who had become commander of the fleet after both Drake and Hawkins died en route, returned to England, he complained: ‘as for those symerouns that were so much talked of before we left England I protest I heard not so much as the name of them in the Indies’. By this time, the political situation in Panama had changed and the Cimarrons sided with the Spanish against the English, who had not visited the region in any force for almost a decade, and could not be depended on to return.38 And yet their reputation as potential allies lived on. Thomas Gage identified them as such in a narrative of his travels in the West Indies, first published in 1648, and in the plans for an invasion of the Spanish Caribbean that he submitted to Oliver Cromwell in 1654. The subsequent expedition failed to capture Hispaniola as planned, taking the lesser prize of Jamaica instead. Although the Cimarrons did nothing to help this so-called ‘Western Design’, they still featured positively in Sir William Davenant’s The History of Sir Francis Drake, performed ‘at the Cockpit in Drury Lane’ in 1659. There, the audience heard the Cimarron King ask Drake to ‘Instruct me how my Symerons and I/May help thee to afflict the Enemy.’39
Diego and Drake landed in Plymouth on 9 August 1573. It was a Sunday, and when the news reached the congregation of St Andrew’s, they abandoned the service and flocked to the shore to welcome home the adventurers. Plymouth, a town of some 5,000 people, was one of Tudor England’s most prominent ports, whence many of the most famous voyagers of the age set forth. The historian William Camden wrote in his Britannia of 1586 that ‘the town is not very large, but its name and reputation is very great among all nations, and this not so much for the convenience of the harbour as for the valour and worth of the inhabitants’.40
Wenceslas Hollar’s map of Plymouth in 1645.
Diego was not the first African to arrive in Plymouth. John Blanke and Catalina of Motril may have landed there with Katherine of Aragon back in 1501. More recently, larger groups of Africans had arrived in the port on ships belonging to John Hawkins. A group of fifty or so that John Lovell had failed to sell in the Spanish Caribbean spent a few weeks in the town in September 1567, before taking ship with Hawkins on his third and final slaving voyage.41 Clearly, they did not benefit from the general rule that all those who set foot on English soil became free, although the discrepancies in the numbers referred to by Hawkins’s sailors suggest one or two managed to slip away and stay in England. Neither Lovell nor Hawkins attempted to sell Africans in Plymouth: there was no market for enslaved Africans there. When Hawkins returned from his final slaving voyage in January 1569, he brought seven Africans back to England with him. It is not known what became of these men, although ‘Bastien a Blackmoore of Mr William Hawkins’ who was buried at St Andrew’s in December 1583, could conceivably have been one of them.42
There is no record of Diego’s activities for the four years following his arrival in Plymouth in 1573. As he set sail with Drake again in 1577, it’s probable that he remained in the sea captain’s household. Using some of the riches he’d acquired in Panama, Drake purchased a prominent Plymouth townhouse with a garden, on the corner of Looe Street, close to the Guildhall. Perhaps Diego lived there, working for Drake and his wife Mary Newman, whom Drake had married at St Budeaux church, to the north-east of Plymouth, in 1569. Diego would not have been their only servant, now that Drake was a rich man. Another member of the household in these years was John Drake, Francis’s young cousin, who would later sail with him.43
Diego may have accompanied Drake when he set off for Ireland in 1575. Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, was attempting to colonise Ulster, a province he called ‘the gall and misery of all evil men in Ireland’.44 Essex enlisted Drake’s help in his attack against Sorley Boy MacDonnell and his Scots mercenaries, who were based on Rathlin Island, off the north coast of Antrim. The island was heavily fortified and had long been thought a safe haven. Its Castle Bruce was named after Robert the Bruce, who had taken refuge there two centuries earlier. Now, Sorley Boy MacDonnell had sent the Scots’ women and children there for safety. In July 1575, the English attacked and besieged the castle. Many were killed in the fierce fighting, but worse was to come. After the Scots surrendered, they began to make their way out of the castle, only for the English to set upon them. Two hundred men, women and children were massacred on the spot. Any who had managed to escape and hide in the island’s caves were tracked down and killed in the days that followed. When it was all over, the total dead numbered some five hundred souls. Their deaths served little strategic purpose, as before the end of the year the English abandoned the island, having been forced to eat their own horses to stay alive.45
The voyage that would result in the first English circumnavigation of the globe was not conceived as a peaceful odyssey of geographical discovery. On the contrary, Drake would take every opportunity to harass the Spanish wherever he encountered them, just as he’d always done. The plan, which had never been attempted before, was to venture beyond the Caribbean, through the Straits of Magellan, and attack along the Pacific coast of South America. This strategy was the result of Drake’s machinations with Sir Francis Walsingham. Drake had recently been introduced to the statesman, either by the Earl of Essex or his retainer, Thomas Doughty, who was to accompany Drake on the voyage. Investors in the enterprise included key members of the anti-Spanish lobby at court: Walsingham, the Earl of Leicester, Christopher Hatton, and the Queen herself.
Diego was one of about one hundred and seventy men who set sail with Drake from Plymouth on 15 November 1577. The fleet comprised five ships: Drake’s Pelican; the Elizabeth, captained by John Wynter; the smaller Marigold; the provision ship Swan and the Benedict, a small pinnace.46 Rather than reveal his true intentions, Drake told the crew that they were embarking on a trading voyage to Alexandria. It would have been hard to persuade men to take ship for a rampage around the world, with the very real dangers that entailed. Nonetheless, the more astute might have realised that Drake’s past exploits and the presence of forty-one guns across the fleet made it unlikely that this was to be a peaceful trading expedition. Diego, given his previous experience of South America and proximity to Drake, may have known the truth.
Nicola van Sype’s 1581 map shows Drake’s circumnavigation route.
On board the Pelican, Diego was Drake’s personal manservant, preparing his clothing, serving his meals, and running errands. Diego’s experience in long sea voyages would have recommended him as a cre
w member, and with Drake’s command of the Spanish language less than strong, his fluency in Spanish and English would make him a useful interpreter when Spaniards or Spanish-speaking Portuguese were captured.47 He could pass as a slave and spy on the Spanish, as one of the Cimarrons had in Panama City in 1573, and should Drake wish to ally with the Cimarrons, Diego could once again be the go-between.
Diego was not the only African sailor to work aboard a Tudor ship. Some joined English ships to replace crew that had died. In November 1582, off the coast of Sierra Leone, Captain Luke Warde bought four ‘Negroes’ from the Portuguese in return for some ‘kersey [woollen cloth], pease and biscuit.’ Warde had no moral qualms about buying Africans in this way, although one of the ministers on the voyage thought differently. Two of the men served on Warde’s ship, the Edward Bonaventure, but on Friday 7 December, at the Bay of Good Comfort in Brazil, they escaped. Richard Madox, minister of the Galleon Leicester, wrote in his diary: ‘Today those two Aethiopians whom Milo [Warde] had acquired with such burning eagerness took to their heels, and ours commended their flight’. It seems he disapproved of their acquisition, and was glad of their escape. The other two men, Massau and Zingo, served on the Galleon Leicester, but died before they reached England. The expedition’s commander, Edward Fenton, recorded Zingo’s death on Friday 7 June 1583.48 Had these men not died or run away they would have returned to England with the potential to continue as sailors on future voyages. When Sir Walter Ralegh journeyed along the River Orinoco in Guiana in 1595, he had an African aboard, who he described as ‘a proper young fellow’. Unfortunately, while swimming in the mouth of the river, he ‘was in all our sights taken and devoured’ by an alligator.49