Free The Elizabethans by A.N. Wilson Page A

it – supposed that Tierra del Fuego, to the south of the straits, was part of a great continent stretching all the way to the South Pole and that the Straits were the only way through. The normal time for navigating the Straits was seven weeks, during which it was necessary to brave powerful currents, jagged rocks and gale-force winds. Drake broke all records and sailed through the Straits in sixteen days.
    But once he was in the Pacific his luck did not last, and a gale drove him southwards. He found open water. Thus it was discovered that there was no need to have sailed through the Straits in the first place, and the world map could be redrawn. (But not yet: Drake kept the secret of the meeting place of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from the Spaniards.) The other two ships were blown far apart. John Winter, commanding the Elizabeth , went back to the Straits and sailed home to England; His men simply refused to go on. The Marigold was lost. John Oxenham, in his ship, landed at Panama. So the Golden Hind alone of the three was in the Pacific Ocean. Drake sailed up the coast of Chile, making sporadic raids, which were to make his fortune. There was still no news of Oxenham in Panama, but when he had captured some Spanish prisoners, Drake began to piece together a narrative of the disaster: Oxenham and three of his officers were prisoners in Lima; the Spanish troops were ruthlessly subduing Drake’s old comrades in arms, the Cimarrones. The Spaniards expected Drake to return to Panama, but with only one ship he would have had no hope of success. Besides, he had another aim, which was to continue his voyage across the Pacific Ocean to the East Indies and open up English trade for the spices which were at that date the richest merchandise in the world. 5 Drake meanwhile sailed on northwards, up the western coast of South America. Not one Spanish ship on this coast had a gun on board. 6 Why should they need one? The idea of enemy vessels entering the Pacific did not enter their calculations. When he captured a Spanish ship that he nicknamed the Cacafuego , Drake knew his fortune was made. It was laden with eighty pounds of gold, twenty-six tons of silver, thirteen chests of money and ‘a certain quantity of jewels and precious stones’, valued in all at £150,000–200,000. There was so much treasure that they ‘believed that they took out of her twelve score tons of plate; insomuch that they were forced to heave much of it overboard because their ship could not carry it all’. 7
    Drake realised that if he told his aim to the Spaniards on this vessel – whom he released when he had robbed them – they would take his words back to their military, naval and political leaders. So he told them the truth, gambling correctly that they would not believe him capable of his intention: sailing the Golden Hind across the Pacific Ocean.
    By now the ship was quite literally groaning with silver and gold, and it was leaking badly. The north-west winds prevailed as he sailed far out to the ocean, but when he reached a point between 42º and 48ºN he coasted southwards and found a haven. It is said that he set up a metal plate claiming the territory for the Queen. In 1936 a motorist near San Francisco found a brass plate inscribed in Elizabethan English. Recent scientific tests dated it ‘sometime between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, most probably the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. 8 In any event, the sunny Californian coast was a good place for Drake and his men to pull in to shore and overhaul the Golden Hind before the next stage of the adventure.
    As they set out, it is perhaps worth reminding ourselves of how little equipment Drake had at his disposal to assist his prodigious navigational skill. He possessed, obviously, a compass. It was probably in the twelfth century that Europeans discovered that a lodestone – that is, a mineral composed of an iron oxide – aligns itself in a north–south