Page:England-a Destroyer of Nations.pdf/6

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the name of Christendom. For a crest this coat-of-arms shows the half-length figure of a negro, with golden armlets on his arm and ears, but bound and captive.

To show to what extent the name of Christianity was abused, Hawkins, when in 1567 entering upon his greatest expedition with five ships, sacrilegeously baptized his flagship: "Jesus Christ."

But when this slave dealer imagined himself under the special protection of the heavenly host, he had made a miscalculation. For, when he arrived with 500 slaves in West India, he unexpectedly met, in the harbor of St. Juan de Ulloa with a strong Spanish fleet which burned three of his ships and defeated him so completely that he, with the remaining vessels was driven to sea without provisions.

How ill he fared on his homeward trip, Hawkins thus plaintively described in the following passage of his logbook: "With many sorrowful hearts we wandred in an unknowen Sea, tyll hunger enforced us to seeke the lande, for birds were thought very good meat, rats, cattes, mise, and dogges, none escaped that might be gotten, parrotes and monkyes, that were had in great prize, were thought then very profitable if they served the turn one dinner. If all the miseries and troublesome affaires of this sorrowful voyage should be perfectly and thoroughly written, there should need a paynstaking man with his pen, and as great a time as he had that wrote the lives and deathes of the martirs."

Among the martyrs of this eventful voyage was Francis Drake, who, later on, became the most famous of the "great" English sea heroes."

From the time of that disaster Drake took up as a profession the work of plundering the Spaniards, for, after his arrival in England he, with the connivance of the government openly set out with the sole purpose of preying upon Spanish commerce and colonies. Of him his Spanish contemporaries speak only as of the "archpirate of the Universe" who, like a dragon, pounced upon Spain's colonies to devastate them. The greatest of his several predatory voyages covered a period of three years. Well equipped, accompanied by many English "noblemen" and able mariners, sure of the pious well wishes of his commerce and government, this buccaneer left Plymouth on Nov. 15th, 1577. with five ships.—When he returned, rich in booty, the Spanish Court demanded that Drake be arrested and tried for piracy. But the English Government ignored this request. Moreover, Queen Elizabeth showed her approval of Drake's acts and her aversion toward Spaniards