Read Mistress of the Sea Online

Authors: Jenny Barden

Tags: #Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #Historical

Mistress of the Sea (42 page)

BOOK: Mistress of the Sea
4.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

‘From the men,’ he whispered.

Next, Captain Drake stepped forward, producing a large battered quoit with a grandiose flourish and placing it on the book as well.

‘From Her Majesty,’ he announced, and the gold was so heavy, the parson almost let it fall. The Captain chuckled, and the parson recovered, giving the ring back to Will to place on her finger, saying words in turn that filled her to glowing: ‘With this ring I thee wed: this gold and silver I thee give: with my body I thee worship . . .’

This gold and silver
– what a story lay behind it, and now it was the gift and seal of her marriage. They were wed; the bells rang out, and she and Will stepped outside to a soaring ovation. Arm in arm they proceeded, as Drake’s men lined up, drawing their swords to form an arch, and sending Peryn Fownes stumbling in momentary panic. Through this arch they walked, showered with sugared grains and petals, with a flurry of white from the doves that were released into the sky.

‘A kiss,’ the people called, and Will bent to kiss her tenderly, until the Captain intervened, clapping his hand on Will’s shoulder.

‘That’s no kiss for a mariner,’ Drake declared, pushing Will aside. ‘Here, let me show you . . .’

Drake made ready to kiss her to hoots and whistles. His merry face came closer, red and whiskered, and she would have made no objection because of the regard in which she held him, but Will took hold of the Captain and bodily pulled him away.

‘No, Captain.’ Will embraced her again, more firmly now, with the kind of hold that no one could break. ‘Let
me
show
you
. . .’

She could not hear any more for the cheering of the crowd.

Author’s Note

On 9th August 1573, during a sermon at St Andrew’s Church in Plymouth, the news spread that Francis Drake had docked in the harbour, and one by one the entire congregation crept out to greet him, until the preacher was left quite alone – so the story goes . . .

Drake and his men returned to a hero’s welcome, their fortunes made, with a haul amounting to a significant proportion of Queen Elizabeth’s annual revenue – some estimate as much as a fifth. Of the seventy-three adventurers who had left Plymouth over a year before, no more than thirty-one arrived back, but Drake had established his reputation, and dared strike a blow for independence and religious freedom against the might of imperial Spain. The success of the enterprise heralded the beginning of the Elizabethan Golden Age, and set the course for the rise of England as a great maritime power.

I expect you will now be wondering just how much of this story is true. The answer is: a good deal; Drake’s activities in the Caribbean between 1570 and 1573 took place much as I have
described
them in
Mistress of the Sea
. Insofar as the novel concerns well-known real-life figures, the story accords with the generally accepted facts. Drake really did mount several attacks on the Spanish bullion supply in Panamá and eventually succeeded after many failures – he did raid Nombre de Dios, ally with the Cimaroons, lose many of his men to yellow fever, capture a mule-train loaded with gold and other riches, escape on an improvised raft and return to England victorious but without two of his younger brothers who died during the venture. The rout of the English fleet at San Juan de Ulúa in 1568 is also a well-documented event, and the duplicitous behaviour of the Viceroy of New Spain during this incident – treachery, as Drake saw it – was the spark that ignited his hatred of the Spanish and a determination to exact vengeance which continued for the rest of his life. Of course, he famously had the ultimate retribution after the period covered by this novel, with the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588.

The setting for
Mistress of the Sea
is supported by such sources as there are, principally the reports of Christopher Ceely, Ellis Hixom and other members of Drake’s crew, on the basis of which Drake’s chaplain, Philip Nichols, compiled an account which was annotated and approved by Drake and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth for presentation to her on New Year’s Day, 1593. This account was later published as
Sir Francis Drake Revived
by Drake’s nephew (also Sir Francis Drake) in 1628. In conjunction with this, I have made use of the Spanish first-hand accounts which were translated by Irene A Wright and published in 1932 by the Hakluyt Society in
Spanish Documents Selected from the Archives of the Indies at Seville
. The degree of consistency between
both
English and Spanish accounts gives credibility to much of the story of Drake’s 1572-3 venture as set out in
Sir Francis Drake Revived
, even allowing for some fairly flagrant elements of exaggeration and dissembling.

For the evidence of what really took place at San Juan de Ulúa I have consulted the eye-witness reports of the gunner, Job Hortop, and the page, Miles Philips, which first appeared in Richard Hakluyt’s seminal work:
The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation
first published in 1589. Also in this collection was John Hawkins’s own account of his ‘unfortunate voyage’ of 1567-8. All three narratives are excellent not only for the information they contain, but also for giving the reader a real feel for the mindset, language and habits of these Elizabethan seafarers from diverse social backgrounds. Again, I have looked at the Spanish sources, and back in 1961, Rayner Unwin wrote a superb description in
The Defeat of John Hawkins
.

But this novel is not faction; it is not primarily concerned with dramatising and retelling the known and probable history.
Mistress of the Sea
is unashamedly fiction; the characters of Ellyn, Will and Kit are all imaginary, and their adventures are products of my own invention, set within the framework of the evidence for what actually happened at the time, so far as I have been able to ascertain it.

Francis Drake and John Hawkins were giants of the age, and I have tried to be faithful to the historical records concerning them both as regards what they did and said, and as regards their characters. Some of the things Drake says in
Mistress of the Sea
come directly from the early sources, for example, several of
Drake’s
responses to the Spanish ‘gentleman soldier’ on the Isla Bastimentos, after the failed attack on Nombre de Dios, are taken from
Sir Francis Drake Revived
, an account that Drake presented as his own. He may well not actually have made any remark to the effect that, before he departed, ‘He meant to reap some of the harvest which they [the Spaniards] get out of the earth, and sent into Spain to trouble all the earth!’ (meaning the gold and silver), but there is little doubt that this is the kind of remark Drake felt he
should
have made.

Drake, the man, as I found him described in the first sources, was not quite the avuncular hero who has come to be revered as Drake, the icon. He was a man of superhuman achievement, from humble beginnings, but the Drake I got to know was quintessentially ruthless. This was a leader who, by his own admission, scuttled his brother’s ship in secret so his men could not sail back home, then watched his brother labour in vain to try and save it, who almost certainly lied about the treasure he had found at Nombre de Dios (we know from the Spanish accounts that it was most unlikely there would have been any bullion left in the city at the time of the raid), and who later infamously hanged two innocent friars in retaliation for the mortal wounding of a black messenger boy after the capture of Santo Domingo, and then threatened to execute two prisoners a day until the murderer was punished or surrendered (the culprit was eventually hanged by the Spanish). The Drake who came alive for me in the accounts would stop at nothing to get what he wanted – and he would never give up. This is the Drake I portrayed in
Mistress of the Sea
: the kind of man who would always put the success of his venture before any individual concern, but who inspired absolute confidence and devotion.

Amongst the many non-fiction books about Drake and his ventures, some of the most useful I found were:
Sir Francis Drake
by John Sugden,
Sir Francis Drake, The Queen’s Pirate
by Harry Kelsey,
The Pirate Queen
by Susan Ronald and the nicely illustrated and compact
Sir Francis Drake
by Peter Whitfield.

There are other characters in
Mistress of the Sea
whose names appear in the records, but about whom little is known: those such as Ellis Hixom and Thomas Sherwell for example. With these players I have envisaged them almost from scratch. Others, such as Capitán Gonzalo de Bastidas, are inventions derived from just a smidgen of fact. There was no officer in command of the garrison at Nombre de Dios by the name of Bastidas, but there really was a Rodrigo de Bastidas (the grandfather of Capitán Bastidas in the story) who sailed with Christopher Columbus and then led his own expedition to the New World and discovered Panama, as well as claiming much of the Columbian coastline for Spain (and how could I resist a name like that?!).

A book I found invaluable in tracing the early colonial history of Panamá was
Old Panama and Castillo Del Oro
, published in 1914 by CLG Anderson (and read in one sitting at the British Library). For the Elizabethan history of Plymouth, I would recommend
A History of Plymouth
by CW Bracken (1931) (bought second hand from a bookshop by Sutton Harbour), as well as
Plymouth – An Illustrated History
by Crispin Hill, and I still keep referring to Liza Picard’s wonderful
Elizabeth’s London
for information on daily life for townsfolk in the era. Of the numerous reference works I consulted on sailing in the Age of Discovery, probably the most helpful for my purposes were:
Galleons and Galleys
by John F Guilmartin Jr (lavishly illustrated),
Sailing Ships
of
War 1400-1860
published in 1979 by Dr Frank Howard,
Spain’s Men of the Sea
by Pablo E Pérez-Mallaína and also
The Mary Rose
, a gem of a little handbook, from the Mary Rose Exhibition in Portsmouth. This brings me to the guides and maps, the notes and museum displays, the Elizabethan House run by Plymouth Museum and Art Gallery, Panamá la Vieja, the remains of the Camino Real and Las Cruces Trail in Panamá – the resources that bring the sensory experiences of time and place that much closer – because for me these are just as important as the text books.

As soon as I had the idea of writing a story with Drake’s raid on the Spanish bullion supply as a backdrop, I was determined to get to know the places involved, to walk some of the unspoilt terrain that my characters would have covered, to understand the climate and gain a feel for what it would have been like to be bitten by sandflies on a shadeless, oven-hot beach, or trudge up and down mountains, heavily burdened, through thick rainforest in near hundred per cent humidity. In this respect there was no better guide for me than Michael Turner’s
In Drake’s Wake: the Early Voyages
, because this series faithfully traces Drake’s journeys over sea and land in superb pictorial and topographical detail. ‘
Espero que encuentres lo que quieres
,’ Michael wrote in the flyleaf to his book in my possession, now extremely battered after numerous treks and thumbings. Well, I did find what I wanted, and his book was a huge help; for anyone interested in following in Drake’s footsteps, I would heartily recommend it.

Did a woman ever accompany Drake on one of his early Caribbean voyages? There’s no evidence that this happened – and there’s no evidence that it did not. For me, it would perhaps have over-stretched credulity to construct a story on the premise that
a
woman sailed aboard the
Pascoe
or the
Swan
in 1572 when that voyage is so well documented, but there are hardly any records relating to the two earlier Caribbean voyages that we know Drake made. What if a woman had been aboard then? . . . What if? . . .

‘What if?’ is how many a story begins . . .

Glossary

Ambergris
– A wax-like substance used in making perfume, secreted by the sperm whale, and often found floating in the sea

Arquebus (also harquebus)
– A muzzle-loaded, long-barrelled handgun, which was a precursor to the musket, often supported on a rest

Astrolabe
– An instrument used to measure the altitude of stars and planets as a navigational aid

Black powder
– Gunpowder (though ‘black powder’ was descriptive at the time)

Bladderball
– A ball made from an inflated animal bladder

Bowsprit
– A large spar projecting from the bow of a vessel on which the foremost stays are fastened

Bo’sun
– A ship’s officer responsible for the crew and equipment aboard, effectively the deck foreman (from a contraction of ‘boatswain’ or ‘boat man’)

Breech
(of a gun or cannon) – The closed part furthest away from the muzzle. (The best cannon were cast in bronze, which was
called
brass; cast iron was much cheaper, but if the casting was not skilfully done then the firing chamber could burst at the breech)

Bride-laces
– Long ribbons of lace used to bind the sprigs of rosemary traditionally worn by a bride and her party

Bridecup
– A cup or bowl full of sugared fruit or spiced wine which would be handed round at the wedding feast

Bulwarks
– The raised sides of a vessel above the level of the deck

Caballero
– A Spanish knightly gentleman or mounted soldier

Caliver
– An improved form of arquebus, being light enough to be fired without the support of a rest (originally of standard calibre and deriving from that word). (Calivers were the principal firearms used in Drake’s Caribbean voyage of 1572-3)

Carcanet
– A jewelled collar or necklace

Caravel
– A light and fast sailing ship, used by the Spanish and Portuguese, typically with a broad beam, moderately high deck at the stern and lateen rig, i.e. triangular sails

Carrack
– A large and potentially cumbersome three or four-masted sailing ship used by the English and others sailing in the Baltic and Atlantic. It had a high forecastle and sterncastle, and was usually square rigged on the foremast and mainmast (i.e. with square sails) and lateen rigged on the mizzenmast (i.e. with triangular sails at the stern). The equivalent Spanish ship was the
nao

Caulk
– To pack the seams between the planks of a hull with waterproof material, typically oakum sealed with pitch, to prevent leakage

Cawle
– A cap or net for the hair worn by women

Churl
– A peasant

Cimaroon
(Spanish: cimarrón, plural: cimarrones) – A runaway slave, typically of African-Negro origin, who banded together with other fugitives and lived in the mountain wilderness (probably from Spanish for summit:
cima
and dirt:
roña
). (The Cimaroons allied with Francis Drake and gave him invaluable support in his attacks on the Spanish)

Coif
– A close-fitting cap

Coxcomb
– A vain and foppish man (from the cap, resembling a cock’s comb, worn by a jester)

Cresset
– A metal basket, mounted on a pole, filled with flammable material such as wood and pitch and set alight for illumination

Cuirass
– Armour consisting of a breastplate and backplate fastened together

Culverin
– A large cannon with a length of about 10-13 feet, capable of firing shot weighing 17-20 lbs fairly accurately

Duenna
– An older woman acting as a chaperone to a girl or young lady, especially in Spain

Farthingale
– A framework of hoops, usually of willow or rope, worn under a woman’s skirts to extend and shape them

Fore (mast or sail)
– A mast or lowest and largest sail at the fore or front of a ship

Fighting top
– A large platform on a mast equipped with guns designed to fire down at the decks of enemy ships. (Typically, masts were made up of three sections, and a basket-style platform or ‘top’ would be at the upper end of the first section)

Forecastle
– A raised structure at the bow of a ship, originally castle-like and providing a high base for firing at the enemy

Frigate
– A relatively small and fast sailing ship

Fustian
– A kind of coarse woollen cloth

Galliard
– A quick and spirited dance characterised by leaps and jumps

Gibbet
– A structure resembling a gallows on which the bodies of executed criminals were left hanging as a warning to others

Gimmel ring
– One with several hoops or links that fit together to form a composite ring, typically used in betrothals where the engaged couple would wear one hoop each and rejoin them as a wedding ring

Goffer
– To press wavy pleats into a frill or ruff using heated irons

Gorget
– A piece of armour protecting the throat

Grapple
(in warfare) – To secure with a grappling iron, i.e. a hooked claw or grapnel at the end of a rope

Gun carriage
– A mobile support for a piece of artillery, typically with two heavy wheels at the front and a wheel-less wooden trail at the back. English gun-carriages used aboard ships often had four small wheels, or ‘trucks’, with ropes allowing for recall after firing and repositioning.

Gunwale
– The upper edge of the side of a ship or boat

Halberd
– A weapon like a spear and battleaxe combined, having a long shaft with an axe blade and a pick topped by a spearhead

Hautboy
– An early form of oboe

Hawser
– A thick rope used for mooring or towing a ship

Hornbook
– A teaching aid usually displaying the alphabet, the ten digits and the Lord’s Prayer, mounted on a wooden tablet and protected by a thin plate of horn

Hose
– Male clothing for the legs consisting of ‘upper hose’ or breeches (typically short padded ‘trunk hose’ or loose ‘slops’), and ‘nether hose’ or close-fitting stockings, usually made out of wool, which could reach down to the ankles or cover the feet as well

Huguenot
– A French Calvinist or follower of the minority Protestant Church in France

Hulk
(ship) – The body of a dismantled unseaworthy ship retained in use as a store-vessel or for other purposes

Jackanapes
– A cheeky person (deriving from a man whose behaviour resembles that of a tame ape)

Jennet
– A small Spanish riding horse

Journeyman
– A worker who could charge for each day he worked, who had completed an apprenticeship and was competent to practice a trade or craft, but who had not yet been admitted as a master to a guild (from Old French for a day or day’s work:
jornee
)

Kirtle
– A woman’s skirt or outer petticoat

Lackey
– A servant or hanger-on

Lawn
– Very fine linen fabric

Lee
– The side or part that is away from the wind (hence ‘leeward’: on the sheltered side)

Lighter (boat)
– A flat-bottomed boat used for transporting cargo especially in loading or unloading a ship

Lychgate
– A roofed gate to a churchyard

Main (mast or sail)
– The chief mast or sail of a ship, between the fore and mizzen masts of a three-masted ship, and usually the largest

Mantilla
– A large light veil or scarf worn by Spanish women over the head and shoulders

Marry!
– An expression of surprise or outrage (from Mary, the mother of Jesus)

Mastiff
– A breed of massive, powerful, short-haired dog, usually fawn or brindle with a dark mask. The dogs were prized for
blood
sports such as bear and bull-baiting

Match cord
– A length of hemp or flax cord treated to make it burn slowly

Matchlock
– A mechanism for firing a handgun in which a piece of smouldering match-cord held in a clamp on a lever is used to ignite priming powder in a flash pan and thence the main charge in the gun barrel. The word can also refer to a gun with this type of firing lock

Medlar
– A small bushy tree with brown apple-like fruit, which are only edible after they have begun to decay

Mizzen (mast or sail)
– A mast or lowest and largest sail aft or behind the mainmast

Morion
– A curved brimmed helmet without a visor usually having a crest from front to back

Nosegay
– A small bunch of sweet-smelling flowers

Oakum
– Loose fibre from unravelled old rope used for caulking ships’ seams

Palfrey
– A light docile saddle horse much favoured by women riders

Palisade
– A fence of wooden stakes forming a defensive enclosure

Pallet
– A crude bed, often having a straw-filled mattress

Partlet
– A woman’s covering for the upper chest worn when the bodice had a low neckline

Pinnace
– A boat, typically with sails and oars, carried aboard merchant and war ships to serve as a tender, or for scouting and raiding. (Drake took three pinnaces on his 1572-73 venture, which were carried disassembled and in pieces in the holds of his ships; they were put together and made seaworthy in a matter of days)

Placer
– A deposit in the bed of a stream or river containing particles of gold or other valuable minerals (probably from Spanish for pleasure:
placer
)

Plate corselet
– Protective armour comprising metal plates covering the upper body

Primer
– Gunpowder placed in the pan of a firearm to ignite a charge after itself being ignited by a spark or friction

Quoit
– A lump of crudely processed gold or silver formed into a rough disc that was thickest in the centre and tapering towards the edges. (Much of the bullion from the mines in Peru was transported by the Spanish in these disc-shaped ingots as well as in the form of bars and coins)

Rapier
– A thin, light sharp-pointed sword used for thrusting

Rubbing strake
– A projecting line of planking extending from stem to stern along the side of a ship which acts as a crude bumper

Saltpetre
– Potassium nitrate: a crystalline substance typically found in decayed manure from old stables and chicken coops

Scriptorium
– A room set apart for writing, especially one in a monastery where manuscripts were copied

Scut
– A term of contempt for a person, probably deriving from its other meaning as the short erect tail of an animal in flight

Shallop
– A light sailing boat used mainly for coastal fishing

Sheet
(nautical) – A rope attached to the lower corner of a sail for securing or extending the sail or changing direction

Slops
– Thick loose breeches, reaching to the knee or below, often worn by sailors

Sluice
– A trough with grooves through which a current of water is directed in order to separate gold from the ore containing it

Spar
– A thick, strong pole used for supporting the sails of a ship

Stanchion
– An upright support

Sterncastle
– A large raised structure at the stern of a ship

Stomacher
– A V-shaped piece of decorative cloth, worn over the chest and stomach

Stooks
– Sheaves of grain stood on end in a field

Tallow
– A hard, fatty substance made from rendered animal fat used for making soap and candles

Tapir
– A nocturnal, hoofed mammal native to the forests of tropical America, resembling a very large pig, and having a flexible snout

Tender (boat)
– A boat used to ferry people and supplies to and from a ship

Tholes
– The pins set upright on the gunwales of a rowing boat to serve as a fulcrum in rowing and against which the oars press

Trencher
– A flat piece of wood or other material on which food was served and cut

Trunnions
– The supporting stubs on which a cannon barrel pivots up or down

Tussie-mussie
– A small bunch of flowers or aromatic herbs

Waxbill
– A finch-like songbird having a bright red bill resembling sealing wax in appearance

Wheellock
– A firing device that was a development on the matchlock using a rotating steel wheel rubbing against a piece of pyrite to provide the spark for ignition of the charge. The word can also refer to a handgun with this kind of mechanism.

Yard
– A cylindrical spar slung across a ship’s mast from which a sail could hang

BOOK: Mistress of the Sea
4.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Young Winstone by Ray Winstone
Affliction by Russell Banks
High Hurdles by Lauraine Snelling
Pattern for Panic by Richard S. Prather
Ricochet by Sandra Sookoo


readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024