A SLAVING VOYAGE

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29240, 25 June 1960, Page 3

A SLAVING VOYAGE

The Defeat of John Hawkins. A Biography of his Third Slaving Voyage. Rayner Unwin. George Allen and Unwin. 319 pp. In October, 1567, seven ships, with 400 men on board, sailed from Plymouth under the command of John Hawkins, merchant adventurer and seaman, a young man in his middle thirties. By modern standards it was an extra-

ordinary expedition to set out on a distant and hazardous adventure. Of the two “great ships,” the larger was of only 700 tons, and was far from seaworthy; both belonged to the Queen. The smaller ship was only 33 tons. The object of this alliance of royal and private enterprise was ostensibly to find and exploit a new supply of gold hot far inland on the Guinea Coast, theoretically Portuguese territory and Hawkins’ supporters were a Court syndicate. But his Portuguese guides disappeared at the critical moment, and his thoughts turned to a new purpose, which included the collection of slaves on the African coast and the sale of these, with linen and cloth, in the Spanish Indies, a forbidden area in which he hoped, somewhat naively, that he would be welcomed as the ally of Spain (with which his Queen was nominally at peace), and the enemy of pirates. So the fleet sailed to the inhospitable African coast and thence by the Middle Passage to the Caribbean, where Hawkins traded with the Spaniards, whom their own government could not protect.

By a strange mixture of cajolery and threats he pursued his ‘policy of peaceful trade’ along the northern coast, of South America until a . storm drove him into the harbour of San Juan de Ulua shortly before the arrival of a Spanish fleet. From this situation he finally extricated himself with difficulty, and only three of the original ships (one 1 commanded by the young Drake) managed to make their way back j to England. | Over a quarter of the book deals with the sequel to this most ' unfortunate voyage. Not only the prisoners at San Juan were left behind, but also 100 men who were landed at their own request on the Mexican coast rather than face hunger, thirst and the dangers of the sea on the voyage home, and Mr Unwin has much to tell us of their subsequent adventures and sufferings.

Most of the castaways were severely harried by Indians; the survivors surrendered to the Spaniards and were sent on a 300-mile march to Mexico City, after which their fortunes varied. Of those sent to Spain, some were repatriated mainly through the efforts of Hawkins, who never forgot his lost men; others, who arrived later, fell into the hands of the Inquisition and Buffered

. greatly. The final escape of Job i Hartop, after being sentenced to 1 10 years in the galleys and life . imprisonment, is a great tale of endurance and determination, although for sheer excitement the circuitous escape of Miles Philips from New Mexico is outstanding. The Inquisition also visited New Mexico in 1571, and three years ’ later many of the English ' prisoners suffered grievously from the punishments meted out to those adjudged to be heretics.

Finally Mr Unwin examines in some detail the credibility of the fantastic story of the 40 men who, on landing in America, marched north; three of them reached Nova Scotia, 3000 miles away, 11 months later. The account of this journey is righty entitled “The Improbable Walk.”

This is a Book Society Recommendation, and with reasons. Mr Unwin has pieced together his various sources of information with great skill, and has produced a very readable story. It is a plain tale without flourishes, but there is an abundance of vivid description which the reader will not easily forget. For instance, the siege of Conga with its nauseating sequel, the 52-day voyage in a leaking ship from Africa to Dominica and—surely one of the most extraordinary battles in history—the fight at San Juan, when English and Spanish fleets, tied up at the same wharf, engaged in a struggle partly on the water and partly on land.

The commercial results of the voyage were presumably gratifying to the syndicate that sponsored it, even though the trading profit of 25,000 golden pesos was secured partly by the sale of some of the 300 slaves who survived the crossing of the Atlantic. The staple diet of these unfortunate people on the slave decks consisted of beans which Hawkins had brought from England for the purpose; it was therefore inevitable that after a rough voyage they were in a pitiable condition by the time they reached Dominica, and that a number of children and old people had died. Six of the survivors turned home with Hawkins, and five died. The Spaniards appear to have been equally insensitive to the sufferings of the Indians in their Empire. In terms of foreign policy the results were more creditable, and also more valuable; for the battle of San Juan made it clear that Roman Catholicism was the only religion that Spain would and that free trade within the Spanish Empire was an empty dream. Thus was England warned of the open hostility which reached its climax with the Armada. At • the end of the book there is a select bibliography, which will prove useful to those who wish to study the background of the itory in greater detail ;