THE PRIVATEERS

Evening Star, Issue 21077, 14 April 1932, Page 14

THE PRIVATEERS

BRITAIN'S WONDERFUL SEAMEN WHEN THE KING OF SPAIN'S BEARD WAS SINGED It has been said of the Elizabethan privateers that they wore the ships from which the naval power of England was about to rise. To the enemies of England they were pirate ships, although the privateer was the school from which many of Queen Elizabeth’s greatest sailors graduated to knighthood and respectability. Whether he was a sixteenth century sea-dog or a seventeenth century buccaneer however, the privateers-man remained a picturesque fighter. C. Wye Kendall’s recent book, dedicated to his ancestors of the sea, is an historic panorama of privateering. The complaint of the Navy against privateering was that it demoralised seamen by substituting greed for patriotism; ‘but, as Mr Kendall points out, plunder was one of the main incentives to war until recent times. Even Sir William Parker, one of Nelson’s officers, that prize money was the poorly-paid naval seaman’s chief motive to adventure and exertion. Sir William Parker himself received £35,000 as his share of the sixty ships he captured during a period _of nine years. In the fifth year of Elizabeth’s reign there wero at least 400 privateers in the English Channel. The Mayor of Dover was a leading light in this profitable form of sport, whereby GOO French and sixty-one Spanish prizes were brought into the port of Dover in three months. It may not be surprising, then, that sometimes Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, winked at her privateers while she rebuked them. Once the Queen did order Admiral Holstock to clear the Channel of the pests. But that was when some privateersmen made the mistake of attacking and seizing an English vessel which had on hoard the baggage and belongings of Elizabeth’s Ambassador, the Earl of Worcester,.

RECKLESS VALOUR. The Tudor sailors wero pre-eminently suited to the struggle which lay before them when the shadow of Philip of Spain was growing ominous over England. They wero men of reckless valour and wonderful seamen. They would face the greatest odds, “ as when a small privateer of ninety-five tons and a company of twenty-eight men attacked a fleet of eighty-seven Norman and Breton ships, returning from Scotland.” This small band of twentyeight drove one ship of tho fleet ashore, left it to manoeuvre two more on to tho rocks, and captured a fourth. Philip of Spain was so stung by the depredations of the privateers that ho lost his temper and ordered the arrest of all British subjects in Spanish ports, and presented Elizabeth with a bill for damages. For many years before Spain was at war with England, the private warfare of the Channel went on. By degrees the privateers went further afield, voyaging to the West Indies to ransack the Spanish treasure-ships. If Philip of Spain lost his temper, “ the soul of Good Queen Bess,” writes Mr Kendall, “ was tossed between the demands of caution and political decency on the ono hand, and the temptations of plunder on the other.” Dover became the chief mart for tho goods brought in by the privateers. Among the interesting odds and ends offered for sale were Spanish gentlemen, some of the grandees of the Court, who “ could be bought by the speculative for the sum of £IOO, to he kept in the cellar or elsewhere until ransomed at a profit in accordance with tho value set upon them by their captors and the willingness of their friends and relatives to pay.” DRAKE SETS OUT. In 1572 Privateers-man Drake, not yet Sir Francis, set out to repair some former losses in the Indies and on the Spanish Main. He began by capturing a richly-laden galleon in tho Bay of Nomhre do Dios, and ended by landing on the Isthmus of Panama, where he waylaid a mule-train laden with gold. It was upon tin's occasion that lie first saw the Pacific, lu 1577 ho set sail with a fleet of small ships for his famous voyage round the world. Ho arrived homo three years later with about £2,000,0(10 in treasure on board the Golden Hind. “The knighting of

Drake by Elizabeth shortly after his return from his amazingly profitable world tour.” writes Mr Kendall, “ reverberated ‘ ominously through the courts of’ Europe. By it tho Queen tore the veil of hypocrisy to shreds and set the seal of her approval upon deeds that were an intolerable affront to Spain.” The privateers-men were delighted, and now their ceaseless attacks on the sea-borne commerce of Spain hastened the war between tho two countries. Thomas Cavendish, inspired by the example of Drake, tried his hand at a little privateering. Ho fitted out three ships of 120, GO, and 40 tons respectively, and set out from Plymouth. Ho captured nineteen Spanisli ships, and was the third sailor to circumnavigate the globe. “ Upon returning home,” Mr Kendall says, “ he came up the Thames, and, with sails of damask and cloth of gold gloaming in the sun, and his crew clad in gaily coloured silks, he doubtless provided a nine days’ wonder for tho good citizens of London.” When the invincible Armada, Philip of Spain’s reply to England, set out on July 12, 15SS, tho privateers-men suddenly became patriots. Drake, his piratical attire doffed, was admiral of a squadron of English ships, composed of privateers and a few Royal ships. His flagship was tho famous Revenge. The fate of the Armada is well known. Mr Kendal! thus describes the end of the fight: “Drake and his privateers were the fiercest of all. Like wolves they worried tho Spaniards, then, running in close, poured a hurricane of shot into the exposed sides of the galleons, supplemented by musket halls and even arrows, which swept the decks of the enemy with deadly effect until the Alost Happy Armada and the chivalry of Spain fled.” GREATER LOYALTY. With warfare between Spain and England avowed, the traffic of the privateers became tinged with a greater appearance of legality. Privateering syndicates were formed to make and retrieve fortunes. Drake and John Hawkins returned to their favourite haunts in the West Indies and the Spanish Alain, there eventually to end their days. Amyas Preston and George Sommers, two other privatccrs-inou. distinguished themselves by taking the shpposedly impregnable town of San Jago do Leon, in Venezuela. “There were others,” writes Air Kendall, “ but

conspicuous among them all was George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, wHo organised ten deep-sea forays, in four of which he personally took part. He became a privateers-man partly out of a love of adventure, but mainly to replenish a depleted family exchequer. He was a man of fine physique who excelled at games and sports of all kinds, being among other things the Queen’s champion at tilting, a much-coveted distinction. . . , His most successful

venture was the expedition of 1592, when he captured the Madre do Hois, a large Spaniard, valued at £139,000, nearly two-thirds of which went to Elizabeth, who shared in some of his speculations by lending him ships at a high premium, as was her practice.” This is only the beginning of Mr Kendall’s story. He goes on to relate the history of the buccaneers of the Spanish Main, of the taking of Panama by the notorious Morgan, and the story of Captain Kidd. At the end of his entertaining history ho points out that upon the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 Great Britain waived the right of commissioning privateers. “This,” he says, “was the prelude to the Declaration of Paris two years later, which announced to a somewhat astonished world that privateering was henceforward abolished.” The last venture in privateering took place during the American Civil War, when the South commissioned ships against the North.