274. Pirates of Panama: Francis Drake Strikes Spain's Empire (Part 2)

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0:29Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Durrumpur. and this episode There Be Pirates Let me tell you There Be Pirates I know you love hearing from us about pirates we did that Three Ships series Christmas of long ago maybe two years ago and you loved it We did a whole series after that too Yes we did Pirates of the Caribbean You almost went pirates and then you lost Pirates I like getting pirates too Pirates of the Caribbean Very fun But we have again got our brilliant very very special guest with us. And drumroll, you say his name and I'm going to tell you something you don't know about him.

1:10Mark Horton, the great archaeologist, my old friend since I was 16 years old. Yes, we know. But did you know, and it's going to be very important to know this, I want to see the look on your face when I tell you a thing. Mark lives in a very special house, a house that belonged to, and you better zip it because Mark's story to tell, Mark, whose house are you living in? Sir Francis Drake. Sir Francis Drake. What? How? When did you discover that? Well, this is while you were late turning up to the recording. This is why to be on time is quite useful. Do you actually? Well, yes. I mean, the tradition is only 19th century, but there's very good reason to believe that he did live there.

1:53Well, we certainly hope there's a myth. Did he play bowls on your lawn? No, but nearby Lidney, he would have played bowls with his great friend William Wintour, who funded all the little expeditions we're going to be talking about shortly. And guess what else? And guess what else? We'll get into all the funding in a second. That's all fine and good. But you told me that he haunts the house. He haunts the house. I'm going to shelve my disbelief in all things supernatural, but I'm dying to know. How do you know that he haunts the house? And what does he get up to? In what way does he haunt the house?

2:28The rattle of bowls down a corridor. The tobacco bones, the sense of tobacco. We get the sense of tobacco. That's really interesting. Ancient tobacco, not modern tobacco, which then suffuses the house. The type of tobacco that was brought back in the 17th and 16th centuries from the New World. Are you being serious? You should be on time. You miss so much. We have a smellscape. No, but you also said, can you see bum compressions on cushions? Is that something that's real? Or are you just having me on there? No, no, no. You just see him in the corner, you know. A little bump impression. You recently fell off a boat and nearly broke your leg and were wandering around limping for a long time.

3:07Was that Sir Francis Drake trying to teach you some seamanship? Some seamanship, that's right. I mean, the reason we're banging on about Francis Drake and who we learn in history as this gentleman, nobleman adventurer is because Francis Drake's first independent privateering, privateering, and remember privateering is that very polite word that they used to use for being a pirate and pillaging on the seas. His first independent piracy was along the coast of Panama. That's right, isn't it, Mark? Yes, it is. He'd fallen out a few years earlier with John Hawkins, who was basically one of John Hawkins' go-to captains in Hawkins' slaving voyages, taking Africans from West Africa and taking them and selling them illegally to the Spanish.

3:49The Spanish didn't like this because it undermined their own monopoly. And in one famous naval engagement, Drake abandoned his position. As a result, Hawkins and Drake fell out and Drake went off on his own way as a privateer and managed to persuade a sponsor, a man called William Wintour, to give him lots of money to go and raid the coast of Panama. We should perhaps, for those who didn't have a British public school education and grew up with Sir Francis Drake, give a little bit of the backstory. Francis Drake, when I went to school, was very much remembered as this heroic Elizabethan who was such a cool cat and so unbothered by wicked foreigners that when the Spanish Armada, the largest Spanish fleet, invasion fleet that was going to come and destroy Elizabethan England, when that hove interview over the horizon and a runner came and said, sir, sir, you must go mount your sails and sail off.

4:50Drake says, I'll just finish my game of bowls. Now, that's how he's remembered. In reality, as Mark has just indicated, he is more nefariously remembered these days as the first English slaver or the second English slaver, along with John Hawkins. And the two went into business breaking what was then a Portuguese and Spanish monopoly And actually going raiding into the interior of West Africa for the first time and capturing human beings and selling them at a profit, taking them from Sierra Leone and selling them on the Spanish main. Is that right? Where did you sell them, Mark? No, no, into the Caribbean.

5:23The Caribbean. At this point, the Caribbean Indians had all been wiped out, the Caribs. And so they needed a new source of labor to run the mines to keep the Spanish economy going. And so there's a massive, insatiable demand for Africans. And again, the backer of his second slave voyage in 1564 is none other than Queen Elizabeth I, who gives him one of her ships, Jesus of Lubeck, or Jesu of Lubeck, which serves as his flagship. So we have, for the very first time, the British crown associated with a slaving exhibition, which is something that, of course, will develop in the Royal Africa Company.

6:01With the Duke of York's brand burned into people's chests. Now, let's go back to Panama, because that's what we were talking about in the last episode. The Spaniards have discovered, or discovered, they've claimed for their own a sea, the Southern Sea, then Panama and the Isthmus. And there have been plans sent to Philip of Spain saying, you know, it might be a good idea to build a canal through this very thin stretch of land might be helpful. And he said no, because if God wanted a canal, he would have put it in there. But what they are attracted to is the gold and the silver that is coming out of these lands.

6:36And the gold, although they think is still in mines, is actually not. It's been taken from elsewhere in South America and brought to Panama or is generational gold. But the silver is flowing and the silver has transformed the European economy. And as William said, all the way up to China, the silver fever in the world. Spanish dollars become the main international currency in the same way that the dollar is today. And the English are looking at this. You know, they have been enemies of the Spaniards for ages. The Protestant Catholic thing has never been thrown into sharper relief. And they're looking at all these bandits getting so very rich off the back of this silver trade that they think, well, we could have a bit of this.

7:18And hence, the pirates or privateers. And that's what we're going to be talking about. You have to put it in your accent again, Anita. You don't recognise it unless you say. Oh, you don't mind doing it. I know you're going to get complaints about it. But there'll be pirates. There'll be lots of pirates because there'll be lots of silver. So where shall we start? We have to start in 1572. Drake has a couple of ships. They're absolutely tiny. One's 25 tons, which is a large yacht, basically. And the one's about 50 tons. They have 70 men involved. And he decides to attack the heart of the Spanish Empire in Panama.

7:56A completely mad scheme. I mean, his reputation is in tatters after abandoning Hawkins a few years earlier. Out of cowardice is the accusation that he just ran away in a battle. That's right, out of cowardice and stealing some of the treasure at the same time. His reputation is not good, but he does have backers who basically say, well, we'll give you a couple of small ships and see what you can do. And he comes up with the idea that if he's able to intercept the gold and silver trains, the bullion coming across the isthmus, then he can make himself extremely wealthy and disrupt that flow of silver and bring that flow of silver back to Elizabethan England.

8:37Which is not a bad plan. Not a bad plan. It's a heist. It's a heist, basically. And so he hatches this plan. And he goes to a place called Port Pheasant, which he creates, which is on the San Blas Archipelago on the north coast. Is that his name for it? Yes. It doesn't sound very Spanish. It has lots of pheasants or probably cockatiels or something similar. The key thing is, because he's got a tiny number of people, the Indians have mostly been wiped out. But in the mountains are Cimarrones. These are escaped slaves from the Spanish mines who, as it were, don't like the Spanish and want to get their own back.

9:15So he manages to create an allowance between the remaining Indians and the Cimarronis and a small number of men. Only 73. 73? I mean, you're not joking. 73 men, that's nothing. That's right. I mean, it's kind of like Cortez, really. So he first of all attacks Nombra de Dias. He comes in behind him because everyone thinks it's going to come from the sea. He lands a bit down the coast and attacks him from behind. Like the Japanese at Singapore or something. Yes, yes, last year. And they get a little bit, but there wasn't very much in the town, to tell you the truth, Nombre de Dios. So he then, as it were, retreated back and decides to, as it were, attack the gold train, which he successfully does with his Cimarronis a few miles outside Nombre de Dios.

10:00It's coming down from Panama. This is after the moment. There's a rather nice story, which I remember hearing about, that at some point he has a cannonball come through his state room. Is that when he runs away? That's when he runs away. He captures Nombodios, but he's slightly wounded in the process. So he withdraws, abandons Nombodios, and then goes back and launches this attack in the interior. And he manages to capture this mool train of silver totally unprepared. They had no idea and ends up with 20 tonnes of gold and silver. That's not a bad day's work. 20 tons is extraordinary. But this lovely fact is it was so too much to carry that he decides to bury some of it and come back later for it.

10:46That's correct. That's not a myth. Is there a treasure map? There's a treasure map. I mean, nobody's ever found it. And whether he actually was unlikely. Why don't you dig there? I understand about your pottery. I understand about your excitement and foundations. But why are you not digging there, Mark? Well, indeed, there might well be an enormous treasure waiting to be finding. If we hear that you've done up Sir Francis Drake's house, it's now got crystal chandeliers, we'll know that you've found it. He then takes what he can, what he can carry, just a few tonnes to the coast where the ships that he thought were leaving had disappeared.

11:26He then builds a raft, rafts his way along the coast to find some penises that he's also left. So he realised as a result of that speech, though he didn't make millions out of it, he nonetheless brought a considerable amount of silver back with him. And when he arrived back in Plymouth, everyone ran out of church to welcome him back. The parson carried on preaching to an empty church. And we think they ran out of church to warn him because a few months earlier, a treaty had been signed between Spain and England, much against Elizabeth's better judgment. So while he went out as a privateer, he came back with all this Spanish silver as a pirate.

12:11And he then disappears for 18 months. And he didn't know. He didn't know. I suppose there's no radio. There's no warning. Is that when he hides in your house or when does he hide in your house? Well, one possibility is that he hides in our house at this point. The man who sponsors his voyage, William Wintour, has this spare house on the Spanx of River Severn where Drake then hangs out for 18 months. No wonder it smells of tobacco. He was stress smoking. Stress smoking. Hang on. So I didn't know this bit of the story. Is he then pardoned or what happens to him before he goes back to pardon the war?

12:43I think the war then breaks out shortly afterwards and there's so much silver that he's been forgotten. And the key thing is that he's then hatching his plans for the round the world voyage. He is the first Englishman with John Oxendam to actually spy the Pacific. So he, part of this, climbs a tree like Balboa did earlier and spy the Southern Seas. Is it the same tree? No, we think not. Spies the Pacific. And then that then gives him the idea that he wants to have an expedition into the Pacific, which, of course, is his great round-the-world voyage, sponsored by Queen Elizabeth and Robert Dudley and Christopher Hatton and all the great nobles of England.

13:26Remind me, Mark, has this been done before by the Spanish and the Portuguese or is he the first? No, Magellan had been round. Magellan, of course, did he. But Magellan had died on his way. So obviously some of his shipmates did a circumnavigation, but Magellan didn't make it all the way round. So his was a continuous navigation round the world. And this is in the famous golden hind. That's right. His flagship. Maybe another podcast will tell you all about this. Oh, you spoil us with your expertise. We could have you on, honestly, every other week. Okay. So we've got Drake, who is not a privateer, is a privateer, lands and then is not a privateer because war breaks out lucky for him.

14:05But he's had a taste now, hasn't he? So Panama, does it call back to him? Because he's also buried a whole bunch of gold and silver there. Yes, absolutely. So he then persuades the crown. War's broken out again with Spain and persuades the crown to launch a major expedition, not just two little yachts this time, but 25 ships, 2 ,000 sailors, 1 ,200 soldiers. It's a proper expedition. Proper expedition. £20 ,000 the Queen invests in the cost of the expedition, which is millions. What date is this? This is in 1585 to 1586. And he goes down, he captures Santo Domingo on Haiti. He then goes to Cartagena and he manages to, as it were, attack that and sort of semi-sack it.

14:55That's a nice place for you to go and dig, Mark. Absolutely. And then he then ends up in St. Augustine and destroys that while he's on his way, capturing quite a lot of loot on his way. It probably never fully repaid the investment that was made on it, but it mightily annoyed the Spanish, who saw that the English were an emerging maritime power and El Drac was somebody to be contended with. El Drac? El Drac, the dragon, the dragon man. Is that what they called him? El Drac. Wow, okay. And so he returned back in 1586. Incidentally, on his way back, he popped into Roanoke and picked up the desperate colonists who were at this point starving on the coast of Virginia.

15:39And he picked them up and brought them back to Plymouth, but so annoyed the Spanish that they then made their plans for the Armada, which of course is that moment of English history in 1588. Which is defining, and we are taught that, you know, great length. Singeing of King's beards and the Armada and all of that stuff is the stuff of our history curriculum. But why was he so successful against the Spanish? Is it just because they didn't expect him? They were outgunned, they were out-sailed. I mean, what was it about El Drac that made him so successful in attacking Spanish interests? I mean, this is the discussion about how the English managed to defeat the Armada.

16:17The ships were much more versatile. The sailors were better trained, better gunnery. They're smaller and have got more guns, as I was always taught at school. Is that right absolutely and faster and generally more maneuverable these great big lumbering galleons look very good but but but actually hopeless and the guys themselves the spanish on them were noblemen they were laden with gold and armor and everything else and one of the spanish armada ships dug up on the coast of northern ireland the number of chains of gold that were found in this ship, demonstrate it was an extraordinary aristocratic, but not professional sailors.

16:57And so they were easy prey. We haven't said, but it's an important point that Draco comes from a very modest background. Yes, absolutely. Draco is self-made. Self-made man with a dissenting father as a parson, and he learns his craft sailing small boats on Thames Estuary, basically. Wow. Actually, it's really interesting how many of these expeditions are led by hungry, otherwise could be poor men, failed pig farmers or people from modest backgrounds who want to make so much more of themselves. Isn't it interesting? Okay, so carry on, Mark. So he's being successful. He's really annoying the Spanish.

17:31The Spanish have had enough of this nonsense and so they're building their armada and we know what will happen next. But in the intervening period, it can't just be Drake who sniffs a fortune in this part of the world. So Drake comes back in 1586, are similarly successful with this hugely expensive expedition. And of course, the Elizabethan crown get wind of the Spanish armaments. So Drake is then dispatched off to Cadiz to singe the King of Spain's beard, as the famous saying is, to provide a sort of counter-attack to the Armada, at which point all the ships can't leave England because every ship is then needed to defend England against this extraordinary invasion that's being planned.

18:15So what you're saying, Mark, is that had the war not happened, others might have hurled themselves into the ocean and had a go. But because every ship is needed, every boat is needed for Cadiz, he's the only one. He is the pioneer and he remains the only one to have achieved what he did in South America for some years. That's right. The Armada happens. He becomes a national hero. But actually, I think naval historians have rather bigged up Drake's role. Many other naval captains were also involved in the defence. But then the year after, there was the counterarmada, which is a disaster. English historians tend not to dwell on the counterarmada, which was led by Drake.

18:54This is 1589. And this is a massive British-English armada against the Spain. I'd never heard of it. Of the counterarmada. And actually more English ships were lost in the counterarmada than the Spanish lost in the Spanish armada. It was a complete and utter disaster. It's funny how that isn't taught in our schools. It is. It was a complete disaster. And as a result of this, Drake, when he returned, was in disgrace. He became an MP. What you do if you're in disgrace. had to hang around a bit, wondering really what to do. Finally, he persuaded investors in 1595 to undertake one last crack at Panama.

19:40And he did so along with his old foe, John Hawkins. Have they been reconciled sitting in the Westminster corridors? Yes, yes. They were both in their dotage, probably way past their best. What sort of age would he have been in 1595? 55, something like that. We don't know exactly. Around 55. Which is a very old man in Elizabethan England. Absolutely. And he managed to marshal 16 ships, 600 sailors, and a set about attacking the Caribbean again, raiding Spain, trying to, as it were, recover his reputation, which was now in tatters as a result of the debacle of the counter-armada. So, I mean, the reason I was asking, was he the only one?

20:22And, you know, circumstances meant that he was the only one. It's because he has knowledge of the waters and the coastline. And so, of course, Hawkins is going to have to reconcile with him because there's nobody else to do business with. He's the only one who's been there and done that. So that would explain that. Okay. So talk us through the pillaging of the Panamanian coast that follows. So they go to Puerto Rico, first of all, and have a rather ill-fated attack. Unfortunately, John Hawkins then subsends to dysentery and dies and is buried at sea shortly afterwards. They attack on Puerto Rico.

20:55And then Drake goes down to Panama and tries the same trip that he did again, which was to capture Nombre de Dios. Now he had sufficient ships to capture it and to hold it, but then sent a military expert. He has soldiers on board to go along the Camino Royal, the Royal Road, to sack Panama, which is obviously on the Pacific side. He successfully captures Nombre de Dios. And he ransoms it, doesn't he? He ransoms it for huge sums of money, which eventually gets paid. But the military expedition fares less well and confronts a large Spanish army coming up from Panama. And they are rather nicely defeated.

21:37About 60 English soldiers are killed. They all run away and about five Spanish are killed in this engagement. We should say at this point that Panama that we're talking about is Panama the city, not Panama the country, which doesn't exist yet. Yeah, no, very good to point that out. But also, some of you might be scratching your head saying, what do you mean he ransomed Panama? And what he did was he said, if you don't want me to destroy this place, pay me whatever it was, one billion pounds or whatever it is he asks for. He doesn't get the money. So then he does order the town to be destroyed, right?

22:09I mean, what do they do? Burn it down? Yeah, they burn it down and kill everybody off. And although they don't find any money in the town itself, there's a watchtower on a nearby hill. And they go up there and they find a chest of silver with two bars of gold, some pearls and a few other goodies. But it isn't the same sort of stuff as he got last time. Not your 20 tonnes of booty that he left with before. That's correct. So he kind of slightly comes in empty-handed. So it's all a bit bloody. The soldiers have been defeated by the Spanish and have had to come back and withdraw. He's in Nombre de Dios, sort of, and they decide to withdraw to the harbour just further up the place, a place of Portobello, that was discovered by Columbus in 1502, at which point Drake contracts dysentery.

22:55And over three days, he eventually dies, I think, in the evening, on the morning of the 30th of January, of dysentery. It takes him about three or four days to kill the old man. And at which point, Moal collapses in the fleet. Surprisingly, both Hawkins and Drake have been put into lead coffins and thrown into the sea. That's right. So Drake ordered, as he was dying, to be dressed in his armour, his suit of armour, and then placed in the lead coffin. And when he was then thrown overboard somewhere in Portobello Harbour, we don't quite know where. And treasure hunters obviously have looked for it for the last 50 years and have not found Drake's lead coffin.

23:37So Mark, poor old Drake has got dysentery. He's died. Hawkins has died too. they'd be defeated by the Spanish. How come that we all remember Drake as this great hero? How does his reputation suddenly get dry cleaned and he now represents this? It is actually probably the first Englishman to be remembered in the same way that we like to think of James Bond as this character, so cool and so collected and calm that even the approach of the Spanish Armada doesn't ruffle him. Well, it's a really interesting question. You see the sort of historiography of Drake in terms of the sort of changing dynastic politics of England.

24:10So the Stuarts hate Drake because he created all this horrible warfare and so forth. It was very much associated with Elizabeth and Elizabethan England. But ironically, his reputation is rehabilitated during the Cromwellian period. Cromwell himself sent out expeditions to the grand design to Jamaica and again confrontations with these nasty Catholics in Spain. So here his reputation is rekindled, accounts of his voyages are then published, ships are named after him and it's really from that period, from the 1650s onwards, Drake then becomes a bit of a household name. He's a kind of symbol of anti-Catholic pirating, that's the point of him, that he's one of these characters that today we forget that there was this massive prejudice against Catholics, which was a major part of English history for such a long time.

25:06And Drake is the embodiment of that. That's why he's remembered. That's right. But there's a second, as it were, bite at the cherry because the Victorians also needed a great naval hero. And there was a famous historian called Sir Julian Corbett, who wrote a big book called Drake and the Elizabethan Navy, which is this eulogy about what a wonderful seafarer he was. And it was from that, from the 1880s, 1890s, that Drake's reputation as the great naval hero of the British Empire was fostered and created, with HMS Drake, of course, being the naval station down in Plymouth and everything else, the founder of the Royal Navy.

25:53So, I mean, I'm just thinking now the landscape has changed entirely. So no Hawkins, no Drake. The Spanish are sick and tired of getting attacked in this way. So there must be some Spanish response to this. Do they start fortifying? Do they start rearming? What do they do? So they decided to abandon Nombro de Dios as an unfortifiable place and move to Portobello, which they fortify in 1597. And they build three enormous fortresses at Portobello, two guarding the entrance and another one guarding the harbour. And then within Portobello, they built a great treasure house, an enormous great big stone building that's able to store the bullion as it comes down the road.

26:36And they divert the Camino Real, the Royal Road, which went to Nombra de Dios, that now goes a little bit further down the coast to Portobello. And then that becomes the great entrepot for the export of the bullion through the 17th and 18th centuries. Okay, now this is a UNESCO World Heritage site now, these fortifications. And look at the picture of it. It looks lovely. Yeah, I know. I mean, it looks amazing. But is it somewhere where you have dug or would like to dig? And what is allowed there? Alas, I mean, it's such an enormous site. It's actually in quite good condition. So the fact very little archaeology has been done in Porto Polo, simply the sheer scale of the fortresses are completely overwhelming there.