Aboard this escort went Francis Drake as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy.  Home in June, Drake ran down to Tavistock in Devon; wooed, won, and married pretty Mary Newman, all within a month.  He was back on duty in July.

For the time being the war cloud passed away.  Elizabeth’s tortuous diplomacy had succeeded, owing to dissension among her enemies.  In the following year (1570) the international situation was changed by the Pope, who issued a bull formally deposing Elizabeth and absolving her subjects from their allegiance to her.  The French and Spanish monarchs refused to publish this order because they did not approve of deposition by the Pope.  But, for all that, it worked against Elizabeth by making her the official standing enemy of Rome.  At the same time it worked for her among the sea-dogs and all who thought with them.  ‘The case,’ said Thomas Fuller, author of The Worthies of England, ’the case was clear in sea divinitie.’  Religious zeal and commercial enterprise went hand in hand.  The case was clear; and the English navy, now mobilized and ready for war, made it much clearer still.

Westward Ho! in chief command, at the age of twenty-five, with the tiny flotilla of the Dragon and the Swan, manned by as good a lot of daredevil experts as any privateer could wish to see!  Out and back in 1570, and again in 1571, Drake took reprisals on New Spain, made money for all hands engaged, and gained a knowledge of the American coast that stood him in good stead for future expeditions.

* * * * *

It was 1572 when Drake, at the age of twenty-seven, sailed out of Plymouth on the Nombre de Dios expedition that brought him into fame.  He led a Lilliputian fleet:  the Pascha and the Swan, a hundred tons between them, with seventy-three men, all ranks and ratings, aboard of them.  But both vessels were ’richly furnished with victuals and apparels for a whole year, and no less heedfully provided with all manner of ammunition, artillery [which then meant every kind of firearm as well as cannon], artificers’ stuff and tools; but especially three dainty pinnaces made in Plymouth, taken asunder all in pieces,’ and stowed aboard to be set up as occasion served.

Without once striking sail Drake made the channel between Dominica and Martinique in twenty-five days and arrived off a previously chosen secret harbor on the Spanish Main towards the end of July.  To his intense surprise a column of smoke was rising from it, though there was no settlement within a hundred miles.  On landing he found a leaden plate with this inscription:  ’Captain Drake!  If you fortune to come to this Port, make hast away!  For the Spaniards which you had with you here, the last year, have bewrayed the place and taken away all that you left here.  I depart hence, this present 7th of July, 1572.  Your very loving friend, John Garrett.’  That was fourteen days before.  Drake, however, was determined to carry out his plan.  So he built a fort and set up his pinnaces.  But others had now found the secret harbor; for in came three sail under Ranse, an Englishman, who asked that he be taken into partnership, which was done.