Introduction | Sir Francis Drake | Sir John Hawkins | Sir Martin Frobisher
Sir Humphrey Gilbert | Sir Richard Grenville | Sir Richard Hawkins | Sir Walter Ralegh

Sir John Hawkins

1532-1595

John Hawkins was the prototype Elizabethan pirate, with a merchant's eye for profit and a mariner's love of the sea. Born to a wealthy Plymouth trading family, he went to sea young and soon moved into trafficking slaves.

He bought slaves in west Africa and sold them to the Spanish colonies in the West Indies, often raiding Spanish ships as he went. He grew rich, and Elizabeth I, delighted by the profits, became his backer. But Spanish resentment was rising, and in 1568, Spanish ships attacked Hawkins' six-strong fleet in San Juan de Ulua harbour in Mexico. Only Hawkins' ship and one other, captained by his cousin Francis Drake, escaped – though Hawkins managed to take the treasure away with him.

As ill feeling escalated between Spain and England, Hawkins acted as a double agent and foiled a Spanish plot to depose Elizabeth. During the 1570s, he saw less of the sea, becoming a major shipbuilder, MP and treasurer of the navy. He remained an influential pirate by proxy, however, financing and equipping other seafarers' expeditions, notably Drake's.

In the 1580s, Hawkins brilliantly reconstructed the English fleet, replacing the traditional high-forecastled style of galleon with low 'race-built' ships. Fast, heavily armed and yet able to operate with smaller crews, these were to prove crucial to England's victory over the Armada. He also cleaned up the navy's finances – by the standards of his day, Hawkins the pirate was remarkably honest.

During the attack of the Armada, Hawkins – newly knighted and made rear-admiral of the fleet – harried the Spanish in his ship, the Victory. He lacked Drake's flamboyant genius, but he was reliable and brave and completely understood the capabilities of the new, more manoeuvrable ships.

After the Spanish defeat, Hawkins urged the use of piracy to seize Philip II's colonial treasure and so stop him re-arming. In 1589, he sailed with Frobisher to try and intercept the Spanish treasure fleet. The voyage failed but the plan caught the imagination of English pirates, and several of his comrades would make their own attempts.

Hawkins was a natural-born pirate. Despite having much to occupy him on land – he ran his business and founded a mariners' almshouse – he ended his life by returning to sea. In 1595, aged 63, he sailed to South America with Drake and died of sickness while waiting to have another go at the treasure fleet.

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