Elizabeth's Pirates
The pirates
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.
The rogue state
The pirates
The Armada
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