Blurb

Twenty years before Sir John Hawkins and his kinsman Drake harried the Great Armada to its doom, these two same English sea-captains had matched their guns against those of Spain in an obscure harbour on the Gulf Coast of Mexico—San Juan de Ulua. It was a hard- fought, desperate battle, from which Hawkins and relatively few of his men escaped home. It was also a turning-point in the relationship between England and Spain. The fight at San Juan made the Great Armada inevitable, and taught the English navy how to overcome it.
The voyage that brought Hawkins' fleet to the Caribbean was a slaving and trading venture--the most ambitious he had ever undertaken. To accomplish his object Hawkins sought out negroes in the creek villages of West Africa and sailed, in defiance of Spanish law, to sell them to the Spanish colonists of the islands and the main. Despite storm and mutiny, and the hazards of navigating uncharted seas, he almost succeeded. Then destruction overwhelmed his fleet. The survivors straggled home over the years, each bearing a tale of captivity or endurance. Many had suffered under the Inquisition— some at the stake, others at the galleys. One group of men even claimed to have walked the length of North America before finding a ship to take them home.
To bind the numerous fragmentary accounts of this enterprise into a unified narrative is the purpose of this book. The story that emerges is one of courage and high endeavour: an exciting tale that needs no meretricious embroidering. Against the background of this voyage (typical of many for which Elizabethan seamen have become renowned) the figure of John Hawkins—their youthful commander—and many of his shipmates and adversaries come to life: human figures still, despite the separation of four centuries, resourcefully struggling through the perils of the unknown, and fighting against the toils of an adverse fate.
Illustrated
The Defeat of John Hawkins
Rayner Unwin
George Allen & Unwin