Two galleons duel it out on a becalmed sea. The artist has given each ship a Portuguese name, but a closer inspection of the masthead flags reveals the ship to the left to be carrying the quartered royal arms of Elizabeth I, showing three lions ‘passant guardant’ and fleurs-de-lis. The ship on the right, which appears to rest lower in the water, carries the Cross of Burgundy, naval ensign of the Spanish Empire. In literal terms, Caca Fogo means to ‘shit fire’, while Caca Plata implies the defecation of silver. The ships’ oceanic location can be guessed at by the calm sea state. In the decades after Magellan’s breakthrough voyage, El Mar Pacifico became a de facto ‘Spanish Lake’, but that was to change in 1579 with the arrival of Francis Drake and The Golden Hind.
By the time of the above engagement, Drake had already had to put down a mutiny, and had lost four of his five ships, leaving him with only the 100ft, 18-gun Hind and its own pinnace. The Hind had been named in honour of the expedition’s chief backer, Lord Chancellor Sir Christopher Hatton. Drake’s official goal was to explore lands not already subject to Christian rule. However, in a private conversation, the Queen had encouraged Drake to take revenge on the King of Spain for ‘diverse injuries’ he had inflicted on her.
On reaching the Pacific in September 1578, Drake wasted no time in carrying out her wishes, raiding the settlements of Valparaiso, Valdivia, and Coquimbo, in modern-day Chile. Further north at Callao, the Spanish Empire’s chief South American port, Drake pillaged a dozen ships and cut their mooring cables. It was during this raid that he learned of a Spanish treasure ship that had recently left port loaded with Peruvian silver; Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion (Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception), a ship known colloquially as the Cacafuego.
By the 1570s, the Spanish plundering of South America had turned from melting down Incan gold to mining silver at Potosi and other Andean locations. This process had been greatly expedited with the discovery of mercury deposits in the same area in 1564, an element which enabled the more efficient extraction of silver. By the 16th century, the region was producing 85% of the world’s silver, all of which passed through the port of Callao. From there, galleons would transport it northwards to Panama, where it was hauled overland by mules to the Atlantic port of Nombre de Dios (which Drake had sacked in 1572) for its final journey to La Casa de Concratacion, the King’s counting house in Seville.
The Cacafuego had almost a two week start on the Hind, but Drake was convinced he could make up the distance on the heavily laden galleon. By the time the Englishman put in at Paita, on what is now the northwest tip of Peru, he learned he was only two day’s sailing behind. According to the story, Drake offered a gold chain taken from a previous prize to the first crewmember to spot their quarry; a prize won, it is said by his nephew John Drake. The ships came within sight of one another on 1st March 1579 off Cape San Francisco, some 50 miles north of the equator. Having received no word of Drake’s raids of ports further south, the Cacafuego’s captain, San Juan de Anton, had no reason to suspect the speck on the horizon was a belligerent.
Eager to avoid giving away his identity in daylight, Drake deliberately reduced his speed. Fearing his intentions would be read by trimming sail, he instead ordered that water-filled wine casks be dragged over the Hind’s stern. This action delayed his reaching the Spanish ship until after dark. Drawing up alongside, the cry went up ‘English, strike sail!’ Despite her fearsome name, the Cacafuego was essentially unarmed to allow for a heavier cargo. Nevertheless, her captain initially refused to surrender. His defiance was met with the discharge of arquebuses and arrows, one of which slightly injured the Spanish commander. Meanwhile, a cannonade of chain-shot swiftly destroyed the Cacafuego’s mizzen sail, giving San Juan de Anton no choice but to heave to. Upon boarding, Drake is said to have pacified his Spanish counterpart with an embrace and the words ‘Have patience, such is the custom of war’.
In his 1908 blank verse epic ‘Drake’, the poet Alfred Noyes’ imagines the stunned and joyous reaction of Drake’s men to the discovery of Cacafuego’s lustrous cargo:
In the crimson dawn
ringed with the lonely pomp of sea and sky,
the naked footed seamen bathed knee deep
in gold and gathered up Aladdin’s fruit
– all coloured gems- and tossed them in the sun
The hold like one great elfin orchard gleamed
With dusky globes and tawny glories piled
Hesperian apples, heap on mellow heap
Rich with the hues of sunset, rich and tipe
And ready for the enchanted cider-press;
An emperor’s ransom in each burning orb;
A king’s purchase in each clustered bow;
The freedom of all slaves in every chain.
A more literal description of what was in the Cacafuego’s hold was given by one of Drake’s sailors:
‘A certain quantity of jewels and precious stones, 13 chests of rials (reales) of plate, 80 pound weight in gold, 26 ton of uncoined silver, two very fair gilt silver drinking bowls, and the like trifles, valued in all about 360,000 pesos.’ [1]
The loot, which included around 1,300 bars of silver, was transferred by means of the pinnace, a laborious process that evidently took three full days. In fact, owing to the becalmed equatorial conditions, the two ships may have spent up to a week in each other’s company. Despite the initial violence, Drake evidently acted chivalrously towards his captive captain, dining with him and providing him with musical entertainment. According to some accounts, Drake made small gifts to the Spanish crew before releasing the Cacafuego and continuing northwards. Ballasted with Peruvian silver, the Hind eventually reached as far north as modern-day California, which Drake imperiously named New Albion, before turning west to complete his remarkable circumnavigation.
The Cacafuego hoard, combined with a valuable quantity of cloves picked up at the Spice Islands, made rich men of Drake and his backers, with an estimated return of £47 to every one pound originally invested. Although the silver taken from the Cacafuego represented a mere 3% of the annual Spanish haul of specie, a sizable chunk of it belonged to the humiliated Spanish crown. Consequently, to guard against further incursions, the Peruvian Viceroy established a Pacific naval patrol, El Armada del Mar del Sur, the following year.
Drake’s exploits did indeed spur other seafarers to emulate his success. Thomas Cavendish arrived off the South American coast in February 1587, where he captured and destroyed nine ships, later capturing a Manila galleon of great value off the coast of Baja. Richard Hawkins, son of the illustrious ‘sea dog’ Admiral John Hawkins, to whom Drake was distantly related, also reached the Pacific in June 1594, but had less success than his predecessors, being captured after a desperate and bloody action with two Spanish warships, and imprisoned in Spain for more than 5 years.
The above image is believed to be the work of Dutch craftsman Friedrik van Hulsen. Hulsen was a pupil of Johann Theodor de Bry, part of a dynasty of 16th century goldsmiths, copper engravers and book publishers based in Frankfurt. Another image of Drake depicting an earlier event in his voyage – the theft of his hat by a native American at the Rio de la Plata – illustrated a voluminous de Bry publication titled Historia Americae Sive Novi Orbis (Grande Voyages), published between 1590 and 1605. The Hulsen engraving appears to come from a later publication dated around 1626. The artist’s confusion over ship names appears to have been the result of the wit attributed to a young Spaniard by English propagandist Richard Haklyut:
‘…sayd thus unto our Generall, captaine, our shippe shall no more be called the Cacafuego, but the Cacaplata, and your shippe shall bee called the Cacafuego, which pretie speech of the pilots boy ministered matter of laughter to us, both then and long after.’ (The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, 1589)
[1] Lane, K. E. (1998) Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500-1750, Taylor & Francis, p45.
Bow Creek to Anatahan 