Slaves and Englishmen. Michael Guasco
regularizing a direct trade. During the 1550s and 1560s, when Englishmen and Africans encountered each other for the first time in a sustained fashion, perhaps a dozen expeditions, involving as many as 1,500 English mariners, sailed the waters between the southern coast of England and the western shores of Africa. But as vital as the English effort seemed to be during this early stage, the African trade presented numerous complications for English merchants, not least of which were the devastating mortality rates. As Richard Eden recounted about the 1558 expedition of Thomas Wyndham, “of the sevenscore men” who set out from Plymouth, there returned “scarcely forty, and of them many died.”69 Africa was a destination from which shocking numbers of English mariners failed to return.
The transatlantic slave trade was, in many ways, still in its infancy during the sixteenth century, but thousands of captive Africans were already being loaded onto European ships and transported across the sea to Spanish America and Brazil every year, especially after 1560.70 In this vein, an expedition under the command of John Lok reportedly returned to England with “certayne blacke slaves” in 1555. Although a small number of sub-Saharan Africans had been in the British Isles before this date, their arrival was remarkable. According to Eden, “sum were taule and stronge men, and could well agree with owr meates and drynkes.” At the same time, the “coulde and moyst ayer dooth sumwhat offende them.” The difficulties and sufferings of the indigenous inhabitants of equatorial Africa transplanted to England’s colder clime were not surprising: “[D]oubtlesse men that are borne in hotte regions may better abyde heate” than cold. But what about their apparent status as “slaves”? Certainly, these Africans were not slaves in the modern sense of the term. The English viewed these five men more as cultural mediators than as bondmen. William Towerson, a London merchant and commander of three well-documented expeditions to Africa (1555, 1556, and 1558) reported to a group of Africans during his first voyage that “they were in England well used, and were there kept till they could speake the language, and then they should be brought againe to be a helpe to Englishmen in this Countrey.”71 When three of the original five Africans who had been taken to England returned to Africa with Towerson on his second voyage, then, the English saw them as mechanisms that would make it easier to acquire gold, pepper, and ivory. To this end, the “slaves” proved their worth immediately. At one point, Towerson reported meeting some Africans who “would not come to us, but at the last by the perswasion of our owne Negros, one boat came to us, and with him we sent George our Negro ashore, and after he had talked with them, they came aboord our boates without feare.”72
The characterization of the five Africans on board Lok’s ships as “slaves” may have been a label of convenience rather than a true indication of their condition and, certainly, West Africans in general had little to fear from the English during their early voyages. Even so, some Englishmen clearly embraced the slave trade from an early date and accepted that it was a necessary component of successful African enterprises. In 1555, a group of English merchants petitioned Queen Mary in order to obtain free trade privileges in Guinea. They claimed that earlier English expeditions to Africa had uncovered several local rulers who were happy to trade with English ships. In addition, the “said inhabitauntes of that country offred us and our said factors ground to build uppon, if they wold make anie fortresses in their country, and further offred them assistaunce of certen slaves for those workes without anie charge.”73 These English merchants recognized the advantages of a captive labor force as well as the importance of the willing assistance of African merchants and leaders.
The rapid English embrace of African slavery, however, was demonstrated most clearly during the 1560s when four English expeditions (three of which were led by John Hawkins) sailed to the African coast, filled their holds with Africans, and sold their human cargoes in Spain’s American colonies. Hawkins’s first expedition, which departed England in 1562, consisted of three ships and “not above 100. men for feare of sicknesse and other inconveniences.” The small fleet sailed to Sierra Leone and, “partly by sworde, and partly by other means,” acquired “300. Negros at the least, besides other merchandises which that country yeeldeth.” As quickly as possible, the ships sailed on to the Caribbean where they unloaded their cargo. By September 1563, they were back in England. Hawkins set sail again the following year with a slightly larger and much more powerful fleet of four ships and more than 150 men. This expedition was broadly similar to the first and succeeded in capturing or trading for 400 Africans, who they subsequently transported across the Atlantic and sold into slavery. John Lovell attempted to sail in his former commander’s wake two years later when he left Plymouth with three ships, but he lacked Hawkins’s skill, or good fortune, and only managed to acquire and sell a few slaves. Lovell’s small fleet was largely dispirited and none-the-wealthier when it returned to England in 1567.74
The most notorious English expedition to Africa during the sixteenth century was the final slave-trading expedition launched and led by John Hawkins in 1567. This massive expedition was a grand scheme and represented a serious commitment to the slave trade on the part of Hawkins, numerous investors, and Queen Elizabeth herself. By contemporary standards, the fleet was impressive, consisting of six ships, including two royal warships. In a letter from Plymouth drafted shortly before his departure, Hawkins confidently assured Elizabeth that he would return from the West Indies laden with “gold, pearls and emeralds, whereof I doubt not but to bring home great abundance to the contentation of your highness and to the relief of the number of worthy servitures ready now for this pretended voyage.” Departing Plymouth in October, the fleet reached Cape Verde in mid-November and proceeded to try to “obtaine some Negros,” but they “got but fewe, and those with great hurt and damage to our men.” Hawkins continued down the coast to Sierra Leone and prepared to give up on his grand scheme, having procured fewer than 150 slaves, when “there came to us a Negro, sent from a king, oppressed by other Kings his neighbours, desiring our aide, with promise that as many Negros as by these warres might be obtained, aswell of his part as of ours, should be at our pleasure.”75 After a disappointing start, then, things appeared to be looking more positive for the English slave traders.
Having learned the painful lesson that he could not simply dispatch his men to the coast to waylay random Africans without great difficulty, Hawkins prepared to work in consort with an African ally. Together, they attacked and set fire to a village housing approximately 8,000 people. As the inhabitants fled for their lives, Hawkins and his men managed to capture “250 persons, men, women, & children, and by our friend the king of our side, there were taken 600 prisoners, whereof we hope to have had our choise.” Hawkins was disappointed, however, when “the Negro (in which nation is seldome or never found truth) … remooved his campe and prisoners, so that we were faine to content us with those few which we had gotten our selves.” Thus, with perhaps 500 Africans on board, the English fleet set sail for the West Indies in early February. After a difficult journey, they arrived in the West Indies and “coasted from place to place, making our traffike with the Spaniards as we might, somewhat hardly, because the king had straightly commanded all his Governors in those parts, by no meanes to suffer any trade to be made with us.” By the end of July, the English ships were ready to depart, but in August, off the coast of Cuba, they were caught in “an extreme storme which continued the space of foure dayes.” Initially, they sought safe harbor in Florida to repair their ships, but another storm forced them westward and compelled Hawkins to seek relief at San Juan de Ulloa on the coast of Mexico near Veracruz. There, however, they soon found themselves trapped by the newly arrived Spanish flota. The two sides initially maintained an uneasy peace. Unfortunately for the English, the Spanish viceroy, Don Martín Enríquez, had no intention of allowing the privateers to go unchallenged. Within days, the Spanish attacked and devastated the English force. Two ships, the Judith and the Minion, managed to get past the Spanish fleet and safely out to sea, but three other ships were destroyed and a majority of the men were abandoned to their fate in New Spain. Of the roughly 400 men who set sail with Hawkins in 1567, only about 100 returned to England in 1568.76
Figure 2. Sketch of the arms and crest (a bound African slave) granted to Sir John Hawkins in 1568. “Miscellaneous Grants 1,” fol. 148r. By permission of the College of Arms, London.
With