John Hawkins was a well-to-do ship-owner of Plymouth, and as already stated, Treasurer of the Royal Navy, with a contract for the upkeep of ships. His first venture to the Spanish Main was in 1562, when he kidnapped 300 negroes on the Portuguese coast of Africa and exchanged them at Hispanola (Haiti), for West Indian products, chartering two additional vessels to take his cargo home. Though he might have been put to death if caught by either Portugal or Spain, his profits were so handsome by the double exchange that he tried it again in 1565, this time taking his "choice negroes at L160 each" to Terra Firme, or the Spanish Main, including the coasts of Venezuela, Colombia, and the Isthmus. When the Spanish authorities, warned by their home government, made some show of resistance, Hawkins threatened bombardment, landed his men, and did business by force, the inhabitants conniving in a contraband trade very profitable to them. On his third voyage he had six vessels, two of which, the _Jesus of Lubeck_ and the _Minion_, were Queen's ships hired out for the voyage. The skipper of one of the smaller vessels, the _Judith_, was Francis Drake, a relative and protege of the Hawkins family, and then a youth of twenty-two. On September 16, 1567, after a series of encounters stormier than ever in the Spanish settlements, the squadron homeward bound was driven by bad weather into the port of Mexico City in San Juan de Ulua Bay. Here, having a decided superiority over the vessels in the harbor, Hawkins secured the privilege of mooring and refitting his ships inside the island that formed a natural breakwater, and mounted guns on the island itself. To his surprise next morning, he beheld in the offing 13 ships of Spain led by an armed galleon and having on board the newly appointed Mexican viceroy. Hawkins, though his guns commanded the entrance, took hostages and made some sort of agreement by which the Spanish ships were allowed to come in and moor alongside. But the situation was too tense to carry off without an explosion. Three days later the English were suddenly attacked on sea and shore. They at once leaped into their ships and cut their cables, but though they hammered the Spanish severely in the fight that followed, only two English vessels, the _Minion_ and the _Judith_, escaped, the _Minion_ so overcrowded that Hawkins had to drop 100 of his crew on the Mexican coast. Drake made straight for Plymouth, nursing a bitter grievance at the alleged breach of faith, and vowing vengeance on the whole Spanish race. "The case," as Drake's biographer, Thomas Fuller, says, "was clear in sea-divinity, and few are such infidels as not to believe doctrines which make for their own profit."[1] [Footnote 1: THE HOLY STATE, Bk. II, Ch. XXII.]