For daring and audacity this voyage was astonishing, and its results were quick wealth to Drake and renown as a masterful man of the sea. Two ships, the “Swan” of the previous voyages, and the “Pasha,” a larger vessel, of seventy tons, with three “dainty” pinnaces in parts, stowed in the holds of the ships to be set up when occasion served, comprised the equipment. Drake sailed the “Pasha” as the “admiral,” while one of his brothers, John Drake, was captain of the “Swan” as “vice-admiral” of the fleet. Another brother, Joseph Drake, went along as a sailor. The company numbered in all seventy-three men and boys. All were volunteers, and all were under thirty years of age, excepting one who was not over fifty. The ships were well provisioned for a year, and they were fully armed, each like a man-of-war of that day. Although the enterprise was ostensibly Drake’s alone, it had a substantial backing furnished by influential silent partners. The expedition set sail from Plymouth on Whitsunday eve, the twenty-fourth of May, 1572, with intent first to raid Nombre de Dios, on the north coast of the Isthmus of Darien, then “the granary of the West Indies wherein the golden harvest brought from Peru and Mexico was hoarded up till it could be conveyed into Spain.” On the sixth of July the high land of Santa Marta was sighted, and six days later the ships were anchored in a secret harbour within the Gulf of Darien, framed in a luxuriant mass of trees and vine, which Drake had discovered on his second reconnoitering voyage, and called “Port Pheasant,” "by reason of the great store of these goodly fowls which he and his company did then daily kill and feed upon" here. It is supposed to have been the Puerto Escondido, or “Hidden Haven” of the Spaniards. Upon entering it was seen that the nest had very recently been occupied, and, landing, Drake found nailed to a great tree a lead plate upon which was posted a warning that their rendezvous had been discovered by the Spaniards, signed John Gannet, and dated five days before. Gannet was presumably the former master of the “Minion,” of Hawkins’s ill-fortuned fleet. He had come out to the Spanish Main on a voyage of his own shortly before the sailing of Drake. Undisturbed by this warning Drake put his carpenters to work at setting up the pinnaces, and the rest of the company at fortifying the place with ramparts of trees. In the meantime there sailed into the snug harbour another English bark. This was captained by James Rouse, the former master of the lost “William and John” of the Hawkins expedition. He also had sailed on a part trading and part buccaneering voyage before Drake had left Plymouth. His company numbered thirty men, some of whom had been in Drake’s second reconnoitring voyage. They brought in two small prizes, one a caravel of Seville, a despatch boat, bound for Nombre de Dios, which they had captured the previous day, the other a shallop taken at Cape Blanc. Rouse joined forces with Drake.