The Boy's Hakluyt: English Voyages of Adventure and DiscoveryHakluyt, Richard
History
The Boy's Hakluyt: English Voyages of Adventure and Discovery
Hakluyt, Richard
Discoveries in geography -- English -- Juvenile literature; Voyages and travels -- Juvenile literature
The execution over, Drake made a speech to the assembled company,
persuading them to “unitie, obedience, love, and regard of” their
voyage: and “for the better confirmation thereof” he “willed every man
the next Sunday following to prepare himselfe to receive the Communion
as Christian brethren and friends ought to doe.” This, the chronicler
concludes, was done “in very reverent sort, and so with good contentment
every man went about his businesse.”
St. Julien was left on the seventeenth of August, and on the twentieth
the mouth of the Strait of Magellan was reached. At the entrance, Drake,
as another chronicler recorded, caused the fleet, in homage to the queen
of England, to “strike their topsails upon the bunt as a token of his
willing and glad mind to shew his dutiful obedience to her highness,
whom he acknowledged to have full interest and right” in his
discoveries; and he formally changed the name of his own ship from the
“Pelican” to the “Golden Hind,” in remembrance of his “honourable friend
and favourer,” Sir Christopher Hatton, whose crest bore this design.
Then the chaplain delivered a sermon and the ceremonies closed.
The passage of the strait was successfully made in the remarkable time
of sixteen days, and on the sixth of September the little fleet emerged
in the sea of their desire on the “backside” of America.
Instead, however, of the tranquil ocean that Magelhaens had named the
Pacific, because of its serenity when he first saw it, they encountered
a rough and turbulent water; and no sooner had they cleared the strait
than a great storm arose by which they were driven some two hundred
leagues westward, and separated. The “Golden Hind” was struggling
against the almost continuous tempest for full fifty-three days. From
the west she was carried south as far as fifty-seven degrees, and Drake
was enabled to see the union of the Atlantic and the Pacific, and by
chance to discover Cape Horn. He sighted numerous islands, and gave the
name of the “Elizabethides” to the whole group of Tierra del Fuego.
While beating about west and south the fleet came together again, but
only soon to be parted forever. In the middle of September a harbour was
temporarily made in a bay which Drake called the “Bay of Severing
Friends.” Working northward again they stood in a bay near the strait.
The next day the cable of the “Golden Hind” parted and she drove out to
sea. Thus she lost sight of the “Elizabeth,” and never saw her more. It
was supposed that she had been put by the storm into the strait again,
and that she would ultimately be met somewhere above. The first part of
this supposition was correct. She had recovered the strait. But instead
of returning to the Pacific course Captain Winter made the passage back
to the Atlantic, and so continued his voyage homeward, reaching England
on the first of November. Captain Winter prepared an account of his
companionship with Drake from the start, and of his experiences after
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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