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Updated: June 10, 2025
They will keep the same faith with us as they kept with Captain Hawkins at San Juan d'Ulloa, in that accursed business which was the beginning of all the wars; when we might have taken the whole plate-fleet, with two hundred thousand pounds' worth of gold on board, and did not, but only asked license to trade like honest men.
In an expedition led by Lord Charles Howard in 1591 against the Spanish plate-fleet, Grenville was vice-admiral, and he opposed his ship single-handed against five great Spanish galleons, supported at intervals by ten others, and he fought them during nearly fifteen hours.
Luiz de Guardiola commands the citadel, and he is a strong man, but Pedro Mexia at the Bocca is so easy-going that his sentinels nod their nights away. In the port ride two caravels eighty tons, no more and their greatest gun a demi-cannon. The town is a cowardly place of priests, women, and rich men, but it holds every peso of this year's treasure gathered against the coming of the plate-fleet.
"Towing the King of Spain his plate-fleet behind you," quoth the mustachioed gentleman. " all my sails shall be cloth of gold," continued wine flushed one-and-twenty. "The main-deck shall be piled with bars of silver, and in the hold shall be pearls and pieces of gold, doubloons, emeralds as great as filberts "
And now, reader, how does this of Witney, and Woolaston, and Parker's intentions to 'pirate' separately, if it be true, agree with King James's story of Raleigh's calling a council of war and proposing an attack on the Plate-fleet? One or the other must needs be a lie; probably both. Witney's ship was of only 160 tons; Woolaston's probably smaller.
Essex having agreed to the course pointed out, alters his course on a fancy; then alters it a second time, though the hapless Monson, with the whole Plate-fleet in sight, is hanging out lights, firing guns, and shrieking vainly for the General, who is gone on a new course, in which he might have caught the fleet after all, in spite of his two mistakes, but that he chooses to go a roundabout way instead of a short one; and away goes the whole fleet, save one Carack, which runs itself on shore and burns, and the game is played out and lost.
Why do we make sail, and that so hastily?" "Look!" said Ambrose Wynch, gruffly, and pointed to the west. "The plate-fleet!" Those many white flecks upon the horizon grew larger, came swiftly on. Forth from the river's mouth, out to sea, put the Mere Honour and the Marigold, for they might not tarry to meet that squadron.
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