WESTWARD HO 



authorities to send out a settlement, and then proceeded to India. 

 Amerigo Vespucci, after whom the continent of America is named, was 

 then sent out and returned with a wonderful account of his doings on 

 the coast, but it is to be feared that modern historians are rather inclined 

 to put him down as a mere liar and not to give much credence to his 

 explorations unless they are backed by independent evidence. After 

 his time the Portuguese carried on the settlement of the country rather 

 half-heartedly in spite of the efforts of the Spaniards to oust them, using 

 it for some time as a penal settlement. One William Hawkyns, a 

 Plymouth shipmaster, took his ship, the Pole of 250 tons, to Brazil in 

 1530 and not only made three very profitable trading voyages but also 

 gave the English a very good name in these regions. 



John Rutt and Others. 



In the year 1527 King Henry VIII sent out John Rutt of Radcliffe 

 in command of the ships Mary of Guildford and Sampson to explore 

 the American mainland but the Sampson was lost and the other ship 

 returned with very little result. One Captain Grube was then sent out 

 and gave a very fair account of the region round Cape Race. In 1536 

 the Inns of Court raised a number of volunteers to take a fleet of 

 small ships out into the West. At Cape Breton they discovered 

 thousands of great auks and were pleased to find that their eggs were 

 very good and nourishing. Then provisions ran out and after a ghastly 

 bout of cannibalism the expedition reached home with difficulty. After 

 that many similar voyages were undertaken, some of them successful. 



Sir John Hawkyns. 



The William Hawkyns that we have already mentioned had a son 

 John, born in 1532, who was to become one of the most famous English 

 seamen. When he was thirty years of age his family interest obtained 

 for him the command of three ships with which he collected a number 

 of negroes on the Guinea coast and sold them at colossal prices to work 

 in the plantations of Hayti. This voyage showed a profit in spite of the 

 fact that the Spaniards seized two of his ships with valuable cargoes, and 

 on his return he had no difficulty in persuading the Queen to lend him 

 one of the Royal ships to help him fit out a similar voyage on a very 

 much bigger scale. It was on his third voyage that the treachery of the 

 Spaniards at Vera Cruz caused the loss of the greater part of the expedi- 

 tion, Hawkyns and his kinsman Drake having the greatest difficulty in 

 escaping with their skins and the latter losing the greater part of his 

 fortune. Hawkyns was appointed treasurer and comptroller of Queen 

 Elizabeth's Navy and did magnificent work in giving it the finest avail- 

 able material. After taking part in one or two other campaigns against the 

 Spanish he died on Drake's last voyage to the West Indies, in a manner 

 that has already been described in an earlier chapter. The slave trade 

 to the Spanish islands which he encouraged was illegal from the first and 

 to modern thinking grossly iniquitous, but it was another stepping stone 

 which carried British commerce towards prosperity. 



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