Admiral Sir John Hawkins (also spelled as Hawkyns) (Plymouth 1532 – 12 November 1595) was an English shipbuilder, naval administrator and commander, merchant, navigator, and slave trader. As treasurer (1577) and controller (1589) of the Royal Navy, he rebuilt older ships and helped design the faster ships that withstood the Spanish Armada in 1588. He later devised the naval blockade to intercept Spanish treasure ships. One of the foremost seamen of 16th-century England, he was the chief architect of the Elizabethan navy. In the battle in which the Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588, Hawkins served as a vice admiral and was knighted for his role.[1]
William, John's father, was a confidant of Henry VIII of England and one of England's principal sea captains. Sir Francis Drake, John's second cousin, helped him in his second voyage.
The first Englishman recorded to have taken slaves from Africa was John Lok, a London trader who, in 1555, brought five slaves from Guinea. A second London trader taking slaves at that time was William Towerson whose fleet sailed into Plymouth following his 1556 voyage to Africa and from Plymouth on his 1557 voyage. Despite the exploits of Lok and Towerson, John Hawkins of Plymouth is often considered to be the pioneer of the British slave trade, because he was the first to run the Triangular trade, making a profit at every stop.
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John Hawkins was the son of William Hawkins and Joan Trelawney. No exact date of when he was born has been found. William Trelawney was the son of John Trelawney and Florence Courtenay, daughter of Hugh Courtenay. Hugh Courtenay was the son of Hughie Courtenay, Sr. and Matilda "Maud' Beaumont. Maud's mother was Eleanor Plantagenet, herself the great grand daughter of King Henry III, making John Hawkins the 7th great-grandson of King Henry III. John was also the second cousin of Sir Francis Drake.
John Hawkins formed a syndicate of wealthy merchants to invest in the slave trade. In 1555, he set sail with three ships for the Caribbean via Sierra Leone. They hijacked a Portuguese slave ship and traded the 301 slaves in the Caribbean. Despite having two ships seized by the Spanish authorities, he sold the slaves in Santo Domingo and thus made a profit for his London investors. His voyage caused the Spanish to ban all English ships from trading in their West Indies colonies. In 1563, John Hawkins brought the first slaves from Africa to both the Caribbean Isles and Lower Americas.[2]
Hawkins' second voyage was even more successful. In 1564, Queen Elizabeth I partnered with him by renting him the huge old 700-ton ship Jesus of Lubeck, on which he set forth on a more extensive voyage, along with three small ships. Hawkins sailed to Borburata, privateering along the way. By the time he reached Borburata, he had captured around 400 Africans. After Borburata, Hawkins sailed to Rio de la Hacha. The Spanish officials tried to prevent Hawkins from selling the slaves by imposing taxes. Captain Hawkins refused to pay the taxes and threatened to burn the towns. After selling his slaves, Captain Hawkins sailed to a French colony in Florida for a respite. Captain Hawkins returned to England in September 1566, his expedition a total success as his financiers made a 60% profit.
His third voyage began in 1567. Hawkins obtained many more slaves, and also augmented his cargo by capturing the Portuguese slave ship Madre de Deus (Mother of God) and its human cargo. He took about 400 slaves across the Atlantic on the third trip. At San Juan de Ulúa (in modern Vera Cruz) he was chanced upon by a strong Spanish force that was bringing, by a royal edict issued on 16 June 1567 by king Philip II of Spain, an investigative commission consisting of Licenciado Gaspar de Jarava, Licenciado Alonso Muñoz, and Doctor Luis Carrillo to find out about the insistent rumours alleging some sort of move towards Mexican independence from the Spanish Crown by the Spanish Viceroy of Mexico Gaston de Peralta, 3rd Marquis of Falces, and his half-brothers Martin Cortes I "El Mestizo", Martin Cortés y Zúñiga (also known as Martin Cortés II and Martín Cortés, 2nd Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca) and Luis Cortés y Hermosillo. De Jarava and Muñoz were from the Council of the Indies, while Carrillo was an official at the Court. The General Commander of the Fleet was the newly appointed governor of Cuba Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (founder of the City of San Agustin, Florida), assisted by the capable seafarer Sancho Pardo Donlebún, who was later to be a powerful adversary of both Hawkins and Drake.
In the ensuing Battle of San Juan de Ulúa only two of the English ships escaped destruction, and Hawkins' voyage home was a miserable one. That of Hawkins' gunner, Job Hartop was equally so and took many years.
Although his first three voyages were semi-piratical enterprises, Queen Elizabeth I was in need of money and saw pirates as fighting her battles at their own cost and risk.
Hawkins would write about the details of his third voyage in An Alliance to Raid for Slaves. Specifically he comments on how trading and raiding were closely related in the English slave trade, and how European success in the slave trade directly depended on African allies who were willing to cooperate. He also comments on the level of violence he and his men used and encouraged in order to secure his captives. The title makes clear the basis of his methodology.
As part of the English government's web of counter-espionage, Hawkins pretended to be part of the Ridolfi plot to betray Queen Elizabeth in 1571. By gaining the confidence of Spain's ambassador to England, he learned the details of the conspiracy, and notified the government so to arrest the plotters. He offered his services to the Spanish, in order to obtain the release of prisoners of war, and to discover plans for the proposed Spanish invasion of England.
His help in foiling the plot was rewarded, and in 1571 Hawkins entered Parliament as MP for Plymouth. He became Treasurer of the Royal Navy on 1 January 1578, following the death of his predecessor Benjamin Gonson (who was also his father-in-law, Hawkins having married Katherine Gonson in 1567).
Hawkins' financial reforms of the Navy upset many who had vested interests, and in 1582 his rival Sir William Wynter accused him of administrative malfeasance, instigating a royal commission on fraud against him. The commission, under William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, Francis Walsingham, and Drake, concluded that there was no undue corruption, and that the Queen's Navy was in first-rate condition.[3]
Hawkins was determined that his navy, as well as having the best fleet of ships in the world, would also have the best quality of seamen, and so petitioned and won a pay increase for sailors, arguing that a smaller number of well-motivated and better-paid men would be more effective than a larger group of uninterested men.
Hawkins made important improvements in ship construction and rigging; he is less well known for his inventiveness as a shipwright, but it was his idea to add to the caulker's work by the finishing touch of sheathing the underside of his ships with a skin of nailed elm planks sealed with a combination of pitch and hair smeared over the bottom timbers, as a protection against the worms which would attack a ship in tropical seas. Hawkins also introduced detachable topmasts that could be hoisted and used in good weather and stowed in heavy seas. Masts were stepped further forward, and sails were cut flatter. His ships were "race-built", being longer and with forecastle and aftcastle (or poop) greatly reduced in size.
John Hawkins' innovative measures made the new English ships fast and highly manoeuvrable. In 1588 they were tested against the Spanish Armada. Hawkins was the Rear Admiral, one of three main commanders of the English fleet against the Armada, alongside Francis Drake and Martin Frobisher. Hawkins’ flagship was Victory. It is possible that Hawkins organised the fire-ship attacks at Calais. For his role in the great sea battle, Hawkins was knighted.
After the defeat of the Armada, Hawkins urged the seizure of Philip II's colonial treasure, in order to stop Spain re-arming. In 1589, Hawkins sailed with former apprentice Francis Drake in a massive military operation (the Drake–Norris Expedition) with one of its goals being to try to intercept the Spanish treasure fleet. The voyage failed, but the idea led many other English pirates to make similar attempts.
In 1590 Drake and Hawkins founded a charity for the relief of sick and elderly mariners. This was followed by a hospital in 1592 and another in 1594, the Sir John Hawkins’ Hospital. The charity continues today.
Potatoes were first imported to the British Isles (probably to Ireland) in either 1563 or 1565 (sources differ) by Hawkins.
Some scholars suggest that it was John Hawkins who introduced tobacco into Britain. Some accounts say this was in 1569, others in 1564. The latter is more likely, since he mentions "Ltobaccoj" (meaning tobacco) in his journals of the second voyage.
The Oxford English Dictionary notes that the word shark appears to have been introduced by Hawkins' sailors, who brought one back and exhibited it in London in 1569. It has recently been suggested that the derivation is from xoc, the word for "fish" in a Mayan language spoken in Yucatán.[4]
In 1595 he accompanied his second cousin Sir Francis Drake, on a treasure-hunting voyage to the West Indies, involving two unsuccessful attacks on San Juan in Puerto Rico. During the voyage they both fell sick. Hawkins died at sea off Puerto Rico. Drake succumbed to disease, most likely dysentery, on January 27, and was buried at sea somewhere off the coast of Porto Belo. Hawkins was succeeded by his son Sir Richard Hawkins.
Hawkins came to the public's attention again in June 2006, almost four and a half centuries after his death, when his descendant Andrew Hawkins publicly apologized for his ancestor's actions in the slave trade.[5]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
| Preceded by Benjamin Gonson |
Treasurer of the Navy 1577–1595 (jointly with Benjamin Gonson, 1577) |
Succeeded by Fulk Greville |