Explore "John Hawkins" by Roger Pocock on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A. D. 1588
Master John Hawkins, mariner, was a trader's son, familiar from childhood with the Guinea coast of Africa. Worshipful merchants of London trusted him with three ridiculously small ships, the size of our fishing smacks, but manned by a hundred men. With these, in 1562 -- the "spacious times" of great Elizabeth -- he swooped down on the West African coast, and horribly scared were his people when they saw the crocodiles. The nature of this animal "is ever when he would have his prey, to sob and cry like a Christian bodie, to provoke them to come to him, and then he snatcheth at them. " In spite of the reptiles, Master Hawkins "got into his possession, partly by the sword, and partly by other means," three hundred wretched negroes.