Qualla: Richard Hawkins

Richard Hawkins: Introduction

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In June 1594, a year out of Plymouth, Richard Hawkins sailed his galleon the Dainty into the Bay of San Mateo on the coast of what is now Ecuador, carrying plunder taken from the Spanish colonial town of Valparaiso. Two Spanish warships were waiting. What followed was not the kind of battle that made the reputation of English seamen in the Elizabethan age. Hawkins was outgunned, the Dainty was battered until it was nearly sinking, 27 of his men were dead, and he himself was severely wounded when, on 1 July 1594, he surrendered on a promise of safe conduct home. The promise was not honored. Hawkins spent the next eight years in Spanish prisons. He used part of that time to write, and what he wrote became one of the most-read accounts of the English war at sea.

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Richard Hawkins: Born Into a Naval Family

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Richard Hawkins was born about 1562, the son of Admiral Sir John Hawkins - the slave trader, naval officer, and architect of Elizabeth I's fighting fleet. John Hawkins's early career trading enslaved Africans across the Atlantic is a part of his legacy that modern assessments can...

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Richard Hawkins: The Falklands, Valparaiso, and a Bad Calculation

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Hawkins set out in 1593 nominally on a voyage of discovery. In practice, as he more or less admitted afterward, his project was to prey on Spain's overseas possessions. After a difficult passage down the Atlantic, a storm blew the Dainty eastward off the mouth of the Strait of Ma...

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Richard Hawkins: Eight Years in Seville and Madrid

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Hawkins had surrendered on a promise of safe conduct, but through no fault of the Spanish commander on scene, the promise did not hold in the wider imperial system. In 1597 he was transferred to Spain, held first in Seville and then in Madrid. Treatment of high-status prisoners i...

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Richard Hawkins: Citrus, Scurvy, and a Book

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

His memoir, Voiage into the South Sea, was published in 1622, the year he died. It became one of the most famous adventure narratives of the Elizabethan era and was republished by the Hakluyt Society in 1847 and adapted by Charles Kingsley in the 1855 novel Westward Ho! Hawkins w...

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