Page:The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation 16.djvu/260

 Indias were first discouered: for that before they could get cleere of the coast of Spaine, a storme tooke them, and cast away fiue of them, and aboue eight hundred men, and the residue of the fleete put into Cadiz. Notwithstanding which hard successe, the king sent them word that they should proceede: and so they did with sixteene sailes only, for two other of their ships were so shaken with the storme, that they could not goe foorth. In these sixteene saile of ships Pedro Sarmiento was sent to be gouernour in the Streights: he caried with him all kind of artificers, to build forts, and other necessaries, with great store of Ordinance and munition. This fleete because it set late foorth, wintered on the coast of Brasil in the riuer of Ienero. Winter being past, they set sayle from hence, and about the height of 42 degrees they had such a storme, that Diego Flores was faine to beate it vp and downe about 22 dayes; in which storme was sunke one of his best ships, and in her three hundred men and twenty women that went to inhabite the streights, and most part of the munition that should haue bene left in the streights were all cast away. In the ende the storme grew so intollerable, that the ships not being able to endure it any longer were constrained to put backe againe vnto an Island called Santa Catelina: and there he found a barke wherein where certaine friers going for the riuer of Plate, which friers told him of two great English ships and a pinnesse that had taken them, but tooke nothing from them, nor did any harme, but onely asked them for the king of Spaines ships. Now Diego Flores supposing that these English ships would go to the streights, was himselfe determined to go to the streights also, though it was in the moneth of February: and choosing tenne shippes of the fifteene that were left, he sent three of the residue that were old and shaken with the storme (wherein he put all the women and sicke men that were in the fleete) backe againe to the riuer of Ienero; leauing the other two shippes, which were not able to brooke the sea, at the foresayd Island; and so himselfe with the sayd ten ships returned againe for the streights.

Now the three ships wherein the sicke men and the women were embarked, came to the port of Sant Vincent: where finding the two foresayd English ships, and vrging them to auoide the harbour, the English entred combat with them: and by reason that these three ships were weakened with former tempests, and were manned with the refuse of all the Spanish fleete, the