and ivory found the Portuguese police on the Guinea Coast to be negligible;
but poaching in the slave trade was a harder problem, for Spain held firm
control of her colonies which were then virtually the world's only slave
market.

The test of this was made by Sir John Hawkins who at the beginning of his
career as a great English sea captain had informed himself in the Canary
Islands of the Afro-American opportunity awaiting exploitation. Backed by
certain English financiers, he set forth in 1562 with a hundred men in
three small ships, and after procuring in Sierra Leone, "partly by the
sword and partly by other means," above three hundred negroes he sailed to
Hispaniola where without hindrance from the authorities he exchanged them
for colonial produce. "And so, with prosperous success, and much gain to
himself and the aforesaid adventurers, he came home, and arrived in the
month of September, 1563."[2] Next year with 170 men in four ships Hawkins
again captured as many Sierra Leone natives as he could carry, and
proceeded to peddle them in the Spanish islands. When the authorities
interfered he coerced them by show of arms and seizure of hostages, and
when the planters demurred at his prices he brought them to terms through a
mixture of diplomacy and intimidation. After many adventures by the way he
reached home, as the chronicler concludes, "God be thanked! in safety: with
the loss of twenty persons in all the voyage; as with great profit to the
venturers in the said voyage, so also to the whole realm, in bringing
home both gold, silver, pearls, and other jewels in great store. His name
therefore be praised for evermore! Amen." Before two years more had passed
Hawkins put forth for a third voyage, this time with six ships, two of them
among the largest then afloat. The cargo of slaves, procured by aiding a
Guinea tribe in an attack upon its neighbor, had been duly sold in the
Indies when dearth of supplies and stress of weather drove the fleet into
the Mexican port of San Juan de Ulloa. There a Spanish fleet of thirteen