ABSTRACT
Captain William Parker himself recorded his two West Indian raids of 1596–7 and 1600–1 for publication in Hakluyt and Purchas. Parker made reprisal voyages every year from 1590 to 1597, and from 1592 these voyages were always to the West Indies. Thus Parker probably picked up as much information, first and second hand, reliable and unreliable, about the Caribbean and the Mainland, as any English sailor. Parker was a shipowner as well as a captain, though in his earlier ventures his privateer, the Richard, belonged to Richard Hutchins, a Plymouth merchant. A Plymouth man and a gentleman in rank, he was nevertheless not one of the regular captains of the Queen's ships, though he did serve under Essex in the other Cadiz expedition in 1596. Parker presumably did tolerably well in these cruises, for he is found with his own ship in 1596, and in 1602—the year after his sensational raid on Puerto Bello—he became mayor of Plymouth.
