ABSTRACT
At dawn on Friday the sixth of this month, day of Santa Fe, the sentinel on the mountain of Las Isletas lit the beacon, the castle fired a gun and 28 ships were sighted. Later it was known that among them were six galleons of the queen of England's, the rest belonging to merchants, and that the generals by sea were Francis Drake and John Hawkins and the land-generals Nicholas Clifford and Thomas Baskerville. They first sent a launch with only eight soldiers to reconnoitre the harbour. This then returned to the fleet, 2 and another launch, bearing Francis Drake, came out together with a caravel. These arrived in the bay of Santa Catalina, where they left a buoy as a marker, and Francis Drake then returned to the fleet while the caravel went on to reconnoitre the whole shore as far as the bay of San Pedro.3 They took soo men out of the six
and the whole of the latter are printed in J. A. Rey, Drake dans la Poesie Espagnole (Paris, 1906). Cairasco was a canon of the cathedral of Santa Ana, Canary Islands, and a famous poet.
