The Roots of Betrayal

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Everybody knew at least one story about Raw Carew. There was the matter of his birth: the illegitimate son of an English captain who abandoned his mistress to die in a Calais whorehouse. There was his refusal to surrender when Calais fell to the French in 1558. Although only seventeen, he had commandeered a ship and fought his way out of the harbor. Then there were the stories of his courage. Some of these were true, such as his boarding a Spanish vessel by jumping on to the rigging from the main mast of his ship in a heaving storm. Others were only loosely based on events or were fictitious. But even the tallest stories carried a modicum of truth. They were all wrought around an extraordinary man-brave as well as capable, regardless of whether the tale told was one of courage, seduction, loyalty, or revenge.

If William Gray, the captain of the Davy, had known that Raw Carew was at that moment in a skiff just two hundred feet away from his ship, he would have paid less attention to the young girl in his cabin and more to his crew, who were laughing, playing dice, and drinking by the dim light of the candles and lanterns on the main deck. Attack was the last thing on his mind. The ship was safe, anchored in Southampton Water, only four miles from the port itself. Gray knew that Sir Peter Carew was at that very moment patrolling the Channel with five ships and a royal warrant to hang pirates. The idea that Sir Peter’s own illegitimate nephew might take a vessel from its overnight mooring was unthinkable. Besides, Gray’s men had worked hard to sail so far that day. Leaving the Thames estuary five days earlier, they had been hit by a storm and had had to take shelter in Dover. It would not have been reasonable for Gray to insist that they stay on guard all night.

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