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On April 4, 1581, Francis Drake was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I aboard his ship the Golden Hind at Deptford. From the article:
"Sir Francis Drake
by Ben Johnson
Sir Francis Drake – to the Spanish, a wayward pirate; to the English, a hero. He could be considered a morally dubious hero in many ways, perhaps even a villain, but was still incredibly influential in Tudor times.
Drake (c. 1540 – 1596) was born the eldest of 12 sons, in Tavistock, Devon. His father, Edmund Drake, was a farmer and preacher. The family later moved to Kent, where they lived in an old ship and it was there that his fascination with sailing began. The reason for the move is not entirely certain: the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549 angered Catholics, who could have then made it difficult for Drake’s Protestant family, or it may be that Edmund was involved in petty crime. Francis had a trading ship left to him by his apprenticeship boss at the age of 20, which was perhaps the catalyst for his historic naval achievements.
Queen Elizabeth I
During the Elizabethan period (1558-1603) of Tudor England, the country’s population was growing, and the desire for power and to explore was increasing. Religion and politics were dominant forces. Queen Elizabeth I was eager to follow in Spain and Portugal’s explorative footsteps – they were travelling the globe, to the Americas, benefiting from slavery and setting up important trade routes.
Francis Drake was key to gaining much of England’s riches and naval successes, however morally corrupt his actions were! He would attack Spanish vessels, taking the treasure that they had brought back from abroad, and would raid Spanish and Portuguese ports. Walter Raleigh/Ralegh was a distant relative of Drake, famous for many things including writing and expedition. He contributed to the colonisation of the New World. Exploration was obviously in their genes!
To the Spanish, ‘El Draque’ (The Dragon) was a wayward pirate, a threat to their voyages. The king of Spain and Portugal, King Philip II was said to have offered the huge sum of 20,000 ducats (£4 million) for Drake’s life. Drake was definitely not popular! Although vital to the British government and the Queen herself, even the English people were somewhat divided in their view of Drake. Some admired his achievements and courage, whilst others resented him.
Drake and his second cousin, Richard Hawkins, led one of the first slavery trips to West Africa in 1567. It was illegal in English law to capture people and transport them, but in those days it was perceived as ok if they were slaves, non-protestants or criminals! They were attacked by Spanish vessels and only two of the six British ships survived (those led by Drake and Hawkins themselves). This, as well as other factors, contributed to fuelling the animosity between Spain and England, leading up to the war in 1585 and subsequent Armada.
Queen Elizabeth I had obvious faith in Drake – in 1572 she enlisted Drake as a privateer (pirate working for the head of a country) to sail to the Americas. Her minister, Lord Burghley, was not at all fond of Drake’s villainous behaviour, but did concede that he was a good weapon against the Spanish. Queen Elizabeth had to maintain a public attitude of disapproval for his unlawful methods, to try and prevent hostile relations with Spain. She did approve of the treasure he returned with though!
Magellan led the first voyage round the world, but Drake was next, the first Englishman to achieve this. The trip lasted 3 years from 1577-1580. He led the trip alongside Jon Winter and Thomas Doughty, the latter secretly appointed by Queen Elizabeth I. In 1578, though, Drake would accuse poor Doughty of witchcraft! This led to his beheading on 2nd July for mutiny and treason.
Drake left Plymouth on 13th December, 1577 on board the Pelican, after a delay due to bad weather. There were six ships in total heading for the Pacific coast of America. On arrival in America, Drake feared the fleet splitting up, so ordered two ships to be destroyed.
Golden Hind
They then sailed to Brazil, and successfully navigated the notoriously difficult Strait of Magellan in 1578. He was the first Englishman to do so. Then there was more bad luck, as the Marigold was lost, and the Elizabeth sailed back to England. Out of the 164 crew that started the voyage, only 58 crew members remained on the voyage by October of 1578 and all were now on the one remaining ship – the Pelican. Drake chose to rename the ship to honour Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord Chancellor. It became the Golden Hind.
1579 was an eventful year for Drake. He took over the Spanish ship, Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion, only hurting the captain with an arrow. He gained a wealth of treasure from this!
Also in this year, repairs to Drake’s ship were needed, so Drake moored at what today is San Francisco. He did not waste the opportunity and claimed the land for England, naming it ‘Nova Albion’ (Latin for ‘New Britain’) – a successful journey! Today, there is a Sir Francis Drake Hotel in Union Square, San Francisco, as a commemoration of this historical moment.
They then crossed the Pacific and through the Indian Ocean, past Indonesia and all the way back to England, returning with much treasure and exotic spices. He had become the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe on 26th September, 1580.
After this incredible achievement, Queen Elizabeth I saw it fitting to honour Drake, not only with £10,000, but also with a knighthood. It was thought that she dined on the Golden Hind at Deptford in 1581 and it was after this meal that he became Sir Francis Drake. But in fact, she delegated the job of knighting Drake to Marquis de Marchaumont, a French ambassador. This was to avoid drawing attention to Drake’s achievements and making it seem that she approved of his tactics, to appease the Spanish. In September of the same year, he was made Mayor of Plymouth. The water supply he set up for the city under this role lasted 300 years!
Drake’s first wife, Mary Newman, had died just 12 years after they married. Then, in 1585, he married again, to Elizabeth Sydenham, who was 20 years younger than him and a wealthy heiress. With their combined fortune, they lived in Buckland Abbey, Devon. It is believed that when the drum in the house – ‘Drake’s Drum’ – is heard, England is under threat. The Abbey is now a museum owned by the National Trust.
Drake was involved in the destruction of a Spanish fleet at Cadiz in 1587, in what became known as ‘singeing Philip of Spain’s beard’. The attacked fleet was to be part of the Armada, and this action delayed it for a year. Drake was given the position of Vice Admiral to Lord Howard of Effingham in 1588, to fight the Armada. Broadside positioning, devised by Drake, was a success. He ordered the British ships to sail in a line further away from the Spanish ships than would normally be advised. They would then shoot from this position, which proved very effective in defeating the Spanish.
Spanish Fleet
It was Drake’s voyage in 1596 that was to be his last. His attempts to attack Spanish vessels in San Juan, Puerto Rico were failing and he then contracted ‘the bloody flux’, today known as dysentery. It was this that killed him on January 28th, on board the Defiance. His body, dressed in armour in accordance with his request, was encased in a lead coffin and lowered into the sea near Panama, a fitting end for a man famous for his naval voyages. The coffin has never been found."
"Sir Francis Drake
by Ben Johnson
Sir Francis Drake – to the Spanish, a wayward pirate; to the English, a hero. He could be considered a morally dubious hero in many ways, perhaps even a villain, but was still incredibly influential in Tudor times.
Drake (c. 1540 – 1596) was born the eldest of 12 sons, in Tavistock, Devon. His father, Edmund Drake, was a farmer and preacher. The family later moved to Kent, where they lived in an old ship and it was there that his fascination with sailing began. The reason for the move is not entirely certain: the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549 angered Catholics, who could have then made it difficult for Drake’s Protestant family, or it may be that Edmund was involved in petty crime. Francis had a trading ship left to him by his apprenticeship boss at the age of 20, which was perhaps the catalyst for his historic naval achievements.
Queen Elizabeth I
During the Elizabethan period (1558-1603) of Tudor England, the country’s population was growing, and the desire for power and to explore was increasing. Religion and politics were dominant forces. Queen Elizabeth I was eager to follow in Spain and Portugal’s explorative footsteps – they were travelling the globe, to the Americas, benefiting from slavery and setting up important trade routes.
Francis Drake was key to gaining much of England’s riches and naval successes, however morally corrupt his actions were! He would attack Spanish vessels, taking the treasure that they had brought back from abroad, and would raid Spanish and Portuguese ports. Walter Raleigh/Ralegh was a distant relative of Drake, famous for many things including writing and expedition. He contributed to the colonisation of the New World. Exploration was obviously in their genes!
To the Spanish, ‘El Draque’ (The Dragon) was a wayward pirate, a threat to their voyages. The king of Spain and Portugal, King Philip II was said to have offered the huge sum of 20,000 ducats (£4 million) for Drake’s life. Drake was definitely not popular! Although vital to the British government and the Queen herself, even the English people were somewhat divided in their view of Drake. Some admired his achievements and courage, whilst others resented him.
Drake and his second cousin, Richard Hawkins, led one of the first slavery trips to West Africa in 1567. It was illegal in English law to capture people and transport them, but in those days it was perceived as ok if they were slaves, non-protestants or criminals! They were attacked by Spanish vessels and only two of the six British ships survived (those led by Drake and Hawkins themselves). This, as well as other factors, contributed to fuelling the animosity between Spain and England, leading up to the war in 1585 and subsequent Armada.
Queen Elizabeth I had obvious faith in Drake – in 1572 she enlisted Drake as a privateer (pirate working for the head of a country) to sail to the Americas. Her minister, Lord Burghley, was not at all fond of Drake’s villainous behaviour, but did concede that he was a good weapon against the Spanish. Queen Elizabeth had to maintain a public attitude of disapproval for his unlawful methods, to try and prevent hostile relations with Spain. She did approve of the treasure he returned with though!
Magellan led the first voyage round the world, but Drake was next, the first Englishman to achieve this. The trip lasted 3 years from 1577-1580. He led the trip alongside Jon Winter and Thomas Doughty, the latter secretly appointed by Queen Elizabeth I. In 1578, though, Drake would accuse poor Doughty of witchcraft! This led to his beheading on 2nd July for mutiny and treason.
Drake left Plymouth on 13th December, 1577 on board the Pelican, after a delay due to bad weather. There were six ships in total heading for the Pacific coast of America. On arrival in America, Drake feared the fleet splitting up, so ordered two ships to be destroyed.
Golden Hind
They then sailed to Brazil, and successfully navigated the notoriously difficult Strait of Magellan in 1578. He was the first Englishman to do so. Then there was more bad luck, as the Marigold was lost, and the Elizabeth sailed back to England. Out of the 164 crew that started the voyage, only 58 crew members remained on the voyage by October of 1578 and all were now on the one remaining ship – the Pelican. Drake chose to rename the ship to honour Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord Chancellor. It became the Golden Hind.
1579 was an eventful year for Drake. He took over the Spanish ship, Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion, only hurting the captain with an arrow. He gained a wealth of treasure from this!
Also in this year, repairs to Drake’s ship were needed, so Drake moored at what today is San Francisco. He did not waste the opportunity and claimed the land for England, naming it ‘Nova Albion’ (Latin for ‘New Britain’) – a successful journey! Today, there is a Sir Francis Drake Hotel in Union Square, San Francisco, as a commemoration of this historical moment.
They then crossed the Pacific and through the Indian Ocean, past Indonesia and all the way back to England, returning with much treasure and exotic spices. He had become the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe on 26th September, 1580.
After this incredible achievement, Queen Elizabeth I saw it fitting to honour Drake, not only with £10,000, but also with a knighthood. It was thought that she dined on the Golden Hind at Deptford in 1581 and it was after this meal that he became Sir Francis Drake. But in fact, she delegated the job of knighting Drake to Marquis de Marchaumont, a French ambassador. This was to avoid drawing attention to Drake’s achievements and making it seem that she approved of his tactics, to appease the Spanish. In September of the same year, he was made Mayor of Plymouth. The water supply he set up for the city under this role lasted 300 years!
Drake’s first wife, Mary Newman, had died just 12 years after they married. Then, in 1585, he married again, to Elizabeth Sydenham, who was 20 years younger than him and a wealthy heiress. With their combined fortune, they lived in Buckland Abbey, Devon. It is believed that when the drum in the house – ‘Drake’s Drum’ – is heard, England is under threat. The Abbey is now a museum owned by the National Trust.
Drake was involved in the destruction of a Spanish fleet at Cadiz in 1587, in what became known as ‘singeing Philip of Spain’s beard’. The attacked fleet was to be part of the Armada, and this action delayed it for a year. Drake was given the position of Vice Admiral to Lord Howard of Effingham in 1588, to fight the Armada. Broadside positioning, devised by Drake, was a success. He ordered the British ships to sail in a line further away from the Spanish ships than would normally be advised. They would then shoot from this position, which proved very effective in defeating the Spanish.
Spanish Fleet
It was Drake’s voyage in 1596 that was to be his last. His attempts to attack Spanish vessels in San Juan, Puerto Rico were failing and he then contracted ‘the bloody flux’, today known as dysentery. It was this that killed him on January 28th, on board the Defiance. His body, dressed in armour in accordance with his request, was encased in a lead coffin and lowered into the sea near Panama, a fitting end for a man famous for his naval voyages. The coffin has never been found."
The Life of Sir Francis Drake
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Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that on April 4, 1581, Francis Drake was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I aboard his ship the Golden Hind at Deptford.
When I was a teenager I built a model of the Golden Hind from a kit.
From most reliable accounts of Francis Drake's life he became ruthless towards Spanish treachery. Prior to that he picked up slaves in Africa and sold them to fund his expeditions.
Images:
1. Sir Francis Drake attributed to Jodocus Hondius, completed by George Vertue engraving, circa 1583
2. 1591 portrait, also by Gheeraerts the Younger, wearing the 'Drake Jewel' suspended from a strap, and displaying new arms.
3. A map of Drake's route around the world. The northern limit of Drake's exploration of the Pacific coast of North America is still in dispute. Drake's Bay is south of Cape Mendocino
4. Portrait miniature by Nicholas Hilliard, 1581, reverse of 'Drake Jewel', inscribed Aetatis suae 42, An(n)o D(omi)ni 1581 ('42 years of his age, 1581 AD').
Background from {[https://exploration.marinersmuseum.org/subject/francis-drake/]}
EXPLORER
AGE OF DISCOVERY
Quick Facts:
He effectively ended Spanish dominance over the seas and the New World, allowing England to become a global empire.
Name: Francis Drake [fran-sis] [dreyk]
Birth/Death: ca. 1540 - January 28, 1596
Nationality: English
Birthplace: Devonshire, England
Introduction
Sir Francis Drake’s adventurous life was filled with many accomplishments. He played a major role in the destruction and defeat of the mighty Spanish Armada. This helped England to create a great empire in the New World. He also became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe. During his world voyage, he explored much of the northwestern part of the modern United States. His strong dislike for the Spanish motivated him to destroy and loot as many Spanish vessels as possible. Some would call Sir Francis Drake a pirate, others would call him a privateer. But to the English, most saw him a hero.
Biography
Early Life
Francis Drake was born at Tavistock, in Devonshire, England around 1540, although the exact date is not certain. He was the oldest of 12 boys.1 His father, Edmund Drake, was a shearman. This is someone who used a skilled technique to soften cloth.2 They lived on a large farm, and his father was also able to make money as a farmer. Very little is known or certain about his childhood and education. In the early 1550s, young Francis began working as an apprentice on a trading ship. While here, Drake was taught several skills that a sailor would have, including how to sail and how to navigate, and was also provided food and shelter. In 1567, he went to work for his cousin John Hawkins who was a slave trader. They would travel to Africa, where they would capture and chain Africans, sail across the Atlantic, and sell the African people to European colonists. Drake joined him on his trading trips to the New World.
At this time, much of the Caribbean islands, South America, and Mexico were controlled by the Spanish empire. England and Spain were often at war with each other, and as such, the Spanish banned trading with the English in their colonies. But this did not stop people like Hawkins and Drake. But Drake and Hawkins often encountered problems. In October 1567, Hawkins and Drake arrived at San Juan de Ulúa on the Mexican coast ready to trade.3 They had six ships including the Minion – captained by Hawkins – and the Judith – captained by Drake. It was not long before the Spanish attacked the English fleet. Four of the ships were destroyed, but the Judith survived. Hawkins also managed to escape. This battle would create a deep hatred for the Spanish in Drake. After his return to England, Drake happily accepted a position by Queen Elizabeth I in 1570 to become a privateer. A privateer is similar to a pirate, but unlike pirates who raid for their personal use, privateers are usually hired and paid. Drake spent the next several years commanding several vessels raiding and destroying Spanish fleets. Drake became a hero to the English people. But once England and Spain had reached a temporary peace, Drake’s privateering services were not needed. But peace did not last long, and Drake was called on again once more.
Voyages
Principal Voyage
In 1577, war broke out again between England and Spain. Elizabeth I gave Drake command of an expedition to set up English trading posts in the Pacific.4 But Drake also had his own plans. He planned to continue raiding Spanish fleets, and attacking Spanish settlements in South America. Drake and his fleet left from the port of Plymouth in England on December 13, 1577. He had five ships: The Elizabeth, Swan, Christopher, Marigold, and the Pelican which Drake commanded. He sailed across the Atlantic to Brazil, then south down the coast to Argentina to an area called Patagonia. While here, at Port St. Julian, a firefight between the English and Natives broke out, killing several men on both sides. By August 20, 1578, Drake and his fleet entered the Strait of Magellan, and crossed into the Pacific Ocean.5 It had taken Ferdinand Magellan a month to cross through the Strait; it only took Drake 16 days.6 It is around this time that Drake renamed his ship Golden Hind. The fleet then sailed north up the west coast of South America.
Drake raided several Spanish ships and outposts along Chile and Peru. After capturing and destroying several Spanish vessels, and taking their riches, Drake and his crew continued onward. The other ships had either turned back for home or had been damaged and lost at sea.7 After passing through the Strait of Magellan, Drake began making his way up what would become the west coast of the United States. He made it as far as present day Vancouver Island before heading back south down the coast. He stopped briefly near modern day Coos Bay, Oregon, and then continued on. He charted much of the unknown west coast of North America. In June 1579, Drake landed at Point Reyes, near present day San Francisco, California, and claimed the land for Queen Elizabeth and England.8 Here, the English interacted with the friendly Miwok natives for several weeks. The Golden Hind left the area on July 23, 1579, and headed for home.9 They sailed across the Pacific Ocean. For almost 2 months they saw no land. They eventually reached the Molucca Islands (present day Indonesia). After a brief stay, they sailed again, rounding the southern tip of Africa, and headed north to England. After almost three years sailing around the world, the Golden Hind reached England on September 26, 1580. Although he was the second person to circumnavigate the world, he was the first Englishman to do it.
Subsequent Voyages
When Drake returned to England, he brought with him much treasure. Queen Elizabeth rewarded his success. In 1581, the Queen knighted him. So he was now Sir Francis Drake. He became mayor of Plymouth for the next four years.10 When hostilities between Spain and England worsened, Drake once again went to sea. In 1585, he sailed towards Spain where he attacked several ships in their fleet, then headed across the Atlantic. He then attacked Spanish fleets in present day Colombia and Dominican Republic. On histheir way back to England, Drake stopped to resupply the struggling colony at Roanoke Island (present-day North Carolina), founded by Sir Walter Raleigh. The colonists there were so miserable that they decided to abandon the colony and return to England with Drake.
Later Years and Death
By 1587, Drake once more left England to attack the Spanish. He destroyed a fleet in Portugal which delayed a Spanish attack on England. After a few more encounters with the Spanish, Drake went back to Plymouth for several years. His next expedition would be less fortunate. Drake went out to sea again in 1595 with John Hawkins. They sailed to the Caribbean, where Drake soon got sick. He got infected with dysentery, a disease that infects the intestines. Sir Francis Drake died on his ship from this illness on January 28, 1596 off the coast of Panama.11
Legacy
Sir Francis Drake’s accomplishments cemented English dominance at sea. The Spanish Armada never fully recovered from Drake’s victories. This loss weakened their grip in the New World, and allowed the English to establish themselves as a great empire. In addition to his military achievements, he was a famed explorer who claimed part of the west coast of North America for England. He also rescued many of the settlers from the doomed Roanoke settlement. Drakes Bay near San Francisco bears the name of the great English explorer who helped claim these lands for the English.
Endnotes
Richard E. Bohlander, ed., World Explorers and Discoverers (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1992), 155.
Lynn Hoogenboom, Sir Francis Drake: A Primary Source Biography (New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc., 2006), 4.
Don Nardo, Sir Francis Drake EBook (Hockessin: Mitchell Lane Publishers Inc., 2016), 5.
Bohlander, World Explorers and Discoverers, 156.
Daniel B. Baker, ed., Explorers and Discoverers of the World (Detroit: Gale Research, Inc., 1993), 207
Bohlander, World Explorers and Discoverers, 157.
Britannica Educational Publishing, Biographies of the New World: Leif Eriksson, Henry Hudson, Charles Darwin, and More, ed. Michael Anderson (New York: Britannica Educational Publishing, 2013), 67.
Rand Richards, Historic San Francisco: A Concise History and Guide (San Francisco: Heritage House Publishers, 2007), 16.
Bohlander, World Explorers and Discoverers, 157.
Bohlander, World Explorers and Discoverers, 158.
Baker, Explorers and Discoverers of the World, 208.
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D GySgt Thomas Vick SGT Denny Espinosa SSG Stephen Rogerson SPC Matthew Lamb LTC (Join to see)Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO2 (Join to see) SSG Franklin Briant SPC Woody Bullard TSgt David L. SMSgt David A Asbury SPC Michael Terrell SFC Chuck Martinez CSM Charles Hayden
When I was a teenager I built a model of the Golden Hind from a kit.
From most reliable accounts of Francis Drake's life he became ruthless towards Spanish treachery. Prior to that he picked up slaves in Africa and sold them to fund his expeditions.
Images:
1. Sir Francis Drake attributed to Jodocus Hondius, completed by George Vertue engraving, circa 1583
2. 1591 portrait, also by Gheeraerts the Younger, wearing the 'Drake Jewel' suspended from a strap, and displaying new arms.
3. A map of Drake's route around the world. The northern limit of Drake's exploration of the Pacific coast of North America is still in dispute. Drake's Bay is south of Cape Mendocino
4. Portrait miniature by Nicholas Hilliard, 1581, reverse of 'Drake Jewel', inscribed Aetatis suae 42, An(n)o D(omi)ni 1581 ('42 years of his age, 1581 AD').
Background from {[https://exploration.marinersmuseum.org/subject/francis-drake/]}
EXPLORER
AGE OF DISCOVERY
Quick Facts:
He effectively ended Spanish dominance over the seas and the New World, allowing England to become a global empire.
Name: Francis Drake [fran-sis] [dreyk]
Birth/Death: ca. 1540 - January 28, 1596
Nationality: English
Birthplace: Devonshire, England
Introduction
Sir Francis Drake’s adventurous life was filled with many accomplishments. He played a major role in the destruction and defeat of the mighty Spanish Armada. This helped England to create a great empire in the New World. He also became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe. During his world voyage, he explored much of the northwestern part of the modern United States. His strong dislike for the Spanish motivated him to destroy and loot as many Spanish vessels as possible. Some would call Sir Francis Drake a pirate, others would call him a privateer. But to the English, most saw him a hero.
Biography
Early Life
Francis Drake was born at Tavistock, in Devonshire, England around 1540, although the exact date is not certain. He was the oldest of 12 boys.1 His father, Edmund Drake, was a shearman. This is someone who used a skilled technique to soften cloth.2 They lived on a large farm, and his father was also able to make money as a farmer. Very little is known or certain about his childhood and education. In the early 1550s, young Francis began working as an apprentice on a trading ship. While here, Drake was taught several skills that a sailor would have, including how to sail and how to navigate, and was also provided food and shelter. In 1567, he went to work for his cousin John Hawkins who was a slave trader. They would travel to Africa, where they would capture and chain Africans, sail across the Atlantic, and sell the African people to European colonists. Drake joined him on his trading trips to the New World.
At this time, much of the Caribbean islands, South America, and Mexico were controlled by the Spanish empire. England and Spain were often at war with each other, and as such, the Spanish banned trading with the English in their colonies. But this did not stop people like Hawkins and Drake. But Drake and Hawkins often encountered problems. In October 1567, Hawkins and Drake arrived at San Juan de Ulúa on the Mexican coast ready to trade.3 They had six ships including the Minion – captained by Hawkins – and the Judith – captained by Drake. It was not long before the Spanish attacked the English fleet. Four of the ships were destroyed, but the Judith survived. Hawkins also managed to escape. This battle would create a deep hatred for the Spanish in Drake. After his return to England, Drake happily accepted a position by Queen Elizabeth I in 1570 to become a privateer. A privateer is similar to a pirate, but unlike pirates who raid for their personal use, privateers are usually hired and paid. Drake spent the next several years commanding several vessels raiding and destroying Spanish fleets. Drake became a hero to the English people. But once England and Spain had reached a temporary peace, Drake’s privateering services were not needed. But peace did not last long, and Drake was called on again once more.
Voyages
Principal Voyage
In 1577, war broke out again between England and Spain. Elizabeth I gave Drake command of an expedition to set up English trading posts in the Pacific.4 But Drake also had his own plans. He planned to continue raiding Spanish fleets, and attacking Spanish settlements in South America. Drake and his fleet left from the port of Plymouth in England on December 13, 1577. He had five ships: The Elizabeth, Swan, Christopher, Marigold, and the Pelican which Drake commanded. He sailed across the Atlantic to Brazil, then south down the coast to Argentina to an area called Patagonia. While here, at Port St. Julian, a firefight between the English and Natives broke out, killing several men on both sides. By August 20, 1578, Drake and his fleet entered the Strait of Magellan, and crossed into the Pacific Ocean.5 It had taken Ferdinand Magellan a month to cross through the Strait; it only took Drake 16 days.6 It is around this time that Drake renamed his ship Golden Hind. The fleet then sailed north up the west coast of South America.
Drake raided several Spanish ships and outposts along Chile and Peru. After capturing and destroying several Spanish vessels, and taking their riches, Drake and his crew continued onward. The other ships had either turned back for home or had been damaged and lost at sea.7 After passing through the Strait of Magellan, Drake began making his way up what would become the west coast of the United States. He made it as far as present day Vancouver Island before heading back south down the coast. He stopped briefly near modern day Coos Bay, Oregon, and then continued on. He charted much of the unknown west coast of North America. In June 1579, Drake landed at Point Reyes, near present day San Francisco, California, and claimed the land for Queen Elizabeth and England.8 Here, the English interacted with the friendly Miwok natives for several weeks. The Golden Hind left the area on July 23, 1579, and headed for home.9 They sailed across the Pacific Ocean. For almost 2 months they saw no land. They eventually reached the Molucca Islands (present day Indonesia). After a brief stay, they sailed again, rounding the southern tip of Africa, and headed north to England. After almost three years sailing around the world, the Golden Hind reached England on September 26, 1580. Although he was the second person to circumnavigate the world, he was the first Englishman to do it.
Subsequent Voyages
When Drake returned to England, he brought with him much treasure. Queen Elizabeth rewarded his success. In 1581, the Queen knighted him. So he was now Sir Francis Drake. He became mayor of Plymouth for the next four years.10 When hostilities between Spain and England worsened, Drake once again went to sea. In 1585, he sailed towards Spain where he attacked several ships in their fleet, then headed across the Atlantic. He then attacked Spanish fleets in present day Colombia and Dominican Republic. On histheir way back to England, Drake stopped to resupply the struggling colony at Roanoke Island (present-day North Carolina), founded by Sir Walter Raleigh. The colonists there were so miserable that they decided to abandon the colony and return to England with Drake.
Later Years and Death
By 1587, Drake once more left England to attack the Spanish. He destroyed a fleet in Portugal which delayed a Spanish attack on England. After a few more encounters with the Spanish, Drake went back to Plymouth for several years. His next expedition would be less fortunate. Drake went out to sea again in 1595 with John Hawkins. They sailed to the Caribbean, where Drake soon got sick. He got infected with dysentery, a disease that infects the intestines. Sir Francis Drake died on his ship from this illness on January 28, 1596 off the coast of Panama.11
Legacy
Sir Francis Drake’s accomplishments cemented English dominance at sea. The Spanish Armada never fully recovered from Drake’s victories. This loss weakened their grip in the New World, and allowed the English to establish themselves as a great empire. In addition to his military achievements, he was a famed explorer who claimed part of the west coast of North America for England. He also rescued many of the settlers from the doomed Roanoke settlement. Drakes Bay near San Francisco bears the name of the great English explorer who helped claim these lands for the English.
Endnotes
Richard E. Bohlander, ed., World Explorers and Discoverers (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1992), 155.
Lynn Hoogenboom, Sir Francis Drake: A Primary Source Biography (New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc., 2006), 4.
Don Nardo, Sir Francis Drake EBook (Hockessin: Mitchell Lane Publishers Inc., 2016), 5.
Bohlander, World Explorers and Discoverers, 156.
Daniel B. Baker, ed., Explorers and Discoverers of the World (Detroit: Gale Research, Inc., 1993), 207
Bohlander, World Explorers and Discoverers, 157.
Britannica Educational Publishing, Biographies of the New World: Leif Eriksson, Henry Hudson, Charles Darwin, and More, ed. Michael Anderson (New York: Britannica Educational Publishing, 2013), 67.
Rand Richards, Historic San Francisco: A Concise History and Guide (San Francisco: Heritage House Publishers, 2007), 16.
Bohlander, World Explorers and Discoverers, 157.
Bohlander, World Explorers and Discoverers, 158.
Baker, Explorers and Discoverers of the World, 208.
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D GySgt Thomas Vick SGT Denny Espinosa SSG Stephen Rogerson SPC Matthew Lamb LTC (Join to see)Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO2 (Join to see) SSG Franklin Briant SPC Woody Bullard TSgt David L. SMSgt David A Asbury SPC Michael Terrell SFC Chuck Martinez CSM Charles Hayden
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Francis Drake: Heroic Explorer or Notorious Pirate? | History Hit LIVE on Timeline
Dan Snow is joined by historian Giles Milton to discuss one of the most influential people in English history and a large part of England's naval and imperia...
Francis Drake: Heroic Explorer or Notorious Pirate? | History Hit LIVE on Timeline
Dan Snow is joined by historian Giles Milton to discuss one of the most influential people in English history and a large part of England's naval and imperial power, Sir Francis Drake.
https://youtu.be/2bP3pQuJJYc?t=91
Images:
1. Map of Drake's Great Expedition in 1585 by Giovanni Battista Boazio
2. Pelican Swan Circumnavigation Francis Drake on behalf of Queen Elizabeth I
3. Queen Elizabeth I knights Francis Drake painting
4. Sir Francis Drake by Robert Sargent Austin, printed by The Baynard Press, probably after Jodocus Hondius chromolithograph, published 1943
Background from {[https://spartacus-educational.com/TUDdrakeF.htm]}
Francis Drake
Francis Drake, eldest of twelve children, was born in Crowndale, near Taverstock, in about 1540. His father, Edmund Drake (1518–1585), was a passionate supporter of Martin Luther and during the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1548, he was forced to flee with his family to Chatham in Kent.
Drake was apprenticed to a captain trading between the Thames and the Channel ports. In 1563 he joined his cousin, John Hawkins, on a voyage to Africa. The two men started capturing people in Sierra Leone and selling them as slaves to Spanish settlers in the Caribbean. As it was illegal for the settlers to buy from foreigners, Hawkins and Drake soon came into conflict with the Spanish authorities.
His first command was in 1567 when he took part in a successful attack on Spanish ships in the port of San Juan de Ulua. He returned to Plymouth with gold and silver worth over £40,000. Drake, a committed Protestant, saw himself as an instrument of God in his crusade against Philip II and the Spanish Empire. This was followed by voyages to the West Indies and in 1572 he seized gold and silver in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean.
Drake was introduced to Sir Francis Walsingham, and this association led to a plan for Drake to take a fleet into the Pacific and raid Spanish settlements there. Investors included Walsingham, Elizabeth I, Christopher Hatton, John Wynter and John Hawkins. Drake's ship was the 150 ton Pelican, double-planked, lead-sheathed, and armed with 18 guns. Wynter contributed his own 80 ton Elizabeth, which carried 11 guns. Another 12 guns were distributed among the 50 ton Marigold, the 30 ton Swan, and the 15 ton Benedict.
The journey began in November 1577. By the end of the following month six Spanish and Portuguese ships were taken, then looted and eventually set free. Drake also abandoned the Benedict and took one of the Spanish vessels, which was renamed Christopher. The following month they captured a Portuguese merchant vessel, Santa Maria. The commander was Nuño de Silva, who knew the coast of South America. Drake took Silva to serve as pilot of his own fleet.
In June 1578 the fleet arrived at Puerto San Julián, on the southern coast of Argentina, where Drake put Thomas Doughty on trial for mutiny. He was beheaded on 2nd July 1578. Drake feared that others would rebel and so he called the captains and crew together, then announced that all the officers, who held their appointments from the owners of the ships, were relieved of command. He then reappointed them or most of them as officers responsible only to him.
When Drake finally led his fleet through the strait and into the Pacific Ocean, Captain John Wynter took advantage of a storm to leave Drake and took his ship back to England. The Marigold, commanded by Doughty's friend John Thomas, also disappeared, and the Mary was abandoned at Puerto San Julián. Drake, who was left with only the Pelican, renamed it The Golden Hind. Drake now sailed up the Pacific coast. At Valparaíso he took a ship carrying 200,000 pesos in gold, then went ashore and raided the church and the warehouses.
On 5th February 1579 he arrived at Arica on the north coast of Chile and captured a merchant ship carrying thirty or forty bars of silver. As a result of deaths in battles and sickness, Drake's crew to little more than seventy men. Only thirty of them were fit to fight, but that was enough, since the merchant ships Drake took were unarmed. On 1st March he captured the richest ship of all, Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, carrying valuable cargo and 362,000 pesos in silver and gold.
Sailing along the coast of Mexico, Drake took a few more ships and raided several more ports. However, The Golden Hinde was leaking badly and needed to be careened. On 17th June 1579 Drake landed in a bay on the the coast of California. According to Drake's biographer, Harry Kelsey: "Sixteenth-century accounts and maps can be interpreted to show that he stopped anywhere between the southern tip of Baja California and latitude 48° N." Most historians believe that Drake had stopped in a bay on the Point Reyes peninsula (now known as Drake's Bay).
Father Francis Fletcher, the chaplin to the expedition, later wrote in The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake (1628): "Drake's ship entered a convenient and fit harbour." Drake has been reported as saying: "By God's Will we hath been sent into this fair and good bay. Let us all, with one consent, both high and low, magnify and praise our most gracious and merciful God for his infinite and unspeakable goodness toward us. By God's faith hath we endured such great storms and such hardships as we have seen in these uncharted seas. To be delivered here of His safekeeping, I protest we are not worthy of such mercy."
Francis Drake's cousin, John Drake, argued that "Drake... landed and built huts and remained a month and a half, caulking his vessel. The victuals they found were mussels and sea-lions." A local group of Miwok brought him a present of a bunch of feathers and tobacco leaves in a basket. John Sugden, the author of Sir Francis Drake (1990) has argued: "It appeared to the English that the Indians regarded them as gods; they were impervious to English attempts to explain who they were, but at least they remained friendly, and when they had received clothing and other gifts the natives returned happily and noisily to their village." John Drake claims that when they "saw the Englishmen they wept and scratched their faces with their nails until they drew blood, as though this was an act of homage or adoration."
Francis Fletcher suggests that the local people "dispersed themselves into the country, to make known the news." On 26th June a large group of Miwok arrived at Drake's camp. The chief, wearing a head-dress and a skin cape, was followed by painted warriors, each one of whom bore a gift. At the rear of the cavalcade were women and children. A man holding a sceptre of black wood and wearing a chain of clam shells, stepped forward and made a thirty minute speech. While this was going on the women indulged in a strange ritual of self-mutilation that included scratching their faces until the blood flowed. Robert F. Heizer has argued in Elizabethan California (1974) that self-mutilation is associated with mourning and that the Miwok probably thought the British sailors were spirits returning from the dead. However, Drake took the view that they were proclaiming him king of the Miwok tribe.
John Drake pointed out in a statement he made in 1582: "During that time (June, 1579) many Indians came there and when they saw the Englishmen they wept and scratched their faces with their nails until they drew blood, as though this was an act of homage or adoration. By signs Captain Francis Drake told them not to do that, for the Englishmen were not God. These people were peaceful and did no harm to the English, but gave them no food. They are of the colour of the Indians here (peru) and are comely. They carry bows and arrows and go naked. The climate is temperate, more cold than hot. To all appearance it is a very good country."
Drake now claimed the land for Queen Elizabeth. He named it Nova Albion "in respect of the white banks and cliffs, which lie towards the sea". Apparently, the cliffs of Point Reyes reminded Drake of the coast at Dover. Drake had a post set up with a plate bearing his name and the date of arriving in California.
When the The Golden Hinde left on 23rd July, the Miwok exhibited great distress and ran to the hill-tops to keep the ship in sight for as long as possible. Drake later wrote that during his time in California, "not withstanding it was the height of summer, we were continually visited with nipping cold, neither could we at any time within a fourteen day period find the air so clear as to be able to take height the sun or stars."
Drake then sailed along the California coast but failed to see the Golden Gate and San Francisco bay beyond. This is probably because the area is often shrouded in fog during the summer. The heat in the California Central Valley causes the air there to rise. This can create strong winds which pull cool moist air in from over the ocean through the break in the hills, causing a stream of dense fog to enter the bay.
At Java Drake and his crew loaded plenty of food they sailed through the Indian Ocean, and around the Cape of Good Hope. The provisions lasted until 20 July 1580 when they reached Sierra Leone on the African coast. When Drake arrived in Plymouth on 26th September 1580, he became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world. Drake return to England as a very wealthy man and he was able to purchase the Buckland Abbey estate. In 1581 Queen Elizabeth knighted Drake and later that year he was elected to the House of Commons.
Drake carried out a successful raid of the Spanish Caribbean (1584-85) and managed to rescue the remaining English colonists in Virginia and returned to Portsmouth in 1586. He also led the expedition which wrecked the Spanish fleet at Cadiz in 1587.
In July 1588 131 ships in the Spanish Armada left for England. The large Spanish galleons were filled with 17,000 well-armed soldiers and 180 Catholic priests. The plan was to sail to Dunkirk in France where the Armada would pick up another 16,000 Spanish soldiers that were under the command of Alessandro Farnese, the Duke of Parma.
On hearing the news Charles Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admiral, held a council-of-war. Lord Howard decided to divide the fleet into squadrons. Francis Drake, John Hawkins and Martin Frobisher were chosen as the three other commanders of the fleet. Howard went in his flagship, the Ark Royal (800 tons and a crew of 250). Frobisher was given command of the largest ship in the fleet, the Triumph (1,110 tons and a crew of 500 men) whereas Drake was the captain of the Revenge (500 tons and a crew of 250) and Hawkins was aboard the Victory (800 tons and a crew of 250).
Lord Howard decided that the Spanish Armada should be attacked at both ends of the crescent. The Ark Royal attacked the right wing and the Revenge and the Triumph attacked Juan Martinez, de Recalde, commander of the Biscayan squadron on the left. Recalde on board the San Juan de Portugal decided to come out and fight the English ships. He was followed by Gran Grin and the two ships soon got into trouble and had to be rescued by the Duke of Medina Sidonia on board the San Martin.
At the end of the first day's fighting, only one ship was sunk. This was Spain's San Salvador when a tremendous explosion tore out its stern castle and killed 200 members of the crew. It was later discovered that a gunner's carelessness resulted in a spark reaching the gunpowder in the rear hold. The following morning Francis Drake and the crew of Revenge captured the crippled Rosario. This included Admiral Pedro de Valdes and all his crew. Drake also found 55,000 gold ducats on board.
That afternoon Medina Sidonia announced that if any Spanish ship broke formation the captain would be hanged immediately. He also told his captains that they must maintain a tight formation in order to prevent further attacks from the English ships. This decision meant that they could only move towards Dunkirk at the speed of the slowest ship.
Constantly harassed by the English ships the slow moving Spanish Armada eventually reached Calais without further loss. The English fleet now dropped anchor half a mile away. Soon afterwards they were joined by Lord Henry Seymour and his squadron of ships that had been controlling the seas off Dunkirk. This increased the English fleet by a third and was now similar in size to that of the Spanish fleet. Drake wrote to Seymour: "The fleet of Spaniards is somewhat above a hundred sails, many great ships... as far as we perceive they are determined to sell their lives with blows."
The Duke of Medina Sidonia now sent a message to the Duke of Parma in Dunkirk: "I am anchored here two leagues from Calais with the enemy's fleet on my flank. They can cannonade me whenever they like, and I shall be unable to do them much harm in return." He asked Parma to send fifty ships to help him break out of Calais. Parma was unable to help as he had less than twenty ships and most of those were not yet ready to sail.
That night Medina Sidonia sent out a warning to his captains that he expected a fire-ship attack. This tactic had been successfully used by Francis Drake in Cadiz in 1587 and the fresh breeze blowing steadily from the English fleet towards Calais, meant the conditions were ideal for such an attack. He warned his captains not to panic and not to head out to the open sea. Medina Sidonia confidently told them that his patrol boats would be able to protect them from any fire-ship attack that took place.
Medina Sidonia had rightly calculated what would happen. Francis Drake and Charles Howard were already organizing the fire-ship attack. It was decided to use eight fairly large ships for the operation. All the masts and rigging were tarred and all the guns were left on board and were primed to go off of their own accord when the fire reached them. John Young, one of Drake's men, was put in charge of the fire-ships.
Soon after midnight the eight ships were set fire to and sent on their way. The Spaniards were shocked by the size of the vessels. Nor had they expected the English to use as many as eight ships. The Spanish patrol ships were unable to act fast enough to deal with the problem. The Spanish captains also began to panic when the guns began exploding. They believed that the English were using hell-burners (ships crammed with gunpowder). This tactic had been used against the Spanish in 1585 during the siege of Antwerp when over a thousand men had been killed by exploding ships.
The fire-ships did not in fact cause any material damage to the Spanish ships at all. They drifted until they reached the beach where they continued to burn until the fire reached the water line. Medina Sidonia, on board the San Martin, had remained near his original anchorage. However, only a few captains had followed his orders and the vast majority had broken formation and sailed into the open sea.
At first light Medina Sidonia and his six remaining ships left Calais and attempted to catch up with the 130 ships strung out eastwards towards the Dunkirk sandbanks. Some Spanish ships had already been reached by the English fleet and were under heavy attack. San Lorenzo, a ship carrying 312 oarsmen, 134 sailors and 235 soldiers, was stranded on the beach and was about to be taken by the English.
With their formation broken, the Spanish ships were easy targets for the English ships loaded with guns that could fire very large cannon balls. The Spanish captains tried to get their ships in close so that their soldiers could board the English vessels. However, the English ships were quicker than the Spanish galleons and were able to keep their distance.
The battle of Gravelines continued all day. One of the most exciting contests was between Francis Drake in the Revenge and Duke of Medina Sidonia in the San Martin. Drake's ship was hit several times before being replaced by Thomas Fenner in the Nonpareil and Edmund Sheffield in the White Bear, who continued the fight without success.
All over the area of sea between Gravelines and Dunkirk fights took place between English and Spanish ships. By late afternoon most ships were out of gunpowder. The Duke of Medina Sidonia was now forced to head north with what was left of the Spanish Armada. The English ships did not follow as Charles Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admiral, was convinced that most Spanish ships were so badly damaged they would probably sink before they reached a safe port. That evening Francis Drake wrote to a friend: "God hath given us so good a day in forcing the enemy so far to leeward, as I hope in God the Duke of Parma and the Duke of Sidonia shall not shake hands this few days".
After the Armada rounded Scotland it headed south for home. However, a strong gale drove many of the ships onto the Irish rocks. Thousands of Spaniards drowned and even those who reached land were often killed by English soldiers and settlers. Of the 25,000 men that had set out in the Armada, less than 10,000 arrived home safely.
Drake led a disastrous attack on Portugal in 1589. He returned to England and became mayor of Plymouth in 1593. He went on another exhibition to the Caribbean in 1595 and the following year died of dysentery at Porto Bello on 27th January 1596."
FYI SSG Paul HeadleeCPL Michael PeckSgt (Join to see)PO1 Steve DittoCPL Douglas ChryslerSP5 Geoffrey Vannerson SSG Michael Noll SSG William JonesMaj Marty HoganSPC Michael Oles SRTSgt George RodriguezPO3 Charles Streich SGT (Join to see)SGT David A. 'Cowboy' GrothSFC (Join to see) TSgt Joe C. SGT Steve McFarlandSPC Margaret Higgins PO1 H Gene Lawrence Linda Lawrence
Dan Snow is joined by historian Giles Milton to discuss one of the most influential people in English history and a large part of England's naval and imperial power, Sir Francis Drake.
https://youtu.be/2bP3pQuJJYc?t=91
Images:
1. Map of Drake's Great Expedition in 1585 by Giovanni Battista Boazio
2. Pelican Swan Circumnavigation Francis Drake on behalf of Queen Elizabeth I
3. Queen Elizabeth I knights Francis Drake painting
4. Sir Francis Drake by Robert Sargent Austin, printed by The Baynard Press, probably after Jodocus Hondius chromolithograph, published 1943
Background from {[https://spartacus-educational.com/TUDdrakeF.htm]}
Francis Drake
Francis Drake, eldest of twelve children, was born in Crowndale, near Taverstock, in about 1540. His father, Edmund Drake (1518–1585), was a passionate supporter of Martin Luther and during the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1548, he was forced to flee with his family to Chatham in Kent.
Drake was apprenticed to a captain trading between the Thames and the Channel ports. In 1563 he joined his cousin, John Hawkins, on a voyage to Africa. The two men started capturing people in Sierra Leone and selling them as slaves to Spanish settlers in the Caribbean. As it was illegal for the settlers to buy from foreigners, Hawkins and Drake soon came into conflict with the Spanish authorities.
His first command was in 1567 when he took part in a successful attack on Spanish ships in the port of San Juan de Ulua. He returned to Plymouth with gold and silver worth over £40,000. Drake, a committed Protestant, saw himself as an instrument of God in his crusade against Philip II and the Spanish Empire. This was followed by voyages to the West Indies and in 1572 he seized gold and silver in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean.
Drake was introduced to Sir Francis Walsingham, and this association led to a plan for Drake to take a fleet into the Pacific and raid Spanish settlements there. Investors included Walsingham, Elizabeth I, Christopher Hatton, John Wynter and John Hawkins. Drake's ship was the 150 ton Pelican, double-planked, lead-sheathed, and armed with 18 guns. Wynter contributed his own 80 ton Elizabeth, which carried 11 guns. Another 12 guns were distributed among the 50 ton Marigold, the 30 ton Swan, and the 15 ton Benedict.
The journey began in November 1577. By the end of the following month six Spanish and Portuguese ships were taken, then looted and eventually set free. Drake also abandoned the Benedict and took one of the Spanish vessels, which was renamed Christopher. The following month they captured a Portuguese merchant vessel, Santa Maria. The commander was Nuño de Silva, who knew the coast of South America. Drake took Silva to serve as pilot of his own fleet.
In June 1578 the fleet arrived at Puerto San Julián, on the southern coast of Argentina, where Drake put Thomas Doughty on trial for mutiny. He was beheaded on 2nd July 1578. Drake feared that others would rebel and so he called the captains and crew together, then announced that all the officers, who held their appointments from the owners of the ships, were relieved of command. He then reappointed them or most of them as officers responsible only to him.
When Drake finally led his fleet through the strait and into the Pacific Ocean, Captain John Wynter took advantage of a storm to leave Drake and took his ship back to England. The Marigold, commanded by Doughty's friend John Thomas, also disappeared, and the Mary was abandoned at Puerto San Julián. Drake, who was left with only the Pelican, renamed it The Golden Hind. Drake now sailed up the Pacific coast. At Valparaíso he took a ship carrying 200,000 pesos in gold, then went ashore and raided the church and the warehouses.
On 5th February 1579 he arrived at Arica on the north coast of Chile and captured a merchant ship carrying thirty or forty bars of silver. As a result of deaths in battles and sickness, Drake's crew to little more than seventy men. Only thirty of them were fit to fight, but that was enough, since the merchant ships Drake took were unarmed. On 1st March he captured the richest ship of all, Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, carrying valuable cargo and 362,000 pesos in silver and gold.
Sailing along the coast of Mexico, Drake took a few more ships and raided several more ports. However, The Golden Hinde was leaking badly and needed to be careened. On 17th June 1579 Drake landed in a bay on the the coast of California. According to Drake's biographer, Harry Kelsey: "Sixteenth-century accounts and maps can be interpreted to show that he stopped anywhere between the southern tip of Baja California and latitude 48° N." Most historians believe that Drake had stopped in a bay on the Point Reyes peninsula (now known as Drake's Bay).
Father Francis Fletcher, the chaplin to the expedition, later wrote in The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake (1628): "Drake's ship entered a convenient and fit harbour." Drake has been reported as saying: "By God's Will we hath been sent into this fair and good bay. Let us all, with one consent, both high and low, magnify and praise our most gracious and merciful God for his infinite and unspeakable goodness toward us. By God's faith hath we endured such great storms and such hardships as we have seen in these uncharted seas. To be delivered here of His safekeeping, I protest we are not worthy of such mercy."
Francis Drake's cousin, John Drake, argued that "Drake... landed and built huts and remained a month and a half, caulking his vessel. The victuals they found were mussels and sea-lions." A local group of Miwok brought him a present of a bunch of feathers and tobacco leaves in a basket. John Sugden, the author of Sir Francis Drake (1990) has argued: "It appeared to the English that the Indians regarded them as gods; they were impervious to English attempts to explain who they were, but at least they remained friendly, and when they had received clothing and other gifts the natives returned happily and noisily to their village." John Drake claims that when they "saw the Englishmen they wept and scratched their faces with their nails until they drew blood, as though this was an act of homage or adoration."
Francis Fletcher suggests that the local people "dispersed themselves into the country, to make known the news." On 26th June a large group of Miwok arrived at Drake's camp. The chief, wearing a head-dress and a skin cape, was followed by painted warriors, each one of whom bore a gift. At the rear of the cavalcade were women and children. A man holding a sceptre of black wood and wearing a chain of clam shells, stepped forward and made a thirty minute speech. While this was going on the women indulged in a strange ritual of self-mutilation that included scratching their faces until the blood flowed. Robert F. Heizer has argued in Elizabethan California (1974) that self-mutilation is associated with mourning and that the Miwok probably thought the British sailors were spirits returning from the dead. However, Drake took the view that they were proclaiming him king of the Miwok tribe.
John Drake pointed out in a statement he made in 1582: "During that time (June, 1579) many Indians came there and when they saw the Englishmen they wept and scratched their faces with their nails until they drew blood, as though this was an act of homage or adoration. By signs Captain Francis Drake told them not to do that, for the Englishmen were not God. These people were peaceful and did no harm to the English, but gave them no food. They are of the colour of the Indians here (peru) and are comely. They carry bows and arrows and go naked. The climate is temperate, more cold than hot. To all appearance it is a very good country."
Drake now claimed the land for Queen Elizabeth. He named it Nova Albion "in respect of the white banks and cliffs, which lie towards the sea". Apparently, the cliffs of Point Reyes reminded Drake of the coast at Dover. Drake had a post set up with a plate bearing his name and the date of arriving in California.
When the The Golden Hinde left on 23rd July, the Miwok exhibited great distress and ran to the hill-tops to keep the ship in sight for as long as possible. Drake later wrote that during his time in California, "not withstanding it was the height of summer, we were continually visited with nipping cold, neither could we at any time within a fourteen day period find the air so clear as to be able to take height the sun or stars."
Drake then sailed along the California coast but failed to see the Golden Gate and San Francisco bay beyond. This is probably because the area is often shrouded in fog during the summer. The heat in the California Central Valley causes the air there to rise. This can create strong winds which pull cool moist air in from over the ocean through the break in the hills, causing a stream of dense fog to enter the bay.
At Java Drake and his crew loaded plenty of food they sailed through the Indian Ocean, and around the Cape of Good Hope. The provisions lasted until 20 July 1580 when they reached Sierra Leone on the African coast. When Drake arrived in Plymouth on 26th September 1580, he became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world. Drake return to England as a very wealthy man and he was able to purchase the Buckland Abbey estate. In 1581 Queen Elizabeth knighted Drake and later that year he was elected to the House of Commons.
Drake carried out a successful raid of the Spanish Caribbean (1584-85) and managed to rescue the remaining English colonists in Virginia and returned to Portsmouth in 1586. He also led the expedition which wrecked the Spanish fleet at Cadiz in 1587.
In July 1588 131 ships in the Spanish Armada left for England. The large Spanish galleons were filled with 17,000 well-armed soldiers and 180 Catholic priests. The plan was to sail to Dunkirk in France where the Armada would pick up another 16,000 Spanish soldiers that were under the command of Alessandro Farnese, the Duke of Parma.
On hearing the news Charles Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admiral, held a council-of-war. Lord Howard decided to divide the fleet into squadrons. Francis Drake, John Hawkins and Martin Frobisher were chosen as the three other commanders of the fleet. Howard went in his flagship, the Ark Royal (800 tons and a crew of 250). Frobisher was given command of the largest ship in the fleet, the Triumph (1,110 tons and a crew of 500 men) whereas Drake was the captain of the Revenge (500 tons and a crew of 250) and Hawkins was aboard the Victory (800 tons and a crew of 250).
Lord Howard decided that the Spanish Armada should be attacked at both ends of the crescent. The Ark Royal attacked the right wing and the Revenge and the Triumph attacked Juan Martinez, de Recalde, commander of the Biscayan squadron on the left. Recalde on board the San Juan de Portugal decided to come out and fight the English ships. He was followed by Gran Grin and the two ships soon got into trouble and had to be rescued by the Duke of Medina Sidonia on board the San Martin.
At the end of the first day's fighting, only one ship was sunk. This was Spain's San Salvador when a tremendous explosion tore out its stern castle and killed 200 members of the crew. It was later discovered that a gunner's carelessness resulted in a spark reaching the gunpowder in the rear hold. The following morning Francis Drake and the crew of Revenge captured the crippled Rosario. This included Admiral Pedro de Valdes and all his crew. Drake also found 55,000 gold ducats on board.
That afternoon Medina Sidonia announced that if any Spanish ship broke formation the captain would be hanged immediately. He also told his captains that they must maintain a tight formation in order to prevent further attacks from the English ships. This decision meant that they could only move towards Dunkirk at the speed of the slowest ship.
Constantly harassed by the English ships the slow moving Spanish Armada eventually reached Calais without further loss. The English fleet now dropped anchor half a mile away. Soon afterwards they were joined by Lord Henry Seymour and his squadron of ships that had been controlling the seas off Dunkirk. This increased the English fleet by a third and was now similar in size to that of the Spanish fleet. Drake wrote to Seymour: "The fleet of Spaniards is somewhat above a hundred sails, many great ships... as far as we perceive they are determined to sell their lives with blows."
The Duke of Medina Sidonia now sent a message to the Duke of Parma in Dunkirk: "I am anchored here two leagues from Calais with the enemy's fleet on my flank. They can cannonade me whenever they like, and I shall be unable to do them much harm in return." He asked Parma to send fifty ships to help him break out of Calais. Parma was unable to help as he had less than twenty ships and most of those were not yet ready to sail.
That night Medina Sidonia sent out a warning to his captains that he expected a fire-ship attack. This tactic had been successfully used by Francis Drake in Cadiz in 1587 and the fresh breeze blowing steadily from the English fleet towards Calais, meant the conditions were ideal for such an attack. He warned his captains not to panic and not to head out to the open sea. Medina Sidonia confidently told them that his patrol boats would be able to protect them from any fire-ship attack that took place.
Medina Sidonia had rightly calculated what would happen. Francis Drake and Charles Howard were already organizing the fire-ship attack. It was decided to use eight fairly large ships for the operation. All the masts and rigging were tarred and all the guns were left on board and were primed to go off of their own accord when the fire reached them. John Young, one of Drake's men, was put in charge of the fire-ships.
Soon after midnight the eight ships were set fire to and sent on their way. The Spaniards were shocked by the size of the vessels. Nor had they expected the English to use as many as eight ships. The Spanish patrol ships were unable to act fast enough to deal with the problem. The Spanish captains also began to panic when the guns began exploding. They believed that the English were using hell-burners (ships crammed with gunpowder). This tactic had been used against the Spanish in 1585 during the siege of Antwerp when over a thousand men had been killed by exploding ships.
The fire-ships did not in fact cause any material damage to the Spanish ships at all. They drifted until they reached the beach where they continued to burn until the fire reached the water line. Medina Sidonia, on board the San Martin, had remained near his original anchorage. However, only a few captains had followed his orders and the vast majority had broken formation and sailed into the open sea.
At first light Medina Sidonia and his six remaining ships left Calais and attempted to catch up with the 130 ships strung out eastwards towards the Dunkirk sandbanks. Some Spanish ships had already been reached by the English fleet and were under heavy attack. San Lorenzo, a ship carrying 312 oarsmen, 134 sailors and 235 soldiers, was stranded on the beach and was about to be taken by the English.
With their formation broken, the Spanish ships were easy targets for the English ships loaded with guns that could fire very large cannon balls. The Spanish captains tried to get their ships in close so that their soldiers could board the English vessels. However, the English ships were quicker than the Spanish galleons and were able to keep their distance.
The battle of Gravelines continued all day. One of the most exciting contests was between Francis Drake in the Revenge and Duke of Medina Sidonia in the San Martin. Drake's ship was hit several times before being replaced by Thomas Fenner in the Nonpareil and Edmund Sheffield in the White Bear, who continued the fight without success.
All over the area of sea between Gravelines and Dunkirk fights took place between English and Spanish ships. By late afternoon most ships were out of gunpowder. The Duke of Medina Sidonia was now forced to head north with what was left of the Spanish Armada. The English ships did not follow as Charles Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admiral, was convinced that most Spanish ships were so badly damaged they would probably sink before they reached a safe port. That evening Francis Drake wrote to a friend: "God hath given us so good a day in forcing the enemy so far to leeward, as I hope in God the Duke of Parma and the Duke of Sidonia shall not shake hands this few days".
After the Armada rounded Scotland it headed south for home. However, a strong gale drove many of the ships onto the Irish rocks. Thousands of Spaniards drowned and even those who reached land were often killed by English soldiers and settlers. Of the 25,000 men that had set out in the Armada, less than 10,000 arrived home safely.
Drake led a disastrous attack on Portugal in 1589. He returned to England and became mayor of Plymouth in 1593. He went on another exhibition to the Caribbean in 1595 and the following year died of dysentery at Porto Bello on 27th January 1596."
FYI SSG Paul HeadleeCPL Michael PeckSgt (Join to see)PO1 Steve DittoCPL Douglas ChryslerSP5 Geoffrey Vannerson SSG Michael Noll SSG William JonesMaj Marty HoganSPC Michael Oles SRTSgt George RodriguezPO3 Charles Streich SGT (Join to see)SGT David A. 'Cowboy' GrothSFC (Join to see) TSgt Joe C. SGT Steve McFarlandSPC Margaret Higgins PO1 H Gene Lawrence Linda Lawrence
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LTC Stephen F.
Sir Francis Drake:Drake: Pirate, Hero vesves Adventurer
Sir Francis Drake was one of the greatest privateers of all time, became the first Englishman to sail around the world, helped lead the Defeat of The Spanish...
Sir Francis Drake: Drake: Pirate, Hero versus Adventurer
Sir Francis Drake was one of the greatest privateers of all time, became the first Englishman to sail around the world, helped lead the Defeat of The Spanish Armada,, and became a politician.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOZidsh6iI8
Image:
1. Sir Francis Drake, oil painting by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger in Buckland Abbey (after 1590)
2. The mighty display of the Spanish armada in 1588 by Jan Luyken
3. Franciscus Draeck Nobilissimus Eques Angliae Ano Aet SVE43,' Sir Francis Drake, 1577, by Henry Hondius
4. The Spanish Armada Driven out of Calais by Fire by Richard Brydges Beechey
Background from {[https://www.ancient.eu/Francis_Drake/]}
Francis Drake by Mark Cartwright
published on 25 June 2020
Sir Francis Drake (c. 1540-1596 CE) was an English mariner, privateer and explorer who in 1588 CE helped defeat the Spanish Armada of Philip II of Spain (r. 1556-1598 CE) which attempted to invade the kingdom of Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603 CE). Roaming the Atlantic and Caribbean capturing their treasure ships, the Spanish called Drake 'El Draque' ('the Dragon'). Partial to combining exploration with piracy, Drake famously circumnavigated the globe in his ship the Golden Hind between 1577 and 1580 CE. One of England's most celebrated seafarers and idolised in his own lifetime, Drake was witty but sly, generous yet cruel, both audacious and reckless, fiercely patriotic and almost always lucky - in short, the archetypal Elizabethan hero. He died of dysentery in 1596 CE on an expedition to raid the Spanish Main one last time.
Early Life
Francis Drake was born in Devonshire c. 1540 CE, his father was a modest landowner and chaplain in the Chatham dockyard. Aged ten, Francis was already sailing the Thames in a small bark, and in 1563 CE, he first went to sea proper. Three years later he joined his cousin John Hawkins on a trading voyage that visited West Africa, acquired a number of slaves and crossed the Atlantic to the New World. In 1567 CE Drake repeated the voyage, again with Hawkins, but this time he was captain of the Judith, a ship of a mere 50 tons. Unfortunately for the young mariner, this expedition was curtailed when it was attacked by the Spanish at San Juan D'Ulloa on the east coast of Mexico on 23 September 1568 CE. The new viceroy of the Spanish Empire, Don Martin Enriquez, had offered peace terms but then treacherously went back on his word, an infamous about-turn that the English would use as justification for privateering for the next 40 years.
MARINERS LIKE FRANCIS DRAKE WERE GIVEN A LICENSE TO ACT AS PIRATES & TAKE WHATEVER THEY CAME ACROSS OF SPAIN'S ON THE HIGH SEAS.
At San Juan D'Ulloa the English lost four ships but Hawkins and Drake survived to return to England in the two remaining vessels. This was the beginning of a very personal enmity between Drake and all things Spanish, a hatred that was fuelled by his militant Protestantism. From then on, Drake regarded it as a sacred duty to weaken Spain by any means possible. Often preaching on his ship and always carrying on board his copy of Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1563 CE) on Protestants who had suffered under the reign of 'Bloody Mary', Drake would become the scourge of Catholic Spain and its Empire.
1572 CE: Panama & Privateering
On 24 May 1572 CE Drake sailed from Plymouth in the Swan, bound for Panama to explore what he could find there. Now that England and Spain were at war in all but name, Elizabeth, unable to fund large land armies on the Continent, considered that attacking Spanish treasure ships bringing loot from its New World empire was the best way to hurt Philip II of Spain and increase her own wealth. She was further motivated by Spain's continued exclusion of English merchants from trade with the New World. Accordingly, mariners like Drake were given a license to act as pirates and take whatever they came across of Spain's on the high seas. Courtiers, merchants, and sometimes even the queen herself, invested in these ventures, hoping to reap great rewards. The euphemistic name for the adventurers was 'privateers', the Spanish merely called them 'sea dogs'. Fitting out a fleet of ships and maintaining their crews was not cheap, though, and every expedition had to find its prize to make the whole thing financially viable. There was also the not insignificant matter that the Spanish did not take kindly to this nautical mugging and so their ships bristled with cannons.
Arriving in Panama, Drake attacked the Spanish settlement of Nombre de Dios and captured a sizeable quantity of loot. Landing on the Isthmus of Panama, Drake explored the area on foot. Climbing a tree as directed by one of the indigenous peoples there, the sailor was able to see the Pacific Ocean on 11 February 1573 CE, the first Englishman to do so. An unexpected bonus was the interception of a Spanish caravan loaded down with £40,000 worth of silver. Back home, a sojourn followed in Ireland where, in 1575 CE, Drake was involved in the infamous Rathlin Island massacre of 500 men, women, and children.
1577-80 CE Voyage of Circumnavigation
The idea to mount an expedition to explore what lay south of the equator and see if a great southern continent did really exist was first touted by Richard Grenville (1542-1591 CE) in 1574 CE. Grenville had failed to find backing for his plan as the search for the Northwest Passage took precedence, but in 1577 CE, Elizabeth turned to Drake for just such a southern voyage. Secretly, the queen invested in the project and instructed Drake not only to explore new trade possibilities but also to take whatever treasure he came across from the Spanish. Drake was given command of a fleet of five ships: Christopher, Elizabeth, Marigold, Pelican, and Swan. Mid-voyage the 140-ton Pelican would be renamed the Golden Hind in honour of Drake's principal patron, Sir Christopher Hatton, who had that device on his family coat of arms.
On 13 December 1577 CE Drake set off with 164 men on what would turn out to be an extraordinary voyage; 60 of the men would never see England again. The fleet sailed down the coast of northwest Africa and then across the Atlantic route to reach the eastern coast of South America in April 1578 CE. At the southern tip of South America, the Christopher and Swan turned back while the other ships pressed on through the Straits of Magellan in August. Heavy storms in September meant that the Golden Hind continued the expedition alone to sail up the west coast of South America. Spanish settlements like Valparaiso were taken completely by surprise when an English warship showed up in Pacific waters. Several treasure ships were captured, including in March 1579 CE the Nuestra Senora de la Concepćion (aka Cacafuego) off the coast of Peru with its massive cargo of silver.
Drake then sailed on up the west coast of North America in a failed search for the fabled Northwest Passage that was believed to provide an easy route to Asia. After he explored northern waters, the adventurer went back south and anchored near what is today San Francisco in June. There he claimed the land for his queen, naming it 'New Albion' (a claim never subsequently pursued). Drake then turned westwards, swept across the Pacific by the trade winds. In October he reached the East Indies (Indonesia and Philippines) and took on board six tons of valuable cloves. Repairs were made to the ship on Java and in March 1580 CE the Golden Hind crossed the Indian Ocean. In June Drake rounded the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and sailed up the Atlantic coast of that continent to reach Plymouth on 26 September 1580 CE. It was only the second circumnavigation of the world after Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480-1521 CE) in 1522 CE. More important at the time was the treasure Drake had been steadily filling his ship with along the way. The estimated value of the loot was perhaps £600,000 (the entire annual revenue of England) and the queen received a handsome £160,000.
On 4 April 1581 CE, Elizabeth boarded the Golden Hind docked at Deptford on the Thames and, pleased with the treasures he had captured and the glory of his navigational achievements, knighted Drake on its decks. This outraged the Spanish ambassador who regarded Drake as nothing more than a pirate. Drake had become Elizabeth's favourite sea dog, a feeling that must have been mutual as the mariner often gave his queen lavish gifts such as a gold crown embedded with emeralds and a diamond-studded cross in 1581 CE. The queen, too, gave gifts, notably a silver cup in the form of a globe which encased a coconut Drake had brought back from his voyage. Another present was the now-famous Armada Jewel by Nicholas Hilliard in 1588 CE, a gold and gem-encrusted brooch carrying two portraits of the queen. Drake, in terms of cash in his pocket, was probably then the richest man in England and he splashed out on a portfolio of properties which included Buckland Abbey. He acquired, too, a coat of arms (a ship atop a globe with two silver stars intersected by a wavy horizontal line or fess). His official motto became Sic Parvis Magna or 'Greatness from Small beginnings'.
1580s CE: More Privateering
In 1585 CE Drake sailed with a fleet of nearly 30 ships and 2,000 men to raid the Spanish West Indies. He freed many English ships that Philip had embargoed in Spanish-controlled ports that year and captured such a haul of Spanish arms it caused havoc with Philip's supplies meant for his Armada (see below). The important ports of San Domingo on Cuba and Cartagena, the capital of the Spanish Main, were sacked. The loot gained was not so great but Drake showed how vulnerable the Spanish Empire was to naval attacks. In the next couple of years, Drake roamed far and wide, making more raids on Spanish wealth in the Cape Verde islands, Colombia, Florida, and Hispaniola. Ships were captured and settlements torched as Elizabeth's number one 'sea dog' went to work on the Spanish Empire.
1587: The Raid on Cadiz
Philip's interest in England went back to 1553 CE when his father, King Charles V of Spain (r. 1516-1556 CE) arranged for him to marry Mary I of England (r. 1553-1558 CE). Mary's successor, Elizabeth I continued the Protestant English Reformation, and the Pope excommunicated the queen for heresy in February 1570 CE. Elizabeth was also active abroad, sending money and arms to the Huguenots in France and financial aid to Protestants in the Netherlands who were protesting against Philip's rule.
The already tense relationship between England and Spain was made worse by Elizabeth's privateers. Capturing ships on the high seas or attacking colonial settlements was one thing but when Drake went a big step further towards full-on warfare and attacked Cadiz in April 1587 CE, relations plummeted to a new low. Cadiz was Spain's most important Atlantic port and Drake 'singed the king's beard' in his audacious attack. Sailing straight into the harbour and ignoring the cannons fired from the fortress, Drake's fleet destroyed 31 ships, captured another six, and again destroyed valuable supplies destined for Spain's Armada. After three days, Drake sailed on to Cape Vincent in southern Portugal and spent another two months causing havoc among Spain's ships along the coast and as far out as the Azores. Philip's long-planned invasion, what he called the 'Enterprise of England', was delayed by these setbacks, but he remained determined to conquer his number one enemy. Philip even gained the blessing and financial aid of Pope Sixtus V (r. 1585-90 CE) as the king presented himself as the Sword of the Catholic Church.
1588 CE: The Spanish Armada
The Spanish Armada, a fleet of 132 ships packed with 17,000 soldiers and 7,000 mariners, sailed from Lisbon (then under Philip's rule) on 30 May 1588 CE. It was intended that the Armada would establish dominance of the English Channel and then reach the Netherlands in order to pick up a second army led by the Duke of Parma, Philip's regent there. The fleet would then sail to invade England.
The Armada was commanded by the Duke of Medina Sidonia. England's fleet of around 130 ships was commanded by Lord Howard of Effingham with Drake as vice-admiral in his flagship the Revenge. The large Spanish galleons - designed for transportation, not warfare - were much less nimble than the smaller English ships which would, it was hoped, be able to dash in and out of the Spanish fleet and cause havoc. In addition, the 20 English royal galleons were better armed than the best of the Spanish ships and their guns could fire further.
The Spanish galleons were spotted off the coast of Cornwall on 19 July. Fire beacons spread the news along the coast and, on 20 July, the English fleet sailed from its homeport of Plymouth to meet the invaders. There were about 50 fighting ships on each side and there would be three separate engagements as the navies battled each other and storms. These battles, spread over the next week, were off Eddystone, Portland, and the Isle of Wight. The English ships could not take advantage of their greater manoeuvrability or the superior knowledge of tides of their commanders as the Spanish adopted their familiar disciplined line-abreast formation - a giant crescent. The English did manage to fire heavily at the wings of the Armada, 'plucking their feathers' as Lord Howard put it (Guy, 341). Although the English fleet outgunned the Spanish, both sides found themselves with insufficient ammunition, and commanders were obliged to be frugal with their volleys. The Spanish prudently retreated to a safe anchorage off Calais on 27 July having lost only two ships and suffered only superficial damage to many others.
Six fireships, organised by Drake, were then sent into the Spanish fleet on the night of 28 July. Strong winds blew the unmanned ships into the anchored fleet and quickly spread the devastating flames amongst them. The English ships moved in for the kill off Gravelines off the Flemish coast on 29 July. The Spanish broke formation still having lost only four ships but many more were now badly damaged by cannon shots and many anchors had been hastily cut in order to escape the fire ships. The loss of these anchors would be a serious hindrance to the manoeuvrability of the Spanish ships over the coming weeks. The Armada was then hit by the increasingly strong winds from the south-west. The Duke of Medina Sidonia, unable to get close enough to grapple and board with the flighty English ships and with Parma's force blockaded in by Dutch ships, ordered a retreat and abandonment of the invasion.
Drake reported victory from Revenge:
God hath given us so good a day in forcing the enemy so far to leeward as I hope in God that the Prince of Parma and the Duke of Sidonia shall not shake hands these few days; and whensoever they shall meet, I believe neither of them will greatly rejoice of this day's service.
(Ferriby, 226)
The Armada was forced by the continuing storm to sail around the tempestuous shores of Scotland and Ireland in order to return home. A bad storm hit them in the Atlantic, and only half of the original Armada made it back to Spain in October 1588 CE. Philip did not give up despite the disaster of his great 'Enterprise', and he tried twice more to invade England (1596 and 1597 CE), but each time his fleet was repelled by storms.
1589 CE: The Portugal Expedition
An expedition was formed to attack both Philip's New World treasure ships and his remaining Armada ships in port in Spain in April 1589 CE. A mix of private and official ships and men, this expedition is sometimes called the Don Antonio Expedition as one of its leaders' aims was to capture Lisbon and restore Don Antonio to the Portuguese throne (he had been deposed by Philip in 1580 CE). Other names for this attack include the English Armada and the Drake-Norris Expedition, after Sir John Norris (c. 1547-1597 CE) who co-led the expedition with Drake. Elizabeth invested £49,000 pounds in the project but she would be sorely disappointed in the measly return.
The English fleet was impressive with 130-150 ships and at least 15,000 men. However, the expedition had confused aims and so, in the end, achieved little. Corunna was attacked but only partially captured and 2,000 Englishmen returned to England with their loot. Meanwhile, 50 Spanish ships idle in other Spanish ports were ignored. Lisbon was attacked - contrary to Elizabeth's instructions - but the Portuguese did not rise in support of Don Antonio as hoped for and the city resisted capture. Lacking sufficient supplies to continue and having missed the treasure ships coming through the Azores, the expedition retreated ignominiously back to England. With huge casualties, mostly from disease, the whole episode seriously damaged Drake's reputation and clearly showed that mixing private and state control of an expeditionary force only led to confusion and disunity. The queen was outraged with Drake at the attack on Lisbon, the complete failure to attack the Armada ships and the poor financial return. The old mariner thus became a landlubber and served as both the mayor of Plymouth and its Member of Parliament.
1595 CE: Final Expedition & Death
In August 1595 CE Drake showed the old sea dog still had some bite when he led an expedition alongside John Hawkins to the Caribbean. Men flocked to the docks at Plymouth, eager to sign up and sail with the greatest mariner England had so far produced. The objective of the 27-ship fleet was to attack the Isthmus of Panama where the Spanish silver caravans passed through. Alas, Hawkins died on the voyage out and then the attack on Porto Rico was a complete failure. The Spanish defences had been warned of the English fleet's arrival, giving them time to install extra cannons, and this intelligence also meant no treasure ships risked the area. Neither could any riches be found in the settlements Drake attacked. Beset with unfavourable winds as disease ran through the crews, Drake, then around 55 years of age, himself died of dysentery at Porto Bello on 28 January 1596 CE. Sir Francis Drake was, fittingly, buried at sea in a lead coffin, but the Panama expedition was a damp squib of an end to a glittering maritime career.
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Sir Francis Drake was one of the greatest privateers of all time, became the first Englishman to sail around the world, helped lead the Defeat of The Spanish Armada,, and became a politician.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOZidsh6iI8
Image:
1. Sir Francis Drake, oil painting by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger in Buckland Abbey (after 1590)
2. The mighty display of the Spanish armada in 1588 by Jan Luyken
3. Franciscus Draeck Nobilissimus Eques Angliae Ano Aet SVE43,' Sir Francis Drake, 1577, by Henry Hondius
4. The Spanish Armada Driven out of Calais by Fire by Richard Brydges Beechey
Background from {[https://www.ancient.eu/Francis_Drake/]}
Francis Drake by Mark Cartwright
published on 25 June 2020
Sir Francis Drake (c. 1540-1596 CE) was an English mariner, privateer and explorer who in 1588 CE helped defeat the Spanish Armada of Philip II of Spain (r. 1556-1598 CE) which attempted to invade the kingdom of Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603 CE). Roaming the Atlantic and Caribbean capturing their treasure ships, the Spanish called Drake 'El Draque' ('the Dragon'). Partial to combining exploration with piracy, Drake famously circumnavigated the globe in his ship the Golden Hind between 1577 and 1580 CE. One of England's most celebrated seafarers and idolised in his own lifetime, Drake was witty but sly, generous yet cruel, both audacious and reckless, fiercely patriotic and almost always lucky - in short, the archetypal Elizabethan hero. He died of dysentery in 1596 CE on an expedition to raid the Spanish Main one last time.
Early Life
Francis Drake was born in Devonshire c. 1540 CE, his father was a modest landowner and chaplain in the Chatham dockyard. Aged ten, Francis was already sailing the Thames in a small bark, and in 1563 CE, he first went to sea proper. Three years later he joined his cousin John Hawkins on a trading voyage that visited West Africa, acquired a number of slaves and crossed the Atlantic to the New World. In 1567 CE Drake repeated the voyage, again with Hawkins, but this time he was captain of the Judith, a ship of a mere 50 tons. Unfortunately for the young mariner, this expedition was curtailed when it was attacked by the Spanish at San Juan D'Ulloa on the east coast of Mexico on 23 September 1568 CE. The new viceroy of the Spanish Empire, Don Martin Enriquez, had offered peace terms but then treacherously went back on his word, an infamous about-turn that the English would use as justification for privateering for the next 40 years.
MARINERS LIKE FRANCIS DRAKE WERE GIVEN A LICENSE TO ACT AS PIRATES & TAKE WHATEVER THEY CAME ACROSS OF SPAIN'S ON THE HIGH SEAS.
At San Juan D'Ulloa the English lost four ships but Hawkins and Drake survived to return to England in the two remaining vessels. This was the beginning of a very personal enmity between Drake and all things Spanish, a hatred that was fuelled by his militant Protestantism. From then on, Drake regarded it as a sacred duty to weaken Spain by any means possible. Often preaching on his ship and always carrying on board his copy of Foxe's Book of Martyrs (1563 CE) on Protestants who had suffered under the reign of 'Bloody Mary', Drake would become the scourge of Catholic Spain and its Empire.
1572 CE: Panama & Privateering
On 24 May 1572 CE Drake sailed from Plymouth in the Swan, bound for Panama to explore what he could find there. Now that England and Spain were at war in all but name, Elizabeth, unable to fund large land armies on the Continent, considered that attacking Spanish treasure ships bringing loot from its New World empire was the best way to hurt Philip II of Spain and increase her own wealth. She was further motivated by Spain's continued exclusion of English merchants from trade with the New World. Accordingly, mariners like Drake were given a license to act as pirates and take whatever they came across of Spain's on the high seas. Courtiers, merchants, and sometimes even the queen herself, invested in these ventures, hoping to reap great rewards. The euphemistic name for the adventurers was 'privateers', the Spanish merely called them 'sea dogs'. Fitting out a fleet of ships and maintaining their crews was not cheap, though, and every expedition had to find its prize to make the whole thing financially viable. There was also the not insignificant matter that the Spanish did not take kindly to this nautical mugging and so their ships bristled with cannons.
Arriving in Panama, Drake attacked the Spanish settlement of Nombre de Dios and captured a sizeable quantity of loot. Landing on the Isthmus of Panama, Drake explored the area on foot. Climbing a tree as directed by one of the indigenous peoples there, the sailor was able to see the Pacific Ocean on 11 February 1573 CE, the first Englishman to do so. An unexpected bonus was the interception of a Spanish caravan loaded down with £40,000 worth of silver. Back home, a sojourn followed in Ireland where, in 1575 CE, Drake was involved in the infamous Rathlin Island massacre of 500 men, women, and children.
1577-80 CE Voyage of Circumnavigation
The idea to mount an expedition to explore what lay south of the equator and see if a great southern continent did really exist was first touted by Richard Grenville (1542-1591 CE) in 1574 CE. Grenville had failed to find backing for his plan as the search for the Northwest Passage took precedence, but in 1577 CE, Elizabeth turned to Drake for just such a southern voyage. Secretly, the queen invested in the project and instructed Drake not only to explore new trade possibilities but also to take whatever treasure he came across from the Spanish. Drake was given command of a fleet of five ships: Christopher, Elizabeth, Marigold, Pelican, and Swan. Mid-voyage the 140-ton Pelican would be renamed the Golden Hind in honour of Drake's principal patron, Sir Christopher Hatton, who had that device on his family coat of arms.
On 13 December 1577 CE Drake set off with 164 men on what would turn out to be an extraordinary voyage; 60 of the men would never see England again. The fleet sailed down the coast of northwest Africa and then across the Atlantic route to reach the eastern coast of South America in April 1578 CE. At the southern tip of South America, the Christopher and Swan turned back while the other ships pressed on through the Straits of Magellan in August. Heavy storms in September meant that the Golden Hind continued the expedition alone to sail up the west coast of South America. Spanish settlements like Valparaiso were taken completely by surprise when an English warship showed up in Pacific waters. Several treasure ships were captured, including in March 1579 CE the Nuestra Senora de la Concepćion (aka Cacafuego) off the coast of Peru with its massive cargo of silver.
Drake then sailed on up the west coast of North America in a failed search for the fabled Northwest Passage that was believed to provide an easy route to Asia. After he explored northern waters, the adventurer went back south and anchored near what is today San Francisco in June. There he claimed the land for his queen, naming it 'New Albion' (a claim never subsequently pursued). Drake then turned westwards, swept across the Pacific by the trade winds. In October he reached the East Indies (Indonesia and Philippines) and took on board six tons of valuable cloves. Repairs were made to the ship on Java and in March 1580 CE the Golden Hind crossed the Indian Ocean. In June Drake rounded the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and sailed up the Atlantic coast of that continent to reach Plymouth on 26 September 1580 CE. It was only the second circumnavigation of the world after Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480-1521 CE) in 1522 CE. More important at the time was the treasure Drake had been steadily filling his ship with along the way. The estimated value of the loot was perhaps £600,000 (the entire annual revenue of England) and the queen received a handsome £160,000.
On 4 April 1581 CE, Elizabeth boarded the Golden Hind docked at Deptford on the Thames and, pleased with the treasures he had captured and the glory of his navigational achievements, knighted Drake on its decks. This outraged the Spanish ambassador who regarded Drake as nothing more than a pirate. Drake had become Elizabeth's favourite sea dog, a feeling that must have been mutual as the mariner often gave his queen lavish gifts such as a gold crown embedded with emeralds and a diamond-studded cross in 1581 CE. The queen, too, gave gifts, notably a silver cup in the form of a globe which encased a coconut Drake had brought back from his voyage. Another present was the now-famous Armada Jewel by Nicholas Hilliard in 1588 CE, a gold and gem-encrusted brooch carrying two portraits of the queen. Drake, in terms of cash in his pocket, was probably then the richest man in England and he splashed out on a portfolio of properties which included Buckland Abbey. He acquired, too, a coat of arms (a ship atop a globe with two silver stars intersected by a wavy horizontal line or fess). His official motto became Sic Parvis Magna or 'Greatness from Small beginnings'.
1580s CE: More Privateering
In 1585 CE Drake sailed with a fleet of nearly 30 ships and 2,000 men to raid the Spanish West Indies. He freed many English ships that Philip had embargoed in Spanish-controlled ports that year and captured such a haul of Spanish arms it caused havoc with Philip's supplies meant for his Armada (see below). The important ports of San Domingo on Cuba and Cartagena, the capital of the Spanish Main, were sacked. The loot gained was not so great but Drake showed how vulnerable the Spanish Empire was to naval attacks. In the next couple of years, Drake roamed far and wide, making more raids on Spanish wealth in the Cape Verde islands, Colombia, Florida, and Hispaniola. Ships were captured and settlements torched as Elizabeth's number one 'sea dog' went to work on the Spanish Empire.
1587: The Raid on Cadiz
Philip's interest in England went back to 1553 CE when his father, King Charles V of Spain (r. 1516-1556 CE) arranged for him to marry Mary I of England (r. 1553-1558 CE). Mary's successor, Elizabeth I continued the Protestant English Reformation, and the Pope excommunicated the queen for heresy in February 1570 CE. Elizabeth was also active abroad, sending money and arms to the Huguenots in France and financial aid to Protestants in the Netherlands who were protesting against Philip's rule.
The already tense relationship between England and Spain was made worse by Elizabeth's privateers. Capturing ships on the high seas or attacking colonial settlements was one thing but when Drake went a big step further towards full-on warfare and attacked Cadiz in April 1587 CE, relations plummeted to a new low. Cadiz was Spain's most important Atlantic port and Drake 'singed the king's beard' in his audacious attack. Sailing straight into the harbour and ignoring the cannons fired from the fortress, Drake's fleet destroyed 31 ships, captured another six, and again destroyed valuable supplies destined for Spain's Armada. After three days, Drake sailed on to Cape Vincent in southern Portugal and spent another two months causing havoc among Spain's ships along the coast and as far out as the Azores. Philip's long-planned invasion, what he called the 'Enterprise of England', was delayed by these setbacks, but he remained determined to conquer his number one enemy. Philip even gained the blessing and financial aid of Pope Sixtus V (r. 1585-90 CE) as the king presented himself as the Sword of the Catholic Church.
1588 CE: The Spanish Armada
The Spanish Armada, a fleet of 132 ships packed with 17,000 soldiers and 7,000 mariners, sailed from Lisbon (then under Philip's rule) on 30 May 1588 CE. It was intended that the Armada would establish dominance of the English Channel and then reach the Netherlands in order to pick up a second army led by the Duke of Parma, Philip's regent there. The fleet would then sail to invade England.
The Armada was commanded by the Duke of Medina Sidonia. England's fleet of around 130 ships was commanded by Lord Howard of Effingham with Drake as vice-admiral in his flagship the Revenge. The large Spanish galleons - designed for transportation, not warfare - were much less nimble than the smaller English ships which would, it was hoped, be able to dash in and out of the Spanish fleet and cause havoc. In addition, the 20 English royal galleons were better armed than the best of the Spanish ships and their guns could fire further.
The Spanish galleons were spotted off the coast of Cornwall on 19 July. Fire beacons spread the news along the coast and, on 20 July, the English fleet sailed from its homeport of Plymouth to meet the invaders. There were about 50 fighting ships on each side and there would be three separate engagements as the navies battled each other and storms. These battles, spread over the next week, were off Eddystone, Portland, and the Isle of Wight. The English ships could not take advantage of their greater manoeuvrability or the superior knowledge of tides of their commanders as the Spanish adopted their familiar disciplined line-abreast formation - a giant crescent. The English did manage to fire heavily at the wings of the Armada, 'plucking their feathers' as Lord Howard put it (Guy, 341). Although the English fleet outgunned the Spanish, both sides found themselves with insufficient ammunition, and commanders were obliged to be frugal with their volleys. The Spanish prudently retreated to a safe anchorage off Calais on 27 July having lost only two ships and suffered only superficial damage to many others.
Six fireships, organised by Drake, were then sent into the Spanish fleet on the night of 28 July. Strong winds blew the unmanned ships into the anchored fleet and quickly spread the devastating flames amongst them. The English ships moved in for the kill off Gravelines off the Flemish coast on 29 July. The Spanish broke formation still having lost only four ships but many more were now badly damaged by cannon shots and many anchors had been hastily cut in order to escape the fire ships. The loss of these anchors would be a serious hindrance to the manoeuvrability of the Spanish ships over the coming weeks. The Armada was then hit by the increasingly strong winds from the south-west. The Duke of Medina Sidonia, unable to get close enough to grapple and board with the flighty English ships and with Parma's force blockaded in by Dutch ships, ordered a retreat and abandonment of the invasion.
Drake reported victory from Revenge:
God hath given us so good a day in forcing the enemy so far to leeward as I hope in God that the Prince of Parma and the Duke of Sidonia shall not shake hands these few days; and whensoever they shall meet, I believe neither of them will greatly rejoice of this day's service.
(Ferriby, 226)
The Armada was forced by the continuing storm to sail around the tempestuous shores of Scotland and Ireland in order to return home. A bad storm hit them in the Atlantic, and only half of the original Armada made it back to Spain in October 1588 CE. Philip did not give up despite the disaster of his great 'Enterprise', and he tried twice more to invade England (1596 and 1597 CE), but each time his fleet was repelled by storms.
1589 CE: The Portugal Expedition
An expedition was formed to attack both Philip's New World treasure ships and his remaining Armada ships in port in Spain in April 1589 CE. A mix of private and official ships and men, this expedition is sometimes called the Don Antonio Expedition as one of its leaders' aims was to capture Lisbon and restore Don Antonio to the Portuguese throne (he had been deposed by Philip in 1580 CE). Other names for this attack include the English Armada and the Drake-Norris Expedition, after Sir John Norris (c. 1547-1597 CE) who co-led the expedition with Drake. Elizabeth invested £49,000 pounds in the project but she would be sorely disappointed in the measly return.
The English fleet was impressive with 130-150 ships and at least 15,000 men. However, the expedition had confused aims and so, in the end, achieved little. Corunna was attacked but only partially captured and 2,000 Englishmen returned to England with their loot. Meanwhile, 50 Spanish ships idle in other Spanish ports were ignored. Lisbon was attacked - contrary to Elizabeth's instructions - but the Portuguese did not rise in support of Don Antonio as hoped for and the city resisted capture. Lacking sufficient supplies to continue and having missed the treasure ships coming through the Azores, the expedition retreated ignominiously back to England. With huge casualties, mostly from disease, the whole episode seriously damaged Drake's reputation and clearly showed that mixing private and state control of an expeditionary force only led to confusion and disunity. The queen was outraged with Drake at the attack on Lisbon, the complete failure to attack the Armada ships and the poor financial return. The old mariner thus became a landlubber and served as both the mayor of Plymouth and its Member of Parliament.
1595 CE: Final Expedition & Death
In August 1595 CE Drake showed the old sea dog still had some bite when he led an expedition alongside John Hawkins to the Caribbean. Men flocked to the docks at Plymouth, eager to sign up and sail with the greatest mariner England had so far produced. The objective of the 27-ship fleet was to attack the Isthmus of Panama where the Spanish silver caravans passed through. Alas, Hawkins died on the voyage out and then the attack on Porto Rico was a complete failure. The Spanish defences had been warned of the English fleet's arrival, giving them time to install extra cannons, and this intelligence also meant no treasure ships risked the area. Neither could any riches be found in the settlements Drake attacked. Beset with unfavourable winds as disease ran through the crews, Drake, then around 55 years of age, himself died of dysentery at Porto Bello on 28 January 1596 CE. Sir Francis Drake was, fittingly, buried at sea in a lead coffin, but the Panama expedition was a damp squib of an end to a glittering maritime career.
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Sir Francis Drake Documentary 2001 Documentary with overview of Sir Francis Drake's 1577-1580 voyage and circumnavigation of the world, including discussion ...
This is a very long documentary but every educational IMHO
Sir Francis Drake Documentary 2001 Documentary with overview of Sir Francis Drake's 1577-1580 voyage and circumnavigation of the world, including discussion of various theories on where.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3gYjUtyRwA
Images:
1. A Model of the Golden Hind by Alex Butterfield
2. The Spanish Armada Driven out of Calais by Fire by Richard Brydges Beechey
3. The Armada Jewel by Kotomi.
Background from {[https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Francis_Drake]}
Sir Francis Drake
Born c. 1540s at Tavistock, Devon
Died January 28th 1596, Porto Belo, Panama
Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral, (c. 1540 – January 28 1596) was a pre-eminent English navigator, politician, civil engineer, and known slave trader, of the Elizabethan age. He became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, and the second circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition, from 1577 to 1580. Queen Elizabeth thought very highly of him and appointed him second-in-command of the English fleet that sailed against the Spanish Armada in 1588.
Although he was famous for his courage in battle, he was not liked by some of his peers. His legendary exploits made him a hero among the English but to the Spaniards he was equated with the devil himself. He was known as "El Dragón" for his actions. King Philip II placed a bounty on Drake's head of 20,000 ducats; about 10 million US dollars.
Drake's exploits made a significant contribution to the birth of what became the British Empire, as Elizabeth turned her attention away from ambitions in Europe towards the Americas and beyond, where her colony of Virginia was established. Drake's activities thus set the stage for Elizabeth's subjects to settle in North America, where they brought with them notions of religious liberty, of civil society composed of voluntary associations, out of which would arise American democracy.
Birth and early years
c
Francis Drake was born in the parish of Crowndale, a mile south of Tavistock, Devon, probably in February or March 1540. As with many of Drake's contemporaries, the exact date of his birth is unknown and could be as early as 1535. Francis was the eldest of 12 children born to Edmund Drake (1518–1585), a Protestant farmer who later became a preacher, and his wife Mary Mylwaye. Francis was a grandson of John Drake and Margaret Cole. He is sometimes confused with his cousin John Drake (1573–1634), who was the son of Edmund's older brother, Richard Drake. His maternal grandfather was Richard Mylwaye. John Drake and Margaret Cole were also great-grandparents of Sir Walter Raleigh.
He was reportedly named after his godfather Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford, and throughout his cousins' lineages there are direct connections to royalty and famous persons, such as Sir Richard Grenville, Ivor Callely, Amy Grenville, and Geoffrey Chaucer. His father was a tenant of the Earl of Bedford, and must have stood well with him, for Francis Russell, the heir of the earldom, was the boy's godfather."
During the Roman Catholic uprising of 1549, the family was forced to flee to Kent. At about the age of 13, Francis took to the sea on a cargo barque, becoming master of the ship at the age of 20. He spent his early career honing his sailing skills on the difficult waters of the North Sea, and after the death of the captain he became master of his own barque. At age 23, Drake made his first voyage to the New World under the sails of the Hawkins family of Plymouth, in company with his second cousin, Sir John Hawkins.
Circumnavigating the world
Entering the Pacific
In 1577, Drake was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth to undertake an expedition against the Spanish along the Pacific coast of the Americas. He set out to depart from Plymouth on November 15 on his expedition, but terrible weather threatened him and his fleet, who were forced to take refuge in Falmouth, from where they returned to Plymouth for repair. After this minor setback, he set sail once again from England on December 13, aboard the Pelican, with four other ships and 164 men. After crossing the Atlantic, one of the ships, under Thomas Winter turned back through the Magellan Strait, on the east coast of South America.
The four remaining ships departed for the Magellan Strait at the southern tip of the continent. This course established "Drake's Passage" but the route south of Tierra del Fuego around Cape Horn was not discovered until 1616. Drake crossed from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Magellan Strait. After this passage a storm blew his ship so far south that he realized Tierra del Fuego was not part of a southern continent, as was believed at that time. This voyage established Drake as the first Antarctic explorer, because the southernmost point of his voyage was at least 56 degrees according to astronomical data quoted in Haklyut's "The Principall Navigators" of 1589. This achievement was not surpassed until James Cook's voyage of 1773 and was the first known occasion that any explorer had traveled further south than any other human being.
A few weeks later Drake made it to the Pacific, but violent storms destroyed one of the ships and caused another to return to England. He pushed onwards in his lone flagship, now renamed the Golden Hind in honor of Sir Christopher Hatton (after his coat of arms). The Golden Hind sailed north alone along the Pacific coast of South America, attacking Spanish ports and rifling towns as it went. Some Spanish ships were captured, and Drake made good use of their more accurate charts.
The most notable seizures included a Spanish ship, ladened with riches from Peru including 25,000 pezos of pure, fine gold, amounting in value to 37,000 ducats of Spanish money. Near Lima, Drake discovered news of a ship sailing towards Panama, The Cacafuego. He gave chase and eventually captured her, which proved to be the most profitable capture. He found 80 pounds of gold, a gold crucifix, countless jewels, 13 chests full of royal plate and 26 tons of silver.
Nova Albion
On June 17, 1579, Drake landed somewhere north of Spain's northern-most claim at Point Loma. He found a good port, landed, repaired and restocked his vessels, then stayed for a time, keeping friendly relations with the natives. It is said that he left behind many of his men as a small colony, but his planned return voyages to the colony were never realized. He claimed the land in the name of the Holy Trinity for the English Crown as called Nova Albion—Latin for "New Britain."
The precise location of the port was carefully guarded to keep it secret from the Spaniards, and several of Drake's maps may even have been altered to this end. All first hand records from the voyage, including logs, paintings, and charts were lost when Whitehall Palace burned in 1698. A bronze plaque inscribed with Drake's claim to the new lands, fitting the description in Drake's own account, was discovered in Marin County, California. This so-called Drake's Plate of Brass was later declared a hoax.
Another location often claimed to be Nova Albion is Whale Cove (Oregon), although to date there is no evidence to suggest this, other than a general resemblance to a single map penned a decade after the landing. Several other locations have been suggested in both Oregon and California. For example, in 2008 Garry Gitzen posited Nehalem Bay, Oregon, as the true New Albion. However, in 2012, after years of conducting its own review of the research, the Department of the Interior designated Drake's Cove in Drake's Bay, California, as a National Historic Landmark: the official site of Drake's landing.
The colonial claims were established with full knowledge of Drake's claims, which they reinforced, and remained valid in the minds of the English colonists on the Atlantic coast when those colonies became free states. Maps made soon after would have "Nova Albion" written above the entire northern frontier of New Spain. These territorial claims became important during the negotiations that ended the Mexican-American War between the United States and Mexico.
Continuing the journey
Drake now headed westward across the Pacific, and a few months later reached the Moluccas, a group of islands in the southwest Pacific, in eastern modern-day Indonesia. While there, the Golden Hind became caught on a reef and was almost lost. After three days of waiting for expedient tides and dumping cargo, the bark was miraculously freed. Drake and his men befriended a sultan king of the Moluccas and involved themselves in some intrigues with the Portuguese there.
He made multiple stops on his way toward the tip of Africa, eventually rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and reached Sierra Leone by July 22, 1580. On September 26, the Golden Hind sailed into Plymouth with Drake and 59 remaining crew aboard, along with a rich cargo of spices and captured Spanish treasures. The Queen's half-share of the cargo surpassed the rest of the crown's income for that entire year. Hailed as the first Englishman to circumnavigate the Earth (and the second such voyage overall, after Magellan's in 1520), Drake was knighted by Queen Elizabeth aboard the Golden Hind on April 4, 1581, and became the Mayor of Plymouth and a Member of Parliament.
The Queen ordered all written accounts of Drake's voyage to be considered classified information, and its participants sworn to silence on pain of death; her aim was to keep Drake's activities away from the eyes of rival Spain.
The Spanish Armada
War broke out between Spain and England in 1585. Drake sailed to the New World and sacked the ports of Santo Domingo and Cartagena. On the return leg of the voyage, he captured the Spanish fort of San Augustíne in Florida. These exploits encouraged Philip II of Spain to order the planning for an invasion of England.
In a pre-emptive strike, Drake "singed the King of Spain's beard" by sailing a fleet into Cadiz, one of Spain's main ports, and occupied the harbor for three days, capturing six ships and destroying 31 others as well as a large quantity of stores. The attack delayed the Spanish invasion by a year.
Drake was vice admiral in command of the English fleet (under Lord Howard of Effingham) when it overcame the Spanish Armada that was attempting to invade England in 1588. As the English fleet pursued the Armada up the English Channel in closing darkness, Drake put duty second and captured the Spanish galleon Rosario, along with Admiral Pedro de Valdés and all his crew. The Spanish ship was known to be carrying substantial funds to pay the Spanish Army in the Low Countries. Drake's ship had been leading the English pursuit of the Armada by means of a lantern. By extinguishing this for the capture, Drake put the fleet into disarray overnight. This exemplified Drake's ability, as a privateer, to suspend strategic purpose if a tactical profit were on offer.
On the night of July 29, along with Howard, Drake organized fire-ships, causing the majority of the Spanish captains to break formation and sail out of Calais into the open sea. The next day, Drake was present at the Battle of Gravelines.
The most famous (but probably apocryphal) anecdote about Drake relates that, prior to the battle, he was playing a game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe. On being warned of the approach of the Spanish fleet, Drake is said to have remarked that there was plenty of time to finish the game and still beat the Spaniards. This battle was the high point of the remarkable mariner's career. In fact tidal conditions caused some delay in the launching of the English fleet as the Spanish drew nearer so it is easy to see how a popular myth of Drake's cavalier attitude to the Spanish threat may have originated.
In 1589, the year after defeating the Armada, Drake was sent to support the rebels in Portugal, which opposed the personal union of Spain and Portugal under King Philip II of Spain in 1580. En route, he sacked the city of La Coruña in Spain. This massive combined naval and land expedition (see "English Armada") was a dismal failure, attributed to a grievous lack of organization, poor training, and paltry supplies. It was a crucial turning point in the Anglo-Spanish War (1585).
Controversies
Slave Trading
Drake and Sir John Hawkins made the first English slave-trading expeditions, making his fortune through the sale of West Africans. Around 1563 Drake first sailed west to the Spanish Main, on a ship owned by his uncle John Hawkins, with a cargo of people forcibly removed from the coast of West Africa. Drake planned to sell the Africans into slavery in Spanish plantations. But Drake took an immediate dislike to the Spanish, at least in part due to their Catholicism and inherent mistrust of non-Spaniards. His hostility is said to have increased over an incident at San Juan de Ulua in 1568, when, while delivering his human cargo, a Spanish fleet took him by surprise. Although he was in an enemy port, it was conventional for the Spanish to 'surrender' for a few hours in order to purchase control of the kidnap victims. Thus, it was unusual for a fleet of enemy warships to appear out of the blue. Drake survived the attack largely because of his ability to swim. From then on, he devoted his life to working against the Spanish Empire; the Spanish considered him an outlaw pirate, but to England he was simply a sailor and privateer. On his second such voyage, he fought a battle against Spanish forces that cost many English lives but earned him the favor of Queen Elizabeth.
Conflict in the Caribbean
The most celebrated of Drake's Caribbean adventures was his capture of the Spanish Silver Train at Nombre de Dios in March 1573. With a crew including many French privateers and Maroons — African slaves who had escaped the Spanish — Drake raided the waters around Darien (in modern Panama) and tracked the Silver Train to the nearby port of Nombre de Dios. He made off with a fortune in gold, but had to leave behind another fortune in silver, because it was too heavy to carry back to England. It was during this expedition that he climbed a high tree in the central mountains of the Isthmus of Panama and thus became the first Englishman to see the Pacific Ocean.
When Drake returned to Plymouth on August 9, 1573, a mere 30 Englishmen returned with him, every one of them rich for life. However, Queen Elizabeth, who had up to this point sponsored and encouraged Drake's raids, signed a temporary truce with King Philip II of Spain, and so was unable to officially acknowledge Drake's accomplishment.
Final years
Drake's seafaring career continued into his mid fifties. In 1595, following a disastrous campaign against Spanish America, where he suffered several defeats in a row, he unsuccessfully attacked San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Spanish gunners from El Morro Castle shot a cannonball through the cabin of Drake's flagship, but he survived. In 1596, he died of dysentery while anchored off the coast of Porto Belo, Panama where some Spanish treasure ships had sought shelter. He was buried at sea in a lead coffin, near Portobelo, Panama.
Legacy
Drake's exploits as an explorer have become an irrevocable part of the world's subconsciousness, particularly in Europe. Numerous stories and fictional adaptations of his adventures exist to this day. Considered a hero in England, it is said that if England is ever in peril, beating Drake's Drum will cause Drake to return to save the country. This is a variation of the sleeping hero folk-tale.
During his circumnavigation of the globe, Drake left a plate upon leaving his landing place on the west coast of North America, claiming the land for England. In the 1930s, it appeared that Drake's plate had been found near San Francisco. Forty years later, scientists confirmed that the plate was a hoax, as had been suspected. Later information attributed the hoax to E Clampus Vitus.
Drake's adventures, though less known in the United States, still have some effect. For instance, a major east-west road in Marin County, California is named Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. It connects Point San Quentin on San Francisco Bay with Point Reyes and Drakes Bay. Each end is near a site considered by some to be Drake's landing place.
References
• Bawlf, R. Samuel. The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, 1577-1580. New York : Walker, 2003. ISBN [login to see] 053
• Coote, Stephen. Drake: the life and legend of an Elizabethan hero. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2005. ISBN [login to see] 657
• Gitzen, Garry. Sir Francis Drake in Nehalem Bay. lulu.com, 2012. ISBN [login to see]
• Hughes-Hallett, Lucy. Heroes: A History of Hero Worship. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, New York, 2004. ISBN [login to see] .
• Rodger, N.A.M. The Safeguard of the Sea; A Naval History of Britain 660-1649. London, 1997. ISSN 00287806
• Turner, Michael. In Drake's Wake - The Early Voyages, Paul Mould Publishing 2005. ISBN [login to see] 212
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Sir Francis Drake Documentary 2001 Documentary with overview of Sir Francis Drake's 1577-1580 voyage and circumnavigation of the world, including discussion of various theories on where.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3gYjUtyRwA
Images:
1. A Model of the Golden Hind by Alex Butterfield
2. The Spanish Armada Driven out of Calais by Fire by Richard Brydges Beechey
3. The Armada Jewel by Kotomi.
Background from {[https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Francis_Drake]}
Sir Francis Drake
Born c. 1540s at Tavistock, Devon
Died January 28th 1596, Porto Belo, Panama
Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral, (c. 1540 – January 28 1596) was a pre-eminent English navigator, politician, civil engineer, and known slave trader, of the Elizabethan age. He became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, and the second circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition, from 1577 to 1580. Queen Elizabeth thought very highly of him and appointed him second-in-command of the English fleet that sailed against the Spanish Armada in 1588.
Although he was famous for his courage in battle, he was not liked by some of his peers. His legendary exploits made him a hero among the English but to the Spaniards he was equated with the devil himself. He was known as "El Dragón" for his actions. King Philip II placed a bounty on Drake's head of 20,000 ducats; about 10 million US dollars.
Drake's exploits made a significant contribution to the birth of what became the British Empire, as Elizabeth turned her attention away from ambitions in Europe towards the Americas and beyond, where her colony of Virginia was established. Drake's activities thus set the stage for Elizabeth's subjects to settle in North America, where they brought with them notions of religious liberty, of civil society composed of voluntary associations, out of which would arise American democracy.
Birth and early years
c
Francis Drake was born in the parish of Crowndale, a mile south of Tavistock, Devon, probably in February or March 1540. As with many of Drake's contemporaries, the exact date of his birth is unknown and could be as early as 1535. Francis was the eldest of 12 children born to Edmund Drake (1518–1585), a Protestant farmer who later became a preacher, and his wife Mary Mylwaye. Francis was a grandson of John Drake and Margaret Cole. He is sometimes confused with his cousin John Drake (1573–1634), who was the son of Edmund's older brother, Richard Drake. His maternal grandfather was Richard Mylwaye. John Drake and Margaret Cole were also great-grandparents of Sir Walter Raleigh.
He was reportedly named after his godfather Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford, and throughout his cousins' lineages there are direct connections to royalty and famous persons, such as Sir Richard Grenville, Ivor Callely, Amy Grenville, and Geoffrey Chaucer. His father was a tenant of the Earl of Bedford, and must have stood well with him, for Francis Russell, the heir of the earldom, was the boy's godfather."
During the Roman Catholic uprising of 1549, the family was forced to flee to Kent. At about the age of 13, Francis took to the sea on a cargo barque, becoming master of the ship at the age of 20. He spent his early career honing his sailing skills on the difficult waters of the North Sea, and after the death of the captain he became master of his own barque. At age 23, Drake made his first voyage to the New World under the sails of the Hawkins family of Plymouth, in company with his second cousin, Sir John Hawkins.
Circumnavigating the world
Entering the Pacific
In 1577, Drake was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth to undertake an expedition against the Spanish along the Pacific coast of the Americas. He set out to depart from Plymouth on November 15 on his expedition, but terrible weather threatened him and his fleet, who were forced to take refuge in Falmouth, from where they returned to Plymouth for repair. After this minor setback, he set sail once again from England on December 13, aboard the Pelican, with four other ships and 164 men. After crossing the Atlantic, one of the ships, under Thomas Winter turned back through the Magellan Strait, on the east coast of South America.
The four remaining ships departed for the Magellan Strait at the southern tip of the continent. This course established "Drake's Passage" but the route south of Tierra del Fuego around Cape Horn was not discovered until 1616. Drake crossed from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Magellan Strait. After this passage a storm blew his ship so far south that he realized Tierra del Fuego was not part of a southern continent, as was believed at that time. This voyage established Drake as the first Antarctic explorer, because the southernmost point of his voyage was at least 56 degrees according to astronomical data quoted in Haklyut's "The Principall Navigators" of 1589. This achievement was not surpassed until James Cook's voyage of 1773 and was the first known occasion that any explorer had traveled further south than any other human being.
A few weeks later Drake made it to the Pacific, but violent storms destroyed one of the ships and caused another to return to England. He pushed onwards in his lone flagship, now renamed the Golden Hind in honor of Sir Christopher Hatton (after his coat of arms). The Golden Hind sailed north alone along the Pacific coast of South America, attacking Spanish ports and rifling towns as it went. Some Spanish ships were captured, and Drake made good use of their more accurate charts.
The most notable seizures included a Spanish ship, ladened with riches from Peru including 25,000 pezos of pure, fine gold, amounting in value to 37,000 ducats of Spanish money. Near Lima, Drake discovered news of a ship sailing towards Panama, The Cacafuego. He gave chase and eventually captured her, which proved to be the most profitable capture. He found 80 pounds of gold, a gold crucifix, countless jewels, 13 chests full of royal plate and 26 tons of silver.
Nova Albion
On June 17, 1579, Drake landed somewhere north of Spain's northern-most claim at Point Loma. He found a good port, landed, repaired and restocked his vessels, then stayed for a time, keeping friendly relations with the natives. It is said that he left behind many of his men as a small colony, but his planned return voyages to the colony were never realized. He claimed the land in the name of the Holy Trinity for the English Crown as called Nova Albion—Latin for "New Britain."
The precise location of the port was carefully guarded to keep it secret from the Spaniards, and several of Drake's maps may even have been altered to this end. All first hand records from the voyage, including logs, paintings, and charts were lost when Whitehall Palace burned in 1698. A bronze plaque inscribed with Drake's claim to the new lands, fitting the description in Drake's own account, was discovered in Marin County, California. This so-called Drake's Plate of Brass was later declared a hoax.
Another location often claimed to be Nova Albion is Whale Cove (Oregon), although to date there is no evidence to suggest this, other than a general resemblance to a single map penned a decade after the landing. Several other locations have been suggested in both Oregon and California. For example, in 2008 Garry Gitzen posited Nehalem Bay, Oregon, as the true New Albion. However, in 2012, after years of conducting its own review of the research, the Department of the Interior designated Drake's Cove in Drake's Bay, California, as a National Historic Landmark: the official site of Drake's landing.
The colonial claims were established with full knowledge of Drake's claims, which they reinforced, and remained valid in the minds of the English colonists on the Atlantic coast when those colonies became free states. Maps made soon after would have "Nova Albion" written above the entire northern frontier of New Spain. These territorial claims became important during the negotiations that ended the Mexican-American War between the United States and Mexico.
Continuing the journey
Drake now headed westward across the Pacific, and a few months later reached the Moluccas, a group of islands in the southwest Pacific, in eastern modern-day Indonesia. While there, the Golden Hind became caught on a reef and was almost lost. After three days of waiting for expedient tides and dumping cargo, the bark was miraculously freed. Drake and his men befriended a sultan king of the Moluccas and involved themselves in some intrigues with the Portuguese there.
He made multiple stops on his way toward the tip of Africa, eventually rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and reached Sierra Leone by July 22, 1580. On September 26, the Golden Hind sailed into Plymouth with Drake and 59 remaining crew aboard, along with a rich cargo of spices and captured Spanish treasures. The Queen's half-share of the cargo surpassed the rest of the crown's income for that entire year. Hailed as the first Englishman to circumnavigate the Earth (and the second such voyage overall, after Magellan's in 1520), Drake was knighted by Queen Elizabeth aboard the Golden Hind on April 4, 1581, and became the Mayor of Plymouth and a Member of Parliament.
The Queen ordered all written accounts of Drake's voyage to be considered classified information, and its participants sworn to silence on pain of death; her aim was to keep Drake's activities away from the eyes of rival Spain.
The Spanish Armada
War broke out between Spain and England in 1585. Drake sailed to the New World and sacked the ports of Santo Domingo and Cartagena. On the return leg of the voyage, he captured the Spanish fort of San Augustíne in Florida. These exploits encouraged Philip II of Spain to order the planning for an invasion of England.
In a pre-emptive strike, Drake "singed the King of Spain's beard" by sailing a fleet into Cadiz, one of Spain's main ports, and occupied the harbor for three days, capturing six ships and destroying 31 others as well as a large quantity of stores. The attack delayed the Spanish invasion by a year.
Drake was vice admiral in command of the English fleet (under Lord Howard of Effingham) when it overcame the Spanish Armada that was attempting to invade England in 1588. As the English fleet pursued the Armada up the English Channel in closing darkness, Drake put duty second and captured the Spanish galleon Rosario, along with Admiral Pedro de Valdés and all his crew. The Spanish ship was known to be carrying substantial funds to pay the Spanish Army in the Low Countries. Drake's ship had been leading the English pursuit of the Armada by means of a lantern. By extinguishing this for the capture, Drake put the fleet into disarray overnight. This exemplified Drake's ability, as a privateer, to suspend strategic purpose if a tactical profit were on offer.
On the night of July 29, along with Howard, Drake organized fire-ships, causing the majority of the Spanish captains to break formation and sail out of Calais into the open sea. The next day, Drake was present at the Battle of Gravelines.
The most famous (but probably apocryphal) anecdote about Drake relates that, prior to the battle, he was playing a game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe. On being warned of the approach of the Spanish fleet, Drake is said to have remarked that there was plenty of time to finish the game and still beat the Spaniards. This battle was the high point of the remarkable mariner's career. In fact tidal conditions caused some delay in the launching of the English fleet as the Spanish drew nearer so it is easy to see how a popular myth of Drake's cavalier attitude to the Spanish threat may have originated.
In 1589, the year after defeating the Armada, Drake was sent to support the rebels in Portugal, which opposed the personal union of Spain and Portugal under King Philip II of Spain in 1580. En route, he sacked the city of La Coruña in Spain. This massive combined naval and land expedition (see "English Armada") was a dismal failure, attributed to a grievous lack of organization, poor training, and paltry supplies. It was a crucial turning point in the Anglo-Spanish War (1585).
Controversies
Slave Trading
Drake and Sir John Hawkins made the first English slave-trading expeditions, making his fortune through the sale of West Africans. Around 1563 Drake first sailed west to the Spanish Main, on a ship owned by his uncle John Hawkins, with a cargo of people forcibly removed from the coast of West Africa. Drake planned to sell the Africans into slavery in Spanish plantations. But Drake took an immediate dislike to the Spanish, at least in part due to their Catholicism and inherent mistrust of non-Spaniards. His hostility is said to have increased over an incident at San Juan de Ulua in 1568, when, while delivering his human cargo, a Spanish fleet took him by surprise. Although he was in an enemy port, it was conventional for the Spanish to 'surrender' for a few hours in order to purchase control of the kidnap victims. Thus, it was unusual for a fleet of enemy warships to appear out of the blue. Drake survived the attack largely because of his ability to swim. From then on, he devoted his life to working against the Spanish Empire; the Spanish considered him an outlaw pirate, but to England he was simply a sailor and privateer. On his second such voyage, he fought a battle against Spanish forces that cost many English lives but earned him the favor of Queen Elizabeth.
Conflict in the Caribbean
The most celebrated of Drake's Caribbean adventures was his capture of the Spanish Silver Train at Nombre de Dios in March 1573. With a crew including many French privateers and Maroons — African slaves who had escaped the Spanish — Drake raided the waters around Darien (in modern Panama) and tracked the Silver Train to the nearby port of Nombre de Dios. He made off with a fortune in gold, but had to leave behind another fortune in silver, because it was too heavy to carry back to England. It was during this expedition that he climbed a high tree in the central mountains of the Isthmus of Panama and thus became the first Englishman to see the Pacific Ocean.
When Drake returned to Plymouth on August 9, 1573, a mere 30 Englishmen returned with him, every one of them rich for life. However, Queen Elizabeth, who had up to this point sponsored and encouraged Drake's raids, signed a temporary truce with King Philip II of Spain, and so was unable to officially acknowledge Drake's accomplishment.
Final years
Drake's seafaring career continued into his mid fifties. In 1595, following a disastrous campaign against Spanish America, where he suffered several defeats in a row, he unsuccessfully attacked San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Spanish gunners from El Morro Castle shot a cannonball through the cabin of Drake's flagship, but he survived. In 1596, he died of dysentery while anchored off the coast of Porto Belo, Panama where some Spanish treasure ships had sought shelter. He was buried at sea in a lead coffin, near Portobelo, Panama.
Legacy
Drake's exploits as an explorer have become an irrevocable part of the world's subconsciousness, particularly in Europe. Numerous stories and fictional adaptations of his adventures exist to this day. Considered a hero in England, it is said that if England is ever in peril, beating Drake's Drum will cause Drake to return to save the country. This is a variation of the sleeping hero folk-tale.
During his circumnavigation of the globe, Drake left a plate upon leaving his landing place on the west coast of North America, claiming the land for England. In the 1930s, it appeared that Drake's plate had been found near San Francisco. Forty years later, scientists confirmed that the plate was a hoax, as had been suspected. Later information attributed the hoax to E Clampus Vitus.
Drake's adventures, though less known in the United States, still have some effect. For instance, a major east-west road in Marin County, California is named Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. It connects Point San Quentin on San Francisco Bay with Point Reyes and Drakes Bay. Each end is near a site considered by some to be Drake's landing place.
References
• Bawlf, R. Samuel. The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, 1577-1580. New York : Walker, 2003. ISBN [login to see] 053
• Coote, Stephen. Drake: the life and legend of an Elizabethan hero. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2005. ISBN [login to see] 657
• Gitzen, Garry. Sir Francis Drake in Nehalem Bay. lulu.com, 2012. ISBN [login to see]
• Hughes-Hallett, Lucy. Heroes: A History of Hero Worship. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, New York, 2004. ISBN [login to see] .
• Rodger, N.A.M. The Safeguard of the Sea; A Naval History of Britain 660-1649. London, 1997. ISSN 00287806
• Turner, Michael. In Drake's Wake - The Early Voyages, Paul Mould Publishing 2005. ISBN [login to see] 212
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