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'Sir Francis Drake',
Vice Admiral, (c. 1540 –
January 27 1596) was an
English privateer,
navigator,
slave trader,
politician and
civil engineer of the
Elizabethan era. Drake was knighted by the queen in 1581. He was second-in-command of the English fleet against the
Spanish Armada in 1588. He died of
dysentery after unsuccessfully attacking
San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1596.
His exploits were semi-legendary and made him a hero to the English but to the Spaniards he was equated with the devil. He was known as "El Dragón" (an obvious play on his family name) for his actions. King
Philip II offered a reward of 20,000
ducats (about $10 million by 2007 standards) for his life. Many a city in the 16th century was ransomed for less.
While his passing was mourned in England, there were celebrations in Spain and its dominions.
Birth and early years
Francis Drake was born in the parish of Crowndale, a mile south of
Tavistock,
Devon, probably in February or March 1540 (Turner 2005:4). He was one of two sons of 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. (cf.
John White, note 2). 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 are direct connections to
royalty and famous persons, such as
Sir Richard Grenville, Ivor Callely , Amy Grenville, and
Geoffrey Chaucer. However,
James Froude states, "He told
Camden that he was of mean extraction. He meant merely that he was proud of his parents and made no idle pretensions to noble birth. 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."
As with many of Drake's contemporaries, the exact date of his birth is unknown and could be as early as 1535, the 1540 date being extrapolated from two portraits: one a
miniature painted by
Nicholas Hilliard in 1581 when he was allegedly 42, the other painted in 1594 when he was alleged to be 53 according to the 1921/22 edition of the ''
Dictionary of National Biography'', which quotes
Barrow's ''Life of Drake'' (1843) p. 5. Francis was the eldest of 12 children; as he was not granted legal right to his father's farm, he had to find his own career.
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.
In 1569 he was with the Hawkins fleet when it was trapped by the Spaniards in the Mexican port of
San Juan de Ulua. He escaped along with Hawkins but the experience led him to his lifelong revenge against the Spanish.
Circumnavigating the world
Entering the Pacific
In
1577, Drake was sent by Queen Elizabeth to start an expedition against the Spanish along the Pacific coast of the Americas. He set out to depart from Plymouth on the 15th of November 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 honour 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.
In one of his most notable seizures, Drake captured a Spanish ship, laden with riches from Peru, which held 25,000 pesos of pure, fine gold, amounting in value to 37,000 ducats of Spanish money. Near
Lima, they discovered news of a ship sailing towards
Panama, The ''Cacafuego''. They gave chase and eventually captured her, which proved to be their most profitable capture. They found 80lb of gold and a golden crucifix, countless jewels, 13 chests full of royals of 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 realised. 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 were "From Sea to Sea". 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 south west 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 barque 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 arriving with at least one ship intact, after
Elcano'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
Main articles: 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 AugustÃn in
Spanish 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 harbour 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
29 July, along with Howard, Drake organised 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).
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, at age 56 while anchored off the coast of
Puerto Bello,
Panama where some Spanish treasure ships had sought shelter. He was buried at sea in a lead coffin, near Portobelo.
Cultural impact
Sir Francis Drake, circa 1581. After Drake became famous, portraits of him were in demand. This portrait may have been copied from
Hilliard's —note that the shirt is the same — and the somewhat oddly proportioned body added by an artist who did not have access to Drake. National Portrait Gallery, London.
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 folktale.
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.
In 1961 the television series ''
Sir Francis Drake'' debuted on
ITV, starring
Terence Morgan in the title role.
Controversies
Spanish Opinion of Drake
Though considered a hero in England in his own time and regarded as a significant historical figure even now, Spanish history perceives him as a mere pirate who used to sack Spanish harbours. Drake, or ''Draco'' ("
dragon") or "El Draqui," to use Spanish names for him, was used as a
bogeyman for centuries after his "vicious" raids.
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 (see also
Piracy in the Caribbean), 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 favour of
Queen Elizabeth.
Conflict in the Caribbean
The most celebrated of Drake's adventures along the
Spanish Main 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. He remarked as he saw it that he hoped that one day an Englishman would be able to sail it, which he would years later as part of his circumnavigation of the world.
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.
Atrocities in Ireland
In 1575 Drake was present at
Rathlin Island, part of the English plantation effort in
Ulster when 600 men, women and children were massacred after surrendering.
[1]
Francis Drake was in charge of the ships which transported John Norris' Troops to Rathlin Island, commanding a small frigate called "Falcon", with a total complement of 25. At the time of the massacre, he was charged with the task of keeping Scottish vessels from bringing reinforcements to Rathlin Island. The people who were massacred were, in fact, the families of
Sorley Boy MacDonnell's followers.
[1]
=== The case of
Thomas Doughty ===
In 1578, Drake had his co-commander Thomas Doughty beheaded with fabricated accusations of witchcraft in a mock trial.
[2]
Footnotes
1. John Sugden, "Sir Francis Drake" Simon Schuster New York, ISBN 0671758632
2. Stephen Coote, "Drake", Simon Schuster, 2003, ISBN 0743220072
References
★
Bawlf, R. Samuel. ''The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, 1577-1580.''(Douglas & McIntyre, 2003)
★ Coote, Stephen, ''Drake'', Simon & Schuster, 2003, ISBN 0-7432-2007-2.
★ Froude, James Anthony, ''English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century'', London 1896, available as a free
eText from
Project Gutenberg
★ Hughes-Hallett, Lucy. ''Heroes: A History of Hero Worship.'' Alfred A. Knopf, New York, New York, 2004. ISBN 1-4000-4399-9.
★
Mattingly, Garett, ''
The Defeat of the Spanish Armada'', ISBN 0-395-08366-4 – a detailed account of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, it received a special citation from the Pulitzer Prize committee in 1960.
★ Merideth, Mrs. Charles, ''Notes and Sketches of New South Wales, during a residence in that colony from 1839 to 1844; BOUND WITH: "Life of Drake" by
John Barrow'' (1st ed, 1844) [xi, 164; and xii, 187 pp. respectfully]
★
Rodger, N.A.M. ''The Safeguard of the Sea; A Naval History of Britain 660-1649.'' (London, 1997).
★ Turner, Michael. (2005). ''In Drake's Wake - The Early Voyages'', Paul Mould Publishing. ISBN 978-1904959212
See also
★
Buckland Abbey, home of Sir Francis Drake.
★
Giovanni Battista Boazio Drake's mapmaker
★ , a game by
Naughty Dog about Nathan Drake, the descendant of Sir Francis Drake.
★
Letter of marque
★
Bobby Drake fictional nephew in Marvel 1602
External links
★ The Circumnavigation
★
★
Google Earth Tour of Drake's Circumnavigation
★
★
Lesson plans for classroom use
★ General Sites
★
★
Oliver Seeler's website "Sir Francis Drake"
★
★
Francis Drake
★
★
Francis Drake History
★
★
In Drake's Wake - "The world's best Drake resource"
★
★
Mission to rescue Drake's body
★
★
Kraus Collection of Sir Francis Drake at the Library of Congress
★
★
Hand-colored map depicting Sir Francis Drake's attack on Saint Augustine from the State Archives of Florida
★
★
Biography resources dedicated to Sir Francis Drake
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