Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral, (c. 1540 – January 27, 1596) was an English privateer, navigator, slave trader, and politician 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 a simple pirate. He was known as "El Draque" (from the old Spanish meaning "the Dragon" derived from the Latin draco, meaning 'serpent', an obvious play on his family name which in archaic English has the same etymological root) for his actions. King Philip II was claimed to have offered a reward of 20,000 ducats (about $10 million by 2007 standards) for his life.[1]

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 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. He soon added a sixth ship, the Mary (formerly Santa Maria) which had been captured off the coast of Africa from the Spaniards. More importantly, he added its captain, Nuno de Silva, a man with considerable experience navigating in South American waters.

Drake's fleet suffered great attrition; he scuttled both the Christopher and the flyboat Swan due to loss of manpower on the Atlantic crossing. At San Julian, Argentina, the Mary was found to be rotten and was burned. After the trial and execution of Thomas Doughty, Drake decided to remain the winter in San Julian before attempting the Straits of Magellan.

The three remaining ships of his convoy departed for the Magellan Strait at the southern tip of South America. 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. Until James Cook's voyage of 1773, this was the furthest south any seafaring explorer had ventured.

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. (Almost 4 million by modern standards) 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, a golden crucifix, countless amounts of jewels, 13 chests full of royals of plate and 26 tons of silver.

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. He claimed the land in the name of the Holy Trinity for the English Crown as called Nova Albion - Latin for "New Britain." Assertions that he left some of his men behind as an embryo "colony" are founded merely on the reduced number who were with him in the Moluccas.[7]

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. The 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.

Samuel Bawlf[8] marshalled indications that "Nova Albion" was established at Comox on Vancouver Island, during an undocumented "secret voyage" north. It is known that Drake and his men sailed north from Nova Albion in search of a western opening to the Northwest Passage, a potentially valuable asset to the English at the time. During this venture the sailors accurately mapped the westward trend of the north-western corner of the North American continent, present-day British Columbia and Alaska. They had a rough voyage among the islands of the Alaskan panhandle, and were forced to turn back due to freezing weather.

Bawlf argues that Drake's ship reached 56°N, much farther north than was recorded. The reason for this false record, Bawlf writes, was for political reasons: competition with the Spanish in the Americas. Queen Elizabeth wanted to keep any information on the Northwest Passage secret, with the result that the location of Nova Albion and the highest latitude the expedition reached is still a source of controversy today.

Drake's brother endured a long period of torture in South America at the hands of Spaniards, who sought intelligence from him about Francis Drake's voyage.

His voyage to the west coast of North America is important for a number of reasons. When he landed, his chaplain held Holy Communion; this was one of the first Protestant church services in the New World (though French Huguenots had founded an ill-fated colony in Florida in the 1560s). Drake was seen to be gaining prestige at the expense of the Papacy.

What is certain of the extent of Drake's claim and territorial challenge to the Papacy and the Spanish crown is that his port was founded somewhere north of Point Loma; that all contemporary maps label all lands above the Kingdoms of New Spain and New Mexico as "Nova Albion", and that all colonial claims made from the East Coast in the 1600s 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.

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 awarded knighthood by Queen Elizabeth aboard the Golden Hind on April 4, 1581,[9] and, in September 1581, became the Mayor of Plymouth.[3] He was also a Member of Parliament in 1581, for an unknown constituency, and again in 1584 for Bossiney.[3]

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. Also considering the friction with Spain, on the occasion of the knighting, Elizabeth 1 handed the sword to the Marquis de Marchaumont, ambassador from France, and asked him to dub Drake as the knight. During the Victorian era, in a spirit of nationalism, the story was promoted that Elizabeth 1 had done the actual knighting.[9][10]

On his return Drake presented the Queen with a jewel token commemorating the circumnavigation. It bore a ship with an ebony hull, enameled gold taken from a prize off the Pacific coast of Mexico, and an African diamond. For her part, the Queen gave Drake a jewel with her portrait, an uncommon gift to bestow upon a commoner, and one that Drake sported proudly in his portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts, 1591. On one side is a state portrait of Elizabeth by the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard, on the other a sardonyx cameo of double portrait busts, a regal woman and an African male. The "Drake Jewel", as it is known today, is a rare documented survivor among sixteen-century jewels; it is conserved at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.[11]

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 Augustнn in Spanish Florida. These exploits encouraged Philip II of Spain to order the planning for an invasion of England.

The Cadiz Raid

In a pre-emptive strike, Drake "singed the beard of the King of Spain" by sailing a fleet into Cбdiz and also A Coruсa, two of Spain's main ports, and occupied the harbours destroying the thirty-seven naval and merchant ships. The attack delayed the Spanish invasion by a year. [12] Over the next month, Drake patrolled the Iberian Coasts between Lisbon and Cape St. Vincent intercepting and destroying Spanish supply lines. Drake estimated that he captured around 1600-1700 tons of staves to make barrels which is enough to make 25,000 to 30,000 barrels that can contain provisions.[13]

Defeat of the Spanish Armada

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 Valdйs 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. There is no known eyewitness account of this incident and the earliest retelling of it was printed 37 years later. [15] Adverse winds and currents caused some delay in the launching of the English fleet as the Spanish drew nearer [15] so it is easy to see how a popular myth of Drake's cavalier attitude to the Spanish threat may have originated.

The Drake-Norris Expedition

In 1589, the year after defeating the Spanish Armada, Drake and Sir John Norreys were given three tasks. They were ordered to first seek out and destroy the remaining ships, second they were to support the rebels in Lisbon, Portugal against King Philip II (king of Spain and Portugal then), and third they to take the Azores if possible. Drake and Norreys destroyed a few ships in the harbor of A Coruсa in Spain. This delayed Drake and he was forced to skip the rest of hunting the rest surviving ships and head on to Lisbon.[13]

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 of 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.

1. ^ Cummins, John, Francis Drake: The Lives of a Hero, 1996, Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0312163657
2. ^ Turner, Michael. (2005). In Drake's Wake - The Early Voyages, Paul Mould Publishing. ISBN 978-1904959212
3. ^ a b c Harry Kelsey, ‘Drake, Sir Francis (1540–1596)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2007 accessed 20 Nov 2007
4. ^ Tudor Place -Francis Drake bio
5. ^ Froude, James Anthony, English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century, London 1896
6. ^ 1921/22 edition of the Dictionary of National Biography, which quotes Barrow's Life of Drake (1843) p. 5.
7. ^ Dismissed by John Cummins, Francis Drake: The Lives of a Hero 1997:118: "In view of the prominence given in different versions to the crowning of Drake it would be odd if the establishment of a colony had gone unrecorded."
8. ^ R. Samuel Bawlf, The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577-1580 (Walker Publishing) 2003.
9. ^ a b The Encyclopaedia of Plymouth History: Sir Francis Drake
10. ^ a b Coote, Stephen, Drake: The Life and Legend of an Elizabethan Hero Saint Martin's Press, New York, 2003. ISBN 0-312-34165-2
11. ^ "The Drake Jewel"
12. ^ Thompson, E. and Freeman, E.A. History of England, p. 188.
13. ^ a b Kraus, Hans. Sir Francis Drake: A Pictorial Biography, 1970
14. ^ Turner, Sharon. The History of England from the Earliest Period to the Death of Elizabeth, 1835
15. ^ a b Kelsey, Harry, Sir Francis Drake; The Queen's Pirate, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1998, ISBN 0-300-07182-5
16. ^ Rayner, Richard. The Admiral and the Con Man The New Yorker, April 22, 2002, p. 150
17. ^ See especially Drake's Spanish nickname and its mythic power to frighten naughty children. John Cummins, Francis Drake: The Lives of a Hero, page 273. ISBN 0312163657.
18. ^ Brief mention of the massacre
19. ^ John Sugden, "Sir Francis Drake" Simon Schuster New York, ISBN 0671758632
20. ^ a b Paranormality: Drakes' Drum
21. ^ Xroyvision: Drake's Drum

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