Sir Francis Drake

 

 

Sir Francis Drake is usually remembered as a hero, the darling of Queen Elizabeth I’s court, but the Spanish despised him as ‘El Draque’, the bloodthirsty pirate who tortured and murdered their countrymen to the extent that his behaviour helped spark a war between England and Spain.

 

 

Today, Sir Francis Drake is best remembered as the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, helping to discover new sea routes for shipping and to establish a more accurate map of the world. However, at the time that he lived, he was also renowned as a brilliant privateer, plundering Spanish ships and settlements in the New World to bring home treasure for the English monarchy.

As a result of his marauding exploits, he received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth I. Not surprisingly, given his history of murder, torture and robbery against them, the Spanish hated and feared him, nicknaming him ‘El Draque’ (the Dragon). To them, he was far from a conquering hero, and they viewed him simply as a bloodthirsty pirate who had unlawfully attacked their countrymen. The king of Spain reputedly put a high price on his head: King Philip II was thought to have offered a reward for Drake’s capture of 20,000 ducats, which today would be in the region of £4 million. Drake’s raids on the Spanish possessions in the New World were certainly a factor, among others, in the eventual outbreak of war between England and Spain.

 

Bloody Mary

Francis Drake was born in Crowndale, near Tavistock, Devon, to Edmund Drake and his wife Mary Mylwaye. The family was a fairly ordinary one, his father being a farmer and preacher, and he had 11 younger brothers. Since his parents were very religious Protestants, they experienced a good deal of persecution under ‘Bloody Mary’, the Catholic queen of England, and had to move around the country, ending up in Chatham, Kent. At one point the family took up residence on an old ship in dry dock. This experience of being hounded by the royal authorities gave the young Francis a lifelong hatred of Catholicism, and later, he was to wreak his revenge on the Catholic country of Spain in no uncertain terms.

Whilst at Chatham, Francis began an ap-prenticeship aboard a small trading ship. From the age of about 13, he worked on the ship, plying routes from London across the channel to different continental ports. He remained working on the ship until he was 20, when the captain of the ship died. Drake was left the ship in the captain’s will. This gave him the start he needed in life. He sold the ship, and with the proceeds, was able to mount a series of expeditions to the New World, sailing with his second cousin, Sir John Hawkins, who came from a well-known seafaring Plymouth family.

 

Plundering Spanish ports

The first of these expeditions, in 1567, was a trading voyage to sell African slaves in the New World. However, on the way, their ships were attacked by the Spanish, resulting in the loss of many lives. The experience marked Drake for life; from that point on, he considered the Spanish to be his mortal enemy. But the failure of the voyage did not put him off adventuring. In the years to come he made many more trading expeditions to the New World, attacking Spanish settlements along the coastline there and making off with large amounts of treasure. Eventually, he became so well known for his conquests that Queen Elizabeth herself commissioned him, albeit in secret, to attack the Spanish colonizers in the New World. This he did with gusto, plundering Spanish ports along the coasts, and arriving home loaded with yet more treasure and a variety of spices and precious cloth. In one instance, he captured a Spanish ship off the coast of Peru that was loaded with around £7 million worth of gold; in another, he chased and overwhelmed a galleon full of gold, precious jewels and chests full of royal plate. This last triumph had particular significance because the location of the captured ship revealed that the Spanish were trading in areas that belonged to the Portuguese. When this information reached the Spanish court, King Philip II of Spain decided to invade Portugal, thus sparking a major conflict.

As well as his privateering successes, Drake also made a name for himself as an explorer. Among others, he discovered the existence of a navigable passage immediately south of Chile and north of the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, linking the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Shortly before entering the Straits, which were considered dangerous because of the narrowness of the channel and the unpredictable winds, Drake renamed his ship the Golden Hind (previously it had been called the Pelican.) He did this as a mark of respect to his patron, Sir Christopher Hatton, whose family crest showed a golden deer.

By now, Drake had become the scourge of the Spanish, but on returning from his voyages laden with treasure, Queen Elizabeth I rewarded him by knighting him aboard the Golden Hind. Not surprisingly, this infuriated the King of Spain further, and fanned the flames of war between the two countries.

 

The final voyage

More voyages followed, mainly to the West Indies and Florida, where Drake’s looting and pillaging raids continued. He then turned his attention to the port of Cadiz in Spain, picking off 30 ships that were readying themselves for war in the harbour. When war between England and Spain finally broke out, Drake became a vice admiral, helping to defeat the legendary Spanish armada.

At the end of the war, having played his part in the Spanish defeat, Drake went back to privateering. Now in his early 50s, he returned to the West Indies. However, this voyage proved to be his last; he became ill with dysentery and died on 28 January 1596. His cousin John Hawkins also died of the same disease. Both Drake and Hawkins were buried at sea, and some ships that they had captured were sunk in their honour.

 

Lasting legacy

During his lifetime, despite his many successful expeditions, and his renown as the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, Drake was not a universally loved figure. Some distrusted him because of his lowborn origins, and thought of him as a social climber. This, of course, was at a period in history when being a member of the nobility was seen as conferring special rights and privileges on the individual, and it was highly unusual for anyone outside the ranks of the aristocracy to become prominent in society.

Sir Francis Drake left no direct heirs. His two marriages, to Mary Newman, who died in 1583, and to Elizabeth Sydenham, who came from a noble family, produced no children. However, his legacy was a much more lasting one: he achieved worldwide fame as the Englishman who helped to map out the true geography of the world, proving that the Americas were not connected to a Southern continent, as had previously been believed, and that it was possible to sail around the bottom of South America.

He also left a rather less glorious legacy as ‘El Draque’ – the Dragon – who plundered and ravaged Spanish civilization in the New World, bringing its spoils back to the English monarch and thus ingratiating himself to her. Yet, however we may view his activities today, whether as an explorer, a privateer or an adventurer, there is no doubt that his achievements were astounding.