Sir Francis Drake - Birth and early years, Conflict in the Caribbean, Alleged Atrocities in Ireland, Circumnavigation of the globe

Elizabethan seaman, born at Crowndale Farm, near Tavistock, Devon, SW England, UK. In 1567 he commanded the Judith in his kinsman John Hawkyns's ill-fated expedition to the West Indies, and returned there several times to recover the losses sustained from the Spaniards, his exploits gaining him great popularity in England. In 1577 he set out with five ships for the Pacific, through the Straits of Magellan, but after his fleet was battered by storm and fire, he alone continued in the Golden Hind. He then struck out across the Pacific, reached the Pelew Is, and returned to England via the Cape of Good Hope in 1580. The following year, the queen visited his ship and knighted him. In 1585 he sailed with 25 ships against the Spanish Indies, bringing home tobacco, potatoes, and the dispirited Virginian colonists. In the battle against the Spanish Armada, which raged for a week in the Channel (1588), his seamanship and courage brought him further distinction. In 1595 he sailed again to the West Indies, but died of dysentery off Porto Bello.

Francis Drake
privateer
Born	About 1541 Tavistock, Devon
Died	1596-01-28 San Juan, Puerto Rico

Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral, (c.

Birth and early years

Francis Drake was born in Tavistock, Devon, 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 often confused with his cousin Francis Drake (1573–1634), who was the son of Edmund's older brother, Richard Drake. John Drake and Margaret Cole were also great-grandparents of Sir Walter Raleigh.

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. 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 cousin, Sir John Hawkins. Together, Hawkins and Drake made the first English slave-trading expeditions, making his fortune through the sale of West Africans.

Conflict in the Caribbean

Around 1563 Drake first sailed west to the Spanish Main, on a ship owned by his cousin John Hawkins, with a cargo of slaves from Africa. Drake survived the attack in large part because of his ability to swim.

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.

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.

Alleged 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.

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. (see John Sugden,"Sir Francis Drake",Simon+Schuster/New York,ISBN 0-671-75863-2)

Circumnavigation of the globe

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. 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 which a storm blew his ship so far south that he realized that 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, as his furthest south of at least 56 degrees (as evidenced by astronomical data quoted in Haklyut's "The Principall Navigators", 1589) was not surpassed until James Cook's voyage of 1773, and was the first known occasion that any explorer had travelled 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. Some Spanish ships were captured, and Drake made good use of their more accurate charts.

Nova Albion

On June 17, 1579, Drake landed somewhere north of Spain's northern-most claim at Point Loma.

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. 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. This so-called Drake's Plate of Brass was later declared a hoax. The colonial claims were established with full knowledge of Drake's claims, which they reinforced, and remained valid in the minds of the colonialists when the colonies became free states.

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, east of Indonesia. 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. 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.

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.

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. 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.

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 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. In fact tidal conditions caused some delay in the launching of the British 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.

Final years

Drake's seafaring career continued into his mid fifties. The Spanish gunners from El Morro Castle shot a cannonball through the cabin of Drake's flagship, but he survived.

Cultural impact

Drake's exploits as an explorer have become an irrevocable part of the world's subconciousness, particularly in Europe. 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.

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.

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.

Though England considers him a hero, Spaniards regard him as a cruel and bloodthirsty pirate who used to sack defenseless Spanish harbors. Drake, or Draco ("dragon") or "El Draqui," to use Spanish names for him, was used as a bogeyman for centuries after his "vicious" raids.