Born in Tavistock, Devon Drake was the son of a tenant farmer on the estate of Lord Francis Russell, earl of Bedford. He was brought up in Plymouth by the Hawkins family, relatives who worked as Merchants and Privateers (often referred to as Pirates). Drake went to sea for the first time at 18 as Purser on a ship in the Hawkins family fleet.

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In 1566 Drake, sailing under Captain John Lovell, attacked Portuguese towns and ships on the coast of West Africa and then sailed to the Americas and sold the captured cargoes, including slaves, to Spanish plantations.

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Drake's second voyage to the Americas ended in an ill-fated incident at San Juan de Ulúa. Whilst negotiating to resupply and repair at a Spanish port in Mexico, the fleet was attacked by Spanish warships, with all but two of the English ships lost. He escaped along with John Hawkins, surviving the attack by swimming. Drake's hostility towards the Spanish is said to have started with this incident and he vowed revenge.

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After leading two successful expeditions to the West Indies, Drake came to the attention of Queen Elizabeth I, who granted him a Privateer’s commission, effectively giving him the right to plunder Spanish ports in the Caribbean. Drake did just that in 1572, capturing the port of Nombre de Dios (a drop-off point for silver and gold brought from Peru) and crossing the Isthmus of Panama, where he caught sight of the great Pacific Ocean. He returned to England with a large amount of Spanish treasure, an accomplishment that earned him a reputation as a leading Privateer.

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Circumnavigation of the world

In 1577, Queen Elizabeth commissioned Drake to lead an expedition around South America through the Straits of Magellan. The voyage was plagued by conflict between Drake and the two other men sharing command. When they arrived off the coast of Argentina, Drake had one of the men, Thomas Doughty, arrested, tried and beheaded for allegedly plotting a mutiny. Of the five-ship fleet, two ships were lost in a storm; the other commander, John Wynter, turned one back to England and another disappeared. Drake’s 100-ton flagship, the Pelican, was the only vessel to reach the Pacific, in October 1578.

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Drake 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 along the Pacific coast of South America, attacking Spanish ports and pillaging towns. Some Spanish ships were captured, and Drake used their more accurate charts.

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Near Lima, Drake captured a Spanish ship laden with Peruvian gold, amounting in value to 37,000 ducats of Spanish money (about £7m by modern standards). Drake also discovered news of another ship, Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, which was sailing west towards Manila. Drake gave chase and eventually captured the treasure ship, which proved his most profitable capture.

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Aboard Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, Drake found 80 lb of gold, a golden crucifix, jewels, 13 chests full of royals of plate and 26 tons of silver. Drake was naturally pleased at his good luck in capturing the galleon, and he showed it by dining with the captured ship's officers and gentleman passengers. He offloaded his captives a short time later, and gave each one gifts appropriate to their rank, as well as a letter of safe conduct.

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After plundering Spanish ports along the west coast of South America, Drake headed north in search of a passage back to the Atlantic. He claimed to have sailed as far north as 48° N (on parallel with Vancouver, Canada) before extreme cold conditions turned him back. Drake anchored near today’s San Francisco and claimed the surrounding land, which he called New Albion, for Queen Elizabeth.

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To document and assert his claim, Drake posted an engraved plate of brass to claim sovereignty for Elizabeth and every successive English monarch. After erecting a fort and tents ashore, the crew laboured for several weeks as they prepared for the voyage across the Pacific. The Golden Hind was cleaned and repaired. Drake had friendly interactions with the local indigenous Coast Miwok and explored the surrounding land by foot. When his ship was ready, Drake and the crew left New Albion on 23 July 1579.

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Drake left the Pacific coast, heading southwest to catch the winds that would carry his ship across the Pacific, and a few months later reached the Moluccas, a group of islands in the western Pacific, in eastern modern-day Indonesia. Golden Hind later became caught on a reef and was almost lost. After the sailors waited three days for convenient tides and had dumped cargo. Drake then made multiple stops on his way toward the tip of Africa, eventually rounding the Cape of Good Hope, and reached Sierra Leone by 22 July 1580.

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On 26 September, 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. Drake was hailed as the first Englishman to circumnavigate the Earth.

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The Queen declared that all written accounts of Drake's voyages were to become the Queen's secrets of the Realm, and Drake and the other participants of his voyages on the pain of death sworn to their secrecy; she intended to keep Drake's activities away from the eyes of rival Spain. Drake presented the Queen with a jewel token commemorating the circumnavigation. Taken as a prize off the Pacific coast of Mexico, it was made of enamelled gold and bore an African diamond and a ship with an ebony hull.

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For her part, the Queen gave Drake a jewel with her portrait, an unusual gift to bestow upon a commoner.

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Queen Elizabeth awarded Drake a knighthood aboard Golden Hind in Deptford on 4 April 1581.

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Later years

In 1585, with hostilities heating up again between England and Spain, the queen gave Drake command of a fleet of 25 ships. He sailed to the West Indies and the coast of Florida and mercilessly plundered Spanish ports there, taking Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands, Cartagena in Colombia, St. Augustine in Florida and San Domingo (now Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic). On the return voyage, he picked up a failed English military colony on Roanoke Island off the Carolinas. Drake then led an even bigger fleet (30 ships) into the Spanish port of Cádiz and destroyed a large number of vessels being readied for the Spanish Armada. In 1588, Drake served as second-in-command to Admiral Charles Howard in the English victory over the supposedly invincible Spanish fleet.

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The most famous 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, perhaps because he was waiting for high tide. There is no known eyewitness account of this incident and the earliest retelling of it was printed 37 years later. Adverse winds and currents caused some delay in the launching of the English fleet as the Spanish drew nearer, perhaps prompting a popular myth of Drake's cavalier attitude to the Spanish threat.

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After a failed 1589 expedition to Portugal, Drake returned home to England for several years, until Queen Elizabeth enlisted him for one more voyage, against Spanish possessions in the West Indies in early 1596. The expedition proved to be a dismal failure: Spain fended off the English attacks, and Drake came down with fever and dysentery. He died in late January 1596 at age 55 off the coast of Puerto Bello (now Portobelo, Panama).

 

Sir Francis Drake was buried at sea, wearing full armour and encased in a lead lined coffin. Divers, treasure hunters and Drake enthusiasts still continue to search for his final resting place.

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Source: Wikipedia / History.com