Don John of Austria See John of austria.
Drake, Sir Francis (ca. 1540–1596) English sailor
Francis Drake was born about 1540, although his exact
date of birth is unknown, near Tavistock in Devonshire,
southwestern England. When he was a child, Drake and
his family were forced to move to Kent because of his
father Robert’s Protestantism in a Catholic area. The few
facts known of his early life come from a 1626 work
by his nephew, also named Sir Francis Drake, entitled
Drake Revisited. Historians disagree about how he began
his life at sea: One source in the archives of Venice re-
ports that he was a page to King Philip of Spain in En-
gland, although he never spoke Spanish and the evidence
is thin at best. Some historians claim that he was prob-
ably apprenticed as a sailor on a small vessel owned by an
old man into whose care Drake was put. When the man
died, he left the ship to Drake, who used it for trading
purposes for some time. However, about 1565 he joined
a small group of ships under Captain John Lovell to sail
to Guinea in trade there, even though this was against
Spanish policy. In 1567, he took command of the Ju -
dith, a commercial ship on which sailed his kinsman Sir
John haWkins, who also became one of England’s great
naval heroes in his time. Other ships in this expedition
to San Juan de Lua were destroyed by the Spanish navy,
but the Judith and another ship returned to England,
and Drake was applauded as a hero.
Drake spent the next year unsuccessfully suing the
Spanish government for his losses, so he again sailed ships
to the West Indies in 1570 and 1571 to try and recoup
there. After returning to England a second time in 1571,
Drake recruited a number of English seamen to sail to
the New World, including ports in the Caribbean, “with
intent to land at Nombre de Dios... [and] the granary
of the West Indies, wherein the golden harvest brought
from Peru and Mexico to Panama was hoarded up till
it could be conveyed to Spain.” Sailing from Plymouth
in May 1572, the ships reached the Caribbean in July
- There, they attacked various Spanish fortifications
and took control of Spanish ships and stores of supplies,
most notably at the Isle of Pines (now in Cuba). Land-
ing at Nombre de Dios, Drake and his forces marched
onto the Spanish town and after a pitched battle—dur-
ing which he was wounded in the thigh—the English
won a quick victory. They then moved into the Isth-
mus of Panama, to a point where Drake saw the Pacific
Ocean for the first time.
In 1573, Drake and his men returned to England as
heroes. One source noted that “the news of Drake’s re-
turn did so speedily pass over all the church and surpass
their minds with desire and delight to see him, that very
few or none remained with the preacher, all hastening
to see the evidence of God’s love and blessing towards
our gracious queen and country.” He met with Queen
Elizabeth and soon received from her a commission to
continue his activities with the Crown’s authority; this
amounted to a declaration of war against Spain.
Drake assembled a squadron of five ships, includ-
ing his own ship the Pelican, and in December 1577
this expedition sailed from Plymouth toward the coast
of South America. Bad weather caused the destruction
of two of the ships, but the Pelican and two others ar-
rived at South America in April 1578. There, crossing
through the Straits of Magellan, Drake renamed his ship
The Golden Hind. Storms in the straits sank one ship
with all on board, and the other ship, crippled, turned
back and reached England in June 1579. Drake and his
single ship reached the Pacific Ocean in October 1578,
and he used The Golden Hind to plunder various Span-
ish settlements on the coasts of what are now Chile and
Peru. Among other adventures, his men were attacked
by Indians (who shot Drake in the face with an arrow).
In March 1579, they captured the Cacafeugo, a Spanish
ship carrying incredible amounts of gold and other trea-
sure. The Golden Hind moved up the coast of the Ameri-
cas, stopping somewhere near either northern Mexico
or what is now southern California for repairs. Drake
then sailed across the Pacific, through the Indian Ocean,
and around the southern tip of Africa before he returned
to England in September 1580 to a hero’s welcome. It
is said that his ship was “very richly fraught with gold,
silver, silk, pearls, and precious stones.” In April 1581,
Queen Elizabeth visited Drake on board his ship and
knighted him for his service to England and for circum-
navigating the globe. The treasure he had brought back
was estimated in value at a million and a half pounds,
and with his share of this, Drake purchased a home,
Buckland Abbey, near Plymouth.
In 1585, when England declared war on Spain fol-
lowing an embargo placed on English shipping by the
Spanish king, Queen Elizabeth offered to the sailing
men of her nation 25 ships “to revenge the wrongs of-DRAke, SiR FRAnciS