Sir Francis Drake in Buckland Abbey, oil painting by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (after 1590)
Portrait miniature by Nicholas Hilliard, 1581
Sir Francis Drake, oil on panel, after an engraving attributed to Jodocus Hondius, c. 1583; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Sir Francis Drake
Sir Francis Drake
Sir Francis Drake
Portrait miniature by Nicholas Hilliard, 1581
Sir Francis Drake, oil on panel, after an engraving attributed to Jodocus Hondius, c. 1583; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Sir Francis Drake
Sir Francis Drake
Sir Francis Drake
explorer naval officer privateer
Francis Drake was born near Tavistock, Devonshire around 1540. He was the eldest of 12 sons born to Mary Myllwaye and Edmund Drake. Edmund was a farmer on the estate of Lord Francis Russell, the second earl of Bedford. He later became a Calvinist lay preacher and raised his children as staunch Protestants.
Young Drake received some education; he learned the rudiments of navigation and seaman-ship early and did some sailing near his home.
The Drakes were related to the Hawkins family of Plymouth, well-to-do seamen and shipowners. The Hawkins connection got Drake a place on a 1566 slave-trading expedition to the Cape Verde Islands and the Spanish Main.
In 1567 John Hawkins made Drake an officer in a larger slave-trading expedition. Drake ultimately received command of one of Hawkins's ships, the Judith, and accompanied his relative to Africa, Rio de la Hacha, and Santa Marta, where Hawkins disposed of the slaves. The English were caught, however, in the harbor of San Juan de Ulúa by a Spanish fleet that opened fire without warning and destroyed most of their ships. Only Drake's Judith and Hawkins's small vessel escaped to England. Embittered by this, Drake resolved to devote his life to war against Spain.
Elizabeth I of England and Philip II of Spain were not at war then, but grievances were steadily mounting. The Queen declined to offend Philip and would not allow Hawkins to go to sea again immediately, but she had no objections to a voyage by the obscure Drake. He departed in 1570 for the Spanish Main with a small crew aboard the 25-ton Susan. He hoped to learn how the Spaniards arranged for shipping Peruvian treasure home, and he felt that the ports of Panama City and Nombre de Dios on the Isthmus of Panama were the key.
His 1570 voyage was largely one of reconnaissance during which he made friends with the Cimaroons, who were escaped slaves dwelling out of Spanish reach on the Isthmus and stood ready to help him. During a 1571 expedition he captured Nombre de Dios with Cimaroon help but lost it immediately when, wounded, he had to be carried to safety. After depredations off Cartagena, he intercepted a Spanish gold train near Nombre de Dios and returned to England with the bounty.
His arrival embarrassed the Queen, who still hoped for peace with Spain, and Drake evidently received a broad hint to leave the country temporarily. He is known to have served in Ireland with the Earl of Essex, who was trying to crush a rebellion in Ulster. By 1576 relations with Spain had worsened, and Drake returned to England, where a new expedition was being planned in which Elizabeth had a financial share. Drake's main instructions were to sail through the Strait of Magellan and probe for the shores of Terra Australis Incognita, the great southern continent that many thought began with Tierra del Fuego. Drake received five ships, the largest being the Pelican (later named the Golden Hind), and a crew of about 160.
The fleet left Plymouth in December 1577 for the southern Atlantic, stopping at Port San Julián for the Southern Hemisphere winter. Ferdinand Magellan had once crushed a mutiny there, and Drake did the same. He tried and executed Thomas Doughty, an aristocratic member of the expedition, who had intrigued against him in an attempt to foment a rebellion.
When Drake passed through the strait and entered the Pacific, only the Golden Hind remained; the other ships had been lost or had parted company. Contrary winds forced him southward, and he perhaps sighted Cape Horn; in any event, he realized that the two oceans came together and that Terra Australis would not be found there. He traveled along the coasts of Chile and Peru, capturing and destroying Spanish ships but sparing Spanish lives.
Between Callao and Panama Drake took an unarmed treasure ship, bearing gold, emeralds, and all the silver the Golden Hind could carry. Knowing that Spaniards would try to waylay him in the strait, Drake bypassed Panama and, near Guatalco, Nicaragua, captured charts and directions to guide him across the Pacific. Perhaps seeking the Strait of Anian, he sailed nearly 48 degrees north, and then descended to a point at or near Drake's Bay, in California, where he made friends with the Indians and overhauled the ship. He left a brass plate naming the country Nova Albion and claiming it for Elizabeth. (In 1936 a plate fitting the description was found near Drake's Bay.)
Drake then crossed the Pacific to the Moluccas and near there almost came to grief when the ship struck a reef. Skilled handling freed it, and his circumnavigation of the globe continued via the Indian Ocean and the Cape of Good Hope. Drake arrived in Plymouth in 1580, acclaimed by the public and his monarch. In April 1581 he was knighted on the deck of the Golden Hind.
Drake did not immediately go to sea again and in 1581 became mayor of Plymouth. By 1585 Elizabeth, after new provocations by Philip, felt ready to unleash Drake again. A large fleet was outfitted, including two of her own vessels. Drake, aboard his command ship, the Elizabeth Bonaventure, had instructions to release English vessels impounded by Philip, though Elizabeth certainly knew he would exceed orders.
Drake fulfilled the Queen's expectations. He sacked Vigo in Spanish Galicia and then sailed to Santo Domingo and Cartagena, capturing and holding both for ransom. He would have tried to cross the Isthmus and take Panama, a project he had cherished for years, but an epidemic so reduced his crews that he abandoned the idea. On the way to England he destroyed the Spanish settlement at St. Augustine, in Florida, and farther north, took home the last remaining settlers at Sir Walter Raleigh's unfortunate North Carolina colony.
The expedition, which reached Portsmouth in July 1586, had acquired little treasure but had inflicted great physical and moral damage on Spain, enormously raising English prestige in the bargain. Formal war was now inevitable, and Philip started plans to invade England. In February 1587 the Queen beheaded Mary of Scotland who had been connected with plots to dethrone or murder Elizabeth, to the outrage of Catholic Europe and many English Catholics. Philip began assembling his Armada in Portugal, which had been in his possession since 1580.
Elizabeth appointed Lord Charles Howard of Effingham commander of her fleet and gave Drake, Hawkins, and Martin Frobisher immediately subordinate posts. Drake advocated a strong preventive blow at Philip's unprepared Armada and received permission to strike. In April 1587 he recklessly sailed into Cadiz and destroyed or captured 37 enemy ships. He then occupied the Portuguese town of Sagres for a time and finally, in the Azores, seized a large Portuguese carrack bound homeward from Goa with a rich cargo.
The Cadiz raid damaged but did not cripple the Armada, which, under Alonso de Guzmán, Duke of Medina Sidonia, sailed in May 1588. It was alleged that Lord Howard was a figurehead and that the "sea dogs" Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher won the victory in the July encounters. Recent evidence refutes this and shows Howard to have been in effective command. Drake took a conspicuous part in the channel fighting and captured a galleon, but he does not seem to have distinguished himself above other English commanders.
The Armada was defeated, and Drake's career thereafter proved anticlimactic. He met with his first formidable defeat in 1589, when he commanded the naval expedition sent to take Lisbon. He seemed to have lost some of his old daring, and his cautious refusal to ascend the Tagus River for a naval bombardment partly accounted for the failure. Drake did not go to sea again for 5 years. He concerned himself mainly with Plymouth matters. He sat in Parliament, but nothing of note marked his presence there.
In 1595 Elizabeth thought she saw a chance of ending the war victoriously by cutting off the Spanish treasure supply from the Isthmus of Panama. For this she selected Hawkins, then 63, and Drake, in his 50s. The cautious Hawkins and the impetuous Drake could never work well together, and the Queen further complicated the situation by giving them equal authority; in effect, each commanded his own fleet.
The Queen's order that they must be back in 6 months scarcely allowed time to capture Panama, and when they learned of a crippled Spanish treasure ship in San Juan, Puerto Rico, they decided to go there. Through Drake's insistence on first going to the Canary Islands, their destination was revealed, and the Spaniards sent word ahead to Puerto Rico. Hawkins died as they reached the island, leaving Drake in sole command. The Spaniards had strengthened their San Juan defenses, and Drake failed to capture the city.
Ignoring the Queen's 6-month time limit, the aging Drake, still trying to repeat his earlier successes, made for the Isthmus to capture Nombre de Dios and then Panama. He easily took the former, not knowing that it had been superseded by Puerto Bello as the Caribbean terminus of the Plate fleets. His landing party, which soon realized it was following a path long out of use, was ambushed by Spaniards and forced to retreat.
Drake knew the expedition was a failure; he cruised aimlessly to Honduras and back and then fell ill of fever and dysentery. He died off Puerto Bello on January 28, 1596, and was buried at sea. Sir Thomas Baskerville, second in command, took the expedition home to England.
Sir Francis Drake was the most renowned and successful English privateer of the late sixteenth century. His raids on Spanish settlements and shipping in the New World made him a hero to his countrymen, a man of great wealth, and a thorn in Philip II’s side.
Drake's exploits significantly raised the profile of the English in the Atlantic basin, demonstrating to the Spanish that their monopoly could be broken and to the English that both financial and imperial gains were possible in the Americas. The contribution his voyages made to the English treasury ultimately helped to finance Elizabethan imperial expansion.
Elizabeth I awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581 which he received on the Golden Hind in Deptford.
Francis Drake was raised as a staunch Protestant.
In 1581 Francis Drake was appointed mayor of Plymouth for a term and became a Member of Parliament. As mayor, he helped build a canal that supplied Plymouth with fresh water for centuries, but he also took occasional breaks from his political duties to return to sea and conduct raids against the Spanish at Santa Domingo, Cartagena and St. Augustine, Florida.
As a Member of Parliament, Drake was active in issues regarding the navy, fishing, early American colonisation, and defence against the Spanish.
Sir Francis Drake completely changed the way of sea battle. The old style of sea battle was for ships to come close to each other, soldiers swung themselves onto the enemy ships and fought hand-to-hand. As for Drake, he trained his sailors to fight by handling their ships expertly. By using long-range guns, they could out-gun the enemy, sailing by the enemy while firing broadsides into their sides. Moreover, the priority was given to the velocity of a vessel, rather than to a great amount of ordnance, as it had been earlier.
Quotations:
"It isn't that life ashore is distasteful to me. But life at sea is better."
"There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory."
"Great things have small beginnings."
To the Spanish, Sir Francis Drake or 'El Draque' (The Dragon), as they called him, was a wayward pirate, a threat to their voyages. The king of Spain and Portugal, King Philip II was said to have offered the huge sum of 20,000 ducats (£4 million) for Drake’s life.
Drake’s skills as a naval commander were so feared that many of his enemies became convinced that he was a practitioner of witchcraft. Superstitious Spanish mariners whispered tales of how Drake possessed a magic mirror that allowed him to spy the location of all the ships on the sea, and there were rumors that he was in league with a demon or even Satan himself.
Although vital to the British government and the Queen herself, even the English people were somewhat divided in their view of Drake. Some admired his achievements and courage, whilst others resented him.
In legend and perhaps in reality, Drake was the greatest of the Elizabethan 'sea-dogs'. A skilled seaman and naval tactician, an inspiring leader of men and a brave fighter, he was, nevertheless, capable of greed, disloyalty, injustice towards associates, and poor judgement as a naval strategist.
Physical Characteristics: Sir Francis Drake was low of stature, of strong limb, round-headed, with brown hair, full-bearded, his eyes round, large and clear, well-favoured face and of a cheerful countenance.
Quotes from others about the person
Gonzalo González del Castillo: "The people of quality dislike him for having risen so high from such a lowly family; the rest say he is the main cause of wars."
In 1569 Drake married Mary Newman of Plymouth. Mary died just 12 years after they married. Then, in 1585, he married again, to Elizabeth Sydenham, who was 20 years younger than him and a wealthy heiress. With their combined fortune, they lived in Buckland Abbey, Devon. He had no children by either wife.
