Francis Drake
This article is about the Elizabethan naval commander. For other people of the same name see Francis Drake (disambiguation). |
Sir Francis Drake. |
Sir Francis Drake,
Vice Admiral, (c. 1540 –
January 28 1596) was an
English privateer,
navigator, naval pioneer and raider,
politician and
civil engineer of the
Elizabethan era. He was the first captain to
circumnavigate the Earth (
Magellan died on his voyage, which was completed by
Juan Sebastián Elcano). He was second-in-command of the English fleet against the
Spanish Armada in 1588. He died of
dysentery while unsuccessfully attacking
San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1596.
Francis Drake was born in
Tavistock,
Devon, one of two sons of Mary Mylwaye and her husband Edmund Drake (1518–1585), a
Protestant farmer who later became a
preacher, grandson of John Drake and Margret Cole. He is often confused with his nephew Francis Drake (1573–1634), the son of Richard Drake and Ursula
Stafford, grandson of John Drake (1500–1558) – Edmund's older brother – and Amy Grenville (1510–1577), and great-grandson of John Drake and Margaret Cole (cf.
John White, note 2). His maternal grandfather was
Richard Mylwaye. His brother was Thomas Drake.
Drake was reportedly named after his
godfather Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford, and throughout his cousins' lineages are direct connections to the
Royalty and famous people such as
Sir Richard Grenville, through Amy Grenville, and
Geoffrey Chaucer, through Ursula Stafford. Ursula's line may be traced to royalty within four generations. This said,
James Froude states that "He told
Camden that he was of mean extraction. He meant merely that he was proud of his parents and made no idle pretensions to noble birth. His father was a tenant of the
Earl of Bedford, and must have stood well with him, for Francis Russell, the heir of the earldom, was the boy's godfather."
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. 5. Francis was the second eldest of 12 children; as he was not granted legal right to his father's farm, he had to find his own career.
During the
Roman Catholic uprising of 1549, the family was forced to flee to
Kent. At about the age of 13 Francis took to the sea on a cargo
barque, becoming master of the ship at the age of 20. He spent his early career honing his
sailing skills on the difficult waters of the
North Sea, and after the death of the captain for whom he was sailing he became master of his own barque. 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.
Around 1563 Drake first sailed west to the
Spanish Main, on a ship owned by his brother John Hawkins, with a cargo of slaves from Africa. He took an immediate dislike to the Spanish, at least in part due to their mistrust of non-Spaniards and their
Catholicism. His hostility is said to have been increased by an incident at San Juan de Ulua in 1568, when, while delivering his load of slaves, a Spanish fleet came upon him by surprise. Although he was in his enemy's port, it was conventional for the Spanish to 'surrender' for a few hours in order to purchase slaves. Thus it was unusual for a fleet of enemy warships to appear out of the blue. Drake survived the attack in large part because of his ability to swim. From then on, he devoted his life to working against the
Spanish Empire; the Spanish considered him an outlaw
pirate (see also
Piracy in the Caribbean), but to England he was simply a sailor and
privateer. On his second such voyage, he fought a battle against Spanish forces that cost many English lives but earned him the favour of
Queen Elizabeth.
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. He made off with a fortune in gold, but had to leave behind another fortune in silver, because it was too heavy to carry back to England. It was during this expedition that he climbed a high tree in the central mountains of the
Isthmus of Panama and thus became the first Englishman to see the Pacific Ocean.
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.
In 1575 Drake was (as part of the English plantation effort in
Ulster) responsible[
1] for the deaths of the Irish population of Rathlin Island - 600 people, consisting of men, women and children. He was never brought before a court for his part in this incident.
|
Sir Francis Drake, circa 1581. After Drake became famous, portraits of him were in demand. This portrait may have been copied from Hilliard's miniatureâ€"note that the shirt is the sameâ€"and the somewhat oddly proportioned body added by an artist who did not have access to Drake. |
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. He set sail from Plymouth, England, in December aboard the
Pelican, with four other ships and over 150 men. After crossing the Atlantic, two of the ships had to be abandoned on the east coast of South America.
The three remaining ships departed for the
Strait of Magellan at the southern tip of the continent. 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.
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. He pushed onward in his lone flagship, now renamed the
Golden Hind in honour of Sir
Christopher Hatton (after his
coat of arms). The
Golden Hind sailed northward alone along the Pacific coast of South America, attacking Spanish ports like
ValparaÃso as it went. 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. He found an excellent port, landed, repaired and restocked his vessels, then stayed for a time, keeping friendly relations with the natives. It is said that he left behind many of his men as a small colony, but his planned return voyages to the colony were never realized. He claimed the land in the name of the Holy
Trinity for the English Crown as called
Nova Albion —
Latin for "New England."
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. The relevant records at
London's
Whitehall Palace were later burned. 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.
Another point often claimed to be Nova Albion is
Whale Cove (Oregon), although to date there is no evidence to suggest this, other than a general resemblance to a single map penned a decade after the landing.
There is also evidence that "Nova Albion" was at
Comox on
Vancouver Island. This evidence is presented in Samuel Bawlf's
The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake. It is known that Drake and his men sailed north from Nova Albion in search of a western opening to the
Northwest Passage, a potentially valuable asset to the English at the time. During this venture the sailors accurately mapped the westward trend of the north-western corner of the North American continent, present-day
British Columbia and
Alaska. They had a rough voyage among the islands of the Alaskan panhandle, and were forced to turn back due to freezing weather.
Bawlf argues that the furthest north that Drake's ship reached was 56°N, much higher than was originally recorded. The reason for this false record, Bawlf writes, was for political reasons: competition with the Spanish in the Americas. Queen Elizabeth wanted to keep any information on the Northwest Passage secret. Unfortunately, she did such a good job on the cover-up that the location of Nova Albion and the highest latitude the expedition reached is still a source of controversy today, giving Drake and his men less credit for their great accomplishments than they probably deserve.
Drake's brother endured a long period of torture in
South America at the hands of Spaniards, who sought intelligence from him about Francis Drake's voyage.
His voyage to the west coast of
North America is important for a number of reasons. When he landed, his chaplain held Holy
Communion, as, in the words of
Thomas Cranmer, "it is very meet and right and our bounden duty so to do." This was one of the first
Protestant church services in the
New World (though French
Huguenots had founded an ill-fated colony in Florida in the 1560s). Drake was seen to be gaining prestige at the expense of the
Papacy.
What is certain of the extent of Drake's claim and territorial challenge to the Papacy and the Spanish crown is that his port was founded
somewhere north of Point Loma; that all contemporary maps label all lands above the Kingdoms of New Spain and New Mexico as
"Nova Albion", and that all colonial claims made from the East Coast in the 1600s were "From Sea to Sea". 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. Maps made soon after would have
"Nova Albion" written above the entire northern frontier of New Spain. These territorial claims became important during the negotiations that ended the
Mexican-American War between the United States and Mexico.
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. While there, the
Golden Hind became caught on a reef and was almost lost. After three days of waiting for expedient tides and dumping cargo the bark was miraculously freed. Drake and his men befriended a sultan king of the Moluccas and involved themselves in some intrigues with the Portuguese there.
He made multiple stops on his way toward the tip of Africa, eventually rounded the
Cape of Good Hope, and reached
Sierra Leone by
July 22,
1580. 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. The Queen's half-share of the cargo surpassed the rest of the crown's income for that entire year. Hailed as the first Englishman to circumnavigate the Earth, 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.
War broke out between Spain and England in 1585. Drake sailed to the New World and sacked the ports of
Santo Domingo and
Cartagena. On the return leg of the voyage, he captured the Spanish fort of
San AgustÃn in Florida. These exploits encouraged
Philip II of Spain to order the planning for an invasion of England.
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 occupying the town for three days, capturing six ships and destroying 31 others as well as a large quantity of stores. The attack delayed the Spanish invasion by a year.
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, Drake captured the Spanish galleon
Rosario, along with Admiral
Pedro de Valdés and all his crew, but causing confusion in the English fleet in the process. The Spanish ship was known to be carrying substantial funds to pay the Spanish Army in the Low Countries. Drake's responsibilities included carrying a stern lantern intended as a guiding light at night for other English vessels opposing the Armada. This exemplified Drake's ability, as a privateer, to suspend strategic purpose if a tactical profit were on offer.
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 next day, Drake was present at the
Battle of Gravelines.
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. This battle was the high point of the remarkable mariner's career.
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. En route, he sacked the city of
La Coruña in Spain. This massive combined naval and land expedition (see "
English Armada") was a dismal failure, attributed to a grievous lack of organization, poor training, and paltry supplies. It was a crucial turning point in the
Anglo-Spanish War (1585).
Drake's seafaring career continued into his mid fifties. In 1595, following a disastrous campaign against Spanish America where he suffered several defeats in a row, he unsuccessfully attacked
San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Spanish gunners from
El Morro Castle shot a cannonball through the cabin of Drake's flagship, but he survived. In 1596, he died of
dysentery while again unsuccessfully attacking
San Juan, where some Spanish treasure ships had sought shelter. He was buried at sea in a lead coffin, near
Portobelo in
Panama.
* In the
Philip K. Dick novel
Dr. Futurity, a clan of time-traveling Native Americans from the year 2400 travel back to the past with the intent of assassinating various 16th-Century European explorers and thus changing history; Drake's Nova Albion landing was their first stop. The attempt on Drake's life fails, though it is learned that Drake himself has been replaced by the head of a rival time-traveling clan.
* In the
Jennings series of novels, the fictional Linbury Court Preparatory School has a house named after Drake, to which the main characters, Jennings and Darbishire, belong.
* Drake's anti-Spanish exploits were loosely the basis for Warner Brother's production of the 1940 film
The Sea Hawk starring
Errol Flynn as the dashing fictional Captain Geoffery Thorpe, who also was a favourite of
Queen Elizabeth I during the film.
* There was a 1962 NBC television series based on him, titled
Sir Francis Drake.
* James Mitchner's Book "Caribbean" has a good portion dedicated to Drake and Hawkins. ISBN 0449217493
* A popular legend holds that if England is ever in peril, beating
Drake's Drum will cause Drake to return to save the country. This is a variation of the
sleeping hero folktale.
* Drake's exploits were extolled by the patriotic Victorian poet Sir
Henry Newbolt in the poem
Drake's Drum. A similarly-named poem was written by the late Victorian poetess
Norah M. Holland.
* 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. Forty years later, scientists confirmed that the plate was a
hoax, as had been suspected. Later information attributed the hoax to
E Clampus Vitus.
* There is a
high school named for Drake in
San Anselmo, California.
* 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.
* One of the four
houses of
British public school Churcher's College is named for Drake, as is one of the six
houses of
Hong Kong secondary school Sha Tin College.
* 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. Children through the Spanish-speaking world are still raised to fear "El Draqui."
* On the
Advance Wars video game series, there is a
CO named Drake, whose strength point is
naval combat.
* On the popular reality show
Survivor: Pearl Islands, one of the tribes was named Drake.
* The
Clive Cussler novel
Inca Gold involves a search for Drake's treasure.
* Some belongings of Sir Francis Drake are mentioned in some Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez' postcolonial texts, mainly
One Hundred Years of Solitude and
The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Eréndira and her Heartless Grandmother.
* He was mentioned on the
Slashdot Poll in July for "The Coolest Pirate".
* The historical accounts of his travels and exploits are the acknowledged basis for science fiction author
David Drake's
The Reaches trilogy (
Igniting the Reaches,
Through the Breach and
Fireships)
* He is mentioned in the song Hell-fire by the band
Inkubus Sukkubus* In
Don Rosa's elaboration of
Carl Barks'
Scrooge McDuck stories,
Duckburg was founded by Sir Francis Drake as
Fort Drake Borough.
* In
Ragnarok Online, a MVP monster is named, Drake, which is a pirate.
*
Bawlf, R. Samuel.
The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, 1577-1580.(Douglas & McIntyre, 2003)
* Hughes-Hallett, Lucy.
Heroes: A History of Hero Worship. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, New York, 2004. ISBN 1-4000-4399-9.
*
Mattingly, Garett,
Pulitzer Prize winner in 1960.
"The Defeat of the Spanish Armada – a Pulitzer Prize award-winning account of the defeat of the Spanish Armada.(1959),
*
Rodger, N.A.M. The Safeguard of the Sea; A Naval History of Britain 660-1649. (London, 1997).
* Mrs. Charles Merideth,
Notes and Sketches of New South Wales, during a residence in that colony from 1839 to 1844; BOUND WITH: "Life of Drake" by John Barrow (1st ed, 1844) [xi, 164; and xii, 187 pp. respectfully]
*
James Anthony Froude,
English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century, London 1896, available as a free
eText from
Project Gutenberg*
Vice Admiral Sir Francis Drake c1540-1596*
Oliver Seeler's website "Sir Francis Drake"*
Francis Drake*
Mission to rescue Drake's body*
Kraus Collection of Sir Francis Drake at the Library of Congress*
Hand-colored map depicting Sir Francis Drake's attack on Saint Augustine from the State Archives of Florida
*
Michael Turner author who has visited most of the places Drake visited and has written of both his own and Drake's experiences
*
Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online*
Golden Hind, (Ships of the World: A Historical Encyclopedia)
*http://sirfrancisdrakehistory.net/
*
Drake in British Columbia - Oliver Seeler's case against Bawlf's contention that Drake visited British Columbia.
