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Francis Drake
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Sir Francis Drake
Born c. 1540s
Tavistock, Devon
Died month not known 1596
Porto Belo, Panama
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Sir Francis Drake,
Vice Admiral, (c. 1540 – January 27, 1596) was an English privateer, navigator, slave trader, politician and civil engineer of the Elizabethan era. He was second-in-command of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada in 1588. He died of dysentery after unsuccessfully attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1596.
His exploits were semi-legendary and made him a hero to the English but to the Spaniards he was equated with the devil. He was known as "El Dragon" (an obvious play on his family name) for his actions. King Philip II actually offerred a reward of 20,000 ducats (about $10 million by 2007 standards) for his life. Many a city in the 16th century was ransomed for less.
While his passing was mourned in England, there were celebrations in Spain and its dominions.
Birth and early years
Miniature of Drake, age 42 by Nicholas Hilliard in 1581
Francis Drake was born in the parish of Crowndale, a mile south of Tavistock, Devon, probably in February or March 1540 (Turner 2005:4). He was 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 sometimes confused with his cousin John Drake (1573–1634), who was the son of Edmund's older brother, Richard Drake. (cf. John White, note 2). His maternal grandfather was Richard Mylwaye. John Drake and Margaret Cole were also great-grandparents of Sir Walter Raleigh..
He was reportedly named after his godfather Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford, and throughout his cousins' lineages are direct connections to royalty and famous persons, such as Sir Richard Grenville, Ivor Callely , Amy Grenville, and Geoffrey Chaucer. However, James Froude states, "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."
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 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 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 second cousin, Sir John Hawkins.
In 1569 he was with the Hawkins fleet when it was trapped by the Spaniards in the Mexican port of San Juan de Ulua. He escaped along with Hawkins but the experience led him to his lifelong revenge against the Spanish.
Circumnavigating the world
Sir Francis Drake, circa 1581. After Drake became famous, portraits of him were in demand. This portrait may have been copied from Hilliard's miniature—note that the shirt is the same — and the somewhat oddly proportioned body added by an artist who did not have access to Drake. National Portrait Gallery, London.
Entering the Pacific
In 1577, Drake was sent by Queen Elizabeth to start an expedition against the Spanish along the Pacific coast of the Americas. He set out to depart from Plymouth on 15th November on his expedition, but terrible weather threatened him and his fleet, who were forced to take refuge in Falmouth, from where they returned to Plymouth for repair. After this minor setback, he set sail once again from England on December 13, aboard the Pelican, with four other ships 164 men. After crossing the Atlantic, one of the ships, under Thomas Winter turned back through the Magellan Strait, on the east coast of South America.
The four remaining ships departed for the Magellan Strait 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 this passage a storm blew his ship so far south that he realized 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, because the southernmost point of his voyage was at least 56 degrees according to astronomical data quoted in Haklyut's "The Principall Navigators" of 1589. This achievement was not surpassed until James Cook's voyage of 1773 and was the first known occasion that any explorer had traveled 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. He 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 alone along the Pacific coast of South America, attacking Spanish ports and rifling towns as it went. Some Spanish ships were captured, and Drake made good use of their more accurate charts.
The most notable seizures include when Drake captured a Spanish ship, laden with riches from Peru, which held 25,000 pesos of pure, fine gold, amounting in value to 37,000 ducats of Spanish money. Near Lima, they discovered news of a ship sailing towards Panama, The Cacafuego. They gave chase and eventually captured her, which proved to be their most profitable captures. They found 80lb of gold and a golden crucifix, countless jewels, 13 chests full of royals of plate and 26 tones of silver.
Nova Albion
On June 17, 1579, Drake landed somewhere north of Spain's northern-most claim at Point Loma. He found a good 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 realised. He claimed the land in the name of the Holy Trinity for the English Crown as called Nova Albion - Latin for "New Britain."
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. All first hand records from the voyage, including logs, paintings and charts were lost when Whitehall Palace burned in 1698. 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, California. This so-called Drake's Plate of Brass was later declared a hoax.
Another location 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 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 English colonists on the Atlantic coast when those 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 south west Pacific, in eastern modern-day 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 barque 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 (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.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Drake"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Drake
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