Drake, Sir Francis

Drake, Sir Francis (c.1543–96). 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, he was, nevertheless, capable of greed, disloyalty, injustice towards associates, and poor judgement as a naval strategist. His career was a key part of the process by which England emerged as an oceanic power. Though of yeoman stock, Drake became closely associated with a predatory and aggressive ruling aristocracy ready to sanction piracy and privateering against the French, Portuguese, and above all, the Spanish. The contests with the latter also had a religious edge as Drake was a determined protestant. Yet the Spaniards who knew El Draque admired him.

Originally from Devon, Drake learned seamanship apprenticed on a coastal bark plying from the Thames, but in the 1560s joined a kinsman, Hawkins, on ventures to Spain and then to west Africa and the Caribbean, procuring and selling slaves in the face of Portuguese and Spanish hostility. By 1569, Drake was in command of a ship. Details of his life are obscure, but he made at least three piratical expeditions to the Caribbean, with that in 1572 capturing 30 tons of silver, part of the Spanish treasure annually brought across the Isthmus of Panama. After an Irish venture, in 1577 Drake embarked on a circumnavigation of the globe financed by the queen and other great people. This was at once further plundering of the Spanish—now on the western coast of the Americas—a search for the Pacific end of the North-West Passage, and an attempt to reach the spice islands by going west. Drake's expedition was the second to circuit the globe and also led to his claiming California for Elizabeth. Just where Drake landed in California and whether a plaque which came to notice in 1937 was actually the one he left there in 1579 remain in dispute. On the return of the 70-foot-long Golden Hind in 1580, Drake, rich and famous, was knighted, while England, it has been said, began to think globally.

There followed further raids on Spain and, most notably, assaults on key Spanish positions around the Caribbean in 1585–6 and Cadiz in 1587. These actions, combined with the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 with Drake second in command, ended Spain's unquestioned supremacy at sea, though they did not break Spain's naval power. Nor was Drake's role in the defeat of the Armada the key one.

In 1589, Drake led an expedition against Lisbon before settling to active involvement in the life of Plymouth, including becoming its MP. He was encouraged to resume a privateering career in 1595 since Elizabeth's policy favoured predation on Spain as a means of increasing England's stake in world trade. But the attacks in the West Indies failed and Drake died at sea. This disaster was soon forgotten as the legend was elaborated in subsequent years and centuries.

Roy C. Bridges