Francis Drake

Sir Francis Drake (c. 1540 – 28 January 1596) was an English explorer and privateer. He is most famous for leading the second single-expedition circumnavigation of the globe, from 1577 to 1580, and the first such voyage by an English crew. He also sailed on early expeditions with his cousin John Hawkins and with John Lovell. Drake began his career as an ordinary seaman and later served as a vice admiral in the 1588 campaign against the Spanish Armada.

Drake was born at Crowndale Farm in Tavistock, Devon. His exact birth date is unknown; estimates come from contemporary texts and portraits. One miniature from 1581 suggests he was 42 that year, while a 1594 portrait indicates he was 52, placing his birth around 1539–1541. He was the eldest of twelve sons of Edmund Drake, a Protestant farmer, and Mary Mylwaye. He was named after his godfather, Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford. During the 1549 Prayer Book Rebellion, religious persecution forced the family to flee Devon for Kent, where his father became a minister in the King’s Navy and later vicar of Upchurch Church on the Medway.

As a boy, Drake was placed in the household of his relative William Hawkins, a prominent Plymouth sea captain, and began his seagoing training as an apprentice. By age 18 he was a purser. His father later secured him a position with the master of a small barque trading between the Medway and the Dutch coast. Drake likely traded along the coasts of England, the Low Countries, and France. The ship’s master, impressed with Drake, left him the barque upon his death.

Drake participated in the slave trade through voyages with John Hawkins. In the early 1560s, Hawkins planned to break into the West African slave trade, then dominated by Portugal and Spain. Hawkins financed his first slaving voyage with help from colleagues and family. While Drake was not among the financiers, evidence places him as a common seaman on Hawkins’s later voyages between 1562 and 1569. In 1562, Hawkins seized Portuguese slave ships off Sierra Leone and sold the captives in Spanish colonies, a highly profitable venture. For his second voyage in 1564, Queen Elizabeth I lent him the ship *Jesus of Lübeck*. Hawkins attacked an African town and sold its inhabitants in Spanish Caribbean ports, earning large profits for himself, the queen, and her court investors.

In 1572, Drake set out on his first independent mission, privateering along the Spanish Main. His circumnavigation began on 13 December 1577. He crossed the Pacific, an area then exclusive to Spanish interests, claimed New Albion, and plundered coastal towns and ships for supplies and treasure. He returned to England on 26 September 1580. Queen Elizabeth I knighted him in 1581 aboard his galleon, the *Golden Hind*.

Drake’s voyage sparked conflict with Spain, and the Anglo-Spanish War began in 1585. He commanded an expedition to the Americas that attacked Spanish shipping and ports. When Philip II sent the Spanish Armada in 1588, Drake was second-in-command of the English fleet that repulsed it. The following year, he led the English Armada in a failed attempt to destroy the remaining Spanish fleet.

Drake served as a Member of Parliament for Camelford (1581), Bossiney (1584), and Plymouth (1593). His exploits made him a hero in England, but the Spanish branded him a pirate, calling him *El Draque* (“The Dragon”). He died of dysentery in January 1596 after a failed assault on Panama.