Francis Drake: the Elizabethan raider Spain called El Draque

San Juan de Ulúa

Francis Drake was born in Devon around 1540, the son of a modest landowner who became a chaplain at the Chatham dockyard. In 1566 he sailed with his cousin John Hawkins on a slave-trading voyage to West Africa and the Americas, and in 1567 he went again as captain of the 50-ton Judith. On 23 September 1568, at San Juan de Ulúa on the coast of Mexico, the Spanish viceroy broke the truce and attacked the English ships. Four were lost; Hawkins and Drake escaped in the other two. Mark Cartwright, in the World History Encyclopedia, sees in that day the root of a lifelong hostility to Spain, sharpened by Drake's militant Protestantism.²

Drake took his revenge in Panama. Sailing from Plymouth on 24 May 1572, he raided Nombre de Dios, and on 11 February 1573 he climbed a tree on the isthmus and became the first Englishman to see the Pacific. Before going home he ambushed a Spanish silver train, which Cartwright values at about £40,000.³

Around the world

In 1577 Elizabeth I secretly invested in a voyage to the South Sea. Drake left Plymouth on 13 December with five ships and 164 men. Two ships turned back, the others passed the Strait of Magellan in August 1578, and storms left his flagship, the Pelican, renamed the Golden Hind, to go on alone. In March 1579 he took the Spanish treasure ship Nuestra Señora de la Concepción off Peru, then sailed north, claimed a stretch of the Californian coast as New Albion, crossed the Pacific to the East Indies, and came home to Plymouth on 26 September 1580. It was the second voyage around the world, after Magellan's.⁴

The plunder was immense. Cartwright estimates it at about £600,000, roughly a year of England's royal revenue, with £160,000 going to the queen. On 4 April 1581 Elizabeth knighted Drake aboard the Golden Hind at Deptford, to the fury of the Spanish ambassador. He bought Buckland Abbey and took the motto Sic Parvis Magna, greatness from small beginnings.⁵

The West Indies raid

In 1585, after Spain had seized English ships in its ports, Drake led a much larger expedition to the Caribbean. Its size is given differently: Mark C. Herman, in an EBSCO research article, counts about 23 ships and 8 pinnaces with 1,600 to 1,900 men, including 500 to 700 soldiers under Christopher Carleill, while Cartwright writes of nearly 30 ships and about 2,000 men. Martin Frobisher was vice-admiral. The fleet sailed from Plymouth on 14 September 1585, called at Vigo, raided the Canaries and the Cape Verde Islands, and then lost several hundred men to disease on the Atlantic crossing.⁶

On New Year's Day 1586 the English stormed Santo Domingo on Hispaniola and burned parts of the city until the Spanish agreed to pay 25,000 ducats. At Cartagena, entered on 9 February, Drake demanded 500,000 ducats, was offered 25,000, and after more burning settled for 110,000. Havana was too strong to attack. On 28 May the fleet destroyed the fort and town of St. Augustine in Florida, and in June it took home the 105 settlers of the English colony at Roanoke, reaching Portsmouth on 27 July 1586.⁷

Financially the voyage failed: the plunder did not cover its cost of £40,000, half of it put up by the queen. But Herman judges that it opened the naval war between England and Spain, forced Philip II to spend money on defending his colonies that he needed for the Armada and the Netherlands, and badly dented Spanish prestige.⁸

Cádiz and the Armada

In April 1587 Drake struck at Cádiz, Spain's main Atlantic port, where the Armada was being prepared. Cartwright counts 31 ships destroyed and six captured, along with stores meant for the invasion fleet; Drake himself boasted that he had singed the king of Spain's beard. He went on to raid Spanish shipping off Cape St. Vincent and as far as the Azores.⁹

When the Armada came in the summer of 1588, the English fleet was commanded by Lord Howard of Effingham, with Drake as vice-admiral in the Revenge. The fleets fought running battles up the Channel, and after the Spanish anchored off Calais, fireships sent in on the night of 28 July broke their formation before the battle off Gravelines. The Armada escaped north around Scotland and Ireland, where storms wrecked many of its ships.¹⁰

The last voyages

The counterstroke of 1589, led by Drake and Sir John Norris against Corunna and Lisbon, failed to take Lisbon and lost many men to disease, and Cartwright notes that it badly hurt Drake's standing with the queen. He served as mayor of Plymouth and as its member of Parliament. In August 1595 he sailed with Hawkins and 27 ships to seize the Panama silver once more, but Hawkins died on the way, the attack on Puerto Rico failed and the Spanish had been warned. Drake died of dysentery off Portobelo on 28 January 1596, aged about 55, and was buried at sea in a lead coffin. The Spanish called him El Draque, the Dragon.¹¹