Francis Drake Completes Second Circumnavigation
Francis Drake returned to Plymouth in September 1580 having sailed round the world, the first English commander to do so and the first captain of any nation to survive his own circumnavigation. He had left in 1577 with five ships on a voyage whose official purpose was trade and whose actual purpose, understood by Elizabeth I and by her investors, was to raid the undefended Pacific coast of Spanish America. Three ships were abandoned or lost before the Strait of Magellan. At Port St Julian he tried and executed Thomas Doughty, a gentleman of the expedition, for conspiracy and witchcraft, and then delivered the speech about the mariner and the gentleman hauling together that is quoted in every account of naval discipline since. He renamed his flagship the Golden Hind and passed the strait in sixteen days. A storm scattered the remaining ships and left him alone in the Pacific. The Spanish coast was entirely unfortified, since no enemy had ever appeared there. He took ports and shipping at will, and off Peru captured the treasure ship Nuestra Señora de la Concepción — nicknamed Cacafuego — with twenty-six tons of silver, eighty pounds of gold and a quantity of jewels. He then sailed north, possibly as far as Vancouver Island, claimed a Californian landing as Nova Albion, crossed the Pacific, loaded cloves at Ternate, and came home round the Cape. The return was reckoned at about 4,700 per cent on the investment. Elizabeth knighted him on deck. Spain demanded his execution as a pirate. The voyage established that Spanish America was indefensible and made the war of 1588 far more likely.
- Year: 1577 CE
- Category: Military
