Francis Drake
Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe, raided the Spanish empire for two decades, and was second in command against the Armada. Born in Devon around 1540, the son of a Protestant preacher, he was apprenticed to a coastal trader and inherited the vessel. He sailed with his kinsman John Hawkins on slaving voyages to West Africa and the Caribbean, and at San Juan de Ulúa in 1568 a Spanish attack destroyed most of the fleet — an act of treachery as he saw it, and the origin of a lifelong enmity. He returned in the 1570s to raid Spanish shipping and the silver route across the Isthmus of Panama, capturing a mule train of bullion in 1573 and climbing a tree to see the Pacific, praying to sail it. He left Plymouth in 1577 with five ships. He executed Thomas Doughty for mutiny, passed the Strait of Magellan, and raided the undefended Pacific coast, taking the treasure ship Nuestra Señora de la Concepción. He claimed part of California, crossed the Pacific, loaded cloves at Ternate, and returned in 1580 with one ship and a return reported at some 4,700 per cent. Elizabeth knighted him on board. He sacked Santo Domingo and Cartagena in 1585-86, and in 1587 destroyed shipping and stores at Cádiz, delaying the Armada by a year — singeing the king of Spain's beard. He was vice-admiral in 1588, and the story of the game of bowls is later. He failed at Lisbon in 1589 and on a final Caribbean expedition, dying of dysentery off Panama in 1596.
- Lived: 1540 CE – 1596 CE
- Nationality: English
- Roles: privateer, navigator, admiral, explorer
