The Life of Sir Francis Drake
The Beginning of Caribbean Piracy
Jul 6, 2009 Alex Graham-Heggie
Spain imported gold, silver and other American treasure with flotillas of merchantmen that returned to Spain and the royal treasury. This was extremely aggravating to Spain’s rivals.
The Spanish Treasure and Europe
Other European nations commissioned private ships to capture and loot Spanish ones. These ships, their captains and their crews were called privateers, and they quickly became one of the most profitable institutions in the Early Modern economy.
In England, privateering had the additional facets of satisfying England’s desire to catch up in the colonial empire rush, and to vent its Protestant fervor on the Pope’s Spanish champions.
But only one privateer ‘tormented the Spanish so relentlessly that he earned the nickname El Draque, the Dragon.’ His name was Francis Drake. Born in approximately 1540 in Tavistock, Devonshire, England, he is believed to be the son of Protestant preacher, who suffered considerable persecution at the hands of Queen Mary I’s Catholic enforcers.
Early Life of Francis Drake
Drake, as many well-educated people did (and still do), wanted to see the world. His cousin, by happy chance, was a merchant, John Hawkins. Hawkins was a vanguard in England’s defiance of Spanish monopolies.
In 1569, Drake joined his kinsman on a slave-running expedition from Africa to the West Indies. Spanish Imperial law barred foreign merchants from trading in the colonies, and Hawkins “trusted the Spaniards ‘no further than that by his own strength he was able to master them.’” Despite that, he and Drake were led into a trap at San Juan de Ulúa and Drake was forced to abandon Hawkins in his “‘great misery.’” Both of them made it back to England, but it was an incident that most every Drake scholar cites as a major milestone; Drake was left with a strong belief in Spaniards as duplicitous.
Whether from genuine conviction, canny PR or both, on returning to England he painted himself as a staunch Protestant and Englishman maligned by Spanish treachery, and claim a right to redress – or vengeance.
Drake's Early Campagins, 1570-77
Queen Elizabeth had her own grudges with Spain, and so gave Drake permission to go back and plunder Spanish possessions. A number of such campaigns in the early 1570s ended in his capturing a great quantity of silver at Nombre de Dios. With this action, he went from a simple pirate to engaging in ‘full-blooded war campaigns.’ He even enlisted, and generously rewarded, the communities of runaway slaves in Spanish territory for their assistance.
Drake's World Voyage
It was during the Nombre de Dios raid that Drake, looking across the mountains of Panama, saw the Pacific Ocean. And in 1578 he received Elizabeth’s leave to visit it. Daring the treacherous Strait of Magellan, he gained access to the Peruvian coast where Spain’s massive silver revenues were mined. After spectacular surprise raids, including the capture of a treasure-laden warship twice the size of his own Golden Hinde, he headed homeward through the East Indies, and became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe. He returned home, returning 4700% on the investment of his backers, and himself wealthy and a national hero.
The Spanish Armada
Fed up with England’s piracy and Protestantism, in 1588 the Spanish launched their famous Armada to invade England. English seamanship had flourished in the age of privateers, and Drake captured a galleon of the Armada and was one of the principal admirals responsible for England’s victory.
Decline and Death
That, however, was the apex of Drake’s glories. In the 1590s he took part in the disastrous counter-invasion of Spain, and, returning to the Caribbean, found that the Spanish had fortified their ports against him. Stricken with dysentery, Drake died near Cuba in 1596.
Drake’s example set the example for privateers for a hundred years after him, although the line between privateer and pirate would become increasingly vague with time.
Bibliography:
Coote, Stephen, Drake: The Life and Legend of and Elizabethan Hero. Great Britain: Simon and Schuster UK ltd., 2003.
Cummins, John, Francis Drake. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1995
Norman, Andrew, Sir Francis Drake: Behind the Pirate’s Mask. Tiverton: Halsgrove, 2004.
Pirates! Dir. Henry Chancellor, Discovery Civilization Channel, 2000
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