Francis Drake
Francis Drake (Tavistock, England, 1540-Portobelo, Panama, January 28, 1596) was an English privateer, explorer, slave trader, politician and vice admiral. He led numerous expeditions of the English Royal Navy against targets in Spanish territory, both in Spain itself and in the Indies. He led the second expedition to circumnavigate the world, after Magallanes-Elcano (third if the survivors of the Loaísa expedition of 1525-1536 are considered), and participated in the attack on Cádiz in 1587, the defeat of the Invincible Armada and the failed Invincible English, among others.
At a time when England and Spain were in military conflict, he was considered a pirate by the Spanish authorities, while in England he has been valued as a privateer and patriot, and in his day he was honored as a hero, being Knighted by Queen Elizabeth I.
Biography
Early Years
Francis Drake was born in Tavistock, Devon, South West England. He was the eldest of twelve children born to Edmund Drake, a farmer and Protestant preacher, and his wife Mary Mylwaye.
Due to religious persecution during the Prayer Book Rebellion in 1549, the Drake family fled Devon to Kent. There the father obtained an appointment to minister to the men of the king's navy. He was ordained a deacon and was made vicar of Upnor Church on the Medway. Drake's father apprenticed him to his neighbor, the owner of a boat used for coastal trade carrying merchandise to France. The captain was so pleased with the behavior of the young Drake who, being single and childless at his death, bequeathed the boat to Drake.
In 1569 he married Mary Newman, who died twelve years later. In 1585 he married Elizabeth Sydenham, the only descendant of George Sydenham of the Sydenham Valley, who was High Sheriff of Somerset. After Drake's death, Elizabeth married William Courtenay of Powderham. It is believed that Francis Drake had no children, so his titles passed to his nephew, also called Francis.
Sailor Career
At the age of thirteen Francis Drake took a job as a sailor on a merchant ship, and at twenty he was a purser on a ship that frequented the ports of Vizcaya.
At the beginning of December 1567, when he was barely 25 years old, he embarked with his second cousin John Hawkins on an expedition led by him whose mission was the slave trade. They passed through Cape Verde, Guinea and San Jorge de the mine, where they captured two hundred black people; they crossed the Atlantic and reached Dominica, Margarita and Borburata, where they sold these men.
With the intention of heading towards Cartagena de Indias, a storm diverted them into the Gulf of Mexico, and when trying to take the fortress of San Juan de Ulúa, they were attacked and defeated by a Spanish escort fleet. Previously, the English had promised not to use their cannons against it, so the Spanish could dock in the current port of Veracruz. In turn, they had promised not to attack the British once they entered, but it was all a ruse to surprise them and recover the fruit of the English looting. In the encounter, the English lost two ships of their fleet and were forced to withdraw. He arrived in Plymouth, England, at the end of January 1569, after a painful return trip due to lack of food.
Despite a formal truce between the crowns of Spain and England, during that time armed incidents between the two maritime powers became more violent and frequent.
The incursions of the English into Peruvian viceregal waters during the XVI century fall within the framework of privateering operations. The Spanish Crown considered any navigator who entered the Pacific Ocean to be a pirate, and had ordered the local authorities to treat them as such.
After two minor voyages to the West Indies between 1570 and 1571, in May 1572 he embarked again with the intention of attacking Nombre de Dios, on the Isthmus of Panama, where the Spanish Indies fleet used to provision itself before crossing the ocean back to the Iberian Peninsula. In July of that year he failed in his attempt to seize the Spanish fleet and was wounded. He remained in the area all that year, and in 1573, allied with the French privateer Guillermo Le Testu, he captured a Spanish convoy laden with gold and silver.
When Drake returned to England on August 9, 1573, the mere thirty sailors with him were all rich for life. Queen Elizabeth I of England, who sponsored other corsairs like him, also sponsored his expeditions and raids, despite the fact that she had signed a temporary truce with Spain, so she did not officially recognize Drake's acts, but benefited from them..
In 1575 he participated in the massacre on Rathlin Island. By order of the Earl of Essex, John Norreys's troops massacred not only 200 soldiers defending the castle who had surrendered, but more than 400 civilians, old men, women and children, who had taken refuge on the island, while Drake's ships prevented Irish and Scottish reinforcements from reaching the shores.
With the success of the incursion of the Isthmus of Panama, in 1577 Elizabeth sent Drake to start an expedition against the Spanish along the American Pacific coast. Drake used plans that Richard Grenville had received from Elizabeth's 1574 patent, which was rescinded a year later after protests by Philip II of Spain. On November 15, he sailed from Plymouth, but had to return to port due to bad weather conditions.
From England to the Pacific
After this major setback, he set sail again on December 13 aboard the Pelican with four other ships and 164 men.
He soon added a sixth ship. On January 19, 1578 off the coast of Cape Verde he captured a Portuguese merchant ship, the Santa María , renamed the Mary . She also retained her captain, Nunho da Silva, a man with considerable experience navigating South American waters.
At the beginning of April they reached the coast of Brazil, which they skirted as far as the Río de la Plata. It is known that in the Río de la Plata in the department of Colonia a ship from Francis Drake's squadron was lost, falling as a prisoner of the Charrúa Indians, a nephew or brother of Francis whose name was John Drake, who is kept as a slave by said Indians for several months. At the end of 1580, John Drake, a French and an English sailor, took an indigenous canoe and rowed across the Río de la Plata towards the recently founded Buenos Aires. The arrival to the town of few houses that was Buenos Aires at that time must have been a gruesome scene, these three barefoot men, with their clothes completely worn out, half naked and after having lived with hunter-gatherers from present-day Uruguay, decide to turn themselves in to the authorities. of the Spanish Empire. The slave life they would lead must have been very painful for them to decide to give themselves up, knowing what would happen. The corsairs were quickly imprisoned and later sent to the inquisition court in Peru.
Drake's fleet suffered great attrition. He came ashore in the bleak San Julián Bay, in what is now Argentina. Ferdinand Magellan had arrived here half a century before, where he killed some mutineers. Drake's men saw worn and bleached skeletons on the grim Spanish gallows. Following Magellan's example, Drake tried and executed his own mutineer, Thomas Doughty.
They provisioned themselves in Puerto San Julián, where, due to a lack of crew members, they abandoned two of their ships, continuing their route with the remaining four. The crew discovered that the Mary had rotten timbers, so they burned the ship. Drake decided to spend the winter in San Julián before attempting to navigate the Strait of Magellan.
At the end of August they undertook the crossing of the Strait of Magellan, after having lost all their ships except the Pelican, and several men in different confrontations with the Patagonian Indians.
In the Pacific
As a consequence of the voyage, he gave his name to what is now widely known as Drake's Passage, despite the fact that Drake did not sail through this route, but through the Strait of Magellan, and that as early as 1525 the explorer The Spanish Francisco de Hoces had discovered that pass, which was named "Mar de Hoces". En route he renamed his ship Golden Hind.
Before reaching the Peruvian coast, Drake visited Mocha Island, where he was badly injured in an indigenous attack. Then on December 5, 1578 he sacked the port of Valparaíso. On the Spanish ship El gran capitán del sur anchored in the bay where he found 60,000 pesos of gold (400 kg) and many stones precious. Three days later on December 8, 1578 he left for Coquimbo but the infantry and cavalry forces that came from La Serena did not allow him.
As it passed through the coasts of the Viceroyalty of Peru, it attacked numerous Spanish ships. On February 13, 1579, he attacked some ships anchored in the port of Callao. He then continued northward being pursued by the "Armadilla de Toledo" until Paita where he arrived on March 10, 1579.
On March 16, 1579, she anchored on the island of Caño to recharge water, provisions, and repairs until March 24, 1579. She arrived at the port of Huatulco on April 6, 1579. She reached San Francisco Bay on June 17, 1579.
Founding of New Albion and return journey
In June 1579 Drake landed at an unspecified point on the northern coast of California, north of New Spain. He founded a port, repaired and provisioned his ships, and made relations with the natives. In turn, he claimed the territory on behalf of the English crown and gave it the name New Albion (Albion, the old name for Great Britain). The exact location of this port was kept secret to prevent the Spanish from finding out. From there he sailed north in search of the Northwest Passage that connected the Pacific with the Atlantic.
After leaving the American coast, he headed west. It reached the Moluccan Islands, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached Sierra Leone in July 1580. On September 26 of that same year the Golden Hind arrived at Plymouth with Drake and 59 other crew members on board., along with a prized cargo of spices and riches captured from the Spanish along the way.
Knighting
Back to England, he was received with honors, acclaimed as the first Englishman to cross the Strait of Magellan and circumnavigate the world, after the Spaniards Juan Sebastián Elcano, who almost sixty years earlier had accomplished the feat begun with Magellan.
On April 4, 1581, in a ceremony held aboard his ship, the Golden Hind, docked in Deptford Harbor, he was knighted Knight Bachelor) by Elizabeth I of England as a reward for her services to the English Crown. Despite the evidence, Elizabeth maintained that she had nothing to do with the trip and regretted the looting, without ever returning what was looted. a French diplomat, Monsieur de Marchaumont, who was negotiating Elizabeth's wedding to Duke Francis of Anjou, brother of the King of France. By getting the French diplomat to participate in the ceremony, Elizabeth gained the implicit political support of the French for Drake's actions. During the Victorian era, imbued with the nationalism of the time, it would be claimed that Elizabeth had endorsed Drake.
He received the title of sir and on his coat of arms he coined the legend Sic parvis magna (that is, Greatness comes from small beginnings), alluding to his humble beginnings. He remained ashore for the next few years and was appointed mayor of Plymouth, and later a member of the English Parliament, first as representative of the town of Bossiney and later of Plymouth.
War with Spain
In 1585, as a consequence of the constant attacks of the English corsairs on the Spanish fleet and the English support for the United Provinces of the Netherlands, which at that time was facing Spain in the Eighty Years' War, the hostilities broke out between England and Spain, beginning the Anglo-Spanish War. Queen Elizabeth I entrusted Drake with the command of a squadron with the task of attacking the Spanish territories in the Indies.
First expedition to the Indies
On September 14, 1585, Drake set sail from Plymouth in command of a fleet of 21 ships and 2,000 men, to threaten the coasts of Spain and finally fall on Lisbon. Upon reaching the west coast of Galicia, he sacked the Bayonne islands and blockaded the town of Vigo, in turn robbing whatever cattle he found at hand and firing a few cannon shots into the city. Faced with this attack, the people of Vigo, without exception of class, sex or age, came to the defense of their town with such bravery and courage that they forced the boats that the English had thrown into the sea to board. They abandoned their booty and Drake's squadron sailed for the Canary Islands.
This heroic resistance of Vigo was combined with the forces gathered by Pedro Bermúdez, governor of Baiona, and those of Diego Sarmiento, lord of Salvaterra.
Heading for the Indies, he looted several caravels in La Palma and El Hierro de las Canarias and the Cape Verde Islands, where he set fire to Santiago. After crossing the Atlantic he reached Dominica, which he found populated only by indigenous people, and from there he went to the island of San Cristóbal, where they found no inhabitants.
On January 1, 1586, he arrived on the island of Hispaniola, where he commanded the landing of 1,200 men who took the city of Santo Domingo, and demanded a ransom from the Spanish authorities for their return. A month later, after having burned part of the city and having received a payment of 25,000 ducats, the attackers withdrew and put to sea again. The same operation was carried out against Cartagena de Indias, a city that they assaulted on the night of February 19 and which they held in their possession for six weeks. He returned it in exchange for 107,000 ducats.
On March 1, after suffering few casualties during clashes with the Spanish and Indians in Santo Domingo and Cartagena, but decimated by yellow fever, they sailed from Cartagena with the intention of returning to England. On April 27 they made landfall at Cape San Antonio (western Cuba), and from there they continued towards the Florida coast; on May 28 they went up the San Agustín River until they reached the Spanish fortress of San Agustín, which they also set on fire. On the island of Roanoke (today North Carolina) it collected more than a hundred English settlers who, under the orders of Ralph Lane and faced with the difficulties of populating the area, decided to return to England after having settled there the previous year. Drake's fleet arrived at Portsmouth on July 28, 1586.
Expedition to the Iberian Peninsula
In 1587 he led a campaign against the fleet that Philip II was preparing to invade England. In an unprecedented expedition, Drake's fleet attacked and sacked Cádiz, destroying more than 30 ships destined for the Invincible Armada; He returned to Lisbon, where he threatened the fleet of the Marquis of Santa Cruz Álvaro de Bazán without actually attacking it, and turning towards the Azores islands he captured the carrack San Felipe , which had come from the Indies loaded with of riches. The resounding success of Drake's expedition delayed the Spanish invasion of England for another year.
The Invincible Armada
In August 1588, the Spanish Armada, a large fleet led by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, attacked Plymouth. Francis Drake, who held the position of vice-admiral of the English fleet under the orders of Admiral Charles Howard, stood out particularly in the battle, capturing among others the ship of Pedro de Valdés, commander of the Andalusian fleet.
According to an English legend, Drake was playing bowls when he received the news of the arrival of the Spanish fleet, but instead of leaving immediately he decided to play along: «We have time to finish the game. Then we will defeat the Spanish."
The Invincible Englishwoman
The year after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, England tried to take advantage of the Spanish failure. To this end, she organized what has become known as the "Invincible English" or "Counterarmy."
The English objectives were to attack and plunder the Spanish coasts and to provoke and support an insurrection in Portugal against its king, Philip II of Spain. Later they would try to take over one of the Azores islands to have a permanent base in the Atlantic from which to assault the Spanish Indies fleets. Drake attacked La Coruña, managing to sack part of the city but was finally repulsed, highlighting the figure of María Pita in the heroic defense and the English suffering some 1,300 deaths and the loss of four ships. In addition, he also failed to start the revolt of the Portuguese against Felipe II and to occupy any of the Azores islands, finally being forced to beat a retreat without having achieved a single one of his objectives and having suffered tremendous losses of 12,000 men and 20 boats.
However, he wanted to change such a bitter thorn and in order not to return empty-handed and the morale of his troops sunk, he made a fleeting stopover in the Galician estuaries during his return, mercilessly devastating the defenseless town of Vigo for four days, to which its crew, without government and eager for revenge, inflicted cruelty-filled excesses until they reduced the town to ashes. Not even from this abusive display of power did the corsair escape unscathed, since he lost some five hundred men on the ground, in addition to many other wounded. The increasing defense of the inhabitants and the arrivals of militias from Portugal, put the ships in retreat again.
After an investigation was opened in England to try to clarify the causes of the disaster, Drake, whose behavior was harshly criticized by his comrades in arms, was relegated to the modest position of commander of Plymouth's coastal defenses, denied command of any naval expedition for the next six years.
Second expedition to the Indies and death
In 1595, given the bad turn that the war was taking for English interests, Drake proposed to Queen Elizabeth an audacious operation against Spanish America, whose main objective was to establish a permanent English base in Panama from there to put in check the Spanish dominions in the Caribbean. Thus, he managed to get out of the ostracism in which he had fallen after the disaster of the Invincible English and embarked on a long and disastrous campaign, in which he suffered several consecutive defeats against much inferior Spanish forces.
He tried to capture a galleon in San Juan, Puerto Rico, but Spanish gunners from Morro Castle hit his ship's bridge, killing two English officers instantly, though Drake survived. Shortly after, he attacked San Juan again, again being defeated by five Spanish frigates under the command of Don Pedro Téllez de Guzmán. Also facing this same year the governor and captain general of the Province of the New Kingdom of Granada, who at the time was the lawyer Francisco Manso de Contreras.
After suffering a defeat in Panama in front of 120 Spanish soldiers commanded by the captains Enríquez and Agüero, in mid-January 1596, at the age of 56, he fell ill with dysentery. On the 28th of the same month, he died off the coast of Portobelo, Panama, after having made a will in favor of his nephew Francis; Thomas Baskerville was in charge of the expedition. He was buried at sea in a weighted coffin.
The English fleet would be defeated again on the Isle of Pines by a Spanish squadron sent to expel them from the Caribbean, commanded by Bernardino de Avellaneda and Juan Gutiérrez de Garibay. The balance of the expedition; that in addition to the death of Drake it also cost the life of John Hawkins; It would be three ships captured by the Spanish, 17 ships sunk or abandoned, 2,500 dead and 500 prisoners.
The news of his death reached Spain by a letter at the end of March from the Spanish General Bernardino Delgadillo de Avellaneda addressed to Pedro Flores, president of the Casa de la Contratación de Indias. Later, on June 20 of the same year, the lawyer Andrés Armenteros sent a letter to the Duke of Medina Sidonia in which he reported the return of the English fleet to England, adding (erroneously or falsely) the news that Drake's body was on one of these ships, stuck in a barrel.
Literature and popular culture
Despite the English secrecy policy, Drake's voyages appeared on numerous maps and atlases, widely circulated and popular at the time. Both his life in general and his trip around the world were the source of inspiration for some contemporary and later literary works:
- Juan de Castellanos would dedicate his Address by Francisco Drake, written about 1596 in his Choices of illustrious men, but censored in his time by military naval intelligence. It was so true that Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa interpreted that he could play against the defense of the Indian coasts against piracy. It was first published in 1921.
- Lope de Vega dedicates his epic poem The dragontea to the defeat of Drake by the mayor of Name of God, Diego Suárez de Amaya.
- Juan de Miramontes Zuazola refers his gesta in Antarctic weaponswritten in 1609, but hidden until 1921.
- Francisco Drake is the antagonist in the novel The bride of the heretic (1854) by Vicente Fidel López.
- Gabriel García Márquez mentions Drake's attack on Riohacha as the beginning of the story between the Buendía and Iguarán families at the beginning of Hundred years of solitude. He also mentions it in the story The unbelievable and sad story of the Eréndira Candida and her desailing grandmother, referring to a gun taken by Eréndira. Ulysses, his companion, exclaims: "-No good. It was Francis Drake's."
- Manuel Mujica Lainez mentions his name in the story The Love of Little Dragon (Misteriosa Buenos Aires), which deals with a young woman who falls in love with Drake's nephew.
- José Milla and Vidaurre makes Drake one of the most famous characters in the work The visitor.
- David Silvestre mentions it in his Spanish tragedy The English Rose, published in 2007.
- The Treasure of the Pirates of Guayacán, historical fiction work written by the English Ricardo Latcham, also mentions it.
Entertainment
- The Uncharted video game saga mentions throughout history that the protagonist of this saga, Nathan Drake, is the fictitious descendant of the English adventurer.
- On the One Piece sleeve, the X character is based on Drake.
- The table game Francis Drake, published in 2013 by Kayal Games, is set in 1572 and based on its travels.
- In the video game Fate/Grand Order Drake appears as one of the multiple servants that the player can get. He is also a secondary character of anime Fate/EXTRA: Last Encore.
- In the series Black Sails T1:E3 is commented on it as well as along the series.