Francis Drake's circumnavigation

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 13th of December 1577, Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the Earth began with a carefully maintained lie. Drake told his crew they were sailing to the Levant for trade. The real destination was the Spanish empire's exposed Pacific coast, and the real purpose was plunder. Queen Elizabeth I had authorised the expedition in secret and invested 1,000 crowns of her own money. Her Secretary of State Francis Walsingham and other members of her court invested alongside her. The fleet comprised five ships and roughly 164 men. Most of them had no idea what actually lay ahead. Three years later, Drake came home with one ship and a much reduced crew. What had happened to the rest? And what exactly had Elizabeth authorised him to do on behalf of the English Crown? The answers reach back decades before the fleet ever sailed.

• 2. Origins of the Conflict

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  In 1567, a Spanish squadron attacked a fleet commanded by Sir John Hawkins in the Mexican harbour of San Juan de Ulua. Francis Drake was aboard as Hawkins's cousin and managed to escape. Several English ships were lost. The Spanish became a lifelong enemy for Drake from that encounter, and they in turn regarded him as a pirate.

  The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, brokered by Pope Alexander VI, had divided the New World between Spain and Portugal. England's Protestant Reformation gave merchants and adventurers a reason to reject a compact negotiated in Rome. The Act of Supremacy in 1559 formally severed England's relationship with Papal authority. Relations between King Philip II of Spain and Queen Elizabeth I worsened steadily through the 1560s as a result. Spain's enforcement of its colonial monopoly was ferocious. In 1565, several hundred French Huguenot settlers at Fort Caroline in Florida were massacred by the Spanish after they had surrendered.

  Drake responded to his grievances directly. In 1572, commanding two vessels, he raided Spanish Caribbean ports and captured Nombre de Dios on the Isthmus of Panama. He glimpsed the Pacific Ocean for the first time from a vantage point in Panama. He returned home with Spanish treasure. But Elizabeth and Philip had just signed the Convention of Nymegen in 1573. Drake was forced to stay quiet for years. He accumulated resources in the meantime. By the mid-1570s he had nearly 100,000 pesos of hidden stolen loot and had begun constructing a new ship designed for the expedition he was already planning.

• 3. The Secret Fleet

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  Drake's command ship, the Pelican, displaced 150 tons and carried eighteen guns. Its design drew on the nao Victoria, the first vessel ever to circle the globe. Drake had finished building it himself. Four other ships made up the fleet: the Elizabeth at eighty tons under Captain John Wynter, the thirty-ton Marigold under Captain John Thomas, and two supply vessels, the Benedict and the Swan.

  Robert Dudley, Christopher Hatton, and senior naval officials including George Wynter the Clerk of the Queen's ships and William Wynter the Surveyor of the Navy all invested in the venture. Elizabeth had made Drake a privateer and was herself his patron.

  Diego, a formerly enslaved African who had escaped the Spanish and joined Drake at Nombre de Dios in 1572, was among the most carefully selected crew members. By the time of the circumnavigation he was a free man, paid wages equal to the rest of the crew. He could build ships and spoke both Spanish and English fluently. Drake planned to use him as an interpreter and, more crucially, as a conduit for feeding false intelligence to any Spaniards they captured. Thomas Doughty, an attorney who had sailed with Drake before, joined as one of the gentleman adventurers. Drake's younger brother Thomas and his cousin John were also aboard. The crew included carpenters, a blacksmith, a botanist, musicians, and Francis Fletcher, the Secretary of State's chaplain, sent specifically to observe and record the voyage.

  Drake relied on the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the world map by Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius, for navigation. He revealed nothing of the true destination to his men. Tensions with Thomas Doughty surfaced almost as soon as the ships were at sea.

• 4. Execution at San Julian

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  Ferdinand Magellan had called in at San Julian, a natural harbour in Patagonia, half a century before Drake arrived. Magellan had executed mutineers there. Drake's men found weathered skeletons still hanging on Spanish gibbets and decided to winter at San Julian before attempting the Strait of Magellan.

  In January 1578, Drake captured a Spanish merchant vessel, the Santa Maria, at Santiago island in the Cape Verde Islands despite coming under fire from a shore fort. The ship carried wine and useful charts of South American waters. It also yielded a Portuguese navigator named Nuno da Silva, who had extensive experience in South Atlantic waters and agreed to work with Drake. Drake reassigned command of his flagship to Thomas Doughty. Doughty almost immediately accused Drake's brother Thomas of stealing from the captured wine cargo. Drake's hostility towards Doughty grew through the long Atlantic crossing.

  Doughty's demotion to command of the Swan proved a severe humiliation. He began making bitter complaints about the man he called 'the Captain General'. When the Swan became separated during a severe storm, Drake accused Doughty of practising witchcraft. He struck him and ordered him bound to the mast. Drake then scuttled the Swan and burned the Christopher, condensing the fleet. By the 3rd of June, Doughty and his brother John were under house arrest, with sailors forbidden from speaking to them.

  At San Julian, Drake convened a formal trial. Key evidence came from the ship's carpenter Edward Bright, who was promoted to master of the Marigold after the trial, and from Doughty's own admission that he had disclosed the voyage's real purpose to Lord Burghley. Burghley was a vocal opponent of any action likely to provoke Spain. The trial found Doughty guilty of incitement to mutiny. On the 2nd of July 1578, Drake had him beheaded. He then held up the severed head and declared, 'behold the head of a traitor'.

  Through July 1578, the hostility between mariners and gentlemen adventurers remained dangerous. Drake used a sermon to deliver a speech placing himself in sole command and laying down firm rules of conduct. From that point mutiny ceased to be a serious threat. Before the fleet entered the Strait of Magellan, Drake sent Captain Wynter ashore, where indigenous people introduced the crew to a medicinal tree bark. Sailors recorded it as Winter's bark, preserving Wynter's name in the natural world.

• 5. Plunder in the Pacific

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  On the 20th of August 1578, Drake renamed his flagship the Golden Hind. The name honoured his patron Christopher Hatton, whose family crest bore a golden hind, the female red deer. Drake navigated the Strait of Magellan in just sixteen days. Violent storms struck the fleet the moment it entered the Pacific. The Marigold vanished and was presumed lost with all hands. The Elizabeth was so badly battered that its crew demanded a return to England. Captain Wynter wanted to press on but ultimately gave way, and the Elizabeth headed back. Drake was left alone with the Golden Hind and fewer than half the men he had started with.

  Mocha Island was his first stop on the Pacific coast. An eleven-man boat party went ashore for fresh water and was attacked by the Mapuche people on the second day. Two English sailors were killed and two more captured. Multiple men were wounded, including Diego and Drake himself, each struck by numerous arrows. Drake took one in the face. Francis Fletcher later recorded that the two captured men were killed and eaten. Diego never fully recovered from his wounds. He died, probably from a lingering infection, when the expedition neared the Moluccas more than a year later.

  Heading north along the coast, Drake raided the small settlement of Valparaiso on the 5th of December 1578, taking art treasures and church silver. The harbour contained a ship carrying 25,000 pesos in gold and detailed charts of the South American coast. Sailing further north, Drake entered Callao on the 13th of February 1579, ransacked the dozen vessels anchored there, and ran them aground. Prisoners told him that a large treasure galleon called the Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion had recently departed north-west towards Panama. Drake set off in pursuit at once.

  Viceroy Francisco de Toledo in Lima was alarmed. He sent every available vessel out of Callao to pursue Drake, but none could challenge the Golden Hind. Toledo ultimately dispatched his son Luis with thirteen vessels, including two heavily armed galleons, with Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa among the pilots and 120 soldiers. They left Callao on the 27th of February. Drake was far to the north and unaware of them.

  Drake caught the Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion on the 1st of March 1579. The Spanish captain Juan de Anton was astonished to see a foreign vessel so deep in the Pacific. When Anton refused to strike sail, Drake opened fire with cannon and arquebus, tearing away the ship's mizzenmast and lateen yard. The English boarded from both sides. The galleon's crew, who had not expected English ships in these waters, surrendered quickly. The unloading took six days. Drake found 80 pounds of royals of plate and 26 long tons of silver in the hold, along with a golden crucifix and jewels. The total cargo was worth around 360,000 pesos, roughly seven million pounds by modern standards. The silver bars replaced the Golden Hind's ballast. Drake released the Spanish prisoners with gifts and a letter of safe conduct, then directed Diego to mislead the captives about the scale of English strength in the Pacific. He turned north in search of a passage home.

• 6. Nova Albion

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  On the 5th of June 1579, the Golden Hind made landfall near Coos Bay to take on fresh water and food. Drake had pushed north to a latitude of around 48 degrees before foul weather stopped him. He turned south. The hypothetical Strait of Anian, supposed to connect the Pacific and Atlantic, did not exist.

  On the 17th of June, sailing south along what is now the California coast, Drake found a protected cove and anchored in an estuary later known as Drakes Estero. The crew erected a small wooden fort and tents ashore, restocked the ships, and spent several weeks repairing and careening the hull. Drake claimed the territory for Queen Elizabeth I and the English Crown in the name of the Holy Trinity. He named it Nova Albion, Latin for New Britain. He chose the name partly because the white coastal cliffs resembled those of the English Channel. Albion was also an ancient name for Great Britain itself.

  Coast Miwok people came to the encampment and greeted the English with gifts. Over time the interactions grew more ceremonious. A large assembly of Coast Miwok descended on the camp and honoured Drake by placing chains around his neck, a sceptre in his hand, and a crown of feathers on his head. England later cited this gesture as the legal foundation of its authority over the territory. To mark his claim, Drake is said to have fixed an engraved brass plate to a large post. The plate held a sixpence bearing Queen Elizabeth's image and asserted sovereignty for the English Crown.

  Francis Fletcher wrote accounts of the Coast Miwok in striking detail. He became the first person to make a written record of any of the 64 distinct language groups belonging to prehistoric California. Drake also journeyed inland along a Miwok trail, crossing the Inverness Ridge and descending into what is now the Olema Valley.

  The Golden Hind left Nova Albion on the 23rd of July. Those present described the Coast Miwok as appearing distressed as the ship sailed away. Drake anchored the following day at the Farallon Islands, where the crew hunted seal meat before beginning the Pacific crossing.

• 7. East Indies and Home

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  By the 13th of October 1579, the Golden Hind had reached the Caroline Islands after an unusually swift Pacific crossing. Drake stopped at either Yap or Palau, where hundreds of islanders approached in canoes. The meeting turned hostile, and the English fired several rounds, killing or wounding around twenty people before sailing on.

  In early November 1579, Drake reached the Moluccas, the south-west Pacific island group known throughout Europe as the Spice Islands. Two fishing canoes guided the Golden Hind through the islands to Ternate, whose volcanic peak, Gamalama, dominated the skyline. Sultan Babullah received Drake's crew in an old Portuguese castle with formal ceremony and sent them a meal of rice, chicken, sugarcane, coconuts, fruit, and sago.

  Drake told Babullah he was no friend of the Portuguese and expressed an interest in trading for spices. Babullah pressed him to join a campaign against the last Portuguese fort on the neighbouring island of Tidore. Drake declined, his focus fixed on the return to England. Using English linen, gold, and silver, Drake purchased around ten tonnes of spices, mostly cloves, along with ginger, black pepper, and nutmeg. He distributed silver coin to his crew.

  On the 8th of January 1580, the Golden Hind ran onto a reef off the Celebes. Francis Fletcher preached a sermon suggesting the grounding was divine punishment for the execution of Doughty. Drake had Fletcher chained to a hatch cover and solemnly excommunicated him. The crew waited for favourable tides, jettisoned three tons of cargo and several guns, and freed the ship after three days.

  Java's southern coastline was unknown to Europeans until Drake navigated it in March 1580. Arriving at Tjilatjap on the 11th of March, the crew was warmly received by local rajahs and traded fine silks for rice, chickens, yams, and dried beef. Drake established that Java was not an extension of the hypothetical southern continent Terra Australis. He sailed off on the 24th of March.

  On the 15th of June 1580, the Golden Hind rounded the Cape of Good Hope. Drake's crew had read frightening accounts of the passage from Portuguese and Spanish sailors, but they encountered good weather instead. After sailing nearly 9,700 miles without stopping, food and water ran critically short. Drake landed on the 22nd of July at what is now Sierra Leone. The crew encountered elephants for the first time and what they described as an oyster-tree, leafless but covered in oysters. They reprovisioned and left two days later. Drake arrived in the English Channel on the 26th of September 1580, with 59 crew remaining and the holds full of spices and captured Spanish treasure. After Captain Wynter's lone return with the Elizabeth more than a year before, most in England had presumed Drake and his men lost.

• 8. Aftermath and Legacy

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  Queen Elizabeth knighted Francis Drake aboard the Golden Hind at Deptford on the 4th of April 1581. The dubbing was performed by the French diplomat Monsieur de Marchaumont. Marchaumont was in England negotiating a possible marriage between Elizabeth and Francis, Duke of Anjou. By involving a French envoy in the ceremony, Elizabeth gained implicit French endorsement of Drake's actions against Spain.

  Investors received a return of around 5,000 per cent. Drake was officially permitted to keep 24,000 pounds of the captured treasure for himself and his crew. Elizabeth declared all written accounts of the voyage 'Queen's secrets of the Realm' and swore all participants to secrecy on pain of death. As a token of the voyage, Drake presented the Queen with a jewel taken from the Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion, made of enamelled gold and bearing an African diamond and a ship with an ebony hull. Elizabeth gave him a jewel carrying her own portrait in return, an unusual gift for a commoner. Drake wore it in his 1591 portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts, now at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. The jewel, known today as the Drake Jewel, survives at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

  Drake became Mayor of Plymouth in September 1581 and a member of parliament in both 1581 and 1584. John Doughty, the executed man's brother, attempted legal action over the death. The case was dismissed on a technicality.

  Viceroy Francisco de Toledo moved immediately to fortify the Pacific coastline and established the Southern Fleet at Callao. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa led a squadron into the Strait of Magellan to explore and colonise it, aiming to block future English access. The settlements Gamboa founded, including Ciudad del Rey Don Felipe, all failed. Gamboa himself was captured by English privateers two years later. Drake's seizure of cargo from the Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion had a further consequence. It provided evidence that Spain had been operating in waters the 1494 Tordesillas treaty had designated as Portuguese territory. This contributed to Philip II's decision to invade Portugal, which led to the Iberian Union.

  In 1586, Drake captured Santo Domingo, Cartagena de Indias, and raided St. Augustine. The following year he struck Cadiz harbour and destroyed ships being assembled for an invasion fleet. He called the raid 'Singeing the King of Spain's Beard'. King Philip had already placed a bounty of 20,000 ducats on his head. Spain knew him as El Draque, the Dragon.

  Thomas Cavendish, directly inspired by Drake's voyage, completed his own circumnavigation between 1586 and 1588. James Lancaster sailed to the East Indies in 1591 and again in 1600 and became one of the founders of the East India Company. Walter Raleigh undertook his voyage to El Dorado in 1595. The earliest published account of Drake's voyage, The World Encompassed, appeared in 1628, compiled by Drake's nephew from his uncle's journal, Fletcher's notes, and other sources. In 1973, a replica of the Golden Hind named the Golden Hinde was built to mark the 400th anniversary of the circumnavigation. It sailed from Plymouth in late 1974 and arrived in San Francisco on the 8th of May 1975. Britain had invoked Drake's Nova Albion claim during the Nootka Crisis with Spain in 1789. The same claim appeared in negotiations for the 1846 Oregon Treaty, which drew the Canadian border along the 49th parallel to the Pacific. The same stretch of coastline still carries his name.