Francis Drake, eldest of
twelve children,was born in Crowndale in about 1540. His father, Edmund
Drake, was a passionate supporter of Martin
Luther and during
the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1948, was forced to flee with his family
to Chatham in Kent.
Drake was apprenticed to
a Thames captain in the 1550s, and in 1563 joined his cousin, John
Hawkins, on a voyage to Africa. The two men started capturing
people in Sierra Leone and selling them as slaves
to Spanish settlers in the Caribbean. As it was illegal for the settlers
to buy from foreigners, Hawkins and Drake soon came into conflict
with the Spanish authorities.
His first command was in
1567 when he took part in a successful attack on Spanish ships in
the port of San Juan de Ulua. He returned to Plymouth with gold and
silver worth over £40,000. Drake, a committed Protestant, saw
himself as an instrument of God in his crusade against Philip
II and the Spanish Empire. This was followed by voyages to the
West Indies and in 1572 he seized gold and silver in the Americas
and the Atlantic.
With the secret sponsorship
of Elizabeth I, Francis
Walsingham and
Christopher
Hatton, Drake
continued to attack Spanish treasure ships. In 1579 he rounded the
Straits of Magellan, and was the captain of the first ship, the Golden
Hind, to sail into the Pacific Ocean. In June, 1579, he
landed in California. When Drake arrived in England in September 1580,
he became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world.
Drake return to England
as a very wealthy man and he was able to purchase the Buckland Abbey
estate. In 1581 Elizabeth I knighted
Drake and later that year he was elected to the House
of Commons.
Drake carried out a successful
raid of the Spanish Caribbean (1584-85) and managed to rescue the
remaining English colonists in Virginia and returned to Portsmouth
in 1586. He also led the expedition which wrecked the Spanish fleet
at Cadiz in 1587.
In July 1588 131 ships
in the Spanish Armada left for England.
The large Spanish galleons were filled with 17,000 well-armed soldiers
and 180 Catholic priests. The plan was to sail to Dunkirk in France
where the Armada would pick up another 16,000 Spanish soldiers.
The plan was to sail to
Dunkirk in France where the Armada would pick up another 16,000 Spanish
soldiers that were under the command of Alessandro
Farnese, the Duke of Parma.
On hearing the news Charles
Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admiral, held a council-of-war.
Lord Howard decided to divide the fleet into squadrons. Francis Drake,
John Hawkins and Martin
Frobisher were chosen as the three other commanders of the fleet.
Howard went in his flagship,
the Ark Royal (800 tons and a
crew of 250). Frobisher was given command of the largest ship in the
fleet, the Triumpth (1,110 tons
and a crew of 500 men) whereas Drake was the captain of the Revenge
(500 tons and a crew of 250) and Hawkins was aboard the Victory
(800 tons and a crew of 250).
Lord Howard decided that
the Spanish Armada should be attacked at both ends of the crescent.
The Ark Royal attacked the right
wing and the Revenge and the Triumph
attacked Juan Martinez, de Recalde, commander of the Biscayan squadron
on the left. Recalde on board the San Juan
de Portugal decided to come out and fight the English ships.
He was followed by Gran Grin and
the two ships soon got into trouble and had to be rescued by the Duke
of Medina Sidonia on board the San Martin.
At the end of the first
day's fighting, only one ship was sunk. This was Spain's San
Salvador when a tremendous explosion tore out its stern
castle and killed 200 members of the crew. It was later discovered
that a gunner's carelessness resulted in a spark reaching the gunpowder
in the rear hold.
The following morning Francis
Drake and the crew of Revenge
captured the crippled Rosario.
This included Admiral Pedro de Vales and all his crew. Drake also
found 55,000 gold ducats on board.
That afternoon Medina Sidonia
announced that if any Spanish ship broke formation the captain would
be hanged immediately. He also told his captains that they must maintain
a tight formation in order to prevent further attacks from the English
ships. This decision meant that they could only move towards Dunkirk
at the speed of the slowest ship.
Constantly harassed by
the English ships the slow moving Spanish
Armada eventually reached Calais without further loss. The English
fleet now dropped anchor half a mile away. Soon afterwards they were
joined by Lord Henry Seymour and his squadron of ships that had been
controlling the seas off Dunkirk. This increased the English fleet
by a third and was now similar in size to that of the Spanish fleet.
The Duke
of Medina Sidonia now sent a message to the Duke
of Parma in Dunkirk: "I am anchored here two leagues from
Calais with the enemy's fleet on my flank. They can cannonade me whenever
they like, and I shall be unable to do them much harm in return."
He asked Parma to send fifty ships to help him break out of Calais.
Parma was unable to help as he had less than twenty ships and most
of those were not yet ready to sail.
That night Medina Sidonia
sent out a warning to his captains that he expected a fire-ship attack.
This tactic had been successfully used by Francis Drake in Cadiz in
1587 and the fresh breeze blowing steadily from the English fleet
towards Calais, meant the conditions were ideal for such an attack.
He warned his captains not to panic and not to head out to the open
sea. Medina Sidonia confidently told them that his patrol boats would
be able to protect them from any fire-ship attack that took place.
Medina Sidonia had rightly
calculated what would happen. Charles Howard
and Francis Drake were already organizing the fire-ship attack. It
was decided to use eight fairly large ships for the operation. All
the masts and rigging were tarred and all the guns were left on board
and were primed to go off of their own accord when the fire reached
them. John Young, one of Drake's men, was put in charge of the fire-ships.
Soon after midnight the
eight ships were set fire to and sent on their way. The Spaniards
were shocked by the size of the vessels. Nor had they expected the
English to use as many as eight ships. The Spanish patrol ships were
unable to act fast enough to deal with the problem. The Spanish captains
also began to panic when the guns began exploding. They believed that
the English were using hell-burners (ships crammed with gunpowder).
This tactic had been used against the Spanish in 1585 during the siege
of Antwerp when over a thousand men had been killed by exploding ships.
The fire-ships did not
in fact cause any material damage to the Spanish ships at all. They
drifted until they reached the beach where they continued to burn
until the fire reached the water line. Medina
Sidonia, on board the San Martin,
had remained near his original anchorage. However, only a few captains
had followed his orders and the vast majority had broken formation
and sailed into the open sea.
At first light Medina Sidonia
and his six remaining ships left Calais and attempted to catch up
with the 130 ships strung out eastwards towards the Dunkirk sandbanks.
Some Spanish ships had already been reached by the English fleet and
were under heavy attack. San Lorenzo,
a ship carrying 312 oarsmen, 134 sailors and 235 soldiers, was stranded
on the beach and was about to be taken by the English.
With their formation broken,
the Spanish ships were easy targets for the English ships loaded with
guns that could fire very large cannon balls. The Spanish captains
tried to get their ships in close so that their soldiers could board
the English vessels. However, the English ships were quicker than
the Spanish galleons and were able to
keep their distance.
The battle of Gravelines
continued all day. One of the most exciting contests was between Francis
Drake in the Revenge and Duke
of Medina Sidonia in the San Martin.
Drake's ship was hit several times before being replaced by Thomas
Fenner in the Nonpareil and Edmund
Sheffield in the White Bear, who
continued the fight without success.
All over the area of sea
between Gravelines and Dunkirk fights took place between English and
Spanish ships. By late afternoon most ships were out of gunpowder.
The Duke of Medina Sidonia was now forced to head north with what
was left of the Spanish Armada. The English
ships did not follow as Charles Howard
of Effingham, Lord High Admiral, was convinced that most Spanish ships
were so badly damaged they would probably sink before they reached
a safe port.
That evening Francis Drake
wrote to a friend: "God hath given us so good a day in forcing
the enemy so far to leeward, as I hope in God the Duke of Parma and
the Duke of Sidonia shall not shake hands this few days".
After the Armada rounded
Scotland it headed south for home. However, a strong gale drove many
of the ships onto the Irish rocks. Thousands of Spaniards drowned
and even those who reached land were often killed by English soldiers
and settlers. Of the 25,000 men that had set out in the Armada, less
than 10,000 arrived home safely.
Drake led a disastrous
attack on Portugal in 1589. He returned to England and became mayor
of Plymouth in 1593. He went on another
exhibition to the Caribbean in 1595 and the following year died of
dysentery at Porto Bello.
Sir Francis Drake by Nicholas
Hilliard (1581)
Spanish
Armada Activities
(1)
Francis Drake, letter to Admiral Henry Seymour (1588)
The fleet of Spaniards is somewhat above a hundred sails,
many great ships... as far as we perceive they are determined to sell
their lives with blows.
(A2)
Letter from Count Feria to Philip
II (19 March, 1559)
Queen Elizabeth... said that so much money was taken out
of the country for the Pope every year that she must put an end to
it... she kept repeating to me that she was a heretic and consequently
could not marry your Majesty.
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