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Francis Drake

Sir Francis Drake's accomplishments were unparalleled by any of his contemporaries. No compatriot's, no foreigner's reputation surpassed his fame. Drake was a uniquely distinctive individual whose rapid rise to celebrity dazzled his contemporaries. There must be almost inevitably a tendency to present him too much as its author, where he was in reality only the foremost of men similarly inspired who determined its direction and extent.

Drake's career as an admiral and administrator stands alone as the creator and inspiration of a force that was new to the woild. As the perfecter of a rational system of sailing tactics, as the father of a sound system of strategy, as the first and unsurpassed master of that amphibious warfare which built up the British Empire, as an officer always ready to accept the responsibility of ignoring unintelligent orders, he had no rival in British history but Nelson.

It was under the tutelage of Sir Francis Drake and his brother mariners that the English learnt to fight at sea. By upbringing he was a relatively humble seaman from a comparatively backward country: yet his project to circumnavigate the globe, and its triumphant accomplishment have to yield precedence only to Magellan's staggering expedition of 1519-1522. Even so, although Drake was the second to attempt to sail around the world, he was the first captain to achieve the distinction of conducting the voyage in supreme command from start to finish.

Authors later attribute to him and his school the first real appreciation of the broadside and the definite adoption, as a fundamental tactical idea, of the line-ahead, as opposed to the line- abreast of mediaeval and galley warfare. The actual system in vogue in Elizabethan times was one of groups; but they were groups in line-ahead and not in line-abreast. This was the great revolution. It contained in itself the active germ of the full fledged battle order of the eighteenth century.

Young Drake was educated at the expense and under the care of Sir John Hawkins, who was his kinsman. In 1570 he obtained a regular privateering commission from Queen Elizabeth, the powers of which he immediately exercised in a cruise in the Spanish Main. He set sail in 1572, and with a small squadron he took and plundered the Spanish town of Nombre de Dios. With his men he penetrated across the isthmus of Panama, and committed great havoc among the Spanish shipping. Having embarked his men and filled his ships with plunder, he bore away for England, and arrived at Plymouth on the 9th of August 1573. His success and honourable demeanour in this expedition gained him high reputation; and the use which he made of his riches served to raise him still higher in popular esteem.

From 1573 to 1584 the senior official in naval administration was John Hawkins, Drake's kinsman and preceptor. In 1577 he became Treasurer of the Navy; in this post he contrived not merely to stabilize but to reduce the Navy's cost, and at the same time to update its ships radically, incorporating many of the lessons of oceanic voyages and sea-fights abroad. By taking all naval work under contract to himself, Hawkins managed to include major rebuilding within a charge that previously had covered only victuals and minor maintenance. No new ships were laid down but, profiting from his own experience and that of Drake and others, Hawkins built existing ones anew. He lengthened their keels, cut their superstructures down and altered their proportions so that without increasing their draught English vessels sailed nearer the wind. He extended the accommodation for the crews and the storage space for water and victuals; he improved the sail-plans; he increased the number and weight of their guns, and placed almost all of them along the length of the ship on more than one deck, so as to fire broadside. Hawkins was the first to sheath the hulls of ships to prevent the ravages of tropical woodworm. In short, under this régime the Queen's fleet ceased to consist of fighting merchantmen and became principally a fleet of warships, able to cruise anywhere in the world and to fight in tightly defined formations.

This naval revolution might never have been accomplished had not Drake so frequently put his ships to the test: in the case of the specially constructed Golden Hind with which he accomplished the circumnavigation, particularly, his ships returned replete with enlightening lessons for ship-builders and naval officials.

Drake then undertook a voyage into the South Seas through Straits of Magellan, which no Englishman had previously attempted. The queen furnished him with means; and his fleet on this enterprise consisted of only five small vessels, their united crews mustered only 166 men. They set sale on the 13th of December 1577. He continued his voyage along the coast of Chile and Peru, taking all opportunities of seizing Spanish ships, and attacking them on shore, till his men were satiated with plunder. On the 26th of September 1580 he entered the harbour of Plymouth, this voyage round the world, the first accomplished by an Englishman, thus performed in two years and about ten months.

In 1585, hostilities having commenced with Spain, Drake again went to sea, sailing with a fleet to the West Indies, and taking the cities of Santiago (in the Cape Verde Islands), San Domingo, Cartagena and St Augustine. In 1587 he went to Lisbon with a fleet of thirty sail; and having received intelligence of a great fleet being assembled in the bay of Cadiz, and destined to form part of the Armada, he with great courage entered the port on the 19th of April, and there burnt upwards of 10,000 tons of shipping - a feat which he afterwards jocosely called "singeing the king of Spain's beard." In 1588, when the Spanish Armada was approaching England, Sir Francis Drake was appointed vice-admiral under Lord Howard.