Sir Francis "El Draque" Drake (1540-28 January 1596) was an English pirate and Vice Admiral of the Royal Navy who distinguished himself for his circumnavigation of the globe from 1577 to 1580, during his piratical operations against the Spanish Empire in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, and for his key role in the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Drake's exploits made him an English national hero, and King Philip II of Spain posted a £6 million ($8 million) bounty on his head in response to Drake's humiliating victories over the Spanish Navy. Drake died of dysentery in Portobelo, Panama in 1596 while leading a failed raiding expedition in the New World.
Biography[]
Son of a Devon lay preacher and farmer, Francis Drake went to sea from an early age. In the 1560s, he accompanied his cousin, John Hawkins, on illegal trading and privateering voyages to the Spanish-ruled Caribbean. Drake narrowly escaped with his life when Hawkins' ships were trapped between Spanish galleons and shore batteries at San Juan de Ulua (in present-day Mexico) in 1569. He took revenge by further plunder of the Spanish colonies - the capture of a treasure-laden mule train in 1573 made him a wealthy man.
England's Queen Elizabeth I backed Drake's personal war against Spain, although the two countries were officially at peace. In 1567, she sent him to prey upon the Spanish in the Pacific, awarding him a knighthood when he returned, laden with plunder, from England's first circumnavigation of the globe. Open war between England and Spain from 1585 widened the scope of Drake's activities. To disrupt preparations for the Spanish Armada, in spring 1587, he led a fleet of 21 ships in preemptive strikes on Spanish ports. The destruction he wreaked in his daring raid on Cadiz justified his claim to have "singed the king of Spain's beard." Feared in the enemy camp, Drake was too arrogant and quarrelsome to be popular on his own side. When England faced the Armada in 1588, he had to accept, with bad grace, the role of second-in-command. During the running battle with the Spanish fleet along the English Channel, he showed a total lack of discipline by abandoning his station to capture an individual galleon. But he played a full part in the fireship attack that drove the Armada from its anchorage off Calais and in the subsequent battle of cannonades at Gravelines.
Drake's career after the Armada was an anticlimax. A follow-up attack on Spain was a costly fiasco. He joined with Hawkins in a resumption of their earlier Caribbean privateering in 1595, but by this time Spanish defenses had strengthened. The voyage was already a failure before Drake died of dysentery.