693. Elizabeth I vs The Catholics: England’s Greatest Hero (Part 3)

Why is Sir Francis Drake enshrined as one of England’s greatest heroes? Where did he come from, and how did he rise to prominence and earn the adoration of Elizabeth I, from obscure poverty? And, why is he also such a controversial figure…? Join Tom and Dominic as they sail into the remarkable life and adventures of Sir Francis Drake. From his controversial piracy, and his explorations around the world, to his burgeoning feud with the Spanish, ultimately culminating in his clash with Armada in 1588… _______ *The Rest Is History LIVE: The Ultimate Victorian Adventure* The maddest expedition in history and it’s NEVER been heard before on the show: join Tom Holland & Dominic Sandbrook LIVE at the Southbank as they tell the bonkers story of Queen Victoria ordering one of history’s most daring assignments ever. ⁠⁠⁠Tickets available for Friday 4th September⁠⁠⁠, the Saturday show is SOLD OUT. Summer sale is here: get an annual membership for an extra 20% off with code SUMMER26. That's ad-free listening, every bonus episode, and full access to our exclusive members' series. Sale ends August 31st, so grab it before summer's over. To read our new newsletter, sign up at: ⁠therestishistory.com/newsletters⁠ Advertise with us: ⁠[email protected] _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude Senior Producer: Callum Hill Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:02Speaker 00

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• 1:49Speaker 00

  Hello, everyone. And before today's show, I have incredibly exciting news for you about a live show. On Friday, the 4th of September, Dominic and I will be at the South Bank to do something that we have not done before. So you will be the first people to hear it. We are telling the story of what is the ultimate Victorian adventure. The date is 1868, the location is Abyssinia. And the Emperor of Abyssinia has been writing letters to Queen Victoria, who rather rudely has not replied to them.

• 2:28Speaker 00

  So the Emperor of Abyssinia, annoyed about this, has kidnapped a number of British subjects. In response, Britain sends an expedition to rescue the captives. And it is no exaggeration to say, it is massive. On this expedition, 13,000 soldiers, 40,000 animals, including 44 elephants. And the British even put down a railway line to transport everything. It's an incredible story, full of jaw-dropping events, ludicrous characters, lots of moustaches, lots of general Victorian shenanigans.

• 3:08Speaker 00

  And as I say, it is the first time that we have ever done it on The Rest Is History. I don't want to blow our trumpet, but I think it's going to be an absolute Rest Is History classic. So if you want to get a ticket for the ultimate Victorian adventure at the South Bank in London on Friday, the 4th of September, you know where to go. TheRestIsHistory.com.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Drake, he was a Devon man and ruled the Devon seas. Captain, are there sleeping there below? Roving though his death fell, he went with heart at ease, dreaming all the time of Plymouth Ho.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Take my drum to England, hang it by the shore, strike it when your powder's running low. If the Don sight Devon, I'll quit the poorer heaven and drum them up the channel as we drummed them long ago. So that is Drake's Drum by Tom Holland's favorite poet, Sir Henry Newbolt. And it was written in 1897, the high point of late Victorian patriotism, the high point of faith in the British Empire and indeed in the Royal Navy. But it's a point in Britain's history, the late 1890s, when people are beginning to get a little bit worried that the next century, the 20th century, might not be as good as the 19th. And so they're looking for reassurance. They're worried that the foundations of the British Empire are crumbling.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  And they're looking for reassurance back to the glory days of the Virgin Queen and the origins of English sea power. And in particular, they're looking back to the great maritime hero of the Elizabethan age. Probably the greatest English hero between Henry V and Horatio Nelson. And that is Sir Francis Drake. So Nelson had beaten the French. Sir Francis Drake was famous, was celebrated in endless storybooks and textbooks for children as the man who had seen off the Spanish, the Dons, as they're called, specifically in the Spanish Armada of 1588. But Tom, there's more to him than that, isn't there? Because he was also the great English explorer.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  At the time, the only man in history who had set off to circumnavigate the world and had been in command of the expedition from the very start of it to the end. So he'd gone up the coast of California, he'd almost gone to Canada. And in fact, in San Francisco, there is still, well, there is St Francis Drake Boulevard. There's Drake's Bay. It's brilliant that in San Francisco, which you would think of as very woke. They love Sir Francis Drake. Actually, we might touch on this in a second. But when he died, he died at sea. He died off the coast of Panama and he was consigned to the waters. So the poem says, slung between the round shot in Namibia's bay. And the story goes, so the myth, which is celebrated by this poem,

• 6:08Speaker 01

  is that in Britain's hour of need, rather like King Arthur, he will return and you will hear the beating of Drake's ghostly drum. That's why the poem is called Drake's Drum. And supposedly, we've done Trafalgar twice, and yet weirdly, we forgot to mention this, that before the Battle of Trafalgar, as Nelson and Collingwood and the Victory and the Royal Sovereign are sailing into action against the French.

• 6:37Speaker 00

  And the Dons, of course.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  And the Spanish, of course. Yeah, you're right. They hear the beating of Drake's drum. Also, in the First World War, when we were fighting the Kaiser, Drake's drum again. And no doubt, I mean, I don't hear much about this, but people should talk about this more. Falklands veterans, because I bet they heard Drake's drum before the Battle of Goose Green or some such.

• 6:57Speaker 00

  Well, it's supposed to have rung out during the Battle of Britain over the Channel.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:02Speaker 00

  But the one that people always talk about is when the German High Fleet surrendered at the end of the First World War and they sailed into Scapa Flow on Orkney. Then Drake's drum is supposed to have sounded. People looked around and say, where is this drumbeat coming from? And obviously, it was, it was coming from, it was coming from heaven.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  And yet there are some people, aren't there, who question Sir Francis Drake?

• 7:25Speaker 00

  Yes, so there are definitely people who condemn him as a bad guy. Because as we will be seeing, as well as rushing around, circumnavigating the globe and defeating the Spanish, he began his life as a participant in the slave trade. And because of that, there are stretches of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, which is still called Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, but there are other stretches that have been renamed.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  And they've renamed bits of it. I mean, that's so half-hearted.

• 7:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, I think because it had to be, there were kind of local people who had to vote on it. I think that's the reason.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:01Speaker 00

  And also, there was a Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco. And this has now apparently been renamed the Beacon Grand.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  That's a terrible name.

• 8:09Speaker 00

  And just as there is this kind of centuries-old tradition of admiration for Drake, he's been one of the, the great heroes of English history. So also have there been centuries of people really, really loathing him? And the people who really loathe him are of course, the Dons, the Spaniards. Because I guess one country's rebooting sea dog is another country's dangerous pirate.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  And in the 16th century, so the period of the Tudor Cold War, the theme of this series, Drake became the single most detested figure in Spain. And it helped that his name, El Drake, in Spanish, meant the dragon. And to this day, in Spain, he plays the role of a kind of bogeyman. The kind of the mirror image of Drake's status as a hero in England is this notion of a kind of predatory, piratical monster in Spain.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Well, do you know, I mentioned the Falklands. In the Falklands War, the Argentine press typically referred to the British as pirates. And they did, you know, there are Argentine magazines where they will mock up Margaret Thatcher as Sir Francis Drake. And they will say deliberately, explicitly, she's the heir of this particular man. And all Englishmen are enthralled to this bloke Drake, who's an absolutely terrible man, one of the worst villains in history.

• 9:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I think that this points to the kind of incredibly outsized role that he played in the great drama of this series, which is the Cold War between England and Spain, between Protestant world and the Catholic world. And of course, between Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen of England, and Philip II, the most powerful man on the face of the planet, the King of Spain. The two previous episodes that we've done in this series, we were operating pretty much in the shadows. So it was a world of spy chiefs, of double agents, of undercover Jesuits and priest hunters. But in this episode, we are going to be following Drake on the high seas,

• 10:09Speaker 00

  to the Indies, to the Spanish Main, and then ultimately around the world. And he is, I think, kind of unlike the Jesuits that we talked about in the previous episode, or even indeed Walsingham and Cecil, the great spy chiefs. He is a massive lad, but he is also, I think, a bit of a rogue. And definitely, whether you love him or hate him, he is incredibly charismatic. Because he rises from nowhere to become the most talked about man, not just in England, but across Europe. He almost single-handedly gives the English what they did not previously have, which is the self-confidence to think of England as possibly becoming the mistress of the seas.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  And absolutely, as we will be seeing, he began his career as a slaver. But he was also the first English commander in this country's history to ally himself to a black military power.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Hmm, interesting.

• 11:08Speaker 00

  So he's a man of complications and ambivalences.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  A man of contradictions.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  A man of contradictions and a remarkable figure. And it's a remarkable story. And it begins, as Sir Henry Newbolt in that poem implies, in Devon. Francis Drake was a Devon man. And he was born around 1540, we don't know the precise date, at Crowndale Farm outside the town of Tavistock in Devon. And he's the grandson of a yeoman farmer. And he's not even the, uh, the son of that yeoman farmer's first son. So he's the son of a second son. And to be the son of a second son is, is never a good start in life. Um, and this, this second son, Edmund Drake, so Francis's dad, he's kind of weird mix of intense religiosity and

• 11:58Speaker 00

  outright criminality. Um, so in 1548, Edmund Drake was indicted for stealing a horse and for mugging a traveller on the Queen's Highway for his purse. So he's in trouble with the law. And then in 1549, so that's the following year, while he's trying to keep his kind of legal problems at bay, um, he's embroiled in the outbreak of some very violent sectarian conflict. And this is an anti Protestant uprising in Devon and Cornwall, kind of protesting against changes to the prayer book and all of that. And Edmund Drake, who is already kind of in trouble with the law, thinks, well, I don't want to be, you know, strung up by angry Catholics.

• 12:39Speaker 00

  So I'm going to scarper. And so he escapes both the law and Catholic mobs by heading to the opposite end of, of southern England to Kent. And there he reinvents himself as a preacher man, as a man of God, totally casting a veil over his career as a, as a criminal. And the young Francis grows up with the consciousness, obviously, of his father as a man of the gospel, preaching to public congregations. Francis grows up absolutely stamped by his father's religious convictions, which we have no reason to doubt. You know, they're, they're, um, they're very devoutly held. And as an adult, Drake's Protestantism will be very fiery, very uncompromising,

• 13:23Speaker 00

  very passionately held. So to quote very much friend of the show, John Sugden.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Wow. Great to have him back on the show.

• 13:31Speaker 00

  Author of the two volume biography of Nelson, which we both, we drew on a lot for our series on Nelson.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  He said of Drake that, that his profound faith was arguably his most salient characteristic, and it provided the mainspring of his tempestuous career. And I think that's right. Drake has an incredible appetite for adventure, but that adventure is always in the cause of his understanding of the gospel. And so like a lot of the figures that we've been talking about in this series, William Cecil, who becomes Lord Burghley, or Francis Walsingham, Drake grows up a very, very committed anti papist. You know, he is opposed to everything that smacks of the Pope's rule.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  And that may be even more important to him than, than the sense he has of himself as a committed enemy of Spain. I mean, I think that the hostility to, to Spain and to the Pope allied in Drake, but probably it's hostility to the Pope that is the real kind of motivation for him.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  And the other great influence that Drake's father has on him is that he apprentices the young Francis to a captain who sails the Medway and occasionally crosses, um, from the Thames estuary over to Flanders and over to northern France. And the captain is an excellent teacher, and the young Francis proves to be a really excellent student, to the degree that when this captain dies, he leaves his ship to the young Francis, to his apprentice, which I think is clear evidence, um, as to how much this captain had, had grown to admire Francis. You know, the sense that he has that this is a young lad who is an absolute natural on the,

• 15:04Speaker 00

  on the sea. And so when the young Francis Drake, as a young man, returns from Kent to Devon, he is very well set for a career at sea.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:17Speaker 00

  And this is a time when Devon, which is the part of southwest England that sticks out into the sea towards the Atlantic, this is a period when people in Devon are starting to wake up to the opportunities that, that, that the Atlantic may, might provide them in a way that they hadn't previously done.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  And he has got, I mean, he's got an in because he's got a very well-connected cousin, hasn't he? Or possibly a second cousin, who is another of the great names of the golden age of Elizabethan sea dogery.

• 15:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  And that is, uh, John Hawkins. So John Hawkins, he is the son of a merchant from the West Country, right? Who had, and this is where we get into, we start to get into the issue of the slave trade. Cause am I not right in thinking that John Hawkins's father had been involved in the slave trade?

• 16:01Speaker 00

  Yes. Um, and, and the slave trade by this point is, is absolutely fundamental to the functioning of Spain's Atlantic economy.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:10Speaker 00

  You know, in the way that, I don't know, kind of rare metals are to the functioning of the modern economy. And in both cases, of course, the process is incredibly brutal, exploitative, inhuman. But for Hawkins, ultimately it's business. Uh, I mean, we've, we've been drawing le carrie comparisons throughout this series. Maybe Hawkins is a kind of very Protestant Richard Roper from The Night Manager.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, the arms dealer.

• 16:39Speaker 00

  And he is a guy who essentially wants to gatecrash the Spanish and the Portuguese control of the Atlantic trade routes. So Hawkins is part of a breed of Devon seamen who are realising that there are enormous opportunities out there and that, um, the sailors of the Iberian Peninsula have been hoarding it for themselves. And, you know, they've been awarded these oceans by the Pope, but as Protestants, you know, the ship owners of Devon don't care about that. So they are out to try and get a bit of the loot for themselves. And so it is in, um, 1562 that John Hawkins had embarked on the first slaving voyage in English history.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  And a very dark moment in, in our island story. And it proves incredibly lucrative, so much so that investors then start piling in. And Hawkins is able to use this investment to fund further slaving expeditions. And this is where the young Francis Drake comes in. So he might have sailed on the first two of Hawkins's slaving expeditions as a common seaman. Um, but he definitely accompanies Hawkins on his third slaving expedition. And this leaves Plymouth, um, in Devon in 1567. And the vibe on board, it's a kind of ferocious

• 17:58Speaker 00

  blend of Protestantism, of patriotism, and of sheer naked greed. And I think Drake bites into all those kind of characteristics. And he does very well. So Hawkins captures a Portuguese ship on the course of this, this slaving expedition. Um, and he gives it to the young Francis to command. So as far as we know, that is Drake's first command. And then in due course, Drake does so well, um, in charge of this Portuguese ship, that Hawkins gives Drake the command of one of his own ships, the Judith. Um, so clearly Hawkins can see in the young Francis Drake what that captain had seen who'd given him the ship. This is a guy who is entirely suited to command of, of the sea.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  So everything's looking good for Drake. But a year after he's left Plymouth, so September 1568, things start to go wrong, don't they? And this is basically, the, the issue that you always have is you're at the mercy of the elements. And Hawkins's fleet are in the Caribbean. They think they are trading, the Spanish would say they're smuggling, and they're massively blown off course, aren't they? Into, I mean, they're blown basically to Vera Cruz, which is the modern day, um, Mexico. And I think this featured in a series about the fall of the Aztecs, didn't it?

• 19:14Speaker 00

  This is exactly where they go.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Where Cortez met the emissaries from Montezuma, and there was all sort of great banter with exchanging gifts and firing cannons and things.

• 19:22Speaker 00

  All of that. Yes. So this has been called by the Spanish San Juan de Uluua. And Uluua apparently derives from the local name for the Aztecs. So Hawkins and Drake and this slaving expedition, you know, they've sold all the slaves by now, and then they, they've got their money and they're ready to go back home to England. But they've been blown off course, and they have arrived at the place where the Spanish adventure on the Spanish Main, so that's the kind of the mainland of America, it's where it began. But it is terrible timing, because while they're making their repairs, the Spanish viceroy of Mexico turns up with a massive fleet, including two huge warships, completely bristling with cannon,

• 20:04Speaker 00

  and the English flotilla is completely dwarfed by it. So Hawkins desperately tries to kind of sign a truce with the Spanish, um, you know, concealing the fact that he's basically been trespassing on Spanish, in Spanish waters. And the Spanish sign it, but there's an element of treachery in this, because the Spanish are just kind of preparing to launch a full-scale attack on this intrusive English flotilla. And they justify this on the grounds that, that the English are pirates and trespassers and criminals, which I guess if you're Spanish, you know, is nothing less than the truth. And the impact of this attack is devastating. So four English ships are sunk, um, over 300, um, English sailors are killed, 114 are

• 20:48Speaker 00

  taken prisoner. Lots of these are sent to the galley. There is one poor guy, a man actually not from England, but from Cork in Ireland, who is burnt at the stake. Drake and Hawkins both managed to get away, but their ships have been very badly mauled in this battle. And Hawkins ends up taking a massive financial hit. So all that money that he'd made, slave trading, has basically been lost. And the debacle leaves both men, but I think particularly Drake, feeling very badly bruised. And it has a profound impact on the future course of his life, because Drake is left feeling very humiliated, both by the defeat, the fact that the, the English have been pulverised by the Spanish, but also because he had escaped

• 21:30Speaker 00

  the battle before Hawkins did. And so there are rumours that he had been guilty of cowardice. And it seems possible that Hawkins himself believed this. And certainly, when they return, there's an element of bad blood between the, the cousins. And I think Drake therefore feels he has massive amounts to prove. And it compounds the sense of anger and outrage that he feels specifically towards the Spanish. And he has a kind of gunslinger in a spaghetti western resolve to be avenged.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:04Speaker 00

  You know, he, he, he wants to go back and take his anger and his frustration and his sense of shame out on the people that he blames for the humiliation that he'd experienced at San Juan de Uluua. So he, he, he's returned to, um, to England, kind of limping in, in his battered ship.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 22:25Speaker 00

  The early weeks of 1569.

• 22:28Speaker 00

  And he's obviously hoping that maybe he could appeal to Elizabeth's government, that maybe they would kind of rally around, help him out financially, rally to the cause. But this is never going to happen because Elizabeth is very, very nervous about offending the Spanish. She doesn't want to go to war. She hates war. And essentially, the Spanish are right. I mean, Drake had been operating pretty much as a pirate. And so when Drake finds out that he's not going to get any support from Elizabeth's government for his campaign of reprisal against the Spanish, he takes an amazing course. He thinks, okay, well, I will declare war on the Spanish myself. And this might seem like a mad thing to do.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  But the truth is that Drake is a very, very shrewd and opportunistic operator. And while he was in the Indies, he had been taking very careful note of what he was seeing there. And these observations have led him to a conclusion that no one else, not just in England, but basically anywhere in Europe, has quite arrived at. And this is that trying to break the Portuguese monopoly on slave trading, or indeed any of the Portuguese or Spanish monopolies of trading in the Atlantic is a mug's game. The real money is to be found

• 23:50Speaker 00

  in piracy, because despite the disaster at San Juan de Ullua, Drake has noted that Spain's defences in the Indies and on the Spanish Main are actually very weak because they are not expecting to be attacked.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:08Speaker 00

  No one from Europe has actually sailed there with the aim of attacking these ports, these fortresses in the Americas. And so Drake is thinking, well, with boldness and good planning, we could take the Spanish completely by surprise. And if we do that, they have so much treasure coming through, all this kind of silver which is coming up from Peru, all the gold and the other treasure from Mexico. You know, we could just take it. And this is the start of what will become, I guess, the most devastating piracy in English history.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  You say of piracy, but we would, I mean, all the children's books I used to read about Francis Drake said he was not a pirate, he was a privateer, which is very different. Did he see himself as a pirate? If you had put it to him that he was engaged in piracy?

• 25:02Speaker 00

  Well, to be a privateer, you have to have the sanction of a government to operate.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Of course, yeah. And he doesn't have that.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  He does not have that. So I think at that point,

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:12Speaker 00

  you know, by English as well as by Spanish law, he is operating as a pirate. He would say, I think, that he is, he's operating as a godly Protestant,

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  attacking the, you know, the evil papists. And of course, he is out for revenge. And so he would say, I'm launching raids. And these are, they're both raids and reconnaissance missions, his first kind of trips out, out to the Indies. He's basically working out, where should we strike? They are quite lucrative. So when Drake returns to Devon from his first raid in 1571, he has made three times the profit that Hawkins had made on all his slaving trips. So Drake has definitely worked out, yeah, you know, you can get rich with these. But more significantly than that, he's used these raids to kind of sniff around the treasure routes, the shipping lanes that link Spain to the gold and silver of the New World, and

• 26:07Speaker 00

  which of course are incredibly strategically important to Philip and the operations of his empire, because it's this treasure that is funding his armies in, say, the Low Countries, or Italy, or wherever. And Drake has identified the perfect place to attack. It's a weak point that is basically stuffed to the gills with treasure, and it's a port on the Caribbean coast of Panama called Nomre de Dios, the name of God.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:36Speaker 00

  So this is where the silver is being brought from Potocay in Bolivia, which we talked about in our final episode on the Incas, didn't we? It's the greatest silver mine ever found, discovered in 1545, and basically for two centuries, it will flood the entire world with silver.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  An incredible thing. And it's still going. You know, the Cerro Rico, I think they call it, just an unbelievable, I mean, hellish. People used to say, the single worst place in human history, or one of the worst places.

• 27:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, hell on earth, isn't it?

• 27:09Speaker 01

  But producing all of this treasure, I mean, nothing like it in human history has existed before.

• 27:15Speaker 00

  And so it's brought down to the coast from this great mine, loaded onto ships, and then the ships sail up the coast of South America to Panama. It's loaded onto mules and donkeys, and there is a kind of 30-mile mule trail which threads its way through thick forest from Panama on the Pacific coast to Nomre de Dios on the Atlantic coast. And at Nomre de Dios, the treasure is loaded onto these vast galleons, these vast transport ships, and then it is taken across the Atlantic to Spain. So it is, in a sense, kind of, you know, it's the great treasure house of the world, but it's very, very poorly defended.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  No real fortifications, very little artillery, and it depends for protection, essentially on the fact that it is very, very isolated, and that people outside Spain up until this point have not thought to look for it. But Drake has sniffed it out. And so by the spring of 1752, he is ready for the big one, a direct attack on Nomre de Dios. And this by now, people in Devon, and particularly in Plymouth, are starting to think, yeah, he's really on to something here. This is very, very exciting. And so Drake has no trouble in raising funds for this expedition, nor did he have any difficulty in finding sailors who want to

• 28:40Speaker 00

  join him on the trip to the Spanish Main. Because his two previous ventures, you know, people have noted the money that he's brought back and the kind of stories of the rich pickings to be had. You know, people are aware of his plan. And the measure of this is that even John Hawkins, you know, his cousin with whom there was bad blood, even he decides to kind of, you know, mend things up and to sink some money into this expedition. And I think for Hawkins, as for Drake himself, and as with lots of the sailors who are sailing with Drake on this expedition, I mean, it's definitely about profit. There's no question about that. They all want to make themselves rich. But I think they do also want vengeance.

• 29:22Speaker 00

  I think there's a sense in which people in Devon feel that that slaughter at San Juan de Ullua was in some way an insult to them personally. And they, like Drake himself, want their vengeance. And I think that sailors who are joining Drake, when they see him, they feel there is really something special about him. So to see Drake, there's nothing particularly impressive about him physically. He's kind of, he's quite short. I mean, he's stocky, very broad-shouldered, but he's not a kind of giant of a man by any means. He's got this kind of reddish hair, reddish beard. But as I say, he's not physically imposing,

• 30:04Speaker 00

  but he is very charismatic, and he exudes a sense of confidence and authority. And so although his schemes may seem wild, most people in Plymouth think, yeah, he could pull this off. It's worth giving him a go.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:20Speaker 00

  So 24th of May, 1572, Drake leaves Plymouth. He's got two ships, and he's got three kind of Ikea-style pinnaces, which he's planning to

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Flat packs.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, flat packs to build when he reaches the West Indies. He's got about 100 men, and he's got provisions for around a year. And they reach the Spanish Main on the 12th of July, and this is where they assemble the pinnaces. So now they've got five ships.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  And from this point on, everything about the expedition is like the pirates of the Caribbean. It's so Hollywood, everything that happens from now on. So Drake's first move is to attack Nomre de Dios directly. And the amazing thing is that it almost comes off. So the English fleet sails into the harbor under cover of darkness, and there are board rowboats, you know, so they're kind of gliding in. And they take the town completely by surprise. And as a result of this, it seems that they have the treasure house at their mercy. But just as they're about to advance on it and kind of, you know, blow the gates, it starts to rain. And this leaves the English gunpowder sodden, and even

• 31:32Speaker 00

  the strings on their crossbows are kind of left useless. And also, in the fighting, Drake has been wounded in the leg, and he looks down and suddenly realizes that he's losing a lot of blood, and he's kind of, you know, turning a bit faint. And so to quote the record of the expedition that's written up later, "His men abandoned a most rich spoil for the present, only to preserve their captain's life."

• 31:56Speaker 00

  Drake is disappointed, you know, he was so close, but so far. But he's not unduly downcast because I think he's essentially amazed that the Spanish at Nombre de Dios had proved even more useless than he'd been expecting that they would. And so to quote the record, and therefore he advised the governor of Nombre de Dios to hold open his eyes, for before he departed, if God lent him life and leave, he meant to reap some of their harvest, which they get out of the earth and send into Spain to trouble all the earth. And you can see why he becomes such a hero in England. There's something of Robin Hood there.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  Kind of telling the sheriff of Nottingham, I'm going to come in and steal all your treasure.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  Do you think he really did that? Because it would be foolish surely to forewarn this guy.

• 32:41Speaker 00

  I think he did because he was among other things, he's a master of psychological warfare.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah, he's trolling him.

• 32:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. He's building a kind of sense of himself as a menacing figure operating in the shadows, who has to be taken seriously.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  And, and as you say, that kind of trolling is something that, that makes Drake, even at this stage, before he's really taken any treasure from the Spanish, makes him into a kind of bogeyman, a phantom of the shadows.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, not least because he actually does it, right? He actually follows through on his promise.

• 33:13Speaker 00

  He does. So how does he pull it off, this amazing kind of heist? And the simple answer is, he finds some very unexpected allies. And Drake is introduced to these allies by an African, who's been called Diego by the Spanish. He's a slave who had defected to the English during their raid on Nombre de Dios. And Drake adopts Diego as a crew member. And the two men get on tremendously well. So Miranda Kaufman, who wrote a great book on black Tudors, Diego is one of the, the 10 black Tudors in that book. And the friendship between Drake and Diego seems to have been a very close one. And in fact,

• 33:58Speaker 00

  in his book, John Sugden points out that in the official narrative of the voyage, the one we've been quoting, Diego is mentioned more than any of the other seamen on either ship in Drake's expedition. And he pretty much ends up as kind of Drake's right-hand man, because he reveals that in the heights above Panama, there are African outlaws, escaped slaves called Cimarrones. And these Cimarrones are very proficient at fighting, and they're very keen for vengeance on the Spanish. So in every way, they're just the kind of guys that Drake wants to make friends with. It's an absolute marriage made in heaven.

• 34:39Speaker 00

  And for the Spanish, of course, it is an absolute disaster. And as an official in Panama, you know, the Spanish very rapidly become aware of this alliance between the Cimarrones and Drake's Englishmen. This league between the English and the Negroes is very detrimental to this kingdom, because being so familiar with the region and so expert in the bush, the Negroes will show them methods and means to accomplish any evil design they may wish to carry out. And Drake does absolutely have a design, because early in 1573, he is brought the news that he's been waiting for. The Spanish treasure fleet has arrived in Nombre de Dios, ready to pick up a vast consignment of silver that is in Panama, on the Pacific

• 35:24Speaker 00

  side of the Isthmus. And this is about 60 miles away, you know, along this kind of mule trail. And this treasure has been kept there because the Spanish assume, you know, it'll be more secure. There's no way that anyone could attack it actually in Panama. But Drake's plan is to ambush the mule train that will be bringing the silver from Panama. And so that February, he goes with the Cimarrones up into the heights above the mule train to try and kind of work out the lay of the land. And after four days in the wild, they come to a great tree standing on a very high hill. And the Cimarrones have cut steps into the side of the trunk of the tree. And at the top of the tree, there's a kind of

• 36:07Speaker 00

  treehouse, a viewing platform. And Drake climbs up the steps and he gets to this viewing platform. And from it, he is able to see the Pacific as well as the Atlantic. So it's in the, the Keats poem, he and all his men are kind of looking at each other, unbelievable. And Drake, when he sees the Pacific, something that no Englishman has ever seen before, to quote the, the record, he besought almighty God of his goodness to give him life and leave to sail once in an English ship in that sea. I mean, it's very Drake.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And actually, it's a, I was about to ask, is he the first Englishman to see the Pacific? Of course, loads of Spaniards have seen it, but it's a sign of how England has been locked out of so far, the kind of exploration of the new world.

• 36:52Speaker 00

  And everyone in Europe. Only the Spanish really have seen it.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:56Speaker 00

  And it's very Drake that, you know, the moment he sees this kind of unknown vastness of the ocean, he thinks, oh, I want, I want to go there. You know, I wanted, I want to explore it. But of course, his immediate concern is this mule train loading down with treasure. And so a few days later, they see it approaching and they lie in ambush. But unfortunately, one of Drake's men has got drunk and he launches the ambush too early and gives the game away. Drake still doesn't despair. He goes undercover. He lets a month or so pass so that the Spanish will think he's given up and gone home. And then on the first of April, he launches a second ambush, and this one is a resounding success.

• 37:37Speaker 00

  There are no kind of drunks spoiling the surprise. And they take 30 tonnes of gold and silver. And that is such a haul that half of it actually has to be buried because it's too heavy to be transported. And even after the treasure has been shared out among Drake's allies, including the Cimarrones, it's, you know, it's a completely spectacular haul. And when Drake reaches Plymouth, he does so, and to quote Sugden, with wealth few Englishmen could have amassed in a lifetime. You know, it is the basically the greatest robbery in the whole of English history up until this point, because more will be to come. And I think the, that sense that there is more to come, that basically, you know,

• 38:20Speaker 00

  we've just scratched the surface. The treasure is brilliant, but I think what is even more significant is this kind of strategic intelligence that Drake brings back with him. The details of the treasure routes, of how vulnerable these treasure routes are, and specifically the opportunities to be had in the Pacific, where the Spanish do not expect to be surprised. And in particular, there is this alliance with the Cimarrones. So as we said, it's the first alliance ever made by a British captain with a black power. And a Spaniard taken prisoner by the English reported of Drake. He had heard Captain Francis say that he loved them and he spoke well of them. And every day he asked if they were in peace. And you could well imagine that he would, because without the Cimarrones, I don't think

• 39:05Speaker 00

  Drake would have been able to, to, to pull this tremendous scam.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  So just to make a very obvious point, there's absolutely no suggestion whatsoever that Drake is prejudiced, that Drake would be what we would now call racist. I mean, not that they have the concept, I suppose, of racism in the 16th century.

• 39:21Speaker 00

  I think Drake, you know, if he can sell black people for profit, he'll do that. And if he can ally himself with black people for profit, he'll do that as well.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:29Speaker 00

  That's, that's business.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  And key word there is profits, I think.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  Is profit, but also clearly God has sent him in the, you know, has, has shown him these opportunities. So there's an element of, of godliness as well. And it's that fusion of, of greed and, and puritanism that is what Drake is all about. And I think a love of adventure for its own sake. I mean, I think that is really, really important. And I think that's why Drake becomes so kind of loved and admired, is that people, even the Spanish to a degree, kind of respond to the sense of swagger and excitement that, that Drake conveys.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  Well, that's what makes him so famous across Europe, isn't it? The, the fact that he has, he has pulled off a tremendous coup. I mean, don't forget, he's the underdog, the English are the underdogs in all this.

• 40:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, he's Robin Hood. I mean, he absolutely is the Robin Hood here.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:16Speaker 00

  And I'll tell you, one person who, who really sits up and pays attention is someone we've mentioned a lot on this show, and this is Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's first secretary.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Spymaster. Yeah.

• 40:28Speaker 00

  And so he, I mean, he's intrigued by the money that's been taken, but he's intrigued as well to learn that Drake is dreaming of another even bolder expedition. And this is an expedition that Drake had first envisaged while he was standing in that treehouse, gazing out towards the Pacific. And this is an expedition that will lead him to the very ends of the earth.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  The ends of the earth. Well, come back after the break and we'll be sailing to the far side of the world.

• 41:03Speaker 00

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• 41:43Speaker 00

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• 43:33Speaker 01

  Welcome back to The Rest Is History. It's five o'clock in the afternoon of the 15th of November, 1577, and we are in Devon, specifically at Plymouth Sound, where a flotilla of five small ships is slipping out into the harbour. And they are led, of course, by Francis Drake aboard his flagship, which had been built to his personal requirements a year before. And this is one of the most famous ships in English history. It is the Pelican. But if you compare it to other great ships in English history like HMS Victory, I mean, the Pelican is tiny, isn't it? It's only 80 feet long. It's only got only 18 guns, 150 tonnes. There is a Pelican, I think, in, is it Southwark, where there's a replica of the Pelican?

• 44:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a replica of it. So you can see what it's like. And just to say, this ship is, as you say, one of the most famous ships in, in English history, but it's not known as the Pelican. So the Pelican's name will be changed in the course of the voyage.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, we don't want to give the game away there, do we?

• 44:33Speaker 00

  No. So Drake is heading out in the Pelican with his fleet of five small ships into the Bay of Biscay. And he is surrounded on his ship with people he loves. So he's got his brother, Thomas. He's got his 15-year-old cousin, John, and he has Diego, who had come with him from the Spanish main and is, is going off with him on this new adventure. He has books in his cabin, so he's got the Bible, of course. He's got Fox's Book of Martyrs, that great compendium of Protestant martyrs. He's got a songbook of the Psalms, so people can sit on the deck and sing the Psalms, all very godly. But he also has books on navigation. And one of these is an account of a Spanish expedition

• 45:14Speaker 00

  that had been led by a Portuguese explorer called Ferdinand Magellan almost 60 years before. And this had been a really record-breaking expedition. So it had set off in 1519 from Spain, and it had gone all the way down the Atlantic coast of South America. And at the foot of South America, it had discovered some, some dangerous but navigable straits. These straits come to be called after Magellan, the Magellan Straits. And Magellan had led his expedition through, through these straits and had then crossed the Pacific and continued westwards. In the course of this, they had discovered what, in due course,

• 45:56Speaker 00

  come to be called the Philippines. And they're named the Philippines in 1542 after the Philip, who is going to end up the King of Spain, the man who becomes Elizabeth I's great enemy. Magellan is killed in the Philippines. And ultimately, of Magellan's expedition, only a single ship, the Victoria, survives to reach Spain in 1522. But it is obviously a record-breaking and seismic achievement, because the Victoria is the first ship ever to have circumnavigated the entire globe. And the history of this voyage might seem an odd thing for Drake to have brought with him on his expedition, because officially, his expedition is heading to Alexandria and Constantinople

• 46:39Speaker 00

  in the Mediterranean on a, on a trading expedition. And this is what the 160-odd kind of men and boys on, on board his expedition have all been told. And it's also what Spanish spies have reported back to Philip II. You know, they are planning to go to the Mediterranean.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:56Speaker 00

  But I think had, had Philip's spies been a bit more attentive, they, they might have come to a different conclusion. So if they had looked into the hold of, the holds of these ships, they would have found that they were full of armaments, so pikes and crossbows and muskets and kind of various kinds of incendiaries. Also, Drake has a lawyer with him on board this expedition. Again, not something that you, you would generally take with you on a trading trip to the Mediterranean. And this is a guy called Thomas Doughty, who is a friend that Drake had made two years before while in Ireland. And Doughty is a very learned, charming, highly educated man, so a very different class of person to Drake. He's a gentleman. Drake is absolutely not a gentleman.

• 47:40Speaker 00

  And Doughty is secretary to a key figure in Elizabeth's court. And this is a guy called Sir Christopher Hatten. And the Queen herself adores Hatten. Hatten is one of the Queen's favourite courtiers. He's very handsome, he's witty, he's a good dancer. So exactly the kind of guy that Elizabeth tends to go for. And she has made Hatten a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, Captain of the Yeoman of the Guard. And both of those responsibilities means that Hatten is always in attendance personally on the Queen. So very much kind of hanging around her.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  And she bestows all kinds of marks of favour, all kinds of gifts on him. And this includes the estate of the Bishop of Ely on the, the margins of London. And this is where the, the region called Hatten Gardens gets its name from. Hatten Gardens is where the jewellers are. It always kind of features in Guy Ritchie films, where you're blowing up, blowing up the safe, all that kind of thing. And this is, is named after, after Sir Christopher Hatten. And Elizabeth not only admires Hatten's ability as a dancer, but also his loyalty and his political shrewdness. And so three days before Drake leaves Plymouth, Elizabeth makes Hatten a member of the Privy Council. I think this isn't coincidental, because there is now a very clear chain of command.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  You have the Queen, you have Hatten in the Privy Council, and Hatten's secretary, Doughty, is with Drake on this expedition. So there are very clear links there to the Queen herself.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  And what about, you mentioned Francis Walsingham before, the great, the great spymaster. Are there, there are associations with him as well, aren't there?

• 49:22Speaker 00

  Well, he's a direct investor in the expedition, like Hatten and like Doughty. And he's also been pulling strings on Drake's behalf. So a few, a few months before Drake leaves Plymouth Sound, Walsingham had arranged for him to have a private interview with Elizabeth. And according to Drake's later account of what the Queen said, basically, she is upgrading him from the rank of pirate to privateer. So the Queen supposedly said to Drake, "I would gladly be revenged on the King of Spain for diverse injuries that I have received." And Drake had suggested to the Queen a plan that he'd been mulling over a long time. And this is namely, to sail through the Magellan Straits,

• 50:05Speaker 00

  attack the Spanish ships off the Pacific coast of America, and to plunder them for all their worth. And the genius of this is that there is no way the Spanish will be expecting it, because they've actually, including Magellans, up until this point, there've only been three expeditions through the Magellan Straits. They are that dangerous. And so the Spanish, as we've been hearing, tend to access the Pacific via Nombra de Dios and that mule train over to Panama. And so therefore, they assume that their control over the Pacific coast is absolute. You know, there are, there's no way that other European ships can get there. And so they call the Pacific itself the Mare Close, the Closed Sea.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Just to, just to give people a sense about the map, the only way you can possibly get to the Pacific, if you don't go overland through Panama, is to go all the way down the coast of basically Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, round the bottom of Argentina and then up the other side. And that is so difficult that you would be mad to attempt it.

• 51:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. And just to be even more precise, they don't at this stage know that what will become Argentina has a kind of bottom, as it were. They're not yet aware that there is just nothing but open ocean south of Argentina. So that's why the straits are so important. And the Queen hears all this, and she thinks it's absolutely brilliant. And she essentially says, "Yeah, I love this." But Elizabeth being Elizabeth, she's very, very canny, she's very cautious. She doesn't want to put anything in writing. You know, she wants Drake to go and attack the Spanish, but she also wants deniability. And Drake himself is perfectly happy with this arrangement, because the one thing that he really wants is that whatever he does, the Queen privately will have his back.

• 51:50Speaker 00

  And Elizabeth says about Drake before he leaves, "If need be, the gentleman careth not, I should disavow him." You know, they, they basically understand each other.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:00Speaker 00

  Uh, and just to say, Elizabeth, she clearly adores Drake. She thinks he's tremendous, as we will see in due course. So although it is never written down, this is the plan. Drake is going to sail, as you said, down the, the, the Atlantic coast of South America. He's going to reach the Magellan Straits, go through these straits into the Pacific. He's then going to head up the west coast of the Americas. And essentially he will be like a, a fox who has broken into a chicken coop. He's going to take as many prizes as he can. He's going to map the coastline for future reference for, um, later English adventurers. And then he's going to return the way he came. So in other words, via the Straits of Magellan.

• 52:43Speaker 00

  There is no plan at this point to follow Magellan's route all the way around the world. Because that essentially is seen by, by everyone as, as, as a mad course. It's way, way too dangerous.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Well, Magellan himself died.

• 52:58Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly, exactly. And, and since that first attempt, no one else has tried to do it. No one else has tried to sail around the world. You know, it's just not something that people think should, should or could be, be tried.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 53:12Speaker 00

  So that's, that's Drake's plan. Get into the Pacific, loot it, map it, and then come back to England by the, by the Magellan Straits and, and up the Atlantic. And so they set off and at first everything seems to be going well. They make it through the stormy weather of the North Atlantic in November. It soon becomes apparent that they're not going to the Mediterranean, but Drake's men aren't particularly discombobulated by this.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  I'm struck by this. Surely they must, some of them must have known.

• 53:39Speaker 00

  I mean, the fact that, you know, there are explosives in the hole.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, come on.

• 53:43Speaker 00

  I think so. And also Drake is, you know, by this point is the most charismatic sea captain in England. He's very popular, he's very admired. And when he says, we're going to get loads of loot, people believe him. And sure enough, they're soon all, you know, they're having a lovely time attacking Portuguese ships, taking them as prizes, kidnapping Portuguese pilots, you know, they can then use all their maps and their kind of nautical know-how, all of this. But as they sail southwards down towards the Magellan Straits, what has always been a theme in English history, and remains so to this day, starts to raise its head. And this is the issue of class.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  I love this detail.

• 54:24Speaker 00

  So at stake on Drake's ship is a jockeying for position between Doughty, the lawyer, the gentleman with intimate connections at court, the protege of Sir Christopher Hutton, who is the incredibly close courtier to Elizabeth herself, and Drake, who is an upwardly mobile son of Devon with a massive chip on his shoulder.

• 54:49Speaker 00

  And Doughty, as is his due as a gentleman, insists on, you know, the rights that are due to him by virtue of his rank. While Drake is demanding that even a gentleman like Doughty has to put his shoulder to the wheel. And so there's a, a growing tension between these two men who initially had been friends. And Drake does make various attempts to mollify Doughty. So first he gives him the command of a captured Portuguese ship. And then he gives him command amazingly of the Pelican itself, so Drake's own flagship. But despite these, um, you know, attempts to build bridges, relations still worsen. And Doughty accuses Drake's brother of stealing from a captured haul of wine. And he starts to make comments about Drake himself that are clearly verging on the mutinous.

• 55:35Speaker 00

  And Drake starts to think that, um, Doughty is practicing witchcraft against him.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  Does he really think this, or is this just a weapon?

• 55:43Speaker 00

  I think he really believes it. You know, you're at sea, Drake is a very pious man. And I think he's, he thinks the only reason that Doughty could be behaving like this is because he's in hot with the devil. I don't see the flaw in that argument at all.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  Right, okay.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  Comes completely naturally. And finally, um, there is a series of very open bust-ups, which are happening in direct view of all the crew. So firstly, Drake very publicly demotes Doughty from his command of the Pelican to command of a tiny supply vessel called the Swan. And then he places him directly in the custody of his vice admiral. And he warns this, the vice admiral and everybody on board the Pelican that Doughty is a conjurer, a seditious fellow and a very bad and lewd fellow. So essentially Doughty by this point, you know, he's been clapped in irons.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  And by this stage, they're further south than any English ship before them ever in history. And they have, they sail into a bay called Saint Julien, on the coast of what is now Argentina. And they make anchor there on the 20th of June. And in the Bay of Saint Julien, it's very kind of Treasure Island, very Pirates of the Caribbean. On the kind of the, the shoreline of the bay, they find a gallows from which Magellan, who'd arrived there, you know, with his flotilla, had hanged a mutineer. And the bleached skeleton of the mutineer is still there in the gibbet.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Oh my God, that's brilliant.

• 57:09Speaker 00

  So Drake's crew see this, uh, you know, the bones of this mutineer. They say to Drake, well, this is how you deal with mutineers. You should do this with, do this to Doughty.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  God, this is so Pirates of the Caribbean, Treasure Island or something, isn't it?

• 57:22Speaker 00

  It really is. And so Drake thinks, yeah, why not? Okay. So on the 30th of June, he summons his men to an island out in the bay. And Doughty is brought out, you know, clapped in irons, and Drake puts him on trial. And Doughty, of course, is a lawyer. So Doughty says, well, by what right are you doing this? You know, show me your commission from the Queen. And Drake doesn't have a commission from the Queen because he's, you know, operating under the radar.

• 57:49Speaker 00

  So Drake, who of course is not a lawyer, but is very much a man of action. Because I don't care about that. Who cares about the, the letter of the law? And he turns to his men and he says, this fellow is full of prating. Bind me his arms, for I will be safe of my life. And he convenes a jury and he puts Doughty on trial and says the charges treason and incitement to mutiny. And this of course is a massive, massive test of Drake's authority. And it's a test which Drake passes. And the moment that that test has been passed, there can really be only the one verdict. Because Drake says to his men, when he's kind of, you know, commissioning the jury, consider what a great voyage we are like to make.

• 58:33Speaker 00

  The like was never made out of England. We cannot afford to have dissension on board our ships. You know, we cannot tolerate even the threat of mutiny. And so unsurprisingly, uh, the jury finds Doughty guilty and they recommend death. Drake does prevaricate, you know, he and Doughty had been friends. And also Doughty is the secretary of Sir Christopher Hutton, who is this great favourite of Elizabeth. I mean, it's a big ask.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  This is high risk, yeah.

• 59:03Speaker 00

  Very high risk. But, you know, he says, okay, I'm sentencing Doughty to death. And Doughty, to give him great credit, meets his fate very, very bravely. And Drake and Doughty amazingly, they share Doughty's last meal.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  That's bizarre.

• 59:18Speaker 00

  And to quote the record of, of, of the voyage, they shared it as cheerfully in sobriety as ever in their lives they had done aforetime, each cheering up the other and taking their leave by drinking each to other as if some journey only had been in hand. I mean, what a, what a meal that must have been.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  I mean, each cheering up the other just strikes me as a ludicrous claim. I mean, I can see that Doughty needs cheering up, but for Drake to need cheering up, really, I mean.

• 59:44Speaker 00

  Well, Drake's a bit depressed that he's had to do this. And he's, I think he's probably worried about what Sir Christopher Hutton's going to say.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  I don't feel like this is Doughty's job really to cheer Sir Francis Drake up in his final moments.

• 59:54Speaker 00

  Well, I think you could either say this was completely made up, or you could say, well, this reflects tremendously well on both men.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and by extension on England. So that's nice.

• 1:00:03Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So that's all the more reason for believing it. So they finish their meal and then, uh, Doughty is brought forward, uh, and his head is chopped off. And Drake lifts the severed head and cries out, lo, this is the end of traitors. And that is the end of Doughty. And it, it's a very brutal episode. It's controversial. But I think it is an act of expediency. Drake did it and he was right to do it because it very clearly and decisively established the chain of command. Drake is in charge of the expedition, no one else. And it also, uh, I think because of Drake's fame, it serves to establish a very important precedent.

• 1:00:44Speaker 00

  Namely that the authority of a captain on board his own ship outranks that of everyone else, even a gentleman. And you might say that it is because Drake asserted himself over Doughty in this manner, that in 1912, when the Titanic hit the iceberg, Charles Laitola, the guy in charge of allocating people to the lifeboats on the sinking Titanic, was able to tell, um, Astor, the richest man on board the ship, no, you can't get in board. And Astor accepted that instruction. I mean, it's, there's a kind of really fascinating line of dissent there, I think.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:21Speaker 00

  But clearly I think Drake, he'd taken a risk because perhaps his crew wouldn't back him in. They, they've turned out that they have. But he is also, also taking a risk because he doesn't know how this is going to go back home. What's Sir Christopher Hutton going to say? What's, what's Elizabeth going to say? And so they arrive at the, the Magellan Straits on the 20th of August and they pause there. And it's a very forbidding sight, like something out of the Odyssey. The cliffs are kind of grim and grey and forbidding. And Drake, before they enter the straits, he offers a salute to the Queen. And obviously, this is recorded. He's showing his respect for Elizabeth. He holds a church service. I'm sure they're singing from the hymn book of, from the Samadhi, all the Psalms. And then he rechristens his ship.

• 1:02:05Speaker 00

  And what had been the Pelican becomes the Golden Hind. And the Golden Hind is the crest of Sir Christopher Hutton.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  Such a clever trick. Such a good detail there.

• 1:02:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  When you see the kids' books about Sir Francis Drake, or at least the ones I read, this aspect of the story was never mentioned.

• 1:02:23Speaker 00

  Slightly covered over. Yeah.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  Because it's a little bit complicated and it reflects quite badly on Sir Francis Drake, I think, whereas in reality.

• 1:02:29Speaker 00

  I don't think it reflects badly. I think he's, you know, he's asserted himself.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  Well, I think if you're eight, you would, you would be a little bit confused by this story.

• 1:02:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's never explained why the Pelican becomes the Golden Hind, but that's the, that's the reason. So anyway, we now come to the, the passage through the Magellan Straits. And this is a bit like, you know, the Argonauts going through the clashing rocks. It's a very tense experience. The straits are kind of about 300 miles long and they're very treacherous. There are reefs and dangerous winds and erratic tides. So it's, it's, it's a big ask. And it's such a big ask that in fact Drake abandons two of his five ships. Because he feels that they're unseaworthy to make the attempt. However, I am proud to say Drake completely aces it. So he negotiates the straits in only 15 days. And Magellan had taken 37 days.

• 1:03:22Speaker 00

  And Drake sets the record for the whole of the, of the 16th century. So this reflects well on Drake. It reflects well on England. Hooray.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:03:31Speaker 00

  They come out the other side. They're now in the Pacific and there's a massive storm and it rages on and off for almost two months. And one of Drake's ships is sunk and the other is separated from the Golden Hind and is blown back towards the Magellan Straits. And kind of ends up thinking, oh, screw this, we're going to go back home. And so goes back and so now in all the great vastness of the Pacific, the Golden Hind is the only English ship left. So it's very science fiction. It's like kind of Voyager or Interstellar or something like that. The sense of, of a ship lost in the vastness of the Pacific or the vastness of space. I mean, it's in, in an amazing, an amazing drama. And incredible tribute to Drake that he doesn't at this point think, well, I'd better go back too.

• 1:04:15Speaker 00

  He's still thinking, I've got here, I'm, I'm going to take my chances.

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  But to do what? Because there's just one of him.

• 1:04:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, that's the problem. So he can't now launch a direct attack, say, on Panama. And also he has a very finite number of men. So every casualty matters. So in November, for instance, he suffers the loss of two sailors when the native peoples on an island off Chile mistake the English for Spanish, who, you know, they know that the Spanish are bad news. The English are trying to make friends with them, but no, they're not having that. And Drake himself actually gets hit in the face, under his right eye by an arrow. And Diego too suffers an arrow wound. And very sadly, he, he will die of this wound a few months later. So he doesn't make it all the way around the world. But, you know, why is Drake deciding, well, we're going to carry on? Because the Spanish aren't expecting him.

• 1:05:07Speaker 00

  And so that means they are incredibly vulnerable. And so he, you know, I said, he's like a kind of fox in a chicken coop. There are a lot of chickens.

• 1:05:17Speaker 00

  The most spectacular coup is the capture of an enormous Spanish treasure ship, Nuestra Señora de la Concepción. And this gives Drake 14 chests of silver reals. This is so Treasure Island. 80 pounds of gold, 26 tonnes of silver bars. And so this is even more of a haul than Drake's previous haul of Spanish treasure. Probably the greatest, the single greatest haul of treasure in maybe European history? I don't know. I mean, it is a vast amount of money. Drake, I'm proud to say, treats the captured Spanish captain with exemplary chivalry.

• 1:05:56Speaker 00

  And it has to be said that Spaniards who meet Drake are generally, despite themselves, very impressed by his, his courtesy and his sense of chivalry.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:06:06Speaker 00

  So I think, you know, they, they, they fear and hate him, but there is a sense, you know, it's a bit like the kind of the highwayman, the gentleman highwayman, something like that.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:14Speaker 00

  He also, any slaves that he finds on board the Spanish ships, he offers them their freedom and sailors' wages. And of course, most of the, the captured slaves take this offer up. And this is an obvious way for Drake to top up his crew.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  Joe, I'm getting massive sort of Tom Hiddleston, Roger Moore vibes from Sir Francis Drake. He's suave.

• 1:06:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, but remember, he's got, he's, he's stocky and broad-shouldered and he has a broad Devon accent and he's not a gentleman.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. So if you're doing realistic casting, it's John Rhys Davis, it's the guy who played Gimli. But I think you surely want more of a sort of a smooth, suave Englishman, sort of David Niven.

• 1:06:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I thank you for your offer of silver.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Maybe if you're doing comedy, Terry Thomas would play him.

• 1:07:00Speaker 00

  No, I don't think so. No, you've got to take him seriously.

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  Really? You'd never do a Francis Drake comedy? You don't think that would work?

• 1:07:06Speaker 00

  Carry on Drake? No.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Carry on in the Caribbean?

• 1:07:09Speaker 00

  No, I think that would be offensive.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  I mean, the Spanish obviously don't find this a comedy.

• 1:07:13Speaker 00

  No, they don't. They're appalled.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  What are they planning to do?

• 1:07:18Speaker 00

  Well, they're thinking, how is Drake, you know, he's, he's got all this, this silver and gold, but he's got to take it back home. How's he going to do it? So he might try and go overland from the Pacific coast across Panama to, to the Atlantic coast. And so they put garrisons in Panama on the alert in case he tries that. And then they think, well, he might, you know, try and go back through the Straits of Magellan. So we'll put patrols there. But Drake is aware that this is probably what they're thinking. And so instead of heading back south towards the Magellan Straits, he heads northwards in the hope of finding a northern passage. So around what, you know, would be Canada at this point, Drake doesn't know whether that actually that that's impossible.

• 1:07:56Speaker 00

  And so he sails up the coast of South America, North America, and he reaches almost as far as, as, as what is now Canada.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:05Speaker 00

  By June 1579. And he starts to realise, you know, we're never going to find a way around this. It just goes on and on and on. So he heads back south and by late June, early July, he's hanging out in the Bay Area. So hence, that's why you get Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and all of that.

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:23Speaker 00

  And he makes contact with the, the native peoples in the region of what is going to become San Francisco. And these are people called the Miwok, who apparently were based in the, in what's now Sonoma County.

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  Wine country.

• 1:08:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. Isn't that where we had a very expensive truffle crisp?

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  I'm going to just absolutely destroy the reputation. The rest is history. It was you, me and Tabby and we had an artisan Pringle topped with caviar.

• 1:08:46Speaker 00

  Tough on the road, isn't it? Tough on the road.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:49Speaker 00

  Well, Drake wasn't having any of that, but I think he is entertained by the, by the Miwok. And Drake reports of them, that there are people of attractable, free and loving nature, without guile or treachery. And the Miwok put a feathered crown on Drake's head. And so obviously Drake says, right, I'm giving all of this land for England and Elizabeth. And he calls it New Albion. So this is the, the first English possession in the, in the West Coast of America. Californians could perhaps reflect on this. Their open arms if they want to return to the bosom of the English crown.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  So he's done a sort of Nick Clegg and he's gone after San Francisco.

• 1:09:26Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  But rather like Nick Clegg, he ultimately is going to return home, though perhaps a little bit more popular.

• 1:09:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, he wants to come back. He doesn't want to hang out. I mean, he likes the Miwok, but he doesn't want to stay with them.

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  He's obviously not going to go overland.

• 1:09:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  But I mean, that means he has to go back by sea all the way down the coast of South America again. Surely not.

• 1:09:44Speaker 00

  Can't do that.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  So what?

• 1:09:46Speaker 00

  He's going to have to sail across the Pacific, go head westwards. He's going to have to follow in Magellan's, not, not footsteps, but in his, in his wash.

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:55Speaker 00

  It's obviously very risky, you know, sailing across the Pacific is a massive ask. But Drake is prepared for it. So every Spanish ship that he has captured, he's taken charts, he's got sailing guides. And before he leaves California, which he does on the 24th of July, he stocks up with sea birds and seals. So he kind of butchers them and salts them. So hopefully this will be enough to keep him going. I mean, butchered seal, but it's better than drinking urine, urine, I guess. So the Golden Hind set sail westwards from California and it is 68 days at sea without sight of land. And then finally, on the 68th day, they reach an island called Palau, which is west of the Philippines. And they arrive there on the 30th of September.

• 1:10:39Speaker 00

  And the scene is very Captain Cook. The inhabitants of Palau have never seen a European before, never seen a European ship. And they're all kind of rowing out on their canoes and things like that. They're welcoming, you know, they don't kill Drake, as the people of Hawaii end up killing Captain Cook. And by early November, the Golden Hind has reached the Spice Islands, which are in the east of Indonesia. And there they find the local Sultan is at war with the Portuguese. So very keen to sign Drake and the English more generally as allies. And he gives Drake six tons of cloves.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  God, that's a lot of cloves.

• 1:11:17Speaker 00

  Now, this is fabulous wealth. It kind of just adds to the gold and the silver. And he gives a ring for Queen Elizabeth. And in return, Drake says, absolutely, we will send a fleet of English ships to help you out against the Portuguese. I mean, obviously, that never happens. But Drake doesn't care because he's got the cloves. So hooray, he's up there. They continue westwards. And then on the 10th of January, seeming disaster, because the Golden Hind runs aground on a reef. And it's impossible to barge. The reefs are kind of very, very scratchy.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  Sort of coral.

• 1:11:50Speaker 00

  Coral reefs, yeah. So Drake tries prayer first, that doesn't seem to work. And so then they try offloading the artillery, that still doesn't seem to work. So they then revert to prayer. And then the prayer does work, because in the afternoon, the wind changes and the Golden Hind slips off the reef. And the only damage is a slight leak, which is very simple to repair. And so by late March, they've left Java behind. And on the 21st of May, they catch sight of Africa. And that actually is incredible feat of navigation as well.

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:18Speaker 00

  You know, it's a long time at sea. And by mid-June, they're rounding the Cape of Good Hope. On the 22nd of July, they make landfall in Sierra Leone, what will become Sierra Leone, so on the west coast of Africa. And that is 9,700 miles without picking up any supplies, any provisions. Drake's crew suffer no deaths from scurvy, no deaths from dehydration. It's an incredible feat, absolutely incredible feat.

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  How have they done that with no supplies? I don't, I mean.

• 1:12:46Speaker 00

  They're catching birds, they're catching fish, they're getting rainwater. It's amazing.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Wow. I mean, that's, that is impressive. Because, you know, without fresh fruit, I guess.

• 1:12:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, kind of comparison there, I think, between Nelson and Drake. Because Nelson also kind of understood the importance of keeping his crew healthy.

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, but Nelson was always getting supplies, wasn't he, from Naples and stuff?

• 1:13:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was.

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  So Drake's, in many ways, I hate to say this of Nelson, but even more impressive. Yeah.

• 1:13:14Speaker 00

  I mean, my guess is that local people are rowing out and giving them papaya or whatever. That's my hunch.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  Okay. That's great fruit knowledge, Tom. Well done. Thanks. Callum points out that they would have been eating the cloves. I mean, you can get cloves centred toothpaste.

• 1:13:29Speaker 00

  Be like eating silver, wouldn't it?

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  I guess, yeah. Eat the treasure. Wow.

• 1:13:33Speaker 00

  Anyway, so, so by the, you know, by the time they reach the west coast of Africa, they're relatively, they know where they are, they can now sail up the, the west coast of Europe. And on the 26th of September, the Golden Hind heads into Plymouth Sound. And as we've been saying, Drake's achievements are stupefying. The voyage has lasted 1,046 days. It was the first by an English ship, the second in history to circumnavigate the globe. He has survived appalling weather. Drake has returned with enormous amounts of treasure, more than the entire annual revenue of Queen Elizabeth. I mean, stupefying. And he's not only plundered the Spanish, he's outsmarted them and made them look foolish. But all that being said, Drake has good reason to be nervous. You know, what's his reception

• 1:14:18Speaker 00

  going to be? Will the Queen really have his back? That ship that he'd been separated from by the Straits of Miguelin, that will have returned to England with news of doubt his fate. So will doubt his relatives be out to get him?

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  Surely.

• 1:14:30Speaker 00

  What about the Spanish? I mean, you know, they will doubtless have been complaining to Elizabeth. So all of this is a worry, as is the possibility that perhaps while he's been gone, Elizabeth has died or been assassinated or whatever, and maybe Mary Queen of Scots is on the throne, and she certainly won't be a Francis Drake fan. So rather than sail directly for Plymouth Harbour, Drake first of all makes sure to hail a passing fisherman and to ask this fisherman, is the Queen alive and well? And the fisherman replies to Drake's relief, yes, Queen Elizabeth still sits on the throne and is very well. And so then he continues into Plymouth. But even now, he doesn't disembark because the city is ravaged by plague. And Drake is still nervous about the reception that he's going to get from

• 1:15:13Speaker 00

  the Queen. His wife and the mayor of Plymouth are rode out to greet him, and they are able to give him a briefing. And Drake is informed that during his absence, England's strategic situation has got worse. Philip has become the King of Portugal as well as Spain, which means that he now rules an even more global empire. All Portugal's possessions are now his, as well as all those kind of possessions that Spain had won. Philip has also been backing that invasion of Ireland that we talked about in the previous episode. And most ominously of all, from Drake's point of view, Philip is demanding that Elizabeth

• 1:15:56Speaker 00

  punish Drake for, quote, "his piratical acts."

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 1:16:01Speaker 00

  And so the question is, what will the Queen do? And so Drake decides that he is going to stay on the Golden Hind, wait to find out, and hope for the best.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  So what will the Queen do? Is Francis Drake going to be punished? Or is he going to be free to resume his life of plundering the Spanish on the high seas? Listen, there's only one way to find out, and that's to listen to the next episode of The Rest Is History. Now, if you're a member of the Rest Is History Club, of our own swashbuckling crew, then you can listen to that episode right now. If you would like to sign up to embark on our voyage around the world, or around world history, then you should head to therestishistory.com because, Tom, as you will know, that is the only way you can get all of the unbelievable benefits from our own cellar reco, from our own massive silver mine. We hand out bounty,

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  don't we? But you only get all that bounty by signing up at the website rather than on one of the various platforms.

• 1:17:04Speaker 00

  Dominic, I have even more exciting news, because we are running a summer sale. And so for a limited time, if you want to sign up to the Rest Is History Club, listen about the dinosaurs and a host of other supplementary benefits, then you will get an extra 20% off an annual membership using the code SUMMERTWENTYSIX. And this is only valid until the 31st of August. So hurry, hurry, hurry while stocks last.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  So do that. Also, I think the important thing to do is to subscribe to our free newsletter.

• 1:17:35Speaker 00

  Definitely.

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