Dan Snow's History Hit - Francis Drake (Part 1)

Episode Date: March 30, 2025

Dan tells swashbuckling tales of Francis Drake on the Spanish Main. Francis Drake was England's first imperial warrior forged in the crucible of the 16th-century naval engagements against Spain. This episode covers Drake's early life, his transformation from a passionate Protestant to a relentless scourge of the Spanish, and his legendary feats of seamanship as he led England's first successful circumnavigation of the globe. Dan narrates Drake's audacious attacks on Spanish treasure fleets and his daring circumnavigation that not only enriched England but also laid the foundation for its future naval dominance.This is Part 1 of 2.Written by Dan Snow and edited by Dougal Patmore.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail].

It was treachery. It was brazen. The English force was fighting for its life against those who had just sworn that they meant it no harm. Cannonballs smashed through, timbers weakened by nearly a year at sea rigs that had already been worn out torn by Caribbean storms were shredded by enemy shot men were cut down they were hacked through with swords

some leapt into the sea to escape. English ships sank or surrendered. The Spanish had promised them safe passage. But the English, despite that, had been on their guard. A Spanish promise here meant less than in Europe. meant less than in Europe. The norms of European war didn't seem to apply here, across the line, on the infamous Spanish Main.

That stretch of the American mainland from modern-day Venezuela right up into the United States. The Spanish main. A place of opportunity, slavery, conquest, danger, wealth and glory. It was the 23rd of September, 1568, and in San Juan de Lua, on the coast of Mexico, England was locked in its first imperial battle in the New World. Although it wasn't really the English state, it was a private consortium. English, certainly. Merchants, they styled themselves as. Pirates, according to the Spanish. The English were led by John Hawkins, who was now on his quarterdeck roaring at his

gunners to fire and reload while he sipped beer from a silver cup. Around him his squadron was taken or destroyed. He would extract one ship from the wreckage. He would live to tell the tale, just. And apart from his, only one other vessel made it out of that Spanish harbour and managed to limp back across the Atlantic. It was captained by one of Hawkins' cousins, a young, unknown man, given his first command by his relative. His name was Francis Drake.

And that dark day changed him. Drake had always been a passionate Protestant, but he'd hitherto had a fairly abstract dislike of Catholicism and the Pope and the greatest Catholic power of the day, Spain. But now that crystallised into something very different. A particular violent loathing. An unquenchable desire for revenge, a sudden coalescing of his life's purpose to punish the Spanish who'd gone back on their word, to avenge the deaths of his

friends, the humiliation of his family, the torture and enslavement of his former crewmates. England's first imperial sea battle forged England's first imperial warrior, totem, and ultimately martyr, Francis Drake. Arguably England's greatest sailor, we're getting some pretty stiff competition there. He was born decades before, but he was relaunched that day in Mexico. For the next 30 years, he waged a personal war against the most powerful man on earth, the King of Spain. A war that took him around the world, that saw him lay waste to cities, explore shorelines unknown to Europeans, capture fabulous prizes, shorelines unknown to Europeans, capture fabulous prizes, singe the King of Spain's beard,

and defeat the greatest armada that had ever sailed to that point in history. This podcast, as you might have guessed by now, is the story of Drake, the piratical founder of England's naval tradition. The religious zealot. You are listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. And this is part one of my story of Drake. From ship's boy to Gloriana's favourite. Enjoy. T-minus 10. The Thomas bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity.

Never to go to war with one another again. And liftoff. And the shuttle has cleared the tower. Drake was born where the River Tay tumbles, cascades down off the wild uplands of Dartmoor and starts to proceed in a more placid fashion through the gentle, rich lands of the Tavy Valley. This is the land of Devon. Good soil. Green. So green. Drenched by the rains that crash into it off the atlantic nowhere in devon is very far from the sea they're all mariners in the west country the drake family had lived there

well by four generations solid yeoman farmers not grand but comfortable with a few acres, able to employ a few hands for the farm at harvest. We don't know exactly when, but in 1538 or 39 or 40, Edmund Drake had his first son. They called him Francis. He and his wife would go on to have 12 sons that we know of. Some of them will pop up in this tale. Some of them will pop up in this tale. Drake's life was shaped by their religious earthquake that was gripping England at the time. It was the Reformation.

It started with Henry VIII's decision to break with Rome. It intensified in the reign of his son, Edward VI, as a more radical form of Protestantism was imposed. Many Cornishmen were not having this upheaval, not having this change, and there was a West Country uprising. The Drakes, though, were committed to this new religion, so they appeared to have had to flee their home, although that might be something to do with the fact their father may well have been a highway robber. Anyway, the revolt, the West Country

revolt, was put down by Drake's landlord, the Protestant Lord Russell, using a load of Italian mercenaries. The Drakes fled to Kent. They lived on the foreshore of another beautiful river, the River Medway. Quite possibly they lived in an old hulk, an old ship's hull now turned into a cottage. His dad became a preacher of the new Protestant faith and his father's religion shaped Drake. He was a passionate believer, he was an evangelical. And as well as his faith and his father's religion shaped Drake. He was a passionate believer, he was an evangelical and as well as his prayers and his religious belief I think it was here on the Medway that Drake got his introduction to the sea. He watched ships sailing and rowing up the Thames to London. He would have listened to sailors tales, he would have paddled in discarded little open boats

with his brothers and his mates, maybe stepped a branch as a mast, hung some old rags on it, some sacking to make a sail. Somewhere on the Medway, the river where Nelson would later join the Royal Navy, I'm convinced that Francis Drake commanded his first crew, a bunch of kids exploring the shallows. first crew, a bunch of kids exploring the shallows. Faith and the sea. That was Drake. Edward VI died prematurely, died when he was a teenager, and his older half-sister Mary came to the throne. Well, she was a Catholic, and she threatened to marry the hero of Catholic Europe, Philip of Spain, son of the ruler of the most powerful empire in the world, a global empire in which the sun never set. England's Protestants were furious. Foreign faith, foreign rule. For people like the Drakes, this was intolerable. The men of Kent launched a rebellion. Well, a few

thousand of them did anyway. They marched on London, where they were soundly beaten. We don't know any details about the Drakes. Did his father join the rebellion? Did he march on London, where they were soundly beaten. We don't know any details about the drakes. Did his father join the rebellion? Did he march on London, or did he at least shout prayers and promises of absolution as the rebels tramped up the London road? Did young Francis and his mates run alongside the column? Gazing up at these rebels, these men with their billhooks and the odd musket going off to fight for England and Protestantism? An English prayer book? An English queen rather than the one in the pocket of Spain? Well, we don't know. But what we do know is that when the clampdown came,

when agents of Mary's regime arrived, they burned members ofke's church or nearby churches for their protestantism when people were forced to flee to holland drake remembered that religious violence of his youth produced a deeply religious man he was a obvious committed protestant he would pray for hours his crews had regular and strict religious observance. He tried to convert shipmates one-on-one. His letters are shot through with evangelical language, with prayer. Throughout his voyages all around the world, he kept with him a book written by John Fox, infamous book, The History of the Protestant Martyrs Killed by Mary's Regime.

Drake was a religious extremist. He remembered the crimes of Mary's Catholic servants and he would take the most terrible revenge on her faith. That revenge would come by sea was also determined by his childhood. When Mary was succeeded by her Protestant sister Elizabeth Tudor, old man Drake was back in fashion. He became vicar of a parish on the River Medway, but there wasn't much to sustain his sons, and they were nearly all apprenticed to mariners. So he, like his brothers, spent the next few years at sea, spent the next few years learning the ropes. Now, my friends, my listeners, let me tell you, if you can sail in the Thames Estuary, the North Sea, along the Dutch coast, you can sail anywhere

in the world. In fact, it will be a pleasure. Just open a chart, do me a favour, open a chart today, it looks like someone's spilt their coffee on it. Coastline's so fractured that your eye can't really take in their coherence. It's quite difficult to know what is coast and what is foreshore, what is mudflat and sandbank and reef. And those banks run in great jagged parallel lines like wolverines just slash the chart. And that's before we've talked about the tide which howls in and out of the Thames Estuary four times a day, a conveyor belt if you're on it, whizzing you towards the capital, an unstoppable force if you're unlucky enough to be against it. The only course, the

wisest course, to drop your anchor, sit on the fo'c'sle and light a pipe, get to chatting, and wait for the tide to change, which is literally the entire plot of the novel Heart of Darkness. But anyway, what about the weather, you ask? Well, the weather, friends, is foul, and that's in the summer. The relentless pumping of that great British sow westerly, interspersed with howling, screaming gales out of the German sea that brings sleet and snow and cold that will paralyse your fingers as you struggle to make reefing lines fast. Endless mist and cloud. Drake would have learned to feel his way along the coast with his lead line. He'd have watched for telltale wavelets,

odd little eddies in the water that marked places of danger or deeper channels. It was one hell of an apprenticeship. Drake was good. And we know that because the mariner he was apprenticed to came to look on him like a son. And when he died, he left his ship to Drake. And the first thing Francis Drake did was go home out of the Medway along the coast of Kent

around the Foreland back into the English Channel back to the green rolling hills the West Country I think I've always found those West Country folk have a homing beacon on them like salmon and once he was safely and snugly back in Plymouth, he met up with his seafaring

cousins, the Hawkins boys. They're more like seafaring aristocracy. Their father William had been one of the most notable West Country seafarers. He'd become a favourite of Henry VIII, in fact. He appears to have been the first Englishman to sail to West Africa and then across to Brazil in the 1520s and 30s. He'd even brought home an African king to be presented to Henry at Whitehall Palace. He'd become mayor and member of parliament for Plymouth. And when he died, he left his sons a small fleet of vessels. And William Hawkins really epitomises the revolution that occurred in the previous 50 years. England's place in the world, like Portugal's, had been transformed.

In 1490, little old England was sitting on the very edge of the known world, just part of an archipelago in the Atlantic, right on the edge. But 30 years later, it was clear to England that there was a new world out there to the west. Rather than being on the edge of something, England was in the middle. And the hottest place to be in England, in this new paradigm, was in the west of England, where good natural harbours had ready access to the sea lane south and west. You don't want to be in the Medway. You don't want to be in Rochester or East Anglia or Norfolk anymore. No, no. You want to be in the west. You want to look west, young man. You want

to look west to the opportunities there. And that's exactly what Hawkins did and exactly what Drake would do. Hawkins would be like that smallholding farmer who finds himself in the middle of a freshly discovered goldfield. He'd picked up a shovel, and Drake would do the same. Drake put himself right in the heart of the action. In Plymouth, alongside the Hawkins boys. He served on one voyage, trading to northern Spain. He obviously impressed them because they enrolled him for another voyage. And this one was altogether different.

The Hawkins lads wanted to follow the course their father had set and head for the new world. It was a glittering prize. The Spanish had been looking for spices in the Orient, in the Indies. Columbus had not found the Indies or much in the way of spices, but he had found the Americas, the islands of the Caribbean. And later expeditions following in his footsteps arrived at Florida and Mexico and Panama and Colombia and much else besides. And this territory was all claimed by

Spain and rapidly turned into a massive plantation. First local people and then Africans were enslaved and forced to work the land, producing sugar in particular. Alongside a climate and soil that was perfect for sugar cultivation, the Spanish had then found silver. When the Spanish had conquered the Inca Empire, pushing into South America, they'd found Mount Potosi in Bolivia. Now, the Spanish know that mountain as Chiarrico de Potosi, the Rich Mountain Potosi. And it was indeed rich. In fact,

it was the richest source of silver in the history of mankind. Every year that silver was mined, it was shipped up the coast, up the Pacific coast to Panama. Then it was taken on pack animals across the Isthmus of Panama and loaded onto a Spanish fleet, which carried it back to Europe. It was one of the grandest, most ambitious natural resource asset strips in history to that point. Tens of millions of ducats worth of silver were flowing across the Atlantic to Spain and that was the fuel which powered the Spanish crown, the rottweiler of the Roman faith, as it engaged in its unyielding mission to bring the lost Protestant sheep back to Rome. But the extraordinary thing about this vast empire, this imperial project,

was that it was being run by a handful of Spanish officials in largely undefended settlements scattered all over the Americas. Santo Domingo on Hispaniola, for example. It depended on its defence on around 200 part-time Europeans that settled there, backed up by a bevy of unenthusiastic, enslaved Africans and indigenous men who were supposedly reinforcing them. The Spanish were aware of this weakness. They were aware that a few European captains

from other nations were starting to probe into this new world to trade, but also commit acts of piracy. And they tried sending a fleet, a sort of guard fleet, but some of them were lost en route and the area was so vast and the pirates they were trying to catch were so few and nimble that it was just an impossible task for those lumbering warships to track them down. There was something about this new world. There was something about the Spanish main, which made it different, made it separate from Europe. And as Hawkins and Drake were preparing for their expedition,

I think there was a sense that the rules didn't really apply. There was a line drawn down the middle of the Atlantic, an imaginary line, obviously, drawn by the Pope to divide the world between Spain and Portugal. Now, Hawkins believed that once you crossed the line, obviously, drawn by the Pope to divide the world between Spain and Portugal. Now, Hawkins believed that once you crossed the line, the niceties of European diplomacy didn't count for anything. It was a free-for-all. Even when your sovereigns had buried the hatchets in Europe and were playing nice, the expression went that there was no peace beyond the line. It was, in some senses, a wild west. And in the mid-1560s, Hawkins crossed the

line twice. He had the terrible distinction of being the first Englishman to take enslaved Africans to the Americas. He transported them in order to sell them to Spanish plantations, which weren't supposed to trade with the Brits in this Spanish monopoly zone, but whose appetite for enslaved Africans, whose greed, overcame their obedience to Spanish regulations. In 1566, Queen Elizabeth forbade Hawkins from crossing the Atlantic again, so instead he sent his fleet and stayed behind himself. So technically he had obeyed his sovereign. He sent three little ships and aboard them was Francis Drake. And this would be quite an apprenticeship. It was just one long voyage of piracy and mayhem.

They captured Portuguese ships off Africa, stole their cargo of enslaved people and sailed to the Caribbean. They attempted to sell them to Spanish planters, whilst also capturing more Spanish ships. Then they sailed back to Plymouth just under a year later. They had enraged the Spanish and Portuguese. They had not quite hit the jackpot. It hadn't worked quite as well as they'd hoped, but Drake had learned a lot. He learned what to do, and more importantly than that, as a young man, he had learned what not to do. He didn't spend long ashore because Hawkins was fitting out

another expedition, this time six ships. Now, classic Queen Elizabeth, she was pursuing détente with the Spanish at that point, so she was trying to play nice with the Spanish, but she quietly contributed two warships to the expedition, so she came in as a secret investor, and it became therefore a public-private partnership, you could say. She promised the Spanish ambassador that Hawkins was not going to cross the line. No, no, he was heading to trade elsewhere. She was very naughty, because John Hawkins was planning to do exactly that. He would command one of Elizabeth's warships, the Jesus of Lubeck, and Drake would be one of his principal officers aboard. They set sail in October 1567. So unsurprisingly at that time of year, they were scattered by a savage gale in Biscay. You're going to hear about a lot of gales in this episode, but this did seem to be a bad

one. Hawkins at one point summoned the crew because there was nothing left to do but pray for the safety of the ship. All hope was lost. As the ship twisted, the stress on the hull meant the planks were prized apart and water spouted through. Pumps were manned 24 hours a day, but the prayers and the pumps worked. They arrived at Canary Islands and they put in to repair and replenish. And Hawkins at this point breaks up a duel which had burst out between two members of his crew. There was a full sword fight on the ship between two members of the crew. And he was wounded as he broke up this fight. He spared the lives of the men responsible. Even though he was wounded, he put to sea because the Spanish authorities looked to be sort of maneuvering to spring a trap. And so Hawkins

left the Canary Islands, Spanish possessions, and headed to West Africa. He seized Africans from villages. He also committed acts of piracy against Portuguese slaving vessels. Portugal was at peace at the time, we should say, so that was just straightforwardly criminal. And one of those vessels that he seized, well, he gave command of it to Francis Drake, his cousin. In fact, it was a French ship that he seized and he made Drake its skipper. In Sierra Leone, they went on a raid with an African tribe to assault a rival tribe. There was a savage battle. Women and children were massacred. They were drowned. Some of them were even eaten. But the English reward for taking part in that raid was 250 enslaved people. And that was enough to bring Hawkins's holds up to full for the Middle Passage,

the infamous Middle Passage, the Atlantic Crossing. The Middle Passage was an unimaginable torment for the men, women and children that were locked together in the hulls of those ships. The majority of enslaved people would die if the ships meant contrary winds or disease spread between the narrow decks. We don't know how many Africans died on this particular journey, but certainly Hawkins was keen to sell those survivors when he reached South America. He explained his appearance in South America on, well, being blown off course, which is extremely unlikely. But he told the governor of Rio de la Hacha, which is just on the modern border between Colombia and Venezuela, now that he was here, did he want to

buy any slaves? The Spanish had been reminded of their duty. It had been reinforced to them that they were not to trade with the English. And so the governor refused. Hawkins responded by occupying the town, burning parts of it and making several threats to the Spanish until they agreed reluctantly to pay for his slaves and make him leave. He repeated the same formula elsewhere, had mixed success. By early August he decided that he had a reasonable amount of Spanish gold in his hulls and he headed home with Drake and the rest of his crews. Sailed into a violent storm as they tried to get on the edge of Cuba out in the Atlantic. And for a week, most of those ships were driven west into the Gulf of Mexico. It was unknown territory. The ships were in a terrible state. There was so

much seawater that got in through the leaky planks of Hawkins's ship that there were fish swimming around in the hold. In desperate need of a harbour, they simply stopped a Spanish ship and asked for where the nearest one was. They were told the only one really available was San Juan de Lua, just on the coast by the Mexican city of Veracruz. The English limped into San Juan. Now, foolishly, the local Spanish officials rode out to welcome them. They assumed it was a big Spanish fleet bringing the new governor to Veracruz. Hawkins welcomed them politely aboard, said he was here to make some repairs, which he was happy to pay for, but that these Spanish officials would be his hostages until the work was done. The English entered the harbour

and got to work. Two days later though, things got ominous. That Spanish fleet that they'd been waiting for did actually arrive. Hawkins was now outgunned and outnumbered. He acted fast. He sent cannon ashore to a small island which controlled the mouth of the harbour. So the Spanish fleet couldn't get into the harbour without Hawkins's permission. Very embarrassing. A few days negotiations took place and the Spanish needed to enter that port. They need to find the safety of harbour. Otherwise, if they're anchored off, they can be scattered by the wind and they risk being wrecked on the shore. So they cut a deal with the English.

Hawkins was prepared to let them into the harbour as long as they behaved themselves. They agreed to let Hawkins finish his work and Hawkins allowed the Spanish ships to enter. They came into the harbour, they ended up mooring up side by side with the English ships. Very cosy, very snug, very friendly. In fact, there was quite a lot of fraternisation that took place, although I doubt Drake participated in it. But for the Spanish, this was a bitter pill to swallow. They started to secretly squeeze soldiers onto their ship, and they planned for a stunning surprise attack that would take the English ships, destroy them, and punish these Lutheran interlopers. On September the 23rd, the Spanish launched that attack. Englishmen found themselves thrust into their first big battle outside Europe,

the dawn of the age of empire. It wouldn't be their last. Rowing boats suddenly appeared. They were bringing hordes of Spanish troops to swarm aboard English ships. One of them, the Minion, was particularly vulnerable. Hawkins saw what was happening and roared, God and St. George, upon these traitorous villains and rescue the Minion. I trust in God, the day shall be ours. Inspired by that kind of robust leadership, they did drive back the Spanish borders all the ships tried to put to sea. The Spanish had seized the guns ashore, they'd seized the cannon that was ashore, and they turned them on the English ships. And meanwhile, the English ran out what cannons they had left on board and started blasting any

Spanish targets they could see down the barrel. That English fire appeared to be quite accurate. They managed to sink the Spanish flagship in the shallow water. The crew jumped overboard to safety. The next Spanish warship took an unlucky shot to its powder magazine and exploded. The English then sank one of the unarmed merchant ships that had come in with the Spanish. In return though, especially the smaller English ships were being battered by the cannon ashore. The Angel sank, the Swallow, the Opus Dei, and one of the Portuguese prizes they'd picked up in west africa they were all forced to surrender drake got lucky and that's not the last time you can hear me talk about luck in this podcast he was right on the end of the line so he was able to throw off his warps get

his ropes and make it out first but drake's ship had no cannon aboard so he could only watch as his cousin hawkins was smashed by shot from all sides. Hawkins stood there encouraging his men. As you heard in the introduction, he ordered beer to be brought for him in a silver cup. He projected calm. At one stage, it was shot out of his hand, and he roared not to worry. It was a good omen. If that was a good omen, I wouldn't want to see a bad one,

because his fleet was being destroyed. His ship, which hadn't been in great a bad one, because his fleet was being destroyed. His ship, which hadn't been in great shape before, remember, was now shot through, and he ordered Drake and another ship to come alongside and rescue his men and, critically, his treasure. There was a breakdown of order. Things got chaotic as the Spanish sent a flaming vessel, a fire ship, an old hulk piled with fuel

that deliberately set on fire and floated towards the English. Hawkins dashed below. He told his Spanish hostages that they were free to go. He'd kept his side of the bargain. And then he leapt off the rail of his flagship onto the deck of another ship. Only two English ships limped out of the harbour. And at that point, it seems that a stiff breeze blew up. And that encouraged Drake to abandon his cousin, his commanding officer, and he decided to set out for England by himself. Hawkins later said bitterly that Drake had forsook us in our great misery. It's impossible to know what happened. Maybe Drake did lose his nerve, maybe he bolted, or maybe scattered by the

wind, he decided his duty lay in just getting his men home, getting his ship home. And sure enough, his damaged little ship limped into Plymouth four months later in January 1569. On Hawkins's ship, there was terrible suffering. Some of the crew begged to be put ashore to take their chances with the Spanish and the indigenous peoples, rather than endure a trip home in the overcrowded, damaged ship. The crews of the other ships in the squadron, they faced a terrible fate. They were murdered or they were rounded up. Some of those prisoners died in Spanish prisons. Others lived out their days as galley slaves, pulling on oars for his most Catholic majesty. Hawkins remarkably managed to reach Cornwall in late January, just after Drake.

He told Queen Elizabeth's courtier, who inquired, that if he'd written a book about his misfortunes, it would be as big as the Bible. The battle at San Juan de Lua enraged Drake. He felt personally betrayed. He felt for his friends and shipmates who now lay in shallow graves on the Spanish main or chained to the thwarts of Spanish galleys. He was probably feeling a little bit insecure about his own less than glorious role. And in that moment, he reinvented himself. He evolved from a sort of buccaneering merchant into a one-man war machine. Francis Drake would have his revenge.

You listen to Dan Snow's History Hit. More on Francis Drake after this. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes.

Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. In early 1569, a short, stocky, hardscrabble West Countryman went to court for the first time. He was Francis Drake, and he had been sent by John Hawkins, his cousin,

to describe the fate of the expedition to the West Indies and lobby for a robust government response. He must have cut at an aggressive and uncompromising figure. And his words fell on deaf ears because the government at that time was currently in the mood to de-escalate. No action was taken. Drake and his West Country comrades took away a very simple lesson. If they wanted vengeance, they'd have to take it themselves. While he was planning that vengeance, he did obviously have a little bit of spare time because he managed to get married. He married one Mary Newman. They got married in 1569. They'd be married for 12 years. But Drake would be at sea for most of them, and probably for that reason, they had no children. There'd be no Drake dynasty.

The following year, 1570, he left his married life behind. He made his first move. He sailed back to the Caribbean. This time, interestingly, not even pretending to trade. So this idea that maybe you could pick up enslaved people, sell them in the Caribbean, and trade as you would with Spain itself, well, that had now been jettisoned. This was war. Drake would be the first Englishman to raid Spanish possessions in the Caribbean. This was straightforward piracy. He crossed the line in more than one sense. He had seen opportunity in the lightly defended West Indies on the Spanish main. He meant to exploit it. He was going to enrich himself and he was going to make the Spanish weep. The raid did not go that well. You might even say it was a bit of a failure. As we all know,

success is forged in failure. And he later rebadged that raid as a reconnaissance mission. Now, I'm sure he actually wished there hadn't just been a reconnaissance. I bet he wished he'd sailed home with a hole full of treasure, but it was not to be on this occasion. But as a reconnaissance, it did prove invaluable because he made an important discovery. He found the Achilles' heel of Philip's empire, or the jugular, or some other metaphor that I'm reaching for. He certainly found the weak point, the weak point of the Death Star, the choke point. He learned that all the riches of Spain's South American empire, particularly the silver mined from that rich mountain in Bolivia, rather than sailing all the way around the south

of South America, it was shipped north along the South American coast to Panama, where it's moved across the land, across the isthmus, on the backs of mules. The route went through thick tropical jungle. The Spanish had assumed its remoteness was its protection. But what if it wasn't? What if it was a vulnerability? Drake convinced enough backers to invest in sending him once again to the Spanish main, this time for a very specific attempt on that narrow artery of the Spanish empire. He arrived in early 1571. Now, things were a little bit complicated. The Spanish were on their guard because there was a French pirate in the area, actually trying to have a go at the same target. As he was sizing up the

situation, Drake captured a couple of Spanish ships, which he looted. In the gutted hull of one, he left a note, done by the English, who are well disposed if there be no cause to the contrary. If there be cause, we will be devils rather than men. It was quite the warning. He was certainly rather devilish over the next few weeks and months. He terrorised the whole coast between Panama and Colombia. He captured ships, he looted them, he burned, he sank them. And now we know, for the first time, a report of this belligerent Englishman,

this nuisance, arrived on the desk of the King of Spain. Drake was willing to make a name for himself, but it was only the beginning. This expedition, interestingly, it made far more money than Hawkins' attempts to trade. So Drake and others started to believe that piracy, or direct action, was the way ahead. The Spanish would come to wish that they'd let the Englishmen buy and sell goods on the open market. The alternative was much, much worse. In spring 1572, Drake sailed again. He had with him two small ships and only 73 men. And I find this so fascinating. These are the tiny numbers that helped to shape the destiny of global empires

at this dawn of the European age. Drake was in his early 30s, but I think hardly a man aboard the expedition apart from him would have been over 30 years old. He made good time across the Atlantic. He refilled his watercasts in the sweet mountain streams of Dominica, and he arrived in Panama by July 1572. First thing he did was build a sturdy stockade ashore, and he set about building smaller boats so he could conduct inshore raids in shallower waters. He led a daring nighttime raid on the settlement of Nombre de Dios, relying on dash and surprise to overwhelm the Spanish defenders. This is the settlement on the Gulf of Mexico side of Panama. In a chaotic night action, he got hit in the leg by a bullet, but he managed to drive the Spanish defenders out of town. They broke into the governor's house,

they found a pile of silver bars about 70 foot in length, 12 foot high, each weighing 40 pounds. each weighing 40 pounds but then he got greedy he left men to guard this pile of silver and he made for the town treasure house hoping there'd be gold and jewels in there and as his force moved down there was a massive thunderstorm and all their gunpowder was rendered useless and as they began to smash down the treasure house door men realized that drake was growing faint he was covered in blood he was about to pass out and they immediately scooped him up and retreated, leaving the treasure house and all the silver they'd already captured, leaving it all behind. So you get a sense of how much they rated their talismanic captain. Without him, there was little point in carrying all the silver off, there was no way they were going to get home safely. Far better to abandon the treasure and make sure Drake

was safe. The Spanish governor then sent Drake a message saying, get well soon, what are your intentions, and do you need anything to continue your voyage? I, please, please leave us alone. And Drake's reply is simply awesome. He wrote that he wanted nothing but some of that special commodity which that country yielded, treasure, to content himself and his company. And therefore he advised the governor 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 all the trouble of the earth. The governor no doubt quaked when he got that reply. The town

tried to defend itself. They erected a battery, they built some better defences, and so it was now a harder nut to crack. Which compelled Drake to come up with another plan. He couldn't assume now that he could capture the town when the treasure arrived from over the Isthmus. So he came up with a daring plan to seize it before it reached the town. He would ambush the treasure on the narrow track in the jungles of Panama as it passed on mules from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico. No one had ever attempted it before. He was able to attempt it because he got help from a very unexpected, unlikely quarter. Living in those jungles, bitter enemies of the Spanish, was a community of Africans, formerly enslaved people who'd escaped and now waged war on their erstwhile captors. Drake had stumbled into these people and he'd actually recruited a former enslaved called Diego,

who now became his close confidant. And Diego promised to forge an alliance between Drake and these outlaw Africans. They proved willing. And Drake, who'd once been a slave trader, don't forget, suddenly, well, he appears to develop this respect for these new allies. He built a fort on the Gulf Coast and he called it Fort Diego after this invaluable ally. For the next few months, Drake waited for news that treasure was being brought up the Pacific Coast and was making its journey across the Isthmus of Panama. It was a hard time for Drake.

They ran low on supplies. Drake's younger brother was killed trying to board a Spanish ship. Another of Drake's brothers died in a yellow fever outbreak that killed something like, well, as much as half the expedition. But in early 1573, these Cimarrones, these escaped Africans, brought the news that Drake had been waiting for. The treasure had arrived on the Pacific coast and there were plans to bring it across to the Gulf coast. It was time. They set off into the thick jungle. Four Cimarrones broke trail, 12 actors as scouts as an advance party. Then came the sweating Englishmen, about 18 of them, accompanied by two more Africans. And there was a rear guard of 12 Africans that followed on behind. The Africans had phenomenal bushcraft. They were able to build shelters every day to

camp under, made from palm tree wood frames covered with plantain leaves. After a week of hacking through the jungle, Drake came to a viewpoint. The Africans had cut steps into an enormous tree, and from the top of that tree, Drake could stare out at the Pacific, and then twist round and look at the Caribbean. It was another turning point in Drake's life. Right there and then, in that tree, he beseeched the Almighty to give him life and leave to sail an English ship on that sea. He was hit by his destiny in the branch of that tree, but his destiny would have to wait because he had more urgent matters at hand.

The Cimarrones gathered intelligence, and once they were about a day's march from the Pacific coast, Drake heard that a convoy was about to set off. The timing was perfect. He set up an ambush, half his men in long grass, 50 metres from the road, the other half mirroring them on the other side. They waited for half an hour and then heard the mules approach. You can imagine the tension. But suddenly they heard the noise of hooves galloping in from the other direction, coming from the Caribbean side. What was going on? Well, what had happened is an Englishman had had too much to drink. His name was Robert Pike. He'd been swilling down spirits to give him some courage, and he appears to have got a little too encouraged. He'd crawled up too close to the track, and when a solitary rider had come from the direction of the Caribbean, he'd come

from the wrong direction, Robert Pike had risen up and roared at him, and the rider had galloped on and was able to warn the convoy. The mules turned round. They'd escaped the trap, but for some reason they did send two horses loaded with silver along the track, so the English wouldn't suspect that they'd been discovered. Drake now had to make some quick decisions. He realised that the Spanish knew he was here. He led his men in a headlong charge down the path towards the Caribbean to the safety of his ships. They stormed a village, they stole lots of food and valuables, and they staggered to the coast to meet their comrades. The Cimarrones ended up carrying those Englishmen that were too weak to go on. And interestingly, when they arrived back at the coast, they arrived back at their ships,

many of the enslaved Africans opted to join those ships' crews. They wanted to serve under Drake rather than stay and risk the punitive expeditions launched by the Spanish. Now, Drake had failed, all thanks to Robert Pike, but he was determined to make another attempt on the Isthmus. This time he wouldn't trek all the way through the jungle, he'd make it closer to the coast. He hoped the Spanish would think he'd given up and gone home. He received help from another rather unlikely source at this point.

There was a veteran French privateer, Guillaume Letestu, in the area, and so they hooked up and agreed that it would be an Anglo-French-African attack. On the 1st of April, the Cimarrones reported that there was another mule train back on the trail. Drake staked out another ambush, this time much closer to the Gulf Coast. They only went a few miles inland and got ready alongside the path before it entered the Spanish settlement on the Gulf Coast. They only went a few miles inland and got ready alongside the path before it entered the Spanish settlement on the Gulf Coast. This time the attack went like clockwork. Perhaps they'd left Robert Pike back with the supplies. They certainly should have done. The Spanish infantry, the guards of the convoy, they just panicked. They ran, although one shot

the French privateer, the French pirate, in the stomach. Drake's men quickly secured the mules. Now, the mule drivers were enslaved Africans. They hated the Spanish so much. They quickly told Drake not to mess about with the silver, but they said there was gold, and they showed them exactly where it was packed. So Drake and his men loaded up all the gold, but had to bury most of the silver. They buried 15 tons of silver. They carried out 100,000 pesos of gold on their backs, which was equal to about 40,000 English pounds. That's 20% of Queen Elizabeth's annual revenue. With all that gold on their backs, they made their escape through the jungle. A terrible storm stopped them in their tracks that night, but two days later they were able to arrive back at the coast, the rendezvous

point, where they hoped to see their ship sitting neatly at anchor. Instead, they saw Spanish vessels searching for them off the coast. A drunk Frenchman had been captured and given up their rendezvous point, so Drake was now trapped between the Spanish ships and the armed Spanish groups that would no doubt be combing the jungle searching for them. At this point, Drake really shows astonishing resolve. He ordered a basic raft to be built and he put to sea with three other men just on a sort of log raft. They hoped they could creep along the coast, find the English ships and then bring them to chase the Spanish ships off. He gave a brief speech before he left. He said, God willing, be back to get them

in spite of all the Spaniards in the Indies. And then he set off on what was essentially a suicide mission, through shark-infested waters on a few logs and branches lashed together. And Drake got lucky, because not far along the coast, after a very short journey, in fact, he stumbled on the English fleet. The Spanish ships, moreover, had moved on. They'd continued their search elsewhere. And so he was able to get aboard his English ships, go back, collect his men and the treasure from the jungly shore, and then snuck back into the jungle to retrieve what they'd buried. Sadly for them, the Spanish had found most of it, and they'd also found the wounded French pirate and executed him. But Drake did manage to find a few more silver bars squirreled away underground. With the gold and a little bit of silver safely in his ship's holds,

he decided to sail back to England. He arrived on the 9th of August 1573 in Plymouth. Well over a year had passed. Most of the 73 men who'd sailed with him were dead, including two of his brothers. But he had a very cosmopolitan crew, a hold full of Spanish treasure, and he'd seen the Pacific. Drake's dreams of the Pacific, though, well, they would have to wait, because Elizabeth

was still trying to de-escalate the tensions with Spain. He would not get the official backing for another expedition. Not yet. He'd become like an attack dog. Elizabeth determined the length of his chain, and for the moment, she decided to shorten it. So instead of crossing the Atlantic one more time, he joined the English war effort in Ireland. He helped the Earl of Essex and his subordinate military commander, John Norris, to reduce the rebel fortress on Rathlin Island, off the coast of Northern Ireland. He landed supplies and siege guns, and then he swept the sea clear of help coming from Scotland. Now, Drake wasn't present when Norris did besiege and capture the castle, massacring nearly every single one of its defenders. It was not the most glorious

interlude for Drake, but it did give him the chance to meet some very well-connected people at court, people like the Earl of Essex, one of Elizabeth's favourites, and it's with these new contacts that Drake started to put his plan in place to sail further than any English skipper had ever taken a crew before. The idea that you could take a crew into the Pacific was astonishingly ambitious. No English ship had ever left the Atlantic before, and we should say in this period going to the Pacific meant not going round Cape Horn, because that hadn't been discovered yet. It meant penetrating through the Straits of Magellan, which are sort of

inland passage. But it was so difficult, so challenging, that even the Spanish who discovered it, even they didn't use that route very often. It's a nightmare. It's 300 miles long. At times, it's only as wide as a medium-sized river. It's deeply unhospitable landscape, fjord-like valleys which send the wind shrieking down in uncertain and even contrary directions. It's entirely uncharted. It's truly a terrible gauntlet through which to run in order to enter the Pacific. It had been discovered by Magellan on a Spanish expedition in 1590 and 1520, but only a handful of subsequent expeditions had even attempted to round the tip of South America. Magellan's ships, and then one that sailed in 1525, had to endure savage conditions, icy cold,

damage the vessels which left them weakened as they struck out into the Pacific. And that meant of 12 ships that pushed through the Magellan Straits, only one ever returned to Spain. It was a terrifying prospect. And Drake thought he had to run this gauntlet because he didn't know that if you went further south, you went round Cape Horn, which in fact is an island, and then there's plenty of sea room to the south. There's the Southern Ocean to the south. Drake and everybody else believed that the Magellan Straits was the only way through into the Pacific. The rest was the gigantic southern continent yet to be explored. So that gives you a sense, doesn't it, that Drake was sailing into waters

that the English simply had no knowledge of, no experience of at all. The truth is that the English were, embarrassingly, far behind the Spanish and the Portuguese, and dare I say, even the French when it came to blue water sailing, distant oceans. It's a very different business to moving along a coast when you're sailing in open ocean. You require a different set of skills. No original work on ocean navigation appeared in the English language until 1581, so there was no manual in English. But for Drake, the gamble was worth it. Drake had learned how those Spanish ships full of treasure just travelled up and down

the Pacific coast of Central America with no real protection. He realised that an English ship let loose in the undefended Pacific would be like a fox in a hen coop, a wolf in a sheepfold. Now, Drake wouldn't be the first Englishman to enter the Pacific. In fact, one of his comrades sailed out in 1576 to Panama, copying Drake's idea. He crossed the Isthmus and then built himself a small boat, and he sort of terrorised Spanish shipping in the Pacific briefly before heading back across the Isthmus. However, he was hunted down and captured, and the entire expedition ended up dying in Spanish prisons of neglect or being executed. So Drake hoped to be the first person to sail an English ship into the Pacific and lead an English expedition to success in that mighty ocean.

Drake started his planning, telling everyone that this was, on paper, a trading mission. There's stories put about that he was going to head to Egypt, the Middle East. But in private, he had some more realistic conversations. Drake needed backers, and he found them through his new grand friends. The Earl of Essex, for example, he passed a letter to Francis Walsingham, one of Elizabeth's key advisors, always known as Elizabeth the First's spymaster. And he was known to be bearish when it came to attacking Catholic powers. Drake thought that his suggestion might fall on receptive ears.

And Walsingham was keen, because Walsingham realised instantly that this felt like England's chance to really get in the game. If Drake was able to get through the Straits of Magellan, get into the Pacific, do some exploring, find lands in South America not yet claimed by Spain, befriend local princes, find spices, all that classic 16th century stuff. This was England's chance. Walsingham became one of the key investors and he seems to have introduced Drake to several other important people, high officials in Elizabeth's government. Even Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, Elizabeth's favourite, her on-off boyfriend, platonic obviously, and others like Christopher Hatton, Captain of the Queen's Guard, and another of her particular favourites. It's a very interesting clue here that Drake's investors were definitely in the government, navy, national security lobby. They were not merchants. So from

the beginning, really, this was always a strategic mission. This was not a trading jolly. Walsingham and Dudley, well, they were the war party in Elizabeth's court. They wanted to take the fight to Spain. They wanted to fight Spain anywhere, frankly, around the world, everywhere. And these investors also knew there was another strand of this expedition, and it was one so secret it could not be written down. It was so inflammatory that as Drake said, if Elizabeth sadly died and was succeeded by her Catholic cousin and heir, Mary Queen of Scots, such a plan in writing would be their death sentence. And that plan was to go on the greatest raid in history, a tear across the world to set it alight. Drake would bring fire and sword to Spain

on a buccaneering sweep across four continents. You listened to Dan Snow's History Hit. Keep listening for more on Francis Drake. Keep listening for more on Francis Drake. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research.

From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades.

Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. Exploration, trade, and war with Spain. A powerful combination. It won him key backers. He had the money. He just needed one more thing. He did need the permission of Queen Elizabeth herself. And luckily for Drake, Elizabeth in 1576 was rather angry at Spain.

Like great swathes of Asia and the Americas and bits of Africa, Philip also ruled over European empire. Much of what is now the Netherlands and Belgium were part of this Spanish empire. But it was a part of the Spanish empire in the grip of rebellion, a Protestant rebellion. In 1576, Philip had an army in the Netherlands that was brutally crushing Protestant rebels. And it was said that Philip's rather bellicose, rather warlike commander had boasted that once he finished with these low country Lutherans, he would turn his veterans on Anne Boleyn's bastard in London. Elizabeth decided to adjust her aggression setting. She looked at her armoury and she selected her weapon, a stocky evangelical swashbuckler from Devon. She chose

Drake. Elizabeth's attack dog was about to be taken off the leash. Drake was introduced into her regal presence. He said he was struck by her bearing and manner, the ease with which she exercised her power. Drake, she said, so it is that I would gladly be revenged on the King of Spain for diverse injuries that I have received. She listened to his advice. He suggested an attack upon shipping on the west coast of America. Elizabeth was convinced, and so she contributed a thousand crowns to the venture. But in that classic Elizabeth way, nothing was written down. Plausible deniability. Drake carried no letter from his sovereign. If he was captured, he'd be executed as a common pirate. Elizabeth would disavow him. He would be tortured and

mutilated and quartered on some distant baking shore. And Elizabeth would shrug him off and shrug off the complaints of the Spanish ambassador. The secret that she had sent him there would die with Drake. That was the deal. He built himself a ship, the Pelican. Extra planks sheathed the outside of the hull to reduce rot. She had 18 brass and iron guns. You can see Drake's experience in this construction. This would become the most famous ship in English history, but under its rebranded name, the Golden Hind. She was small. I'm always shocked by how tiny she was. 80 foot long, 150 tons or so in weight, nothing. Alongside her, Drake took the Elizabeth of 80 tons, the Marigold of 30 tons, the Swan 50 tons, the Benedict of 15 tons, a little thing commanded by Drake's former carpenter. There were a group of 160 men who were told that they were

going on a trading expedition to the Mediterranean. This would lead to future problems. Now unfortunately for Drake, one of the investors insisted on coming along, the gentleman Thomas Doughty. Drake took another brother, he took a nephew, he took a nephew of Hawkins's, and he took his friend from the Isthmus of Panama, the formerly enslaved African, Diego. He took beer and cheese and wine and biscuit and oatmeal and dried fish. He took musical instruments, he took an account of Magellan's voyage, he took his Protestant martyrs book, of course, he took an account of Magellan's voyage, he took his Protestant martyrs book of course, he took some very, very primitive world maps, and of course he took a good supply of weapons and ammunition. They sailed out of Plymouth Sound on the 15th of November 1577,

the start of the longest voyage to that point in human history. Well, it was the