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

Episode Date: August 2, 2026

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: ⁠[e-mail] _______ 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

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 Abyss. And the Emperor of Abyssinia has been writing letters to Queen Victoria, who rather rudely has not replied to them. 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. 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 Restless 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.

The Rest is History.com. Drake, he was a Devon Man, and ruled the day. Devon sees. Captain, are those sleeping there below? Roving though his death fell, he went with heart at ease, a dreaming all the time a Plymouth Ho. Take my drum to England, hang it by the shore, strike it when your powders running low. If the darn sight Devon, I'll quit the port of heaven, and drum them up the channel as we drummed them long ago. So that is Drake's drum, 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 that age, 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. 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. 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, 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 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 Nambred Dios Bay. And the story goes, said the myth, which is celebrated by this poem, 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. And the Don's, of course. 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.

Well, it's supposed to have rung out during the Battle of Britain over the channel. Yeah. 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. an 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 coming from heaven. And yet there are some people, aren't there, who questioned Sir Francis Drake. 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 person. He began his life as

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. And they've been in bits of it. I mean, that's so half-hearted. Yeah, 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. Okay. And also there was a Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco, and this is now apparently been renamed the Beacon Grand. That's a terrible name. And just as there is, 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 free-booting sea dog is another country's dangerous pirate. 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. 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 deliberate explicitly, she's the heir of this particular man and all Englishmen are in thrall to this bloke, who's an absolutely terrible man, one of the worst villains in history. Yeah. And I think that this points to the kind of incredibly outsized role that he played in the great drama of the series, which is the Cold War between England and Spain between Protestant world and the Catholic world, and of course, between Elizabeth the First, the Virgin Queen of England and Philip the second, 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 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. 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. Interesting. So he's a man of complications and ambivalences. A man of contradictions.

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 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 never a good start in life. And this second son, Edmund Drake, so Francis's dad, he's kind of weird mix of intense religiosity and outright criminality. So in 1548, Edmund Drake was indicted for stealing a horse and for mugging a traveler 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, 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 strung up by angry Catholics. So I'm going to scarper. And so he escapes both the law and Catholic mobs by heading to the opposite end 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 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 very devoutly held. And as an adult, Drake's Protestantism will be very fiery, very unconstitutional. uncompromising, very passionately held. So to quote very much friend of the show, John Sugden. Wow. Great to have him back on the show. Author of the two-volume biography of Nelson, which we both, we drew on a lot for our series on Nelson. He said of Drake 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 Burley 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. And that may be even more important to him than the sense he has of himself

as a committed enemy of Spain. I mean, I think that the hostility to Spain and to the fact that, the Pope alight in Drake, but probably it's hostility to the Pope that is the real kind of motivation for him. Yeah. 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 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

as to how much this captain 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 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. Yeah. 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 the Atlantic might provide them in a way that they hadn't previously done. And he has got, I mean, he's gotten 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-doggery. Yeah. And that is John Hawkins. So John Hawkins, he is the son of a merchant from the West Country, right? And this is where we get into, we start to get into the issue of the slave trade. Because am I not right thinking that John Hawkins' father had been involved in the slave trade. Yes. And the slave trade by this point is absolutely fundamental to the functioning of Spain's Atlantic economy. Yeah.

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 case, of course, the process is incredibly brutal, exploitative inhuman. But for Hawkins, ultimately, it's business. I mean, we've been drawing La Caree comparisons throughout this series. Maybe Hawkins is a kind of very Protestant Richard Roper from the night manager. Oh, yeah, the arms dealer. And he is a guy who essentially wants the gate crash, the Spanish and the Portuguese control. of the Atlantic trade routes. So Hawkins is part of a breed of Devon seamen who are

realizing that there are enormous opportunities out there and that the sailors of the Iberian Peninsula have been hoarding it for themselves. And 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 loop for themselves. And so it is in 1562 that John Hawkins had embarked on the first slaving voyage in English history, kind of very dark moment 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' slaving expeditions as a common seaman. But he definitely, accompanies Hawkins on his third slaving expedition. And this leaves Plymouth in Devon in 1567. And the vibe on board, it's a kind of ferocious 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, 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 cause, Drake does so well, in charge of this Portuguese ship, that Hawkins gives Drake the command of one of his own ships, the Judith.

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 on the sea. 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 there? And this is basically the issue that you always have is you're at the mercy of the elements. And Hawkinson'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? I mean, they're blown basically to Vera Cruz, which is modern-day Mexico. And I think this featured in a series about the fall of the Aztecs, didn't it? Is exactly where they go? Yeah, where Cortez met the emissaries from Montezuma and there was all sort of great banter with exchanging gifts and firing cannons and things. All of that, yes. So this has been called by the Spanish San Juan de Ulua. And Alua apparently derives from the local name for the Aztecs.

So Hawkins and Drake and the slaving expedition, you know, they've sold all the slaves by now and 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 same. 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. And the English flotilla is completely dwarfed by it. So Hawkins desperately tries to kind of sign a truce with the Spanish, you know, concealing the fact that he's basically been trespassing 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 fatilla. And they justify this on the grounds 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. Over 300 English sailors are killed. 114 are 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 English

have been pulverized by the Spanish, but also because he had escaped the battle before Hawkins did. And so there are rumours that he had been guilty of cowardice. And it seems possible that Hawkins himself believe this. And certainly when they return, there's an element of bad blood between 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. Right.

You know, 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 Ulua. So he's returned to, to England, kind of limping in in his battered ship, the early weeks of 1569. 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. 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 in piracy, because despite the disaster at San Juan

de Ulua, Drake has noted that Spain's defenses in the Indies and on the Spanish main, are actually very weak because they are not expecting to be attacked. 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, we could just take it. And this is the start of what will become, I guess, the most devastating piracy in English history. We 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?

Well, to be a privateer, you have to have the sanction of a government to operate. Of course, yeah. And he doesn't have that. He does not have that. So I think at that point, by English as well as by Spanish law, he is operating as a pirate. He would say, I think, that he is operating as a godly Protestant attacking 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 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. Yeah. So this is where the silver is being brought from Potosi 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. 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. Yeah, hell on earth, isn't it? But producing all of this treasure. I mean, nothing like it in human history has existed before. 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 Nome de Dios on the Atlantic coast. And at Nome de 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. 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 onto something here. This is very, very exciting. And so Drake has no trouble in raising funds for this expedition, nor does he have any difficulty in finding sailors who want to 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. I think there's a sense in which people in Devon feel that that slaughter at San Juan de Ulua 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 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, 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 on. It's worth giving him a go. Right. So 24th of May, 1572, Drake leaves Plymouth. He's got two ships and he's got three kind of IKEA-style pinnasses, which he's planning to... Flat packs.

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 reached the Spanish main on the 12th of July. And this is where they assemble the pinnaces. So now they've got five ships. 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 harbour under cover of darkness, and they're aboard rowboats. 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 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 realize 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. 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 Nomredaidos 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, nomri 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. Yeah. Kind of telling the Sheriff of Nottingham, I'm going to come in and steal all your treasure. Do you think he really did that? Because it would be

foolish, surely, to foreworn this guy. I think he did because he's among other things. He's a master of psychological warfare. Okay. Yeah, he's trolling him. 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. Yeah. And as you say, that kind of trolling is something that makes Drake, even at this stage, before he's really taken any treasure from the Spanish, makes him into a kind of bogey manner, you know, a phantom of the shadows. Well, I mean, not least because he actually does it, right? He actually follows through on his promise. 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 Nome 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 10 black tutors in that book. And the friendship between Drake and Diego seems to have been a very close one. And in fact, 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 Cimarones. And these Cimarronos 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. 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 Cimarones 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 the 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 has brought the news that he's been waiting for. The Spanish treasure fleet has arrived in Nomreda de Dios, ready to pick up a vast consignment of silver that is in Panama on the Pacific side of the Isthmus. And this is about 60 miles away, you know, along this kind of mule trail. And the treasure has been kept there because the Spanish assume, you know, it will 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 cimarone's 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 Cimarones have cut steps into the side of the trunk of the tree. And at the top of the tree, there's a kind of 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 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 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. 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. And everyone in Europe. Only the Spanish really have seen it.

Yeah. 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 to go there. You know, I want to, I want to explore it. But of course, his immediate concern is this mule train, Loden Dan, 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 under cover. He lets a month or so pass so that the Spanish will think he's given up and gone home. And then on the 1st of April, he launches a second ambush, and this one is a resounding success. There are no kind of drunks spoiling the surprise. And they take 30 tonnes of gold and silver. And that is such a hall 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 Cimarronos, it's a completely spectacular Hall. And when Drake reaches Plymouth, he does so, to quote, Sugden, with wealth, few Englishmen could have amassed in a lifetime. You know, it is 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, we've just scratched the surface. The treasure is brilliant. But I think what is even more significance 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 Cimarone. 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 Cimarones, I don't think Drake would have been able to pull this in tremendous scam. 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. 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.

Right. That's business. Key word there is prophets, I think, for Drake. It's profit, but also clearly God has sent him in the, you know, has shown him these opportunities. So there's an element of godliness as well. And it's that fusion of greed 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 at, mired, is that people, even the Spanish to a degree, kind of respond to the sense of swagger and excitement that Drake conveys. Well, that's what makes him so famous across Europe, isn't it? The fact that he has pulled off a tremendous coup. I mean, don't forget, he's the underdog, the English of the underdogs and all this. Yeah, he's Robin Hood. I mean, he absolutely is the Robin Hood here.

Yeah. And I'll tell you, one person who really sits up and pays attention is someone we've mentioned a lot on this show, and this is Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth. first secretary. Spymaster. Yeah. 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. The ends of the earth. Well, come back after the break when we'll be sailing to the far side of the world. At IKEA,

we make things just for college life, like the Rosenmandel blackout curtains in gray. They say you can't put a price on sleep, but we did for the low, low price of $49.99. Why are you in my room? Shh, go back to sleep. You have a big exam tomorrow. shop back to school at IKEA.

Welcome back to the rest is history. It's 5 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 harbor, 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 so got only 18 guns, 150 tons. There is a pelican, I think, is it Southwick where there's a replica of the pelican? Yeah, there'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 English history but it's not known as the Pelican so the Pelican's name will be changed in the course of the voyage. Yeah, we don't want to give the game away though, do we? 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 his 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 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 dangerous but navigable straits. These straits come to be called after Magellan, the Magellan Straits. And Magellan had led his expedition through these Straits, and had then crossed the Pacific and continued westwards. In the course of this, they had discovered what in due course 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 the first great enemy. McGillen is killed in the Philippines, and ultimately, of McGillan'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 a 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 in the Mediterranean on a trading expedition. And this is what the 160 odd kind of men and boys on board his expedition have all been told,

And it's also what Spanish spies have reported back to Philip the second. You know, they are planning to go to the Mediterranean. Yeah. But I think had Philip spies been a bit more attentive, they might have come to a different conclusion. So if they had looked into the holds 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 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. And Doughty is secretary. to a key figure in Elizabeth's court. And this is a guy called Sir Christopher Hatton.

And the queen herself adores Hatton. Hatton is one of the queen's favorite 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 Hatton a gentleman of the privy chamber, captain of the yeoman of the guard.

And both of those responsibilities means that Hatton is always in attendance, personally on the queen. So very much kind of hanging around her. Yeah, yeah. 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 margins of London. And this is where the region called Hatton Gardens gets its name from. Hatton Gardens is where the jewelers are.

It always kind of features in Guy Ritchie films where it blowing up the safe, all that kind of thing. And this is named after Sir Christopher Hatton. And Elizabeth not only admires Hatton's ability as a dancer, but also his loyalty and his political shrewdness. And so three days before Drake leaves Plymouth, Elizabeth makes Hatton a member of the Privy Council. I think this isn't coincidental because there is now a very clear chain of command. You have the Queen, you have Hatton and the Privy Council, and Hatton's secretary, Doughty, is with Drake

on this expedition. So there are very clear links there to the Queen herself. And what about some, you mentioned Francis Wilsingham before the Great, the great spymaster. There are associations with him as well, aren't there? Well, he's a direct investor in the expedition, Lighthatton and Light Doughty. And he's also been pulling strings on Drake's behalf. So 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 had been mulling over a long time. And this is namely to sail through the Magellan Straits, 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 Magellons, up until this point, they'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 Nomrididos 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 Marley-Clausum, the closed sea. Yeah. 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, around the bottom of Argentina, and then up the other side. And that is so difficult that you will. would be mad to attempt it. 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 cany, she's very cautious. She doesn't want to put anything in writing. You know, she wants Drake to go in a time.

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. And Elizabeth says about Drake before he leaves, if need be, the gentleman careth not, I should disavow him. They basically understand each other. Right. And just to say, Elizabeth, she clearly adores Drake. She thinks she'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 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 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 later English adventure. And then he's going to return the way he came. So in other words, via the Straits of Magellan. There is no plan at this point to follow McGillen's route all the way around the world. Because that essentially is seen by everyone as a mad course. It's way, way too dangerous.

Well, McGowan himself died. Yes, exactly. Exactly. 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. 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, by the McGowan Straits 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. I'm struck by this. Surely some of them must have known. I mean, the fact that, you know, there are explosives in the whole. Yeah, come on. I think so. And also, Drake is, you know, by this point, is the most charismatic sea captain in England.

You know, 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. I love this detail. 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 Hatton, 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.

And Doughty, as is due as a gentleman, insists on 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 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, you know, attempts to build bridges, relations still worsen. And Doughty accuses Drake's brother of stealing from a captured hall of wine. And he starts to make comments about Drake himself. that are clearly verging on the mutinous. And Drake starts to think that Doughty is practicing witchcraft against him. Does he really think this or is this just a weapon?

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

It comes completely naturally. And finally, 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 the vice admiral and everybody on board the pelican that Doughty is a cundra, a seditious fellow and a very bad and lewd fellow.

So essentially, Doughty, by this point, you know, he's been clapped in irons. Yeah. And by this stage, their further. than any English ship before them ever in history. And they sail into a bay called San Julien on the coast of what is now Argentina. And they make anchor there on the 20th of June. And in the bay of San Julien, it's very kind of treasure island, very pirates of the Caribbean. On the kind of 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 jibbit. Oh my God. That's brilliant. So Drake's crew see the bones of this mutineer. They say to Drake, well, this is how you deal with mutineers. You should do this to Doughty.

God, this is so Pirates to Caribbean, a Treasure Island or something, isn't it? 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. So Drake, who, of course, is not a lawyer, but he's very much a man of action. Yeah. I don't care about that. Who cares about the letter of the law?

And he turns to his men and he says, this fellow is full of prate. 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, 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, 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 Hatton, who is this great favourite of Elizabeth. I mean, it's a big art. This is high risk, yeah. 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.

That's bizarre. And to quote the record of the voyage, they shared it as cheerfully in sobriety as ever in their lives they had done a foretime, 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 meal that must have been. I mean, each cheering up the other just strikes me as a ludicrous claim. I mean, I can see that doubt he needs cheering up. But for Drake to need cheering up, really, I mean, well, Drake's a bit depressed that he's had to do this. I think he's probably worried about what Christopher Hatton's going to say. I don't feel like this is doubt his job, really, to cheer the Francis Drake up in his final moments. Well, I think you could either say this was completely made up, or you could say,

well, this reflects tremendously well on both men. Yeah. And by extension, on England. So that's nice. Absolutely. So that's all the more reason for believing it. So they finished their meal and then Doughty is brought forward and his head is chopped off and Drake lifts the severed head and cries out, low, this is the end of traitors. And that is the end of Doughty. And 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 disliked. decisively established the chain of command. Drake is in charge of the expedition, no one else. And it also, I think, because of Drake's fame, it serves to establish a very important precedent, 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 Lytola, the guy in charge of allocating people to the lifeboats on the sinking Titanic, was able to tell Astor the richest man on board the ship, no, you can't get in board, and Astor accepted that instruction. I mean, there's a kind of really fascinating line of descent there, I think. Yeah. But clearly, I think Drake, he'd taken a risk because perhaps his crew wouldn't back him in.

They've turned out that they have. But he is also taking a risk because he doesn't know how this is going to go back home. What's the Christopher Hatton going to say? What's Elizabeth going to say? And so they arrive at 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 gray 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 the Psalmity or the Psalms. And then he rechristens his ship. And what had been the pelican becomes the golden hind. And the golden hind is the crest of Sir Christopher Hatton. Such a clever trick.

Such a good detail that. Yeah. When you see the kids' books about Sir Francis Strait or at least the ones I read, this aspect of the story was never mentioned. slightly covered over. Yeah. Because it's a little bit complicated and it reflects quite badly on Francis Drake, I think, whereas in reality.

I don't think it reflects badly. I think he's, you know, he's asserted himself. Well, I think if you're eight, you would be a little bit confused by this story. Yeah, it's never explained why the Pelican becomes the golden hind, but that's the reason. So anyway, we now come to the passage through the McGillen 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, 300 miles long and they're very treacherous. There are reefs and dangerous winds and erratic tides. So 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'm proud to say Drake completely aces it. So he negotiates the straits in only 15 days and Magellan had taken 37 days and Drake sets the record for the whole of the 16th century. So this reflects well on Drake. It reflects well on England.

Hooray. Wow. 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 it 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 a ship lost in the vastness of Pacific or the vastness of space.

I mean, it's an amazing, an amazing drama. And incredible tribute to Drake that he doesn't at this point think, well, I'd better go back to. He's still thinking, I've got here, I'm going to take my chances. But to do what? Because there's just one of him. 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 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 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 and the most spectacular coup is the capture of An enormous Spanish treasure ship, Our Signora de la Concepcion.

And this gives Drake 14 chests of silver reales. This is so Treasure Island. 80 pounds of gold, 26 tons of silver bars. And so this is even more of a hall than Drake's previous hall of Spanish treasure. Probably the greatest, the single greatest hall 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. And it has to be said that Spaniards who meet Drake are generally despite themselves very impressed by his courtesy and his sense of chivalry. So I think, you know, 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. Yeah.

He also, any slaves that he finds on board the Spanish ships, he offers them their freedom and sailor. wages. And of course, most of the captured slaves take this offer up. And this is an obvious way for Drake to top up his crew. John, I'm getting massive sort of Tom Hiddleston, Roger Moore vibes from Sir Francis Drake. He's suave. Yeah, but remember, he's got, he's stocky and broad-shouldered, and he has a broad devoured accent, and he's not a gentleman. Yeah, I know. So if you're doing realistic casting, it's John Rhys Davis. It's the guy who paid Gimley. But I think you surely want more of a sort of a smooth, suave Englishman, sort of David Niven. I thank you for your offer of silver.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Maybe if you're doing comedy, Terry Thomas would play him. No, I don't think so. No, you've got to take him seriously. Really? You'd never do a Francis Drake comedy. You don't think that would work?

Carry on Drake. No. Carry on in the Caribbean. No, I think that would be offensive. I mean, the Spanish obviously don't find this a comedy. No, they don't. They're appalled. What are they planning to do?

Well, they're thinking, how is Drake, you know, he's got all this silver and gold, but he's got to take it back home. How's you going to do it? So he might try and go overland from the Pacific coast across Panama 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 northward. in the hope of finding a northern passage. So around what, you know, would be Canada at this point. Drake doesn't know whether actually that that's impossible. And so he sails up the coast of South America, North America, and he reaches almost as far as what is now Canada by June 1579. And he starts to realize, 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, the Bay Area. So hence, that's why you get Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and all of that. Right. And he makes contact with 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 what's now Sonoma County. Wine country. Yeah, isn't that where we had a very expensive truffle crisp? I'm going to just absolutely destroy the reputation of the rest of history. It was you, me and Tabby, and we had an artisan Pringle topped with caviar. Tough on the road. isn't it tough on the road? Yeah.

Well, Drake wasn't having any of that, but I think he is entertained by the, by the Milwaukee, and Drake reports of them that there are people of attractable, free and loving nature without guile or treachery. And the milok put a feathered crown

on Drake's head. And so obviously Drake says, right, I'm claiming all of this land for England and Elizabeth. And he calls it New Albion. So this is the first English possession in the West Coast of America. California. Californians could perhaps reflect on this. There are open arms if they want to return to the

bosom of the English crown. So he's done a sort of Nick Clegg and he's gone after San Francisco. Yes. But rather like Nick Clegg, he ultimately is going to return home, though perhaps a little bit more popular. Yeah, he wants to come back. He doesn't want to hang out. I mean, he likes the Milwaukee, but he doesn't want to stay with him. He's obviously not going to go over land. Yeah. But, I mean, that means he has to go back by sea all the way down the coast of South America again, surely not. Can't do that. So what? He's going to have to sail across the Pacific, go head westwards. He's going to have to follow in Magellan's, not footsteps, but in his wash. Yeah.

It's obviously very risky. You know, sailing across the Pacific is a massive ask. But Drake has 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 sorts them. So hopefully this will be enough to keep him going. I mean, but it's better than drinking your own 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 September. 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 general. as allies and he gives Drake six tons of clothes god that's a lot of clothes no this is fabulous wealth yeah kind of just adds to the 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 clothes so hooray he's

up there they continue westwards and then on the 10th of january seeming disaster because the golden hind runs a ground on a reef, and it's impossible to budge. The reefs are kind of very, very scratchy. Sort of 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 jar. are behind and on the 21st of May they catch sight of Africa. And that actually is an incredible feat of navigation as well. Yeah.

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.

How have they done that with no supplies? I don't, I mean... They're catching birds. They're catching fish. They're getting rainwater. It's amazing. Wow. I mean, that is impressive because, you know, without fresh fruit, I guess.

Yeah, kind of comparison there, I think, between Nelson and Drake. Because Nelson also kind of understood the importance of keeping his crew healthy. Yeah, but Nelson was always getting supplies, wasn't he, from Logue from Naples and stuff. Yeah, he was. So Drake's, in many ways, I hate to say this of Nelson, but even more impressive, yeah. I mean, my guess is that local people are rowing out and giving them papaya or whatever. That's my hunch. 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 clove-scented toothpaste. It'd be like eating silver, wouldn't it? I guess. Yeah, eat the treasure.

Wow. Anyway, so by the time they reach the west coast of Africa, they're relatively. They know where they are. They can now sail up the west coast of Europe. And on the 26th 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 going to be? Will the Queen really have his back? That ship that he'd been separated from by the Straits of McGillan, that will have returned to England with news of doubt his fate. So will doubt his relatives be out to get him? Surely. 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 that, that the city is ravaged by plague and Drake is still nervous about the reception that he's going to get from 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 punished Drake for, quote, his piratical acts. 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. So what will the Queen do? Is the Francis Strait 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, have 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, around world history, then you should head to the rest is history.com because Tom, as you will know, that is the only way you can get all of the unbelievable benefits from our own Cerro Rico, from our own massive silver mine. We hand out bounty, don't we? But you only get all that bounty by signing up at the website rather than on one of the various platforms.

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 of the 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 summer 26. And this is only valid until the 31st of August. So hurry, hurry, hurry, while stocks last. So do that. Also, I think the important thing to do is to subscribe to our free newsletter. Definitely. We've got all kinds of articles and extracts and amazing things. So basically, we've got a lot of silver and we're giving it away. We're just throwing it around, you know, willy-nilly. We want people to share it because that's the kind of people we are. And on that bombshell, we will be back next time with the further adventures of Francis Drake. So we'll see you then.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye.