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- [00:00]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit With a historyhit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own recent two part series A World Torn, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward/subscribe.
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- [01:52]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tutors from History Hit, the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. On a crisp September day in 1580, a small ship slipped into Plymouth Harbour. Its crew, battered but triumphant, had just completed a journey that would make their captain's name a legend. He was Francis Drake, and after their return he was knighted on board his own ship. Once called the Pelican, now the Golden Hind, he was hailed as a hero, a daring navigator who had circumnavigated the globe, defying the Spanish threats of mutiny and relentless storms to bring home unimaginable riches. But beneath Drake's apparently glittering achievements, is there a darker tale to be told? Over the past month on not just the Tudors, I've been looking at a number of history's so called heroic seafarers, including Christopher Columbus and Hernan Cortes, to find out how their legends and reputations may not quite correspond to the true experience of those who encountered them. Do go back and listen to those episodes if you haven't had a chance to hear them yet. So what about Sir Francis Drake? Were his raids on Spanish ships and settlements acts of thinly veiled piracy? Why and how legally did he execute a man who'd once been his associate? And what truth is there in stories that he burned churches, tortured captives for hidden treasure, and abandoned enslaved individuals on remote islands when they were no longer useful to him? To discover more about Drake, I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Richard Blakemore from the University of Reading. His research focuses on the history of human society and the sea, the social history of seafarers and the history and popular perceptions of piracy. His new book is Enemies of the Rise and Fall of the Pirates, which was published in 2024. So there's no one better to help us explore the dark side of Sir Francis Drake. I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and this is not just the Tudors from history hit. Dr. Blakemore, welcome to the podcast.
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Dr. Richard Blakemore
Thank you very much for having me. It's great to be here.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Now, in later life, Francis Drake adopts the motto sic parvis magna, thus from small things greatness. And it's come to stand for his rise from humble stock to great fortune. So what were his origins?
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Dr. Richard Blakemore
So he's born into a relatively humble family. His father was in the cloth trade and probably also a priest. But he has important connections, most especially the Hawkins family, who are his relatives based in Plymouth. And he seems to have spent most of his childhood with the Hawkins. William Hawkins is the sort of head of the family. He has another son called William and one called John. And it's John Hawkins who goes on to be important in Francis Drake's life. All of these young men go to sea early in their careers. All of them gather experience on various merchant voyages. And Francis Drake seems to start off really working on voyages for this family, particularly with John Hawkins, his cousin.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And what were those early voyages?
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Dr. Richard Blakemore
So we don't have too much detail on the very early time that he spent at sea. But the voyages that are very significant come in the 1560s. And this is when John Hawkins seems particularly to be trying to expand to Branch out beyond previous patterns of English trade, which have mostly been focused in northern Europe. And John Hawkins leads some voyages to west Africa, which not many English ships have visited before. And so, actually, from the very beginning, Hawkins and Drake are involved in the slave trade. Their aim is to challenge Portuguese merchants who've been trading in Africa for some time at this point, and to transport enslaved people across the Americas and to transport enslaved people across to the Americas to Spanish colonies. So slavery has a long history, Both in Europe and in Africa at this time. And it's really important that this is not the kind of slavery we see later emerging in the Americas. It can be very brutal, it can be very exploitative, but it's also more complicated, and it's not predominantly based on ideas about race, as it becomes in the Americas. It's on religion and culture. And the predominant ways of getting caught up in slavery Are as prisoners of war or sometimes as legal punishments. So that's already been a system that exists in Africa and as demand for labor, first on sugar plantations near Africa, but then on islands near Africa that the Portuguese are colonizing. But then American colonial settlements In Mexico, the Caribbean, and south America. That demand for labor Brings them into the transatlantic slave trade. Drake and Hawkins, particularly Hawkins leading, See this opportunity to sell enslaved people to spanish colonies, where there is this demand for labor. But this is also a very risky business, because the Spanish law says Only approved Spanish merchants Are able to trade in the spanish colonies. So it's an opportunity, but it's also clearly risky. It's not starting out As a piratical voyage, But I think the potential for violence Is already very high. And clearly, both Drake and Hawkins Are driving into the slave trade at the very start of their careers.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And what do you think we should make of this? I mean, one could argue that he's a product of his time, But I'm not sure if that's quite true. Because although trading in slave africans Is happening in Africa itself As a sort of transatlantic phenomenon, it's not really an existing practice. It's the actions of men like Drake, as Claire jowett has argued, who create the infrastructure in which the transatlantic slave trade can operate and flourish. So what do you make of him?
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Dr. Richard Blakemore
I think that's exactly right. I think that many European traders capitalize on systems that already exist, and African rulers remain in control of much of this trade on the African side of the ocean for much of the period we're talking about here into the 1700s and 1800s. But, of course, it's the involvement it's the demand that really dramatically changes the nature of this trade, and it does bring in ideas of race. Later in this period, it becomes the largest forced migration of people in history. Probably 1 in 5 of people transported on slave ships die. It's absolutely appalling. And I think that in some ways, Drake is operating in a way that's similar to other merchants at that time. According to one story, sometimes he refuses to trade and enslave people in certain occasions. And in the Americas, he allies with escaped communities called simbalones in Spanish, or maroons in English, and he forges a close alliance with them against Spanish forces. And that's really crucial to his success in the Caribbean and the Americas because they provide guides, they provide local knowledge, and they provide military force. In fact, he probably wouldn't have been as successful without those alliances. So it's a complex picture. He's perhaps not unusually dastardly by the standards of the time in this particular area. He may be in other areas, but he's also crucial to the flourishing of this really awful trade that is going to go on to become such a dominant feature of human history later on.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So the last of these slaving voyages, as I understand it, is fairly disastrous. And I wonder if it's what the screenwriters call an inciting incident in his life. Does it incite Drake's lifelong hatred of Catholic Spain?
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Dr. Richard Blakemore
That is the story that I think he wants to tell, and it's certainly the story that become as part of the legend. And one of the key things about Drake is that he becomes a legend in his own lifetime. He's telling stories about himself. He sues publishers at times, as other pirates also do. He's conscious of that narrative, and others leap on the bandwagon, both before and then especially after his death. So exactly how we pick apart that story is a great question. He certainly uses this voyage as a major excuse. So what happens is that he and Hawkins are taking these ships, these captive cargoes, across the Americas, and they're often threatening towns in the Caribbean to force them to trade, because officially, Spanish towns aren't allowed to trade with unofficial merchants. And so often they will sail up. And so if you don't trade with us, we will bombard your town. And that might just be an excuse to give the Spanish merchants a bit of COVID we don't know. But certainly, again, in some cases, they do bombard the town. So again, violence and brutality is always part of this trading picture. On this last voyage, they sail into Villa Cluz in what is now Mexico. And then a Spanish fleet sails in after them. And initially there's a bit of sort of a standoff, but eventually the Spanish fleet attacks and many of the English ships are destroyed. Drake himself seems to just sail off and abandon many of his comrades. And that actually is something that happens other times in his career as well. Other English ships manage to escape and glimp home. The losses that are suffered on that voyage may actually not have been as big, and there's some suggestions that he may have come home with some treasure, but he certainly makes a big deal about having suffered losses. And this is where we get into the question of piracy and legality, which I find really fascinating. And I teach about all my modules at the university as well, because there is a legal system where if you have suffered losses from another country's merchants, you're supposed to go through some legal forms, but if you've done that and not been able to get redress, you. You can get permission to go and attack their ships. And that is effectively what Francis Drake now does. He says, I have been wounded by the King of Spain, and he seems to actually really take you quite personally. And he suddenly positions himself as in this kind of personal conflict with the King of Spain. And so that becomes the excuse. And in the subsequent decade, he launches a series of raiding voyages. He's no longer trying to be involved directly in the slave trade or other trade. He's actually going to attack Spanish Caribbean settlements. He allies with French pirates. He allies with other English raiders. He allies with the Cimarrons in Panama as well, as I mentioned. But it's a sort of shift to his career, and he maybe realizes that it's not going to be possible to do the kind of underhand trade that they'd originally planned. Now it goes into a much more outright attack on the Spanish Empire.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So we'll come back to this question of legality, because that is fascinating. But I want to just ask a quick question about religion and faith, because in some of the ways that this is depicted, it's as a blow against Catholicism. And also other accounts of his upbringing, as you've mentioned, possibly his father was a lay preacher or a priest. Do you think Drake is rooted in his Protestant faith? Do you think he is motivated by it? I mean, how is it possible to tell?
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Dr. Richard Blakemore
I suppose, certainly, again, the legend has him as this great Protestant figurehead. But interestingly, the Hawkins household in Plymouth don't appear to have been particularly Protestant. They seem to have drifted through the religious changes in England in this Period, without getting any trouble on either side. So they seem to be trimming their sails to the wind, to use an appropriate metaphor, as many other people are certainly later in his life. We know on some voyages Drake takes over religious service on his ship and delivers the religious services instead of a chaplain. So he does it himself. We know that there are attacks on priests in some of his voyages, that some of his men burn churches. There's an account from a Spanish prisoner about how one of his ship's officers is berating the Spanish prisoners for being Catholic. So there's certainly Protestant identities going on in the voyages. Whether Drake himself is really committed to that is quite hard to say because we have so little evidence of his early life. I wonder if he steps into that Persona later. It doesn't seem to appear very much in his early letters and his early evidence that we have about his life, but perhaps once it's all got going, it seems to make sense as part of this legend and this Persona. And this is an important element in thinking about the backdrop to his career. This is a really crucial moment for many reasons in English history, particularly in England's relationship with the rest of the world. Expanding trade, not just trade, but many other people to other parts of the world. And of course, in the religious changes that are going on. And so England actually starts Elizabeth's reign allied with Spain, because Philip II of Spain had been married to Mary, Elizabeth's sister. But partially through the Reformation, partly through England trying to intrude into some of these Spanish controlled regions, partially through tensions in Europe, they drift into conflict eventually, by the end of Elizabeth's reign and these voyages that we've been talking about in the 1560s, the 1570s, are in that process of drifting. England is not at war with Spain. When Francis Drake starts attacking Spanish towns and ships, there are hostilities, there are issues around Protestantism, but it's an escalation. And I think that religious identity fits in with that, in that he starts to lean into it more once that escalation has taken place and once it becomes a more useful excuse as English identity itself becomes more Protestant, more opposed to Spain as part of this kind of escalating hostility.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Okay, so you're kind of saying, forgive me if this is too inaccurate or crude a summary, but as a convenient fiction for him later in his life.
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Dr. Richard Blakemore
He may have come to believe it about himself, but I'm not sure it's a guiding feature of his life all the way through. And I think we can actually see a lot of times where Drake does What is convenient or beneficial to him, both in terms of his actions on voyages, but also in the way that he presents himself. And as I said, with the legend, on his later voyages, he recruits a chaplain who also keeps lots of notes, which are then later published as accounts of his voyages. So he's clearly thinking about the kind of impression that is going to be made from his legend. And I think that it's very difficult to say what he personally really did believe. Maybe he was sincere, but if he is sincere, perhaps also that changes over the course of his life. Perhaps the experience of most of his adult life being spent in conflict against Catholic Spain intensifies that Protestant identity as well.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Okay, so let's go back to that lovely question of legality. So in the early 1570s, we have him raiding Spanish settlements in Central America. And for much of that time he's a privateer, which I'm going to gloss and you can correct me, as a sort of state sanctioned pirate. But his first expedition, as I understand it, isn't authorized, which technically makes it piracy. So talk me through how we should understand this stuff legally and also what is literally happening in these raids.
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Dr. Richard Blakemore
So on the legality question, this is actually a really important period for the development of international law as well. Especially because of piracy. Exactly. Because as European empires are expanding into new territories, especially maritime territories, maritime travel, all these questions about legality come up. So this is actually the period in which a lot of later principles of international law, particularly around warfare and what is permitted are being determined. It's also because of that religious conflict in Europe. So you have new sovereignties, you have the Dutch Republic, you have French Huguenot towns who are sending out raiders. And so their legality to do that is a subject of great debate. So these circumstances are causing people to question what is permitted. You have three sort of kinds of raider. You have pirates, which, as you've said, if you haven't got a permission, if you haven't got authority, if you're doing it for yourself out of greed, that is a classic definition of pirate. But actually very few people really fit that definition throughout most of history, because most people try to give themselves some sort of justification. There's really very few, even the most famous of pirates often claim not to be pirates. You then have, as you said, what we now often call privateer, although that word itself emerged in the later 1600s. And the history of that word has its own interesting intricacies. So Drake would never have called himself a privateer. It wasn't a word or a concept at that time. But you do have the ability, as the subject of one Crown, to attack that Crown's enemies. And any subject is authorized in time of war to attack their Crown's enemies. So that's what we would now understand as privateer. And then, like I said, you have this other system called reprisal, which is for kind of private warfare, where if you suffered losses, you can attempt to recoup your losses, if normal law has failed to resolve that issue. And that's very common. And, in fact, Elizabeth never actually declares war on Spain in a public fashion. She just hands out letters of reprisal. So all of the raiding against the Spanish Empire in this time is not a public war, it's this legal fiction being covered. So Drake, in the 1570s, is not officially authorised by the Queen to prosecute war, although she is also investing in some of these voyages and sending ships, even in the 1560s. So Elizabeth's position is really curious because she's maintaining plausible deniability, but she is also taking a lot of money off Drake when he comes back from his voyages. He is using the fiction of reprisal, or at least the legal justification of reprisal. He is saying, I suffered losses from the King of Spain, I am entitled to go back and claim them. And really, it then comes down to Christian perspective. The Spanish are unequivocally clear. He's a cosario, he's a right. He's a Lutheran pirate. He doesn't have any right even to be in the Caribbean, because according to Spanish law, you don't have any permission to be in the Spanish Caribbean unless the Crown actually gives you that. So simply being in the Caribbean makes you a pirate if you're an author. So whether he really felt wronged and it was the Spanish fault for kind of attacking him and he was just taking revenge, which is his line, or whether he shouldn't have been there in the first place, which is the Spanish line. And I think a lot of these debates really come down to that sense of perspective. And again, it's a process of escalation. Drake's raids become part of the complaints by Spanish ambassadors to England that then lead to these greater hostilities. Drake himself seems to have become a real hate figure in Spain. There's even an epic poem on his death about all the terrible things that he did. And so his own actions then lead into these escalating hostilities. And that's where Queen Elizabeth then starts handing out even more commissions and more letters of reprisal. And so he's kind of Part of what tips the scale, he's initially doing it very much on the edge of legality about whether he really has commission and authority or not. But almost as a result of the hostilities that he is causing, by the 1580s, Elizabeth is fully supporting raiding expeditions against Spain, including Drakes and others. And so it's almost he maybe forces her hand. She's maybe trying to maintain this kind of tightrope of taking all the money but pretending that she's got nothing to do with it, when in fact, Spain gets more and more frustrated. And that leads to this outbreak of not publicly declared war, like I said, but basically open hostilities are happening by the 1580s.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Also in the middle of the 1570s, we have this moment where we find Drake in Ireland on campaign, and it's as a particularly terrible moment when the English forces are slaughtering hundreds of men, women and children at Rathlin Castle after its surrender. What role did Drake have to play here? And frankly, should he be tainted for his association with that massacre?
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Dr. Richard Blakemore
We don't know very much about his particular role. The sources are not very clear. He was part of the army that conducted the massacre, but we don't know what part he himself played. But I think absolutely, the brutality of the English soldiers in Ireland is very clearly documented. And indeed, the whole campaign in Ireland as part of these religious wars, again, that are being prosecuted there, it seems that he goes into that campaign largely to try and make connections with important people like the Earl of Essex and other courtiers, and he maybe sees it as a careerist. He is now a famous and established sailor. By the mid-1570s, he's a military figure. A lot of other leading military figures in England are involved in the campaign in Ireland and in other campaigns in Europe at this time as well. So it's not that unusual to find him participating in military service. That's what servants of the Crown are expected to do. But Ireland is definitely a very brutal campaign. And I think, even if we can't say that Rake is one of the leading figures in that, I think it's highly likely that he was involved in some way. And we see brutality as a feature of his other campaigns and careers throughout his life as well. So I don't think he would have had any qualms. He was certainly not reluctant to use brutality as a weapon when it seemed to serve his purposes. So I think his participation in the Irish campaign is probably not as well known as it should be, and it certainly doesn't paint him in any better light being part of the warfare that's conducted there.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So by 1577, he's rich and famous and was secretly commissioned by the Queen to disrupt Spanish interests. And this set the scene for his attempted circumnavigation of the globe. Why did he do this? What did he hope to achieve?
- [23:45]
Dr. Richard Blakemore
I think there are probably a number of ambitions, as you've said. By the mid-1570s, he's already wealthy. He's already had successful voyages to the Caribbean. He's attacked Spanish towns in the Caribbean with the alliance with the semibones. He's attacked the Silver Train crossing the Isthmus of Panama, brought back a lot of treasure from that. But he's probably also learned that much of that silver is traveling up the west coast of the Americas because it's being mined in South America and then traveling through the Spanish imperial system. And that is much less heavily defended because very few other European ships have ever reached the Pacific Ocean at this time. The Spanish have an established trade network between America and the Philippines and trading into Asian markets. In fact, quite a lot of silver coming out of the Spanish empire in the Americas is going to trade in Asia, trade with China. So there's huge fabulous wealth and riches there. And the possibility that this is not as heavily defended as the Caribbean towns are. And so there's a real opportunity, if you can get into the Pacific, to really strike at that wealth. And then I wonder also about the kind of lure of fame. There haven't been that many circumnavigations by the 1570s. There have been a few, mostly by Spanish and Portuguese sailors. But the prospect of being the first person to do that, the prospect of, of even further cementing his name and reputation. He is very well established and wealthy by the middle of the 1570s, but he's certainly not the famous figure that he becomes after the circumnavigation. So I think wealth is almost certainly the main reason, as it is with most of his voyages. But the sort of drama of this feat is perhaps also part of what's appealing to him.
- [25:30]
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- [26:01]
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- [26:32]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Now, quite early on in this voyage, there's an incident involving Thomas Doughty, who had been captain of the Pelican, the fleet flagship, though Drake, of course, was Captain General. But by the time they'd crossed the Atlantic, reached Patagonia, Drake had Doughty tried and executed. And later, Doughty's brother Thomas, who also sailed on the voyage, tried to indict Drake for murder. So, Richard, what was it? Was it murder, Assassination? Was it legal? Was it an abuse of power? Was it somehow all of the above?
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Dr. Richard Blakemore
I think in pure legal terms, Drake was not authorized to execute Doughty, which would probably termite murder. Drake claimed at the point of the trial that he had authority from the Queen to carry out capital punishment and martial law. And certainly there are other voyages where the documents survived that show that authority was granted to commanders, particularly long, dangerous voyages where it's understood that you need to keep order, even if that requires extreme measures. But when some of his crew say, come on, show us this commission, Drake refuses to get it out of his cabin. And that, to me, is highly suspect. I think if you have that paper to hand, you get it out and make your authority is unquestionable. And the fact that Drake doesn't produce it suggests to me that he probably didn't have it. I think it's also pretty clear that the attempted indictment by Doughty's family is prevented by political pressure, that Drake is being protected because he has now become this great famous figure. So I'm pretty sure that Drake was doing something for which he had no proper legal authority. But it is the bit of a gray area in terms of these voyages. So Doughty's actually someone Drake had met in Ireland. They'd become comrades, they've become friends, and they seem to have left the kind of chain of command very unclear in this voyage. And that's partly where this all falls apart. Drake seems to think he's the only one in charge. Doughty tries to participate as well, and they fall out. And it escalates and there seem to be factions. There seem to have been some of Drake's other friend speaking against Doughty, and then Doughty is speaking against Drake and it all falls apart. And it really does seem to have got to a point where Drake felt that he could not continue the voyage with this sort of division going on. They're about to go round into the Pacific. This is one of the most dangerous, shifting routes that you can confront. Drake clearly feels that he cannot continue to allow this division. But after the prosecution and the execution, Drake sails on, but some of the other ships sneak away in storms. Clearly, other people feel they don't want to hang around and also be executed. So others who are involved in the voyage back off and sail home for England at that point. And we also see in other voyages, Drake seems to have been a very suspicious, possibly jealous kind of character. He really fears disloyalty. There are other voyages where he puts together complaints and accusations against his subordinates, not to the point of execution, as with Doughty, but this is quite a common sort of experience for him to fall out with the other people on a voyage and get into arguments. So I don't think he had legal authority. I think this partially comes down to his own personality. But I think there is also a real danger that the voyage could fall apart if all the different people involved in it start fighting over each other. And there are not, it seems, many problems for the rest of the voyage. It seems to be an action that Drake at least considers is necessary. Doughty probably wouldn't have thought it was necessary, and some of the other commanders. I don't think it's necessary. But exactly what the authority that you have on a ship on your own, on the other side of the ocean is actually, again, a question being debated at this time. And like I said, I don't think he really has the legal authority and commission to do this. But it's also not a surprise that he's protected when he gets back and that he's able to spin it and.
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Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Avoid repercussions when he eventually returns home. We'll stay with him a little bit longer on the journey, but he eventually returns home with huge amounts of treasure. Where has he got it from?
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Dr. Richard Blakemore
From a number of places. He raids a lot of Spanish towns, so he makes it into the Pacific. He raids a lot of Spanish towns along the coast of South America, which is causing panic throughout this region of the Spanish Empire as well. They do send out voyages to try and catch him. They are unsuccessful. There's one particular target, though, which is a major Spanish galleon. So one of the major targets is a Spanish galleon. Called Nuesta Senora de la Concepcion, which is carrying vast sum of silver and gold from South America to travel across the Pacific. So this is one of the reasons why this is such an appealing target for Drake is this cross Pacific trade, which is heavily controlled by the Spanish Crown. So they're sending a small number of ships carrying very large valuable cargoes. And Drake's ships attack and seize one of these, which is probably the biggest single capture that they take. But they also attack other towns along the way. And then after raiding his way up the South American coast and capturing this major ship, they've gone probably as far as modern day California. And then they cross the Pacific. And then in the Indian Ocean, they get involved in some trading with local rulers in Indonesia and also in some warfare in that region as well. So it's primarily seizing wealth from the Spanish Empire, either on ships or from towns. But then there are these other elements of it once they get into Indian Ocean, where they're adding to it with trade. And I think one feature we can definitely say is that Drake knows how to sniff out an opportunity he clearly always can seize, can capture, can find. In fact, there's one particular incident in the Armada campaign which we might speak about more, but where he's supposed to be pursuing the Spanish fleet. And he notes a really valuable Spanish ship has fallen off. So he sneaks away. He actually extinguishes his own lights, apparently, and sneaks away to seize this really valuable ship. So he clearly has a knack for hitting on the really valuable targets. And that's exactly what the circumnavigation does. When he comes back, it's even vaster sums of wealth. And he's brought back from the Caribbean and he's already wealthy. But this seems to again be a different order of magnitude.
- [32:55]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
You mentioned California there, and he claims possession of part of modern day California for England. So possibly there's a little bit of conquest going on. But we tend to think of the circumnavigation as being about exploration and discovery. But what you're suggesting is that instead it's about plunder and piracy. Possibly not. And profit, is that right?
- [33:21]
Dr. Richard Blakemore
Yeah, absolutely. Although I think exploration is also about profit in this period. I don't think there's any sense of exploration having any other purpose. Columbus crosses the Atlantic to try and reach Asian markets. He doesn't know America is in the way most other explorers are looking for, mostly a route to wealth, either in the Americas or more often in Asia. And in fact, one of the reasons Drake might be going north is to see if there's a northern passage around America, which might be a quicker route to Asian markets as well. So exploration is certainly part of this voyage. And as I said, there's this sort of sense of achieving something that's never been achieved before. And when he gets back, I think that is a big part of the legend that accrues around him. There's a very interesting moment when he initially gets back and Elizabeth tries to suppress any knowledge of what's happened because she wants to stop upsetting the Spanish, although they know exactly what's happened, because all these reports are flooding in from across the empire. But so you get this wonderful poem published about what wonderful achievements Drake has achieved without saying what they are, because you're not actually allowed to say what he's done. But there's this poem all about how amazing he is. So that kind of sense of achievement and exploration is part of it, but the purpose of that is profit is plunder. And I don't think there's any distinction between them.
- [34:37]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
For contemporaries, that's really helpful because I think we've probably mixed it up in our heads with scientific discovery and some sort of noble sense of finding out the furthest reaches of the planet, but actually it's all profit. You've mentioned earlier this sort of sense about his character, you know, the way that he's kind of territorial, possessive, kind of proud. We have more to say on the darker side of the story. But what would it have taken in terms of character to lead a voyage like this, do you think?
- [35:09]
Dr. Richard Blakemore
I think you'd have to be fanatically determined. We do seem to have some impression that he does try to look after his men in terms of providing provisions. A lot of men die on the voyage, as on all of these voyages, possibly as many as half the crew, which is what you would expect with the kind of problems from health. It's mostly disease, poor provisions that cause deaths at sea at this time, but when you compare it with other circumnavigations, they get off pretty light. And there do seem to be a regular feature of kind of stopping to try and provide provisions, to try and make sure the men are provided for. But he's also happy to abandon members of the crew. Not only execute Doughty, but he abandons some men of his crew and others, as we might speak about, through the course of this voyage. So I do wonder how much he's altruistic or how he's just aware that taking care of the men is what you need to do to make the voyage work, but just to think about the challenges being faced here. If anyone listening has not been to the Golden Hind replica in London, I would highly recommend it. Just to get a sense, going around the world on something that small. We are talking thousands of miles, three years, battle after battle, many days, weeks, months. It takes months to cross the Atlantic, it takes months to cross the Pacific. The navigational skill is clearly something, and there's no question about the trust that his men have. And that is something that comes up in other voyages, because often elite aristocratic commanders are not very good at navigation and that can cause problems. But Drake clearly is a very experienced seafarer from his early career that we talked about. He's commented on. Many of the Spanish prisoners that he takes report on him, and their comments talk about how he's a very good navigator, how he persuades the men, how he motivates the men. So I think there's clearly a driven character there and one who is able to mostly keep the crew going. Obviously, the Doughty incident, there's an edge of disaster there, but you have to persuade a large number of pretty tough sailors to trust you to keep going. And there are many voyages that result in mutiny, that result in shipwreck or in many other kinds of outcomes. That his force of personality must have been pretty extraordinary, I think. Not necessarily something to be admired, to be honest, given many of the aspects of this voyage, but to be able to hold a crew together through the course of that extremely long, extremely dangerous, extremely challenging trip is something that I think we should recognise.
- [37:45]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
There are tales, say that Drake's conduct, in terms of his contact with indigenous peoples, with Spanish settlers, is pretty awful, that he was burning churches and torturing captives, as I mentioned earlier. What evidence do we have of these things?
- [38:03]
Dr. Richard Blakemore
I think we have a fair amount of compelling evidence, but it is a rather complex picture, which suggests that there is a lot of brutality, but it might be quite deliberate. Brutality. It's brutality that serves a purpose. So there are reports from some of his prisoners about being tortured, usually targeting friars as well. But of course, many of these are Spanish accounts which are not inclined to be sympathetic to Drake. And often Spanish prisoners, at least partially, have to explain how they themselves came to end up being captured and surrender. And so they are going to paint the English in a more villainous light. That's not to say they weren't villainous. I think they clearly were. But we do have to be a bit skeptical about some of this source material. Certainly some churches get targeted, whether that's Drake or his men. Again, one of the accounts talks about a boat swain on the ship really being driven by anger against Catholicism and targeting Spanish priests. So it may not be confined to Drake. It may not even be Drake himself. It may be part of kind of mentality and attitudes of the crew. And then the relationship with indigenous people. And again, enslaved African or escaped Maroon or Cimarron African people, I think, is really fascinatingly complex. So in South America, he tries to deal with some indigenous communities, but that breaks down into violence. Although whether that's because of the English conduct or because of misconduct or because of miscommunication or things like that, we just. It's not very clear from the sources. We know that in the Caribbean he had allied with these Himalayan communities. And there's one particularly interesting figure, a man called Diego, who was enslaved in Nombre de Dios in the Spanish Empire in Panama, who either is captured by Drake or escapes to Drake's ship. But he joins Drake, seems to be crucial in negotiating an alliance with some adones in Panama, goes back to England with Drake for some years and goes on the circumnavigation, and seems to have been quite close to Drake and quite a significant figure in this voyage. He dies. He gets injured in a battle, but survives for quite a long time after, but eventually dies when the voyage meets the Indian Ocean. So we don't know too much about his role, but he's clearly a key figure in some ways. And there are other moments where Drake seems to ally with groups in the Indian Ocean, in Indonesia, he allies with a local ruler and participates, but then also sometimes leave the conflict, violence. And then we have the other side of the equation, which is that, as we know, Drake started his career in the slave trade. He's quite happy to deal in slavery. He sometimes takes prisoners from Spanish ships. And the particularly significant situation here is that at least one of these is a woman called Maria. And Maria is probably captured from a ship off the coast of America. And then when they reach the Indian Ocean, at some point, Drake abandons Maria and two other African men on an island in the Indian Ocean, apparently an island without a water supply as well, not the best location. And she is pregnant by this time. And this is mentioned in accounts of the voyage, it's mentioned in later retellings of the voyage. And curiously, it's mentioned in an account by Drake's brother, who was on this voyage, who was much younger when he was captured by Spanish interrogators. And so he actually talks about two Spanish interrogators. So I think there's a lot of compelling evidence that this happens. His story is that they were abandoning them in order to found a settlement. They wanted to give them a place to found their own settlement, perhaps like a marine settlement in the Americas. But I think two men and a pregnant woman on an island without a water supply doesn't look like a very good prospect for a settlement. And there's certainly some theories that they do it to avoid scandal when they get back to England that this is not fitting with the heroic image. It's not entirely clear who is the father, but it's very likely it's one of the sailors and possibly Drake himself, given the timelines of this voyage. So it seems very possible to me. That's again, a very ruthless action, but also an unsuccessful one because the story does get out and the story is being told about Drake and is reported even after Drake's death in accounts of this voyage that are republished. So it's this complex picture. He's clearly ruthless, clearly has no problem with slavery and the exploitation of humans, but can also make alliances and can also join with individuals and even potentially form quite close relationships with individuals. But it always seems to where they have something to offer to break. And I think that seems to me one of the overriding features of his character is the ruthlessness and the sort of potentially grasping nature that seems to drive a lot of what he is doing here.
- [42:57]
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- [43:59]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I was intrigued by the story about Maria and I looked at one of the sources I'm you indicating that there are quite a number of mentions of her. This is the anonymous sailors account from the British Library which says the following. Drake took out of the ship a pilot and also a proper negro wench called Maria, which was afterwards gotten with child between the captain and his men, pirates, and set on a small island to take her adventure. And you know, that seems to imply what you've said, which is that, I mean, she's kidnapped, possibly enslaved, although she possibly was enslaved already. She's possibly been raped, possibly been ganged, raped, and then when pregnant, abandoned. I mean, ruthless is a mild word for it even at this point, isn't it?
- [44:50]
Dr. Richard Blakemore
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that we do need to pause and reflect on her experiences. She may have already come from Africa to the Americas through slavery. The voyage even through Africa to the ports to be transported could be awful because quite a lot of enslaved people were not from the coast in Africa. They were captured from further inland and then transported. She may have spent time in slavery in the Americas. She may then have spent time on the Spanish ships. We know nothing about her experience aboard what becomes named the ship Pelican that you mentioned we named the Golden Hind. We know nothing of her experience on that ship beyond that reference in the manuscript. Other accounts are more cryptic about what exactly happens to her, but there's clearly definitely the possibility that substantial sexual violence occurred and then to be abandoned. And we don't know what happened to her and the two men who were abandoned on this island. It may have been a freedom and escape from quite awful treatment. It may have been a really terrible fate to be left with no resources. According to some accounts, they are left food, but of course, if the island has no water supply, that's not going to help them for very long. We don't know what kind of relationship they might have had with other local communities in that region. So I think you're right. Ruthless perhaps doesn't quite capture the experience from her perspective and the experience of many women and enslaved people across this period. And I don't think we should ever lose sight of just what the basis of slavery was, which was this extremely violent, extremely brutal exploitation of a very large number of people.
- [46:30]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Drake's actions during the circumnavigation exacerbate the tensions between Spain and England. And after Drake's return several years later, he is playing a leading role in continuing to wage this undeclared war against Spain. And famously singeing the king of Spain's beard in the road on Cadiz. What did he do what happened there.
- [46:59]
Dr. Richard Blakemore
As you say, he returned to England in 1580 and then these problems have continued to escalate partially. That's because England is also becoming more openly supportive of the Dutch rebellion against Spain, which is going on at this time. And so in 1585, an English army goes to help the Dutch rebels in what is now the Netherlands as well. And there's also continued raiding, not just by dreg, but by others. In fact, the numbers of raiders really start to intensify in the late 1580s and into the 15. So more and more people are getting involved in this attack on Spanish shipping and the Spanish Empire. So the expedition to Spain has a number of potentially conflicting objectives. And this actually also seems to be a characteristic of these voyages. They're not always very clearly defined. Part of it is to support Doma Antonio, who is a claimant to the Portuguese throne. Philip II of Spain has seized the Portuguese throne in 1580. And actually, although Spain and Portugal remain separate kingdoms and separate empires, there is now a single, almost worldwide empire ruled by one monarch. And the English were supporting Dom Antonio to challenge Philip II and to try to reclaim Portugal, liberate Portugal. Although Dom Antonio does not get a very popular response when he arrives in Portugal, although he's presenting himself as the Saviour, it's not clear that's how he's seen in Portugal itself. So that's one objective. The other objective is to try and look out for Spanish treasure fleets or any other opportunities. This is where the singeing of the King of Spain's beard comes in. So by the time Drake arrives off the coast of Spain in 1587, it seems that targeting Spanish ships has become his major priority. And by chance for him, a large Spanish fleet has just arrived in Caduce. And so he goes in and attacks the fleet. And this is a very heavily defended Spanish harbour, so it's really quite remarkably bold as an attack. And Drake seems very successful. Many of the Spanish ships don't have crews because they're at anchor. They don't seem to be particularly heavily defended. And so the raid is really quite successful, going straight into the major Spanish harbour, right under the nose of the King's forces. And you can see how it must have been deeply infuriating for the Spanish to have their defences breached in this way and this newly arrived fleet targeted and much of again, the plunder taken by Dray. He again seems to have been very good at targeting the ships and taking his own part of what he can find there. But just as with Doughty and the divisions and questions in the circumnavigation. This voyage, too, throws, I think, some doubts on Drake's leadership capabilities. We talked about his force of personality and in terms of navigation and leading a ship, that's clearly there. But he doesn't seem to have the skill to manage a larger expedition very effectively. And so while he is involved in going into the harbor and attacking the fleet, he leaves some other ships outside the harbour and they are targeted by Spanish cannons and he gives them no orders and they can't get hold of him, and they don't really know what to do. They're just hanging around under fire. And that causes a split with William Burrow, who is also a very experienced navigator who's commanding those ships, who accuses Drake of effectively leaving them, hanging them out to dry. Drake, as you can imagine, does not take well to this. And he kicks Burrow out of his command and forces Burrow to make a groveling apology. And again, there's all of these sort of tensions and frustrations. So Drake doesn't seem to have that sort of strategic vision. He's very good at raiding, plundering, getting money for himself and for the Queen. And we should again reiterate that the Crown really does well out of the raiding that Drake and others are leading. In fact, some historians have theorized that England avoids a coinage crisis because the silver that is coming in is allowing the Queen to keep the coinage going, not just from Drake, but from others as well. But Drake doesn't seem to have that ability to manage a larger expedition, to have the strategic coordination or to get on well with other people, frankly, certainly when their views don't necessarily coincide with his.
- [50:55]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And then we come to the Spanish Armada. Now, Drake's not Admiral of the fleet, and we know that the weather plays a massive part in the Spanish defeat. But how much can we attribute the success to Drake? Was it a result of his maverick actions, or actually, did he imperil the success by chasing after that treasure ship?
- [51:20]
Dr. Richard Blakemore
I don't think it would have helped if he was supposed to be leading this whole squadron, which is what he was supposed to be doing at the time, with a light on his ship, and then that disappears and he goes off chasing another ship. And so that whole squadron don't know where their target is, they don't know where they're aiming. But it doesn't seem to have caused a great deal of damage to the campaign. And I think it's worth noting that Drake never seems to have shied away from A fight. He may have gone after the objectives that promised the most profit to himself, but he's clearly not a coward. He's clearly not afraid to be at the forefront of the battle. Later in the campaign, he leads an attack against Spanish ships off the European coast. And in fact, he then makes a big deal to make sure that everybody knows that he led that particular action as well. So, again, he's thinking about his reputation as well as carrying out these actions. I don't think he plays a major role by himself. As you say, he's not the admiral. He does seem to accept command under Lord Howard, who is admiral. There seems to be some concern that Drake might actually kick off about not being made admiral himself. But he seems to accept Howard as a leader, and he does play a part in some of the fighting through the Channel. As the Spanish fleet is moving up the Channel and the English ships are attacking, Drake himself leads his ship in to fight against the Spanish, both at sea and then in port as well. So he is not totally out of the action, but he's also clearly looking out for his own interests. I don't think he's the leading figure in this campaign, but he is part of the broader picture. Although, as you said, the weather plays a really crucial role. And another factor is that the Spanish Armada is sailing to collect an army in Flanders, the Spanish army that's been fighting against the Dutch rebels. And by the time the Armada arrives, they've already marched off to a different campaign anyway. So whether the Armada could ever have actually launched an invasion of England is really an open question. It seems unlikely that they would have ever got it together just because the coordination wasn't there. That's not to say it's not perceived as a major threat. I think there is a panic in England and certainly a fleet of that size could have done some damage, but the full scale of invasion that was apparently originally envisioned seems to have been off the cards before the Armada even reaches the Channel. So it's again, a key moment in Drake's legend, a key moment in his reputation. He's part of it. He's in the action. He makes sure everybody knows that he's in the action, but he's also sneaking off at times. And I don't think he can take credit again, for the sort of strategic oversight or for holding together the English forces.
- [53:56]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
His last years seem to have been marked by failure.
- [54:00]
Dr. Richard Blakemore
What went wrong, again, I think it comes back to the changing role, with his escalating stature and his reputation, and perhaps in some Ways he becomes a victim of becoming too senior, although I'm not sure I'd ever really use the word victim for Francis Drake. He has a lot of victims, so I'm not sure if we can call him one. But there are two major voyages, so there's one voyage where once again, an expedition is prepared to support Dom Antonio in the attack in Portugal to try and reclaim the Portuguese throne. And Drake is in command of the naval component. And there is an army as well. But again, once they reach the coast in Portugal, the army are put ashore and there doesn't seem to be any coordination. Drake sails down, but he doesn't support the army when they need him. He doesn't really seem to have much of a plan, so that kind of broader strategic command doesn't seem to be where his strength is. And then after that army has failed to achieve much in Portugal at all, he sails off to attack the Azores, which, again, were Portuguese islands that have been claimed by Spain when Philip takes the Spanish crown. But again, doesn't really seem to organise the attack very well. The fleet is quite large and this seems to be beyond his skills, and so not much is attacked. This does not go down well with Queen Elizabeth. Right. This is yet another very expensive expedition. They perhaps got so used to success, so used to the legend, that when they basically fail to achieve anything at all, it's really quite a shock. And then the last voyage comes in 1595, when Drake leads another major campaign to the Caribbean and once again launches attacks on. On Spanish towns, but without any of the success that he had enjoyed earlier in his career. And partially that's again, perhaps because he just hasn't got the ability to manage such a large force. Also, Spanish fortifications have been reinforced. The Spanish Empire spent a lot of money, particularly protecting major ports, and Spanish colonists have become much more used to these attacks. And so they know to retreat, they hide their treasure, they escape. And so it's a lot harder to have an unexpected attack, a surprise attack, where you can take a lot of plunder, which is what Drake was doing early in his career. And it's during that voyage that Drake contracts what is probably dysentery and dies during that voyage. So he dies on this last expedition to the Caribbean, but it doesn't seem like it was going to be a glorious success. Even before he falls ill, it seems like it was probably going to come back without many rich pickings anyway.
- [56:33]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So a final question then, and this is a difficult one. We've talked about the fact that he has an eye to posterity in his lifetime, that the legend of Drake is constructed and he becomes a national hero during his lifetime. I want to ask you what we should make of him, what his legacy should be. But I also want to ask why do you think it seems and remains so controversial to raise these aspects of Drake's life and career and whether it relates back to the fact that his heroism has been so written into a British national story?
- [57:16]
Dr. Richard Blakemore
I think that's exactly the reason. I think one of the really interesting aspects of Drake's legacy is almost the legacy itself, in that there are stories about him being produced, being published in his own lifetime, on his death, there's then many biographies, and then this becomes a trend. He becomes an iconic figure. Almost every time England goes to war with anyone in the 1600s, you get another biography of Drake being published. He is the hero. In fact, by the later 1600s, there's a book called the English Hero, which is a retelling of Drake's life based on an earlier biography. So anytime England wants to call up a great hero, Drake is the one they go to. And actually, later figures like Henry Morgan, who's a buccaneer, another plunderer on the shady side of the law, but also deputy governor of Jamaica, at times, he is compared to Francis Drake. Later figures are also compared to Francis Drake. So partially through his own actions, but also through that reputation that accrues around him at the time and is then intensified with each retelling of these stories, he becomes the figure. And I actually think that's one of the really interesting elements of this period of history, in that this is the moment when I think England really begins to start to think of itself as a maritime nation. It had been involved in maritime trade before, but it's in Elizabeth's reign that you get this expansion of global trade. You get the raiding voyages, you get the circumnavigation. By the end of Elizabeth's reign, England is in more direct contact with other parts of the world than it's ever been before. And England's seafaring community has massively increased because of all this conflict and the demand for sailors, the demand for men. And so it's putting them on this trajectory towards becoming a major maritime power. But it's already started to think of itself as a major maritime power. And that involves a retelling of history. They start to retell stories about Alfred the Great, about medieval kings claiming that they were great maritime rulers, even though probably they weren't. And Drake is such a key part in that emergence of that identity. I think that's one of the reasons why he's so controversial, because he's become such a cornerstone in his own life and after his death, but then with continuing force all the way through subsequent centuries. So one thing he tells us about is just that myth making, how important that myth making has been, how important this moment is for the emergence both of Britain or England, and then Britain as a maritime nation, but also the idea of it as a maritime nation. But I think we can also then interrogate him a bit more closely, as we, I hope, have done in this podcast, to think about the other sides of his life. And I think he reflects the brutality, the violence, the exploitation of his a. He was undoubtedly ruthless and brutal, possibly even cruel. There may not be words to describe, but so were many other people. And that's not to excuse him, but it's the nature of trade and empire at this time. It's the nature of conflict and warfare. And perhaps there were people who were not as bad as Drake, but there were many people who were as bad or worse. And like I said, I'm not trying to claim that we shouldn't confront those views of him. I'm not trying to claim that we excuse him for the terrible things that he did. But I think actually by studying those, we get a sense of what that world must have been like, and we get a sense of just how closely intertwined violence, exploitation, trade, commerce were at that time. These were not separate fields. Many people involved in trade were also involved in other aspects. The whole premise of empire, if you like, is about exploitation on some level. It's about conquest, it's about seizing goods, it's about controlling people. The Spanish Empire, the British Empire, the Dutch Empire, the French Empire. Many of their most exalted figures, like Francis Drake, are involved in these kinds of vicious, brutal activities. And so I think we can look at him both to think about how that legend comes into being, to think about how England comes to think of itself in these terms and what role he plays in that. But I think we can also look at it to think about the real nature of maritime activity at that time and the both violent but also complex dimensions in which many people, including Drake, were involved.
- [61:38]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Well, that was a wonderful answer. And this has been a really, really thought provoking and interesting conversation. Thank you so much for your time. Dr. Richard Blakemore.
- [61:48]
Dr. Richard Blakemore
Thank you very much. It's been great fun.
- [61:52]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Thanks for listening to not just the Tudors and to my researcher, Alice Smith, and my producer, Rob Weinberg. And do join me, Professor Susannah Lipscomb. Next time for another episode of Not Just the Tudors From History hit.