Francis Drake

c. 1540 - 1596. English navigator and privateer.

One of the most prominent figures of 16th-century England, Drake is most notorious for his attacks on Spanish colonial towns and trade ships in the New World. While this made him nothing but a pirate in Spanish opinion, he became something of a legend to his English countrymen.

Drake's actions were inofficially backed up by Elizabeth I, whose treasury profited from a share of all the gold and treasures Drake looted and whose foreign policy was supported by the blows he dealt the Spanish economy. More euphemistically, then, Drake was not a pirate but a privateer, whose exploits at sea were a service to his country. Having completed the circumnavigation of the globe (1577-1580), Drake was knighted by the Queen in 1581.

His lasting fame rests on his role in holding off the Spanish Armada in 1588. Although Drake was only Vice Admiral of the English fleet, i.e. the second-in-command under Lord Howard of Effingham, his name is usually associated with the strategy of dispatching fireships: burning ships whose approach put the Spanish fleet into enough disarray that the ships could only regroup when they had drifted too far to the North and were ultimately destroyed in a storm during the attempt of sailing around Scotland.

After a rather disastrous expedition to Portugal, which he was supposed to help in its rebellion against Philip II, Drake spent some years of "civil" life in England and was elected a Member of Parliament. Ultimately, he took up a new campaign against Spanish America but could not duplicate his earlier successes. Drake died from a tropical disease in 1596 during an expedition against the Spanish near Panama.