Talk:Francis Drake

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Contents 1 Links 2 Albion 3 Outgunned? 4 Picture 5 Justification? 6 Piracy 7 Descendant 8 Golden Hinde 9 California? 10 El Draco? 11 Nothwest passage? 12 Deleted the “el Draque” 13 Not the first Protestant services in America 14 New picture 15 What's with the cartoon character? 16 Drake bio 17 Pirate 18 Bad link? 19 Drake's place of death 20 correct myself 21 Spurious text?! 22 WikiProject 23 Drake's ancestry

[edit] Links

I have reviewed the links section and made the following changes:

• The first link was dead, so I removed it.
• Another link went to a "members login" page, so I removed that too.
• Two of the remaining links were to the same site, so I removed the "sublink" leaving the link to the main site intact.
• I divided the remaining links into "General Sites" and "Drake's Circumnavigation". In the latter category I added two links.
• I removed one more link from the "General Sites" links since it was just a potted biography which contained much less information (and was presented less accessibly) than other links already listed in the same section.

Sophie Hargreaves

[edit] Albion

I may be being pedantic but i'm pretty sure 'Albion' means 'Britain' rather than just England? Bjrobinson 09:32, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Outgunned?

I deleted the phrase "heavily outnumbered and outgunned" referring to Howard and Drake's English fleet. This is a total myth, and anybody who doubts this should read Garret Mattingly's book "The Armada", which won a Special Pulitzer Prize and is, incidentally, the finest history book I've ever read.

The fleets were roughly equal in size, but the English ships were of a more modern design with superior guns. Mattingly discusses the origins of the myth about the supposed "superiority" of the Spanish fleet.

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A one-shot anonym having added a note on Drake's career of harrassment of the Spanish, I've made it a bit more accurate: his relations to the Armada are rather inadequately described as "harassment"; and the center of his attentions appears to have been the Empire more than the Spanish, though possibly there could be debate on this. Meanwhile, there needs to be a mention of the incident as San Juan de Ulloa (or Ulua), which has now been done without once using the word "treachery". Dandrake 06:39, Feb 2, 2004 (UTC)

BTW, to say that he became a privateer at the age of 13 is pretty silly, so the article no longer says it. Dandrake 06:47, Feb 2, 2004 (UTC)

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Well, personally, I think he was just a pirate, but that's my own point of view which I am of course not going to add to the main article. I just wanted to mention that my Spanish is good enough to know that "El Draque" does NOT mean absolutely anything. So whoever wrote that it is a translation from Drake was wrong. I don't know what they called him. I'm only saying that Draque is not Spanish for dragon. Rumpelstiltskin 12:54, 5 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well, it means something now, as the folks at a Spanish multimedia company's site www.draque.com could tell you. But this derivative of DragonQuest isn't helpful in the present case. More interesting is the descent of the Cuban cocktail the mojito from a drink popular in the pre-Bacardi era before 1850 and called the draque, allegedly named after (heck, allegedly invented by) Sir Francis; but we know better than to take these folk tales seriously. It would be nice to get the opinion of someone expert in historical Spanish; would el Draque have any semantic significance to a 16th-century Spaniard? But any Google search is doomed by those other two draques. Dandrake 07:13, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Picture

The source for our illustration is http://www.mcn.org/2/oseeler/drake.htm Oliver seeler's website "Sir Francis Drake" Wetman 03:53, 5 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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http://www.douglas-mcintyre.com/book_details.asp?b=817

Agree with Dandrake about Mattingly's book "The Armada" c 1959.

For the record, that's not me; it's someone else's comment that didn't happen to have a signature. BTW don't forget to end your comments with the four-tilde ~~~~ gimmick that attaches a name and time. (I must read the book some day!) Dandrake 19:45, Jun 24, 2004 (UTC)

It's beautiful. I have a copy I am reading now. The only mention of San Juan de Ulua (pp 83-84) does not discuss the size of the forces. It only states "... the armed ships of that prosperous merchant (John Hawkins) were treacherously set upon by the Armada of New Spain." Drake, with Hawkins, lost money and reputation and almost lost their lives. Mattingly states Drake's "private war" with the Spanish arose from this attack. Drake was further motivated by religious considerations learned from his father (a Puritan preacher). The Spanish were of course on the opposite end of the Christian spectrum, papists.

[edit] Justification?

Did Drake use the Puritan theory that Catholics were idolators as moral justification for pirating Spain's silver and gold? - probably

Revenge for San Juan de Ulua and enriching himself - probably more justification.

Could Elizabeth ever acknowledge Drake's activities vs. Spain? No, Elizabeth never did anything politically incorrect. She was the ultimate teflon politician.

Sorry about the non-signature. Just recently started using Wikipedia and now am registered but still neophyte at editing. ````Jambo 19-Jul-04

[edit] Piracy

I think the article is heavily biased in that it doesn't have the word pirate anywhere in the text. A search in google for "drake pirate" gives about 86000 results. 12 Jul 2004

• Instead of adding an NPOV dispute disclaimer to the body of the article, why not edit the article to resolve the dispute? Add "pirate" somewhere, where appropriate. Personally, I think its covered: the lead states that Drake was a "privateer", which is accurate. Marlowe 16:20, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

• If a lot of people talk of him in terms of pirates, and somebody cares, how about a pragraph that notes that the Spanish considered him a pirate, and noting the distinction between a privateer (officer of the Elizabethan privatised navy) and a freebooter (pirate)? Dandrake 23:58, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)

• • Added text to that effect under section 'First Adventures'.Marlowe 17:24, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

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He worked for his cousin John Hawkins, a slave trader, early in his career. This does not make the trade a significant part of his fame, which was gathered after he was master of his own ship. Shall we also have the introduction mention that he was childless, along with his religious opinions? In fact, the article is deficient in saying not enough of his honorable dealings with the ex-slaves who worked with him in the Darien expedition. (Oh, and the Intro goes into excess detail on Nova Albion, which belongs (and is) in the CIrcumnavigation section.)

BTW, what's the source for the bit about the 25 men left behind at N.A.? Doesn't seem to be a familiar part of the usual accounts. Dandrake 05:01, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

• You should fix the lead section, if you find it inadequate, instead of writing about it on the discussion page. Actually, the lead section would be expanded in general. Marlowe 19:44, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)
  • I did fix it, and was noting why. As to larger revisions, I thought I'd see if anyone particularly cared; since no one does, I'll work on it when it hits the top of the queue. I didn't know that policy required changes to be made in a bunch and then argued over, never discussed while in progress. Dandrake 02:46, Aug 17, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Descendant

• I know one of his relatives, Jordan Drake. I went ot school with him.

[edit] Golden Hinde

The name of his ship was the Golden Hinde. The spelling "Hind" is a modernisation.

FYI -- it would be difficult to say that the spelling of any word or name from the 16th Century is exactly a particular way. Consistent spelling was not a requirement at that time. I don't know about "Hind/e" in particular but I do know that in manuscripts of that period and earlier, handwritten and printed, spellings of words could vary within the same page. In fact I have seen facsimilies and "verbatim" copies of some of Caxton's publication and seen "England" spelled in a variety of ways including "Inglande" and "Ynglonde". Seems that as the printers set the page, if they were short on letters they would improvise.

Prior to dictionaries there really wasn't much of a standard, and I don't think there was much social preassure either. I'd be hard put at the moment for a citation, but I have heard mention that the language was still more "oral" and words were simply spelled as they "sounded". FWIW 128.101.114.146 20:37, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] California?

Yes he landed in California however that was a very minor event, not one of his biggest achievments. Why is it mentioned at the head of the article? Shouldn't it mention him being one of the figures seen as creating modern England and defeating the armada?

There must be an editor who is very interested in Drake and California. The History of California is burdened by a long section on Drake's possible stop there. I'm going to move most of it here, and I apologize in advance for any clumsiness in the merge. Please correct as necessary. Cheers, -Willmcw 20:57, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Someone had deleted the entire section about circumnavigation. I've reverted it back, but it's still rather more focussed on California than the whole round trip. --ScottDavis 01:15, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] El Draco?

I seem to remember that for some countries around the Caribbean the term for the boogeyman is something like El Draco and is related to Drake. Can anyone confirm and add this in?

[edit] Nothwest passage?

This fabled northwest passage is mentioned twice, but I am not sure which mention of it is in the correct place. The gold plate hoax is mentioned twice too.. --Sprintstar

[edit] Deleted the “el Draque”

I am Spanish, and I have deleted the reference to the supposed nickname of “El Draque”. The explanation is as simple as hilarious.

Dragon in English means Dragón in Spanish.

“Draque” is how a Spaniard who doesn’t know how to talk English would say “Drake”. ‘El’ is an article used before the name of things, but when it is used before the name of the people it uses to have pejorative connotations.

Drake was (and stills being) depreciated by the Spaniards, as a cruel and coward pirate who used to sack civilian harbors when the Royal Spanish Armada was away enough to protect them.

Unlike Nelson, who was admired by the Spanish naval officers as a great military enemy, Drake would had been hung as soon as he was captured by the Spanish escort fleets.

Apart from this, Drake is seen by the Spanish historians as a megalomaniac and a compulsive liar, who used to exaggerate his victories as much as he hided his defeats.

For instance, something that is not commented in the article, is that when Drake circumnavigated the World, he considered himself as the first man doing such a thing, despite the fact that the Spaniard Juan Sebastián Elcano had circumnavigated the World some decades before Drake. Drake even carried in his ship a plate with the words “First man circumnavigating the World”.

Regarding "El Draque":

"El Draque" was the term by which Francis Drake was known to the Spaniards back then, for precisely the reason mentioned by you: it's the way in which his name would have been pronounced by a spanish-speaker.As for his supposed cruelty- there seems very little evidence of that. The Prisoners held aboard of the "Hinde" certainly attested to his great humanity in dealing with them; and the story of "Diego"- an escaped Slave (Cimmarrone) who followed Drake back to England and eventually around the world- speaks for itself. Diego must have been one of the first- if not THE first- black man to complete a circumnavigation of the globe. Drake was no Saint- but he certainly was no Devil either.213.94.180.191 21:15, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not the first Protestant services in America

Yesterday I edited the entry to say that Drake's communion was *one of* the first Protestant services in America. According to Francis Parkman, who cites extensive primary documents, French Huguenots established a colony in Florida in the early 1560s. They were Protestants. They were also nearly all exterminated by the Spanish.

But my edit disappeared today!! What's up with that?

April 28, 2005

"They were also nearly all exterminated by the Spanish"? I suggest you to read the article about Black Legend

[edit] New picture

Check out the new picture

WB2 05:15, 28 September 2005 (UTC) Does anyone know exactly when this picture was made, and who painted it?

[edit] What's with the cartoon character?

When I try to upload from wikicommons , I get a stupid cartoon character. What's up? WB2 05:35, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Anonymous Coward (Score: -1 Offtopic) Cool, I had no idea that Drake was a pokemon master as well as a master seaman.

[edit] Drake bio

Is there a definitive biography of Drake?

Re.: Drake Bio I don't know if it's a definite one, but it's a pretty good one: John Sugden, "Sir Francis Drake",Touchstone-Book,Simon+Schuster/New York, ISBN 0-671-75863-2 John Sugden can be counted as a "Fan" of Drake, but the historical facts tend to speak for themselves.(I don't have E-Mail right now, so I'm simply entering this by IP-adress.Still got to find my way around here...)213.94.180.191 21:15, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pirate

I have a question, what is the dedffinition of "pirate", to avoid to say that he was a pirate (and not only for a "Spanish point of view").

I would recomend to read the article about the Spanish Armada, that explains the battle of Gravenas. I think it can mislead a little about what happened. --Darkmaiki 02:31, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

And why is there no mention of his massacre of the Irish population of Rathlin island in 1575?

--194.46.252.19 20:10, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Re.: Pirate ...During the 16th. century,the definition of 'Piracy' was seen as attacking ships for the purpose of plundering them, WITHOUT a letter of marque. A letter of marque was a document issued by a government, which entitled the holder to carry out attacks on the ships belonging to nations specified in the document- one could see it as 'state-sponsored piracy'.Practically all nations in Europe indulged in this practise, and it would have been seen as quite normal back then. The holder of a Letter of marque would be a "Privateer".Drake was both- he carried out operations as a Privateer, but also some (such as the "Famous Voyage" 1577-1580) which were effectively piracy.213.94.180.191 21:16, 17 August 2006 (UTC)Joe

Re.: Rathlin massacre The People on Rathlin were not Irish- they were the families of Sorley Boy McDonnell's followers. The Scottish clanchiefs had sent their families to Rathlin in the belief that they would be safe there. Drake had been hired to supervise the transport of John Norris' Troops to Rathlin, and then patrol the waters between Rathlin and the Mull of Kintyre to prevent the scots from sending reinforcements. John Norris had a force of 300 Foot and 80 Horse as well as siege-guns at his disposal; it seems extremely unlikely that he would have had to rely on Drake and the 25-strong crew of the "Falcon"- Drake's vessel at the time- to help Norris do his dirty-work for him.John Sugden's Biography of Drake contains a fair amount of info on the subject.83.71.96.123 21:46, 17 August 2006 (UTC)Joe

[edit] Bad link?

Under External Links "Golden Hind, (Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia)" takes you to a site that requires a log in to access.

Recommend removal. Erraunt 19:02, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Drake's place of death

Although the article has his date of death correct, he did not die of dysentery aboard ship off San Juan, Puerto Rico. He died of yellow fever aboard ship in Nombre de Dios Bay, off modern Portobelo, Panama (formerly Puerto Bello). Source: Samuel E. Morison, The European Discovery of America, vol. 2, page 685 (1974).

[edit] correct myself

the cartoon was made from the original pdold image, so it's not a deriv ative of a copyrighted one. However, the pdold image looks better and makes the entry more professinal -- Drini 05:34, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spurious text?!

The sentence "Elaina thinks that this is a good website" keeps showing up on a line of its own just before the "Final Years" section, but no corresponding text appears in the editing area. Any ideas on why it's here, and how to get rid of it?

141.211.98.103 04:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Re.: Never mind... the text is gone now. It must have been removed from the editing area earlier, but had not yet disappeared from the display page.

[edit] WikiProject

I think it's time there was a Wikiproject:Devon up and running. Anyone interested, come to my talkpage and we'll sort something out. I'm not much good at HTML but if we all put our heads together I'm sure we can give Devon articles the treatment they deserve. Totnesmartin 16:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Drake's ancestry

I am a descendant of the John Drake and Margaret Cole that are asserted in the article to be great grandparents of this Francis Drake. In piecing the Drake family tree from different sources (most notably http://www.wyverngules.com/Pedigrees/Stemped4--Devon.htm), I have concluded that the Francis Drake that is a great grandson of John Drake and Margaret Cole is a ninth cousin twice removed (or thereabouts) of the famous Sir Francis Drake. The two lived at about the same, so it seems that whoever added that information thought the two Francis Drakes to be one person. Does anyone care to comment on this before I make the appropriate corrections to the article? -John Rigali 04:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)