He was a pirate, slaver and killer. So why is he England's national hero?

Francis Drake sailed around the globe and was a leader of the fleet that defeated the Spanish Armada – the ultimate Elizabethan A-lister. He was a brutal pirate who trafficked enslaved Africans and ravaged Spanish ships and ports. Elaine Murphy holds up a mirror to the contradictory faces of Tudor England’s most lauded – and ruthless – naval commander.

Portrait of a man

Published: October 23, 2026 at 3:30 PM

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“Just look at Drake! Who is he?” said Pope Sixtus V. “What forces has he? And yet he burned 25 of the [Spanish] king’s ships at Gibraltar [Cádiz], and as many again at Lisbon; he has robbed the flotilla and sacked San Domingo. His reputation is so great that his countrymen flock to him to share his booty.”

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It was late summer 1588, and Sir Francis Drake’s fame had spread throughout Europe. As the Spanish Armada limped home from ignominious defeat at the hands of the English fleet (with a helping hand from the weather), the pope was discussing the Elizabethan naval commander’s exploits with Giovanni Gritti, the Venetian ambassador in Rome. “Have you heard how Drake, with his fleet, has offered battle to the Armada?” the pope added later. “With what courage! Do you think he showed any fear? He is a great captain.”

In the space of just over 20 years, Drake had risen from humble origins in rural Devon to achieve a position of great wealth and power. He had won renown as the great commander who bested the Spanish aggressors – and the first Englishman to sail around the world some years earlier. Drake was a hugely popular hero in England, and renowned across Europe.

Spanish vessel illustration

A coloured engraving shows Drake’s ship attacking a Spanish vessel dubbed the Cacafuego (‘Shitfire’), laden with gold and silver, in 1579 | Credit: Getty Images

In the 16th century, though, your perspective depended very much on your nationality. England’s enemies, particularly Spain, saw him as a villainous pirate. Spanish accounts of Drake’s voyages highlight his brutality, whereas English reports depict him in a more positive light, often downplaying any violence.

Is it possible to glimpse the truth about this man whose reputation has been burnished by generations of English history books – but sullied by Spanish? And what can his early life and career tell us about his character?

Little is known of Francis Drake’s early years or education. He was born around February or March 1540 near Tavistock in Devon. His father, Edmund, was a shearman (cutting woollen cloth) and priest who moved to Kent in the late 1540s. Francis did not go east with his family but instead moved to Plymouth, where he lived with his kinsman, William Hawkins. It was here that he gained his formative education and seafaring experience.

At that time, the Spanish monarchy prohibited foreign merchants from trading directly with its colonies in the Caribbean and the Americas. English traders, who saw opportunities to profit from trafficking enslaved Africans to the Spanish territories, resented this embargo. Some simply broke it.

First voyages

With the backing of leading courtiers – and, later, Queen Elizabeth herself – William Hawkins’ son John launched four slaving voyages in the 1560s. These were joined by Drake, whose exact shipboard rank on the first three expeditions is not certain. On the fourth, which sailed from Plymouth in 1567, Drake served as captain of a small bark, the Judith.

Illustration of Tudor Queen

An ‘Armada portrait’ of Elizabeth I, c1588. As relations with Spain deteriorated in 1577, the English queen backed Drake’s expedition to plunder South America | Credit: Getty Images

The Spanish took pains to stop English slaving voyages, and in September 1568 defeated Hawkins at the island fort of San Juan de Ulúa on the east coast of New Spain, now in Veracruz, Mexico. Drake’s ruthless nature was evident in this episode: instead of aiding his stricken comrades by taking men onto his ship from the overcrowded Minion, he chose to sail the Judith home to England without them.

The Judith “forsooke us in our great myserie”, reported Hawkins, who was forced to land 96 men on the shore of New Spain; many of them were then captured and executed by the Spanish.

These actions did not hamper Drake’s career, though, and the voyage made a considerable profit.

Many Englishmen, including Drake, felt aggrieved by the defeat at San Juan de Ulúa, and in the 1570s began openly attacking Spanish shipping and territories in the Caribbean. To justify what followed, the Spanish ambassador was told that “the Spaniards had procured unto themselves that evil through their injustice towards the English”. Effectively, Drake had launched on a career as a pirate – though from 1572, when he was licensed by the English crown to attack Spanish forces and colonies, he became a privateer. That distinction between banditry and officially sanctioned action was seen to legitimise the actions of English vessels – though not, of course, to the Spanish.

Key to the success of Drake’s raids in the 1570s and 1580s was the relationship he formed with cimarrons – black people who had escaped Spanish enslavement in Panama. They gave Drake and his men invaluable intelligence about Spanish movements and defences, acted as guides, provided supplies, and fought alongside the English.

French and English pirates in the Caribbean were noted for their brutality against the Spanish. In 1571, for example, Drake commanded a small pinnace, the Swan, as part of a larger fleet and, together with French pirates, attacked settlements in Panama. When the crews of Spanish ships fought back against Drake’s vessel, he responded with extreme violence. On the same voyage, he killed the owner of a dispatch boat from Cartagena.

In 1572, Drake led a small fleet returning to the Caribbean. He joined another English pirate, James Raunse, and launched a violent night attack on Nombre de Dios in Panama. One eyewitness described how Drake’s men “began to sound trumpets in the streets and to fire artillery [from four pinnaces they had brought close into the shore] and to discharge harquebuses and arrows through the streets; and they killed some men and women, white and black, and wounded many more, in all 32 persons”.

Drake's progress: global travels of a pirate seafarer

 

Antique world map detailing Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation route, adorned with French text banners, decorative cartouches, and a small portrait medallion at the bottom

Despite their initial success here, though, the English left with little treasure, and Drake was wounded.

After that failure, Raunse went his own way and Drake decided to intercept the Spanish route along which treasure was transported overland between Panama City on the Pacific coast and Nombre de Dios on the Caribbean. So in April 1573, Drake and a French pirate, Guillaume Le Testu, together with cimarron allies, ambushed a mule train and seized some 80,000 pesos in gold, burying the silver they could not carry. Drake sailed home to England with considerable booty, and his reputation as a successful (and violent) commander was established.

English accounts of the 1572–73 voyage stressed the point that Drake treated the Spaniards civilly. He was also said to have restrained the violence of his cimarron allies, on one occasion reportedly ordering them to “never hurt any woman, nor man that had not weapon in his hand”.

On the other hand, Spanish complaints to Elizabeth listed various crimes committed by Drake and his compatriots, and stated that he had “proclaimed war on behalf of the Queen of England”. They noted his harshness – for example, when he allegedly threw Spanish pilot Francisco Ravano into the sea because he refused to guide the English into other ports.

One Spanish source reported that Drake “has committed many other robberies, murders and injuries, concerted with the Cimarrones negroes, and with a French ship”. The Spanish king demanded that Elizabeth should punish pirates such as Drake, and should forbid her subjects from sailing to the Caribbean. The queen, however, took no action against Drake. Instead he was celebrated for his actions.

English casualties

Not every English voyage to the Caribbean returned home safely, of course. The brutal nature of raiding in the region is reflected in Spanish treatment of captured English seamen. John Noble, along with 28 of his men, was taken while raiding near Nombre de Dios in 1574. The Spanish executed Noble and all of his men, sparing only two boys who were condemned to work as galley slaves.

John Oxenham, who had previously served with Drake, sailed from Plymouth to the coast of Panama in 1576, with a crew of 57 men. Initially, they enjoyed great success, plundering the Pearl Islands, but the Spanish sent out a strong force to hunt down Oxenham’s ship. Much of the loot was recovered by the Spanish, and most of Oxenham’s men were killed or captured; Oxenham himself was executed in Lima in 1580.

Queen Elizabeth and leading courtiers backed Drake’s expedition to South America

In his deposition to his Spanish captors, he stated that he had no permission from the queen for his actions, but that anyone who wanted to sail on such a voyage could “depart out of England without there being required more licence than their will to go”.

Francis Drake’s pirate life

Having gained plenty of experience from his earlier adventures, by 1577 Drake was ready for a bigger challenge: to raid Spanish settlements on the Pacific coast of South America. Relations between England and Spain had continued to deteriorate, and Queen Elizabeth and leading courtiers willingly backed the expedition.

On the voyage, Drake told a Spanish captive that “he carried a letter from the Queen of England to plunder on her account, and that whatever he got more was for her”. He also blamed King Philip II for denying English merchants permission to trade in his territories, noting that “if the King of Spain would not give them leave to trade, paying him his dues, they would come and carry away the silver”.

Historical engraving depicting an Indigenous leader placing a feathered crown on a European colonizer or explorer, surrounded by crowds of Indigenous onlookers and armed European soldiers near a coastline

A 17th-century engraving imagines Native Americans ‘crowning’ Drake in the land he claimed for Elizabeth I as Nova Albion in 1579 | Credit: Royal Museums Greenwich

Before the expedition left Plymouth, to avoid suspicion it was publicly declared that it intended to sail to Alexandria in Egypt to trade. Instead, the fleet – led by Drake aboard the Pelican (later renamed the Golden Hind) – sailed south to the Cape Verde islands and Argentina, then passed through the Strait of Magellan into the Pacific.

Now heading north along the west coast of South America, the English vessels attacked Spanish settlements and shipping; at Valparaíso in Chile, Drake took a vessel carrying 200,000 pesos in gold.

In March 1579, Drake’s crew seized the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción – nicknamed the Cacafuego (‘Shitfire’) – with a cargo of 362,000 pesos in gold and silver, the richest prize seized on the voyage.

Drake also landed on the coast of North America, possibly near San Francisco or in Baja California, claiming the region for Elizabeth and naming it Nova Albion (New England).

Long way home

Importantly, he also captured two Spanish pilots and charts for the sea route taken by the Spanish Manila galleons between the Philippines and New Spain. Instead of running the gauntlet of Spanish forces that would face the expedition if it retraced its route home around South America, Drake was able to sail across the Pacific.

After facing many dangers, including running aground on a reef, the Golden Hind arrived back in Plymouth in September 1580.

Illustrated map

A map of Santo Domingo, Hispaniola, from an account of Drake’s Caribbean foray of 1585–86 when he captured that Spanish colony | Credit: Getty Images

Drake’s voyage around the globe – the first by an Englishman, in only the second vessel to complete such a journey (the first being the Victoria from Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition in 1522) – was a significant feat of navigation. It showcased Drake’s skill as a sailor and captain, as well as his ruthless nature.

From the outset, Drake regarded the expedition as one of reprisal; Elizabeth reportedly said to him that she wanted to be “revenged on the King of Spain, for divers injuries that I have received”

Drake’s hard-nosed attitude extended to the men under his command. He suppressed a suspected mutiny by trying and executing Thomas Doughty, one of the gentlemen officers in the fleet, for treason in July 1578.

When the crews of Spanish ships fought back, Francis Drake responded with extreme violence

Drake also fell out with Francis Fletcher, his ship’s chaplain, and as punishment ordered him to be “excommunicated” – to live with the ordinary sailors and to wear an inscription around his neck that called him “the falsest knave that liveth”.

English accounts of the circumnavigation claimed that the Spaniards Drake encountered received fair treatment. Some Spanish prisoners also reported that he gave them gifts and entertained them with displays of his power and wealth. One described the style in which Drake lived aboard his ship, with fine clothes and food, and how he “was held in great reverence by his people, that he had a guard, and that when he ate, trumpets and clarions were sounded”.

Such accounts sound suspiciously like propaganda. Drake certainly used violence against the Spanish and Portuguese ships he encountered in his search for plunder. One statement by a Spanish sailor described how “the captain, Francis, had taken and burned a ship at Arica, and that at Callao de Lima he had boarded Miguel Angel’s vessel and others, looking for plunder, and had found none, and had cut the vessels’ cables; and that about Callao he had plundered the ship of Patagalana and slain the crew”.

Historical illuminated engraving depicting Sir Francis Drake in full armor standing by barrels and cannonballs on a shore, while sailors unload cargo from a wooden ship beside panels of German text

An illustrated c1580s broadside celebrates Drake’s campaign against the Spanish. Both he and Queen Elizabeth profited handsomely from the plunder he brought home | Credit: Bridgeman

Drake also warned a Spanish viceroy that he would slaughter Spaniards in retaliation if they killed any English prisoners they held.

Casual brutality was a feature of the expedition. Drake is described as taking a “negro wench called Maria” from a captured ship, a woman who “was afterward gotten with child between the captaine and his men pirats”. She and two male slaves were later callously abandoned on an island.

On Drake’s return to England, the Spanish government demanded that he should be punished, and restitution made of the goods he seized. He wasn’t, and it wasn’t. No accurate record exists for the vast treasure Drake brought home. In order to hamper Spanish attempts to reclaim goods seized, he and the queen decided not to make an official inventory. But it’s certain that the original investors and the queen profited handsomely from their investment.

Rich rewards

Drake reaped considerable rewards from the circumnavigation. He took at least £10,000 for himself, and purchased Buckland Abbey in Devon. In April 1581, when the queen visited the Golden Hind, Drake received a knighthood for his services. (Though many depictions of this event show Elizabeth knighting him with a sword, in reality the queen requested that the French ambassador did it.)

Plymouth honoured Drake by appointing him as mayor in September 1581; he also served as an MP. The Spanish continued to view him as a threat and, in May 1582, Philip II reportedly offered 20,000 ducats for his head.

Together, Drake’s circumnavigation and his earlier exploits in the Caribbean enhanced his reputation as a skilled officer, and were key factors in his advancement as open war broke out with Spain in 1585. He played a key role in the destruction of the Spanish ships at Cádiz in 1587, and in the defeat of the Armada in 1588.

Drake and Hawkins both died on a 1595–96 raid to the West Indies, the former perishing from dysentery on 27 January 1596 in Porto Bello (now Portobelo), Panama.

He is best remembered today as a naval hero and navigator, respected for the circumnavigation and Armada campaign. Yet his early career reveals how, underpinning those achievements, lay a violent ruthlessness – a drive to win at all costs.

Elaine Murphy is professor of maritime history at the University of Plymouth

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This article was first published in the November 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine

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