What motivated Sir Francis Drake to circumnavigate the world

• Early life/other explorers:

  • Lived with the Hawkins family from a young age in Plymouth, Devon. They were merchants, seafarers and occasional pirates.
  • Drake showed his skill at sailing when working on ships with his cousin, John Hawkins when they sailed to the Bay of Biscay and the West African Coast.
• Early life/other explorers:

  John Hawkins began to generate significant wealth on his voyages as he broke into the lucrative Portuguese trade monopoly of enslaving

  Africans. For example, he stole 300 enslaved people from the Portuguese. He traded the enslaved Africans for leather, sugar, ginger and pearls.
• Early life/other explorers:

  • 1568: Drake set sail for the Americas with John Hawkins. Hawkins fleet suffered great damage, leading to him anchoring in San Juan de Ulúa for repairs. However, they were attacked by the Spanish and only 2 English ships escaped.
• Early life/other explorers

  • As a result of the attack at San Juan de Ulúa, the English switched to raiding Spanish colonies and piracy. Hawkins and Drake now had a hatred towards the Spanish, so this suited them well.
• Foreign relations:

  • During his 1568 voyage, Drake and his cousin John Hawkins were attacked by Spanish warships while they made repairs in the Spanish port of San Juan de Ulua. Only the 2 ships captained by Hawkins and Drake made it back to England. Drake never forgave the Spanish and became obsessed with gaining revenge against them.
• Foreign relations:

  • During an expedition to the Caribbean in 1572, Drake worked with both French privateers and Cimarrons (African communities in Panama who escaped Spanish slavery) to attack Spanish settlements and steal Spanish gold.
• Foreign relations:

  • From 1566, the Spanish attacked Dutch Protestants in the Netherlands. This damaged the English cloth trade and offended their religion. As a result, Elizabeth took a much more aggressive attitude towards Spain and one of Drake objectives was to investigate opportunities for the conquest of Spanish colonies.
• Economic:

  • John Hawkins began to grasp that much money could be made if he broke into the lucrative Portuguese trade monopoly of enslaving Africans
• Economic:

  • Attention turned in the 1570s to South America, in particular to Brazil and Peru, where there was the prospect of trade with Spanish colonies
• Economic:

  • Until 1550s England had mainly traded with Europe and their main export had been wool. It made up 75% of all business and was traded via the Netherlands
  • This important trade route collapsed when England’s enemy, Spain, attacked Dutch Protestants, damaging the English cloth trade.
• Economic:

  • Funded by the upper classes who were keen to make a quick profit, voyages were launched to find new trading routes.
• Reputation:

  • Social class also played its part in how Drake was seen, with a Spanish prisoner writing to Philip II that ‘people of quality dislike him for having risen from such a lowly family’.
• Reputation:

  • Sic parva magna’ (‘Great things from small beginnings’) was his motto. Drake wanted to impress people with the wealth he gained and the social standing he had achieved.
• Reputation:

  • Drake had the support of the Queen who showed how much she liked him by giving him permission to buy Buckland Abbey in Devon which had originally been property held under a grant from Henry VIII.
• Developments:

  • Advancements in the practical skills of navigation allowed explorers to thrive during the Elizabethan era.
• Developments:

  • Drake’s ship, the Golden Hind, was well built and had a reputation for seaworthiness.
• Developments:

  • Drake learned about rutter-making from the French expert mapmaker, Guillaume le Testu.
  • The Spanish used their own rutters as navigational aids to the West coast of America and they were treated as highly secret documents.