Drake’s ship has come in, and it’s a quite a sight.

After striding the oaken decks, peering into the master cabin that contains a mannequin of Sir Francis Drake himself, and making their way through the dusky gun deck with its cannon and powder kegs, people seem to have one overriding reaction to the Golden Hinde:

How could as many as 80 seamen have sailed around the world more than 400 years ago in a primitive wooden vessel that is 102 feet long and 20 feet wide? Today’s pleasure craft are from 25 to 40 feet long and 10 feet wide.

“I don’t know how they withstood cabin fever. It certainly would not have been pleasant,” said Hub O’Brien of San Pedro, who was visiting the ship. Henry Thedinga of Monrovia said the crew “must have been hunchbacks” to get around on the lower decks, where even short people must stoop.

Somberly black with red trim and a maze of rigging, the three-masted Golden Hinde--a replica of Drake’s ship--is a trip back to the sailing days of England’s Queen Elizabeth I, when Drake and other sea captains were filling the queen’s treasury with pirated Spanish gold and jewelry and laying claim to a future empire.

During a nearly three-year voyage around the world, Drake landed on the California coast in 1579 in the general vicinity of San Francisco (the exact spot is unknown) and claimed the territory for England. The English never pursued his claim and it became part of the Spanish empire.

The Golden Hinde’s pegged decks are well-worn, its dark wood gleams with varnish, flags fly, ropes are carefully wound and stowed, and everything smells vaguely of tar, which is used throughout the ship as a preservative. With only a little imagination, one can visualize Drake, kneeling on deck before the door of his cabin, as he is knighted for his deeds by a grateful monarch.

Bringing history to life is what the Golden Hinde is all about, according to Sue Quinn, spokeswoman for the British company that owns the ship and is sailing it on a remarkable, snail’s pace odyssey along the entire United States coastline that will end in 1991. It will be in San Pedro until the end of June, then will make stops at Marina del Rey and Long Beach.

“We want to make people aware of where they came from, what it was like,” said Quinn, dressed in Elizabethan garb as were other crew members (except when they don standard California shorts and T-shirts to do maintenance work). “For children, history comes alive. They can reach out and touch it.”

The original Golden Hinde lay berthed for about 100 years near London as a memorial to Drake’s voyage, but it rotted and the remains became souvenirs.

The $2-million replica was built for a group of San Francisco businessmen and was sailed there in 1973, where it remained to mark the 400th anniversary of Drake’s landing. As in Drake’s time, the ship went around the world, was used in a movie, and then returned to England. It was later purchased by the present owners, the Golden Hinde Ltd.

Although no one knows exactly what Drake’s ship looked like, and there are no existing blueprints, the replica is as exact as possible--the result of studying Elizabethan accounts of Drake, his ship and the voyage, as well as engravings of 16th-Century ships.

“This ship was handmade, as it would have been in Drake’s time,” Quinn said. “The only difference is that cranes were used to lift the masts.”

It is authentic down to a pair of deck posts with carved knights’ heads to ward off evil spirits and a replica of Drake’s drum, which, legend says, beats whenever England is in danger. The last time it supposedly was heard was during the World War II Dunkirk evacuation.

Echoing the comments of some of the visitors, Quinn said life aboard ship in Drake’s time was crowded, rough and pungent since bathing had not yet become a custom.

“The majority of them slept with the cannons, powder and the animals that were kept for food,” she said. Food was Spartan, without any fresh vegetables. The superstitious seamen feared the sea and knew very little of the Earth’s geography.

Drake and the other officers on board had a better time of it, enjoying their own Great Cabin, as it is called, with an ornate oak table where they drank and played backgammon as the queen gazed down in a portrait. Outside is a narrow balcony, with a slatted deck that served as a convenient latrine.

But regardless of rank, everyone had to endure the pitch and roll of storms, something that has not spared the present-day crew either.

Quinn recalls a gale off the Santa Cruz coast: “I was holding on and I looked back and saw a wave 25 feet high. I don’t know how we got through that.”

If the Golden Hinde is a living museum for visitors, it is a lark for the youthful American crew of about 20 that sails her. They include students taking a break from books and people who have left jobs for a few months of adventure at $75 a week plus board.

Rusty Kaufman, 27, said he was in college in Shasta County when he heard the ship was looking for crew. He learned in record time about being an Elizabethan sailor.

“I went aloft the third day,” he said with a nervous laugh. “I didn’t expect to do it so soon.”