For God, Country and Booty : SIR FRANCIS DRAKE <i> By John Sugden (A John MacRae Book/Henry Holt: $29.95; 325 pp., illustrated) </i>
The rogues and rascals of other ages often have a piquant charm that excuses their infamous acts. Such a rogue was the great Elizabethan adventurer and seafarer, the bluff and charismatic Sir Francis Drake, who began life as a slaver and pirate under the notorious Capt. Sir John Hawkins and then sailed as his own master, a freebooter and corsair of unlimited daring and unbounded ingenuity, to bring home booty worth (in today’s currency) hundreds of millions of pounds. In the 19th Century, Drake might have been a robber baron, in the late 20th, a corporate raider, a vendor of junk bonds or an unscrupulous real-estate developer. But he was--and is--one of Britain’s greatest national heroes.
A West Country man, born about 1540, Drake was the son of a yeoman farmer of an intensely religious bent who read prayers to sailors to supplement his income and eventually was ordained a deacon. It was a time of intense religious upheaval, of pitched battles between Catholics and Protestants in England as well as on the continent. Drake, like his father, was a deeply religious man; he prescribed daily services for his crews and was likely to spend three hours a day himself in prayer if time and circumstances permitted.
John Sugden, author of “Tecumseh’s Last Stand” and a knowledgeable man in naval matters, has produced the first biography of Drake in 100 years. The admiral was always a controversial figure. There are blank passages in his life, although the literature about him is formidable. Nevertheless, Sugden does a magnificent job in organizing the often contradictory material and in sorting out irreconcilable versions of what took place.
After he served with the piratical Hawkins, Drake’s own public career began in the fall of 1567 when he led a small fleet out of Plymouth to raid the Spanish Main, a permissible goal (although Queen Elizabeth and the Spanish king, Philip II, had an uneasy truce, as Catholics the Spaniards were considered fair game--at least in Drake’s eyes). Drake set off for the Caribbean on a voyage that despite many hardships and short-term failures brought him a substantial amount of booty--gold, silver, rare gems, slaves, cloth, hides, spices and other valuables--and the respect of the Spaniards as well as of the Pope, who several times was to express his admiration of this Protestant corsair.
When he returned to Plymouth with a sizable fortune, Drake had to share the bulk of his prize with the Queen and other backers--profits of as much as 4,700% could be gained in such raids, so there was enough to please everyone.
Drake saw his raids not as acts of piracy but in another light--”Religion, even more than gold, dominated his mind,” says Sugden, “and for Drake the causes of God and England were one.” There was a human side to him: He regularly carried a small band of musicians on his voyages for entertainment; he was likely to spare enemies, even the hated Spaniards, and treat their officers like fellow gentlemen; he protected women captives from rape--all this at a time when both the English and the Spanish slaughtered captives of another faith without mercy. Drake stands out as a unique example of a humanitarian, for once he had a man’s gold and silver he could spare his life, even if the man was a Catholic.
Sugden refrains from analysis or criticism and merely lays out the facts. That Drake was a genius in certain fields is clear. He had an uncanny knack for smelling out the Spanish ship with the greatest treasure; he was a skilled leader of men (although there were always dissenters among his captains, and occasional mutinies), and he had an unerring eye for finding the safe passage through uncharted seas--making his way through the treacherous Straits of Magellan, one of the most formidable passages known to navigators, and sailing across the Pacific, first exploring the coast of then-unknown California (he anchored in San Francisco Bay, or close to it; hence the number of landmarks, streets and hotels bearing his name in the Bay Area), then sailed to Pacific island chains that promised nothing but shipwreck.
Ashore back home, Drake had an uncanny skill in amassing real estate, and in getting along with people in power. With the proceeds from his first freebooting expedition, he bought a laicized Cistercian monastery and 500 choice acres; he regularly added to his holdings, and at his death owned about two dozen prime pieces of real estate. He got himself into Parliament, and also held various minor posts in his native Devon. After the death of his first wife, a simple country woman, Drake married the young, very wealthy, extremely powerful society beauty, Elizabeth Sydenham. Little wonder that he often was called a social climber.
Sugden, I think, is at his best in his description of the Spanish Armada (built in response to the attacks on the Spanish Main by Drake and his imitators) and its subsequent defeat, displaying a masterful knowledge of naval warfare. The battle of the Armada in July, 1588--actually a series of naval encounters in the English Channel over a period of about eight days--failed to give one side or the other a clear-cut victory. However, by superior seamanship, Drake and the other captains forced the Spaniards into untenable waters or inadequate harbors; it was the weather that finally destroyed them. Drake emerged from the victory a hero--a Protestant hero.
There were always more raids on the Spanish Main for Drake (and an abortive attempt on the Iberian peninsula itself in 1589 to restore the pretender to the Portuguese throne). For a man who lived so dramatically and dangerously as Drake did, his end was ignoble. On still another freebooting expedition into the Caribbean in 1589, he contracted dysentery and after a few days of suffering died. His body was placed in a lead coffin and dropped into the water somewhere off the coast of Panama.