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The Golden Knight
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19291 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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6 / 1991 |
3,421 Words |
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Byron Farwell
Byron Farwell is the author of nine books dealing in whole or
part with Africa, including The Great Anglo-Boer War, Queen
Victoria's Little Wars, and his latest, The Great War in
Africa, 1914-1918. |
SIR FRANCIS DRAKE
John Sugden
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1990
353 pp., $29.95
Few men in all history have cut such a swashbuckling swathe through life as did Francis Drake: pirate, seaman extraordinary, astute businessman, social climber, and of the luckiest of adventures.
The exact date of his birth in Devonshire is unknown, perhaps 1538, perhaps a year or two later. He was one of a dozen sons, most of whom were sent to sea at an early age. His father taught him to read and write, and, while still a boy, he was apprenticed to the master of a coastal bark. He proved an apt pupil, learning about tides and currents, how to navigate by the sun and stars, and the management of the small ship in all weathers.
About 1564 he was employed by William and John Hawkins, prosperous shipowners and kinsmen, for whom he made several voyages to Spain. Then, in 1567, he took part in a major expedition to the West Indies with 408 men in six ships, two of them contributed by Queen Elizabeth. Their mission: slave raiding, piracy, and illicit trading; throughout it all, officers and crew piously prayed twice a day. Drake was ever a devout Protestant. He was also a militant one, abhorring Catholics and all the symbols of the Church of Rome. Author Sugden is skillful in explaining how intricately woven in the minds of most Elizabethans, and certainly in Drake's mind, were patriotism, piety, and profit.
It was on this first major expedition that Drake first commanded his own ship. A short young man, he was at this time "thick-set, robust and powerful, with broad shoulders and strong limbs." According to Sugden, he "never lost the common touch, he toiled at ropes with the men and dug for water with them," but he "would brook no challenge to his authority."
After his return to England, on July 4, 1569, he married Mary Newman, of whom little is known except that she lived only twelve years after the marriage and bore no children. She saw little of her husband, for he soon embarked on the first of three successful expeditions of his own to the Gulf of Mexico in 1570, 1571, and 1573.
The gold and silver that the Spanish were extracting from their colonies in western South America were sent back to Europe by being taken
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