The Queen’s half share in the profits of the Golden Hind’s circumnavigation of the world, amounted to more than her normal annual income. So it is no wonder she knighted the Captain, Sir Francis Drake. The ceremony took place in the dock in what is now South East London at Deptford.
The Spanish were furious that a Pirate should be so honoured. The Queen may have given a French man the honour of dubbing Sir Francis. She did this, perhaps to encourage the French to support the English against the Spanish?
The annual Royal Income for King Charles III is £86.3 million. This is paid in the Sovereign’s Grant. It gives you an idea of Drake’s booty. But I imagine she had a greater share of the nation’s wealth than Charles, as she was the Government not just a honorific cutter of ribbons.
Francis Drake. Hero or Bloodthirsty Pirate?
Francis Drake was one of the British heroes I read about as a child. I had a thick book with stories about people King Alfred the Great, Hereward the Wake, Robin Hood, Drake, Charles II, Bonny Prince Charlie, Flora MacDonald, Florence Nightingale, David Livingstone etc. Some of them horrifically Imperialist and racist!
Drake is remembered for being the first English person to sail around the world. And his exploits in ‘singeing the beard of the King of Spain’ on his piratical raids on the Spanish Main.
In the books I read, the Spanish were the bad guys, and we were on the side of the Angels. Drake was one of the swash-buckling heroes who turned Britain from a not very important country on the edge of Europe, to one of the World’s Great Powers.
On the other hand, he was also a pioneer of the Slave Trade, was involved in atrocities in Ireland and in the Spanish Territories. He summarily executed one of his crew in dubious circumstances. Perhaps more significantly, his contemporaries did not entirely trust him.
Francis Drake and the Spanish Armada
As the Spanish Armada sailed along the southern coast of England, the English Navy sniped at the heels of the Spanish ships. Drake was tasked with leading the nighttime harrying of the Armada up the Channel. The idea was to stop them landing and to drive them away and into the hostile waters of the North Sea. Drake in the Revenge was leading the pursuit, and the other ships were told to follow. He was to keep a single lantern alight in the stern of his ship. But the Lantern went out, and the British pursuit was disrupted.
The next morning, Drake comes back having captured the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora del Rosario, flagship of Admiral Pedro de Valdés. The ship contained the gold to pay the Spanish Armada, which Drake seized. Was this a fortuitous accident which rebounded to Drake’s considerable financial advantage or something more deliberate?
In the end, the lantern incident did not stop the British forcing the Spanish to flee around the North of Scotland. On this perilous voyage only about 60 of their ships returned to Spain out of about 130. And Britain was saved from the Spanish Armada.
Nuestra Señora del Rosario and Agatha Christie
I used to lead an Agatha Christie program which included a visit to Torre Abbey in Devon. And it was here that the Spanish ship’s crew were imprisoned after Francis Drake took the ship.
The Abbey was a Premonstratensian Abbey. Its tithe barn was used to hold the prisoners of war from the ship of whom there were 397.
Sir John Gilbert, who was Sheriff of Devon at the time, used 160 Spanish Prisoners of War to develop his estate above the River Dart. The Estate is in a magnificent position, overlooking the drowned valley of the Dart. It is now enjoyed by those millions of visitors to what became the summer home of Agatha Christie (Greenway). The Poison Garden in the Garden of the Abbey is themed around poisons used in Agatha Christie’s books.
The Golden Hind & Deptford
Queen Elizabeth I decided that the Golden Hind should be permanently docked in Deptford. So the ship was placed in a ‘dry’ dock filled with soil. The ship decayed and by 1660 nothing much was left.
I remember as a young archaeologist that some of our team took time out to work with Peter Marsden. He is one of the great experts in Naval archaeology, and he led a search to find Drake’s ship. There was a huge fanfare in the London newspapers. ‘Find the Hind’ I think must have been the hopeful Headlines. But, rather embarrassingly, given the build up, they failed to find anything of significance.
Further exploratory excavations took place in 2012, with no greater success.
Golden Hind souvenirs
The Keeper of the Naval Stores at Deptford made chairs from the ruins of Drake’s ship, and one of them is on display at the Divinity Hall, Oxford.
Sir Francis Drake and Middle Temple Hall
In London, Sir Francis Drake visited Middle Temple Hall, off of Fleet St regularly. A table (called the cupboard) is reputedly made from the hatch cover of the Golden Hind. This is where the newly qualified barristers stood to have their registration entered into the Inn’s books. Sadly, it did not survive the bombing of 1941.
The lantern which hung in the entrance Hall allegedly came from the ship’s poop deck (so not the one he failed to keep lit!). Other famous mariners associated with the Middle Temple include Sir Martin Frobisher and Sir Walter Raleigh. Shakespeare’s company performed Twelfth Night in the Middle Temple Hall
https://www.middletemple.org.uk/about-us/history/elizabethan-and-jacobean-times
On this day
The Romans celebrated the Great Mother, the Cybele in the festival of the Megalesia. To celebrate bringing a meteorite of Cybele to her temple in Rome in 204BC. Celebrated by the Games of the Great Mother
1660 – Declaration of Breda by King Charles II promises a general pardon to all royalists and opponents of the monarchy for crimes committed during the English Civil War. Excluded were the Regicides who signed Charles I’s death warrant.
1814 – Napoleon abdicated and on April 11 ordered into exile in Elbe.
1949 Twelve nations sign the North Atlantic Treaty creating NATO. They were the Western Union – ( France, UK, Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg) and the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland
1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee
First published 2024, revised 2025, On This Day added 2026