Drake

Fighter Seaman and Adventurer

A smallish stoutish man in Elizabethan costume

This Naval History is a continuation from: "Family Likeness"

We have to devise and use our imagination a little to put together a general picture of Sir Francis Drake, and add to it what we know about this famous seaman.

If by some miracle we were to meet him in his day we would have come across a smallish, stoutish man in Elizabethan costume, with a bright eye, ruddy cheeks and perhaps a little reddish beard; but what could he tell us?

It would depend a great deal, on the age of the Francis whom we happened to meet. If he were quite young still a boy, he would almost certainly tell us "seaman"; for this was how he began his active life. At a very tender age he was apprenticed by his father to the master of a small coastal bark that also made trips across to Zealand and France.

It was a humble start, for Drake, who grew to be a man who made his own fortune. The boy Drake was after all the son of the man who was also a Sir Francis, so he was bound to rise.

When he was a little older; say a youth of eighteen; he would probably have said: "Merchant Seaman," or possibly a "Merchant." For meanwhile his master had died, and left his little bark to his former-apprentice.

Still later came the period of undeclared war with Spain, he might have satated "trade" this covered a multitude of other activities to which very different names would now be given. As the period progressed, so did Drake.

Family Likenesses

Drakes first Pacific voyage

In 1753 Francis Drake's guide took him overland, to where he could see Spanish Ships sailing in the Pacific Ocean. When he saw the sight of the Silent Sea before him, he knelt on one knee and prayed; "Almighty God I ask your goodness to give me life and leave to sail once in an English Ship in that Sea."

Drake did sail in that sea, and it was the first English ship to sail across the Pacific Ocean. However, he was not, the first Englishman to do it, fore another did this in the Service of Spain. The famous early explorer Magellan, had sailed the gunner, "Master Andrew of Bristol" across, and around the Pacific. He never returned from his last trip and is buried somewhere on a remote Pacific island.

Drake was later sent to the Pacific to fortify the Straits of Magellan, to block Sarimento, the raider's possible return by that route. His attempt to establish a settlement in that inhospitable land ended as a tragic fiasco. He failed to find Sarimento and returned without success.

The adventurer who invested

He started his life as an "adventurer" in a private capacity, taking part in the "friendly" Take-Trade phase. But he really came to the fore during the second of "forcible" Take-Trade phase, still acting on his own.

Drake was gradually becoming an official weapon of the Crown, more and more often, and on occasions of ever-increasing importance; until he was found to emerge, whenever open war emerged. He relished the challenge and soon became the leading weapon of the Crown in the strange kind of "War-through-Trade."

What he would have called himself during this period is open to doubt; perhaps still "Merchant," or "Adventurer," or even a bit later "Privateer," or, later still, by some generalization as "Her Majesty's Servant," a description which was gradually becoming truer on a strictly time-basis, but which never became anything like completely true.

For to the last, the proportion of his life that Drake spent direct, and strictly naval, service to Her Majesty, was small; it could as easily be measured in months as in years. Towards the end of his life he might even have answered with the one word "Gentleman."

Without raising the somewhat vexed question of Drake's ancestry, we can still state without qualification that this description too would be accurate, in the sense in which he would use it.

For to an Elizabethan the word "Gentleman" was closely related with "Land-Owner," or at least the "Land-Owning Class." And Drake when he made his fortune in "trading," which brought him such pleasant dividends; invested it in the way that all other fortunate Elizabethans did-in land.

A land-owner and Parlimentarian

He may even at certain times in his career, have replied "Soldier," for on several occasions he saw something like purely land-service. And this should serve us as a timely reminder that in his day "Fighting" was still a distinctive profession which had not yet divided itself up into sub-divisions of "Sea-fighting" and "Land fighting."

Yet, somehow, we cannot help suspecting that, however he described himself, there would have been in his answer, were he boy, youth or man, some reference to the sea. For in whatever other profession he dabbled, and there were many, that of the sea was definately the preferred one.

He would not have said, "Royal Naval Officer." For that would have been impossible; there was no such thing in his day, either in name or meaning, and there wouldn't be for a good many years to come.

Such an answer would have been right enough in spirit, if wrong in fact, perhaps, especially if made at certain peak-points of his life, as when he dealt the Spaniards a sevre blow at both San Domingo and Cartagena in 1585, or "singed King Philip's beard" in 1587, or when he sheperded the Armada up the Channel in 1588, or led the "English Armarda" against Lisbon during 1589.

Another description of himself that he could not give would be "Royal Naval Reserve Officer." He could not give it because that combination of words had not the been thought-of.

There is no doubt that, could he speak the modern-day laguage, it would be the right answer. It would mean, "I am basically a seaman, though I occasionally do other things too, Like fighting, or sitting in Parliment and on Select Committiees, or I am looking after my estates, or busying myself with such municipal undertakings as bringing good water to Plymouth."

"But when my Queen and Country need me, I am always prepared, as a good Englishman and a professional seaman, to put such talents I possess at their disposal, and to fight for them on the sea for the duration that I am needed."

He was a kind of Reserve Officer

"I am always prepared to return when the need is over to some of my other activities, preferably to one of my sea-activities." Drake was, in fact, a very distinguished and faily early example of the Royal Naval Reserve Officer.

He played his part, in the process of combining Fighting and Seamanship. For he was a great "fighter" and quite a good "Seaman." He was on several occasions a champion of Seaman Fighters, compared to the claims of the more "blue-blooded" Fighters, who, as we shall soon discover, often appeared at sea.

He stood up again and again for the rights of the "seaman" side of the partnership. He fought with a great deal of success, for the idea, which underlies all modern naval custom and tradition, that the Man-in-Charge shall be a seaman as well as a fighter, and that all on board shall obey him, whether they be of the privileged "fighting" class or only a seaman.

Drake laid low Thomas Doughty

His greatest triumph was when he was pitted against Master Thomas Doughty, his own friend, on his famous voyage round the world in the "Golden Hind."

That young man, represented "Class" presige, and wealth, claiming something very much like naval superiority because he regarded himself as socially superior.

He tried to wreck the whole enterprise by setting his fellow "fighter's" against the authority of the "seaman" and Drake and his "seaman" officers. And, it is well known how Drake laid low both poor Doughty and his pretentsiousness. He had him tried and executed.

Thereafter, in the famous sermon preached to his embarrassed followers, Drake underlined the lesson of the whole wretched business, when he pronounced clearly, probably for the first time, what was to be the true relationship between Commander and Command at sea. "I must have the gentleman to haul and draw with the mariner, and the mariner with the gentleman."

Which, freely paraphrased simply means. "The man placed by Authority in command must command, whoever, he is: and nothing may stand between him and that command, least of all social considerations." This, it may safely be affirmed, enshrines the very essence of all Military discipline.

Drake was not a whole-time professional

It would be quite unrealistic to pretend that, long before the close of his career, Drake was not a magnificient Seaman Fighter, of the very stuff and spirit from which all our great naval officers of later days have sprung.

None the less, this undeniable fact must not lead us into thinking that our English evolutionary methods can be stamped on by one man, however great, into a set of revolutionary methods which is alien to us.

For all his vast potentialities, Drake was not, in his own day, what we call a Royal Naval Officer, or anything like one. He was in no sense a whole-time professional like Hawke or Nelson, Jellicoe or Cunningham.

His nearest modern counterpart, would be the brilliant R.N.R. officer who saw much hard fighting in the two World Wars, and rose high through his own excellence.

There is one big difference, however, Drake rose nearer to the top in the Elizabethan War than such a successor can rise today; The "Reserve" will always be fighting alongside the professional whole-timer of the Royal Navy, and in a sense, will be competing with him for high command; where the professional has many obvious advantages.

Drake was not so restricted, since the world knew nothing of the coming naval breed. He was up against no professional naval competition. Drake is mentioned first because he was one of the brightest firghting Seaman; there were others in varying magnitudes; who also kept on going into, and coming out of, the Crowns fighting sea-service.

They did not stay consistently in it, but all tended, to gravitate back to their original "merchant seaman" vocations. They were, the Queens "natural reserve" drawn from the sea, who would at need cheerfully leave the profession to which they had been brought up and fight for her; in theory they were, the leading R.N.R. officers of the day.

The continuation of this Naval History will be: "Ex Warrant Officers"

Drake Ex Warrant Officers

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