Original subtitles

[Narrator] For centuries,

pirates have terrorized the oceans--

looting ships,

seizing captives,

pillaging settlements--

men and women out for blood and riches,

striking fear into the hearts of entire populations.

[Expert 1] Piracy is thievery on the high seas.

[Expert 2] We've really romanticized the pirate life.

[Expert 3] Almost no one in human history

self-identifies as a pirate.

[Narrator] Were they skilled seamen loyal to their crews

or savage criminals ready to kill for their treasure?

[Expert 3] They all had reasons to justify their behavior.

They all had arguments for why what they were doing was okay.

[swords clanging]

[Expert 1] It's often a matter of perspective.

[Narrator] Perhaps no other historical figure

is more famous for treading this murky line

than Sir Francis Drake,

a man who inspired generations

to take to the sea seeking their fortunes.

[Expert 3] Sir Francis Drake could be perceived

as the ultimate English pirate.

Any Englishman who performed an act of sea marauding,

they saw him as a hero, as a model.

[Narrator] The first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe,

he earned a knighthood from his queen

and a place in English high society.

Drake's time at sea revealed his true character

as a power hungry ruthless pirate.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

[Expert 3] Francis Drake grew up in Plymouth,

which is in the West Country of England.

He would have been surrounded by sailors and sailing culture.

[Narrator] Having already spent years of his life at sea,

Francis Drake sets sail for West Africa

under the command of his wealthy cousin, John Hawkins,

an experienced captain who built his fortune

in a most sinister industry.

Hawkins was an early profiteer

of the transatlantic slave trade.

[Mark Hanna] Piracy has an interesting relationship

with the history of the slave trade.

The first slave traders were, in fact, pirates.

In many ways, the slave trade itself

was associated with piracy.

Sir John Hawkins, Drake's cousin,

was one of England's first slave traders.

[Harcourt Fuller] In the late 15th century

and then into the 16th century,

the Spanish controlled

the transportation of enslaved Africans to the Americas.

They were the dominant power,

and essentially the Spanish forebode other European powers

from trading in their territories.

Peru, Mexico, Cuba, all of these places

had enslaved Africans that were the driving forces

of the economies in precious metals,

plantation commodities, et cetera.

[Narrator] Drake and Hawkins arrive on the coast

of Sierra Leone with six ships bustling with 100 men,

determined to loosen Spain's grip

on the lucrative transatlantic slave trade.

♪ ♪

[Richard Blakemore] They raid villages.

They also ally with local African rulers

who are involved in warfare

because most enslaved people

are prisoners of war at this time.

And they do carry large numbers of enslaved people

over to the Americas,

and they try to force Spanish ports to trade with them,

even though this is against the rules of the Spanish Empire.

[Narrator] Spanish colonies across the New World

are making great sums of money

off the vast number of enslaved laborers

being transported from African countries.

Under King Philip II's law,

it's illegal for Spanish merchants

to trade with the English,

but when Hawkins and Drake reach the New World,

they care little for Philip's rules.

By threatening Spanish traders,

they force the sale of their captives.

[Craig Lambert] Hawkins is buying for 2 pound

in West Africa and selling for 22 pound in the New World,

which is significantly undercutting

the Spanish merchants.

[Narrator] September 1568.

Drake has been given command of his own ship

in Hawkins' convoy,

and the duo are hoping to land one of their biggest sales yet

at the Spanish port of San Juan de Ulúa.

But whilst attempting to barter their goods

and trade enslaved people,

Drake and Hawkins are interrupted

by the sudden arrival of a Spanish fleet.

[Lambert] There's a standoff between the two fleets,

and they come to a decision

that Hawkins will be allowed to leave.

However, later on, the Spanish fleet

attacks the English at night.

Drake is on one of the other English ships,

and he sees this happening.

Hawkins' fleet is in trouble

because it's bottled into the harbor.

And rather than helping Hawkins stand and fight

against the Spanish,

Drake turned around and heads back for England.

♪ ♪

It's an interesting reflection, I think, on Drake's character

in that he's got steely determination,

he's very ambitious.

He's also quite willing to, to ditch friends

when he thinks it's right to do so.

[Narrator] Drake races home to Plymouth.

Hawkins, however, isn't captured or killed

in the skirmish.

A sudden shift of wind blows the Spanish fleet

off course, allowing his escape.

Hawkins washes up on English soil some weeks later,

furious, accusing Drake of abandoning him.

Their voyage has been a disaster,

and it puts an end to English involvement

in the slave trade for the next century.

The cousins' once-lucrative partnership is terminated.

[Fuller] He escaped with his life,

but he was humiliated.

That incident really made him hate the Spanish,

and he vowed that he would dedicate his life

to harassing them, destroying them, and breaking them down

so that he could build up England for Queen Elizabeth I.

[Narrator] But Spain is a formidable adversary

for the upstart captain.

King Philip II controls the mightiest empire in the world,

encompassing Spain itself,

the Netherlands,

parts of Italy,

and vast territories of the Americas.

Spain's unmatched wealth stems from the millions of pounds

of silver extracted from the mines of the New World,

attracting the envy of every monarch in Europe,

including Queen Elizabeth.

Their rivalry is further stoked by a difference in faith.

Elizabeth is Protestant. Philip is Catholic.

[Iszi Lawrence] Queen Elizabeth was in a world of trouble

geopolitically

because Britain was under constant threat of invasion.

Spain wanted to stamp out Protestants.

All of this made Spain an existential threat.

[Lambert] But Elizabeth doesn't want a full-scale war with Spain

because A, she can't afford that

and B, it's gonna be very dangerous for her.

But increasingly, she wants to attack Spain,

where it might hurt, to take the war

to Spain's overseas territories.

[Lawrence] She needed men who were capable

of stopping the Spanish from expanding further.

[Narrator] The Crown then takes a cut of any plunder.

Hawkins is amongst those whose actions against the Spanish

are, to the English queen, legitimate.

[Blakemore] There's a big debate.

The Spanish don't consider this legal at all.

[Mélanie Lamotte] The view of Queen Elizabeth I,

she didn't care much

about what the Spaniards were saying.

She saw it as a way to enrich England

and then to attack enemy vessels.

[Blakemore] So all of these raiders are not actually

formally at war with Spain, but they're pursuing it

under this legal instrument called letters of reprisal.

[Hanna] These men became known as the Sea Dogs.

And they weren't openly supported by Elizabeth,

but she also didn't openly condemn them.

In some ways, she wanted to maintain some deniability

in the face of potential Spanish reprisal.

[Narrator] Drake readies himself for another expedition,

preparing to attack Spanish ports in the New World,

but since parting with Hawkins,

he's no longer protected by a letter of reprisal.

Any assault by Drake on the Spanish

will be considered an act of piracy.

However, behind closed doors, Queen Elizabeth seems

quietly supportive of Drake's ambitions.

[Blakemore] The rules around piracy were evolving

at this time.

Drake claims that he's carrying out revenge

for the attacks that the Spanish Empire mounted on him.

And it's not entirely clear if he has a just cause,

which he claims to have, then that pushes him

into this sort of slightly murky category of legal raider,

which is less clear-cut than being a pirate.

But from the Spanish point of view,

he's definitely a corsario, a pirata, a pirate.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] For Drake, any Spanish target is legitimate.

He sets his sights on the port of Nombre de Dios

on the isthmus of Panama,

a major artery in the movement of Spanish silver.

[Blakemore] It's a crucial node in the Spanish silver route.

So silver being mined in Peru

is brought up the west coast of the Americas to Panama...

...carried across to Nombre de Dios,

and then shipped from there to Spain.

[Hannah Cusworth] Nombre de Dios

is an incredibly attractive place to raid

because of the fact that for such an important place,

it wasn't very well protected.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] Drake slips into the port...

...where he discovers the treasury lies vulnerable.

It's time to strike.

[Narrator] Acting with speed, Drake and his crew

dismantle the town's defenses,

but it's too late; the alarm is raised.

In the melee, a shot slams through Drake's leg.

But he's lucky, merely injured,

forced to retreat, escaping with his life.

Drake survives to fight another day.

But he now realizes that he requires greater manpower

and local knowledge if dangerous raids

of this ambition are to succeed.

Fortunately, a multilingual sailor known only as Diego

has recently joined his crew.

[Cusworth] The likelihood is Diego came from a region

known as Senegambia in West Africa.

Diego had been enslaved in the household

of the captain of Nombre de Dios,

and we get the sense that he wanted to seek freedom

in some way.

There was a sense going around,

whispers in the Atlantic world at this time,

that England was somewhere that didn't do slavery,

and that if you then stepped onto English soil,

you would become a free man.

Not that much longer after Drake, that completely changes.

Diego was so central to Drake being able to do this raid

on Nombre de Dios by easing that path, being eyes on the ground,

someone who had really good local knowledge,

which Drake wouldn't necessarily have had.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] Another direct attack on Nombre de Dios

is out of the question,

so Diego approaches a group of people who are living quietly

in the Panamanian hinterlands-- the Cimaroons.

[Cusworth] The Cimaroons are a group of Africans

who had previously been enslaved by the Spanish

and had been able to escape.

[Fuller] These were formerly enslaved people

that had escaped from the plantations,

and they hid themselves in inhospitable territory,

so we're talking about mountains and forests.

[Cusworth] They set up their own communities being able to live

a lot more by their own rules in a state of freedom.

For understandable reasons, they hated the Spanish.

[Narrator] Drake manipulates that hatred

to forge an alliance with the Cimaroons.

They provide him with invaluable intelligence

covering the movement of Spanish silver,

including news of a mule train,

picking its way through the Panamanian forests,

laden with a fortune in precious metal.

[Lawrence] There are weaknesses in this chain.

You've got to get your silver from the mines to the ports,

and it's 12 days through the jungle,

the mules packed up with this precious metal,

and you better hope that nobody attacks

before your big battleships can come and defend you.

[Narrator] Drake and his crew trek through the jungle

to a point just south of Nombre de Dios,

where they lay in wait for the train.

[Lambert] Drake and the others set an ambush,

so they divide the forces in two.

Drake goes on the eastern side of Nombre de Dios

a few kilometers away, and they wait for the mule train.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] Drake and his allies spring the trap.

Spanish guards put up a fierce resistance,

but Drake overwhelms them.

The surviving Spaniards flee into the jungle.

[Lambert] This time, it's a really great success.

Drake just takes the silver bars and clears off.

[Narrator] Drake and his crew drag the silver

across 18 miles of jungle.

Their heist has been so successful

that they are unable to haul all of the heavy treasure

back to their boats.

And so the men bury it.

They carefully draw up a map

so that one day the silver can be reclaimed.

[Lambert] This is where the treasure map originates

because legends grow up that Drake never went back

to collect all these bars of silver, and therefore,

there's potential that they might be there.

[Narrator] So begins one of the most enduring

and seductive myths around Drake, the map,

and the silver, which has never been found.

Generations of future seafarers will pass on tales of plunder

buried in the Panamanian jungle,

Drake's map providing the catalyst for hundreds of years

of legends of fearsome pirates and their hidden treasure.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] August 1, 1573.

Drake returns to England a hero and fabulously wealthy.

[Blakemore] When they came back with the plunder,

the queen probably wasn't going to quibble

over how they got it, so when Drake returns,

she takes a cut.

[Lambert] Elizabeth quite likes him.

He's effectively a useful tool.

But Elizabeth was liked to be charmed

by quite a lot of people.

The favors slip in and out of the nexus quite quickly.

But there is certainly a connection

that he did have at times with, with Elizabeth.

So Drake is now the man at the forefront, the hero.

[Blakemore] When Drake was on the isthmus of Panama,

he supposedly sees the Pacific Ocean

for the first time,

and this awakes in him an ambition to reach that ocean.

It's also part of Spain's global silver networks

because a lot of the silver from the Americas

is being shipped to Manila and to China for trade there.

And this is much less protected

because it's much less accessible than the Caribbean.

So this is probably where Drake's plan comes from,

the knowledge that there is money to be made

in these vulnerable shipping routes

along the west coast of America.

[Narrator] Drake begins planning what he hopes

will be the greatest voyage in his nation's history--

an illicit assault on the unguarded Spanish towns

on the west coast of the Americas.

But fearing that few would enlist

if they knew the dangers and duration of the expedition,

Drake conceals his true plans.

Without a letter of reprisal,

they'll all be committing piracy.

Instead, he boasts of a short voyage with easy plunder.

[Lambert] Seafarers actually do have a reputation in this period

as being seen as itinerant drunks.

So this idea that they're moving from place to place

and they don't have a set home

creates an image of them that they're an unruly bunch.

[Hanna] If you're someone who grew up

in the same Plymouth along the coast

and you were part of a fishing family,

that might be all you're ever going to do

for the rest of your life

and always be sort of living hand to mouth.

And so the idea that you could go on a voyage like Drake's

could mean a change of your entire existence.

You and your family could be set for the rest of your life.

[Narrator] Drake assembles a crew of 164 men

from across every sector of English society,

a solid mixture of sailors, soldiers, apprentices,

and even a dozen gentlemen.

[Cusworth] Pirate crews were more multiracial

than I think we previously assumed.

In England, we have records of African people being paid wages.

And so not all people who were in England at this time

who were Black were enslaved, very far from it.

[Narrator] Forever pious, Drake also recruits a preacher

to offer God's message to his men

and hires musicians to accompany them

in the daily singing of psalms.

[Blakemore] And often we find sailors sailing

with the same captains over multiple voyages,

and that's happening with Drake as well.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] December 1577.

Drake sets sail, bound for waters unknown,

guided by his dogmatic faith

and the promise of loot beyond compare.

But the challenges of this epic expedition

will be far greater than he could ever have imagined.

At the head of Drake's fleet

sails a galleon known as the Pelican,

later renamed the Golden Hind.

Measuring 80 feet from bow to stern,

she carries 22 guns and a crew of 80 men.

Her speed would give Drake a distinct advantage

when confronting larger, less nimble Spanish trading ships.

[Blakemore] Francis Drake and other raiders like him

want fast ships,

they want maneuverable ships,

and these are the kind of

vessels that they are using.

They've a fairly substantial

size and quite well-armed.

But they're not as big as the enormous Spanish galleons

that they're targeting.

[Narrator] Following two months at sea,

the fleet arrive at Cape Verde

and immediately attack a Portuguese vessel.

Drake forces the ship's navigator to join his crew,

bringing rare charts of the Pacific with him.

The information is priceless.

Whilst maps of the New World were riddled with inaccuracies,

they nevertheless provided a basic sense of lands

little known to the English captain and his men.

[Blakemore] The Spanish and Portuguese empires

really tried to control navigational knowledge

because it was so valuable, so maps of the Americas

were tightly regulated in the early period

of the Spanish and Portuguese empires.

[Narrator] Drake makes a decision.

They'll sail west from Cape Verde,

hitting South America and pushing south,

where they will face

the treacherous Straits of Magellan.

But it's going to take them

several months to cross the Atlantic.

Having risen through the ranks himself,

Drake knows that the success of the voyage

depends on the morale of his crew.

Even as captain, he joins in on the rougher tasks of seafaring.

[Lambert] Conditions are very cramped.

Mariners would sleep either on the main deck or below.

It's extremely wet.

They would only usually have one pair of clothing,

so the clothing gets caked in salt quite easily.

[Blakemore] Ships are fragile. They are perishable.

Wood rots. Rope decays and frays.

Part of the life of sailors is continually repairing

these ships simply to keep them afloat.

And it makes you think about the amount of effort

that goes into these really long voyages over months and years.

[Lambert] Food is rudimentary.

You would have ship's biscuit, a hard kind of tack.

The hunt for fresh water is a perennial problem

that they're always trying to solve.

[Blakemore] We think about the kind of grimness

and the hardship of these voyages,

and that's absolutely true, but there's also

a really important dimension of community.

[Lambert] There's probably gambling activities

and things like that occurring on board these ships.

Wills will say, you know,

you must pay this person the money I owe him.

♪ ♪

[Blakemore] He clearly cares deeply

for the men under his command.

For example, we know that very few sailors

die of scurvy or sickness during his voyages,

which is quite unusual at the time,

so he's clearly taking measures

to protect the people serving with him.

He is motivating the sailors who are joining him.

The men do get a share of the plunder,

perhaps not as much as he got himself,

but certainly he seems to be rewarding them.

But he's also not hesitating to be brutal

when he feels that the circumstances demand it.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] As the expedition drags on into the unknown,

the ships pushing ever further south,

the crew begin to suspect Drake has deliberately misled them.

This will be a far lengthier voyage

than they had expected or been promised.

Some men begin to openly complain;

others conspire in secret.

The most vocal among them is Thomas Doughty,

Drake's second-in-command.

[Lambert] Doughty's a gentleman,

so Drake sees him as a challenge to his authority.

And this is a real issue for Drake.

He has a paranoia.

[Blakemore] Thomas Doughty seems to think

that he's sharing command with Drake.

That's not how Drake sees it.

He, first of all, moves Doughty to a less important ship,

and then he puts him on trial for treason.

[Narrator] Drake knows he cannot afford

to be witnessed tolerating disobedience.

He must secure his position as captain.

Having carefully selected a jury,

Drake ruthlessly prosecutes the case against his former friend.

♪ ♪

[shouting]

[Lambert] The crew was scared of Drake.

[shouting]

Every voyage that he goes on,

he identifies a particular individual

who he has to discipline to the crew.

[Narrator] The crew fall in line behind Drake.

No one on the jury dares vote against him,

and Doughty is found guilty by unanimous consent.

Given his high status as a gentleman,

Doughty enjoys the cruel luxury of a beheading,

rather than being hanged like a common criminal.

[Narrator] With renewed confidence

in their captain's total authority asserted,

Drake's crew are poised to become

the first ever Englishmen to sail into the Pacific Ocean.

But before making history,

he must face the notorious Magellan Strait,

a 350-mile waterway punctuated by lethal currents,

violent winds, and jagged coastline.

Drake's fleet presses on.

[Lambert] They suffered quite badly.

It was freezing cold. There were storms.

They had to survive by killing penguins down there

and eating penguin meat.

The fleet got separated and broken up.

It wasn't a pleasant trip.

[Narrator] And the worst is yet to come.

The Pacific welcomes Drake by unleashing a vicious storm,

relentlessly pounding his boats for 50 days.

One ship is sunk. Everyone on board drowns.

Another abandons the voyage and returns to England.

Only Drake's flagship, the Golden Hind,

and its small crew remain.

[Blakemore] It's very difficult to sail that route,

and things are looking pretty hairy

by the time they reach South America.

But the Spanish Empire there is really not prepared

for the arrival of an English ship.

[Lambert] Spanish ships on that side of Panama, down into Chile,

on the Pacific side, they're not armed.

They don't expect someone like Drake to be there.

[Blakemore] The first thing they do on arrival is construct

more smaller vessels to help them sail around

on sort of coastal voyages as well.

So they begin to raid these major Spanish settlements

all along the coast of South America.

[Narrator] 11 perilous months

have passed since the expedition left England.

Finally, a determined Drake

works his way up the Pacific coast,

the soft underbelly of Spain's New World empire.

He strikes several towns in quick succession.

At Valparaíso, his men loot the storehouse,

making off with thousands of bottles of wine.

At La Herradura, they steal pigs

before being repelled by Spanish horsemen.

And at Arica, they pillage two ships, plundering silver.

[Lambert] Those raids follow the same pattern

as they do in the Caribbean.

They'll enter a harbor,

sometimes they'll go in, sometimes they won't,

it depends on what the defenses are like within that place.

They will usually try and capture ships

that are sat riding in the harbor.

If there's anything on them,

they'll rifle them and take things off them.

[Blakemore] He's taking prisoners who apparently

his crews are torturing to get them to reveal

where their wealth is hidden

aboard the ship that they've captured.

[Narrator] So far, the raiding has brought only modest return.

Drake has heard whispers of the riches to be discovered

aboard a treasure galleon

named Nuestra Señora de la Concepción,

but the ship proves elusive.

That is until, during their 17th arduous month at sea,

Drake spots the Concepción off the coast of Peru.

He and his men close in on their prize,

a haul large enough to finally justify their expedition.

Disguising the Golden Hind as an innocuous trading vessel,

the wily pirate tracks the Concepción until nightfall,

when he strikes.

[gunfire]

Firing a broadside into the galleon,

the Spaniards are caught unprepared,

their cannons silent.

They surrender instantly.

♪ ♪

[Lambert] It's this ship in particular that's probably

responsible for the few hundred thousand pound in money

that Drake brings back.

Several million in today's money.

In fact, they say that they captured so much

that they don't use stones as ballast anymore.

They use silver bars as ballast for the ship.

So it's a huge cache of silver

and also the precious items that Drake captures on that vessel.

[Narrator] Drake plunders rare jewels, 80 pounds of gold,

and a mountain of silver.

No Englishman has ever seized such an impressive prize.

Drake and his men will be extremely rich

if they survive the long voyage home through enemy waters.

It will be months, if not years,

before they reach safe harbor.

In that time, death could strike at any moment--

from shipwreck, battle, or disease--

and if captured by the Spanish,

Drake and every last one of his men

would be tried as pirates and face the noose.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] Drake continues to raid the coast,

eventually reaching the Mexican port of Huatulco

in April 1579.

Having seized the settlement's valuables,

Drake's gaze lands on their Catholic church.

[Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra] Drake arrived in many

of these places and began to

do destruction of religious images in churches.

Drake and his peers were often seen as heretics,

destroyers of cities,

particularly targeting their churches.

[Narrator] Drake and his crew smash crucifixes,

remove all the bells from the belfry,

and take the priest as their hostage.

Reports of this Protestant attack on the Catholic Church

turn Drake into a despised figure throughout Spain.

[Hanna] The Spanish saw him as one of the greatest enemies

that they've ever had in their entire history.

[Cañizares-Esguerra] He was known as the Dragon

of the Apocalypse,

the multiheaded dragon.

[Hanna] The Spanish put a massive ransom on his head

to sort of capture him.

[Lambert] He feared that going back across the Atlantic,

that there would be a Spanish fleet waiting for him.

[Narrator] Spanish warships are closing in.

If Drake attempts to sail east through the Magellan Strait,

the Golden Hind will almost certainly be destroyed

by an enemy fleet.

He's left with only one other option--

sail west on a long, perilous journey

across a hostile Pacific Ocean.

[Lambert] The idea slowly formulates with Drake

about making the trip across the Pacific.

So, in a sense, the circumnavigation happens

because Drake doesn't want to go back through the Atlantic.

[Narrator] July 1579.

A weather-beaten Golden Hind leaves the coves of California

and heads west into the vast unknown of the Pacific Ocean.

Drake's crew have been at sea for nearly two years.

The return journey will be longer still.

For 68 monotonous days and nights,

Drake and his men face an endless sea.

But then, finally, they spot land,

a small island in the Micronesian archipelago.

From there, the Golden Hind

picks her way through the East Indies,

crosses the Indian Ocean, and rounds the Cape of Good Hope.

At last, they're back in the familiar wash of the Atlantic.

Drake pushes for home.

The Golden Hind docks at Plymouth

on September 26, 1580.

164 men had left England,

and three tough years later,

only 59 return.

The survivors claim a feat

unlike any other Englishmen before them--

a successful circumnavigation of the globe.

[Hanna] One of the most amazing elements of the Age of Sail

is the sheer amount of risk

it took to go on one of these voyages.

And Drake's is a good example of that,

having hundreds of men on board ship when they leave,

all very excited to have the adventurous trip

and only to have dozens be alive when they return back home.

And even that is lauded as a successful voyage.

But those 59 all shared in a massive amount of wealth.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

[Blakemore] The first thing that he does

when sailing into England,

when he meets a boat coming out of England, is ask,

"Is Queen Elizabeth still alive?"

Because he's clearly worried that if she's dead

and a successor has taken over,

they might look differently on his actions,

and he might get into some serious trouble.

Luckily for him, she is alive and he is welcomed as a hero.

[Narrator] Drake deposited loot to the value

of roughly 264,000 pounds

in the vaults of the Tower of London,

a sum equivalent to $100 million today.

[Blakemore] That plunder first had to go through

a legal process, at least in theory,

and some part of it was due to the queen.

And then what was left was shared out to the suppliers

who had provided the ship, also to the captain and to the crew.

And different members of the crew got different shares

depending on their rank.

[Narrator] The queen authorized her favorite pirate

to pocket 10,000 pounds,

almost $5 million in today's money,

and to distribute a further 8,000 pounds

amongst his faithful crew.

[Blakemore] The sailors probably make years' worth of wages

in just that one voyage.

And there's a lot of concern amongst Crown officials

that actually the sailors, who are the ones on the ship,

are taking a lot of it before it even gets to the judges.

And so the Crown is continually concerned

that they are not getting their full share

because by the time they get down to the ship,

a lot of it has already been snuck away

into the taverns and the local shops

of the maritime communities.

[Narrator] Even so, the Crown's share of Drake's haul

was still greater than the queen's usual annual revenue.

[Lambert] Elizabeth is obviously happy at this,

but she doesn't want to overly publicize this

for obvious reasons, that she doesn't want

to antagonize the Spanish even more.

The narrative of the voyage is suppressed.

There's clearly sensitivity about what's happened.

[Narrator] Francis Drake proves to be a contentious figure.

Courtiers and merchants believe he has unsettled

a delicate balance of affairs across Europe.

[Blakemore] When he comes to court, some of the wealthy elite

will refuse to meet with him, refuse to take gifts from him,

refuse to encounter him

because he has this very divisive reputation.

[Narrator] Meanwhile, reports of Drake's violent excesses

at sea, his blatant acts of piracy, begin to circulate,

throwing into question his status as a hero.

[Blakemore] There's one particularly interesting example

where he and his sailors during the circumnavigation

capture several African people,

one of whom is a woman who we think was called Maria.

[Cusworth] She was heavily pregnant.

We get the sense that she probably became pregnant

on Drake's ship,

so she seems like she's in an incredibly vulnerable position

and that she might have been subject to sexual assault.

There have been a number of people who have said

that the father of Maria's child was Drake,

but there isn't anything that definitely proves that.

I think what we do know was that Drake didn't protect her.

♪ ♪

[Blakemore] They leave Maria on an island

in the Indian Ocean,

and he's probably doing that

to protect his reputation back home,

but it's actually recorded by writers at the time,

so it's clearly a rumor that's getting home somehow.

♪ ♪

[Narrator] April 1581.

Despite whispers of his betrayal of Maria,

Drake is knighted by Queen Elizabeth

on board his flagship, the Golden Hind.

A bloody career of violent piracy is legitimized,

elevating Drake into English high society.

[Blakemore] Him being knighted represents this shift

towards the image of a maritime hero.

[Lambert] The French ambassador and all the other people there,

it's a grand affair, it's very public,

and so Elizabeth is showing that she respects Drake

and that she's accepted him.

[Hanna] Not only was Drake knighted by the queen,

but he was made mayor of Plymouth.

For Drake and his own self-image,

that was actually one of the most important things

he ever achieved, as well as eventually becoming

a member of Parliament.

[Narrator] Drake's story isn't over yet.

In 1588, war breaks out between England and Spain.

Queen Elizabeth calls on Drake to serve as her vice admiral,

charged with fending off the mighty Spanish Armada,

a fighting force of 73 ships and 30,000 men.

[gunfire and swords clashing]

Drake succeeds,

defeating the Spaniards with a far smaller force.

At the age of 46, the mariner's life

has seen an incredible transformation--

from commoner, to pirate,

to a victorious commander of Queen Elizabeth's navy.

And yet as rapidly as he rises, Drake falls.

The following year, he leads a disastrous attack on Spain.

His force is violently repulsed,

with roughly 10,000 Englishmen left dead.

He drifts home to England, humiliated,

his name falling out of favor.

It's seven years until he's given another command.

August 1595.

Drake sets sail for the Caribbean

for what would become his final campaign.

[Lambert] It's a voyage that breaks down quite a bit.

There's fractious relationships between members of the crew.

But, of course, the big issue on these voyages is disease.

[Narrator] Drake's campaign disintegrates.

The Spanish ships policing the Caribbean

have grown stronger and wiser to his tactics.

Meanwhile, a fever ravages the English crew,

seizing lives on a whim,

and Drake falls ill.

January 28, 1596.

Drake dies.

He's buried at sea in a lead-lined coffin.

To this day, treasure hunters search

for Drake's final resting place,

but his remains have never been found.

Sir Francis Drake measured his success

in the ships he captured, the cities he plundered,

and the oceans whose waves he battled against.

[thunder]

[Blakemore] I think he's a very complex character,

and I think he's characteristic of the complexities of that age.

[Narrator] He transcended his bleak beginnings

through determination, great risk, and a ruthlessness

which bore little consideration for human life.

[Lambert] I think Drake is a very ambitious man

who knew exactly what he wanted.

And he did raise himself through piracy

to become an extremely wealthy individual,

to rise to the heights of the social strata.

So he's successful in that regard.

But I wouldn't trust Drake.

He was a man who looked after his own interests.

[Narrator] During his tumultuous lifetime,

he found status as a great hero to the Protestant English

and as Catholic Spain's most detested enemy

whilst also becoming the first Englishman

to successfully circumnavigate the globe.

[Cusworth] Drake's circumnavigation of the globe

was incredibly significant.

I think it showed that England was a naval force

to be reckoned with, and Britain becomes a big empire

on the basis of its naval supremacy.

[Narrator] But to truly understand Drake's legacy,

we must follow those English sailors who emerged in his wake

for generations to come.

Pirates and privateers inspired by Drake

would descend upon the Caribbean

seeking fame and fortune doing whatever they felt necessary

to seize an almost ever-elusive treasure.

[Hanna] So, in some ways, he is the most heroic

and the most anti-heroic naval figure in world history.

[Narrator] Francis Drake was dead,

but the great age of piracy had only just begun.