My favourite Privateer: Sir Francis Drake of England

Well, honoring the name of my blog, today I´m going to speak about a privateer, but first I must explain what a privateer is.

A privateer is a kind of pirate with a golden age in the age of the sail, or the age of discovery: When the european potences conquest and stablished colonies on all America and The Caribbean.

At difference of the pirates, the privateers were sailors loyal to a crown or countrie, they ransacked and sunk ships like other pirates, but only the ships or towns of their crown´s enemies. They were "PRIVATE" vessels or men that engage enemy ships without any order or relation with the governament, so an attack of a privateer wasn´t considered an act of war. That of corse is not true, but that was the idea. If they became trapped by the enemy, they must answer to the law like ordinary criminals and pirates (execution). But in the cities and harbors of their nationality, they were recibed like any other royal navy vessel.

And, one of the best privateers ever, if not the best (and personaly, my favourite one with Lord Thomas Cochrane), was Sir Francis Drake, of England.

Francis Drake was a privateer of the XVI century, loyal to the Queen Elizabeth I of England. But like any other privateer, he sailed on his own ships.

The British´s enemies at that time were the spaniards, recently conquerors of almost all America, and trully the first world´s potence. The spaniards began to extract silver and gold from the american continent, and they transported the gold by sea on the atlantic ocean. That silver and gold were the bounty by the privateers like Drake.

But he wasn´t only a ransacker, he was more ambitious than that, he was for over all other things, a sailor, and a explorer (in certain aspects, a fellow geographer). And he has the goal of being the first englishman that sail all around the world, an adventure began by Ferdinand Magellan ten years before him, but didn´t completed by an Englishman.

So, he sailed from the England port of Plymounth with five ships and 166 crewman. At the beggining he tried the same route used by Magellan to cross South America in the south of Argentina and Chile, but four ships were left on the way: two were abandon on Rio de la Plata because a failed mutiny, one became sunk on the Strait of Magellan Pass, and the other became seriously damaged and lose contact with Drake´s flagship, so returned to England.

Drake, now only with his Flagship( the "Golden Hind") traveled across the south coast of America and assaulted spaniard ships and ports everywhere (including Valparaiso and Coquimbo)he reached Canada and meet north american indians, and before three years of travel, he return to England. Fourty crewman died on the journey, but he earn the reputation of great sailor that he wanted.

The Queen commanded he again to engage spaniard ships in american territory in 1595, and that was his last battle. He wasn´t defeated by a spanish enemy, but a strong feaver took his life on 1596.

Not only for his greed of glory was remembered Sir Francis Drake. Thanks to his travels, the tobbaco and the pottato became known on Europe. The proud of the English crown and maybe one of the best navigators and naval tactician of his age, he was the inspiration of many others that took the way of the privateering many years later (one very important to Chile by the way...) and a demostration of willpower and determination of a man with a gigant goal in mind, a noble ambition, that doesn´t became defeated by any human opponent, or dificulty (like the Strait of Magellan Pass and the loss of 4/5 of his fleet).