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The life of Sir Francis Drake

Michael Turner - school teacher

Sir Francis Drake was probably born in 1540 near Tavistock, Devon. When Francis was 9 years old, the family left Devon at the time of the Catholic revolt against a new Protestant Prayer Book and due to his father being charged with robbing a man of his horse and purse, for which he was later pardoned. The Drakes lived on a disused old boat on the River Medway in Kent. Drake's father Edmund preached to sailors and later became vicar at nearby Upchurch. Therefore young Francis was anti-Catholic. As a teenager, Francis was experiencing life in the North Sea upon a trading bark.

In his early twenties Drake returned to Plymouth to work for his second cousin, John Hawkins, on a slave-trading expedition under the command of Captain John Lovell. In 1568 Drake sailed on his second voyage, but this time with John Hawkins in command. After raiding and trading for