Piracy Enriched Elizabeth I
Sir Francis Drake was more than just a highly successful pirate. Queen Elizabeth I’s favorite sailor also became the second man to circumnavigate the globe after Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition. However, scratch the surface of any of Drake’s occupations, and piracy lurked beneath. True to character, he combined his voyage of exploration with opportunistic plunder of the Spanish. In 1577, he led an expedition of five ships to raid the Pacific coast of Spanish South America, which was wholly undefended in those days.
Drake braved massive storms, and passed through the Straits of Magellan in his flagship, the Golden Hind. He then sailed up the coasts of Chile and Peru, and near Lima, captured a Spanish ship that yielded 25,000 gold coins. Soon thereafter, he seized a fabulously rich prize, the Cacafuego, a Manila galleon that yielded a treasure of eighty pounds of gold, thirteen chests of coins, and twenty six tons of silver. Queen Elizabeth made out quite well from that prize. Both as an investor in Drake’s voyage, and as the sovereign who had issued him a permit to privateer, and to which a portion of the loot was owed.