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20. From Pirate to Saving England From the Spanish Armada
In 1585, Francis Drake led a fleet that harried Spanish shipping, captured Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands, and plundered Spanish settlements in Florida and Hispaniola. In 1587, he conducted preemptive raids against Spanish fleets assembling in Cadiz and Coruna for an invasion of England. He inflicted significant damage that prevented their sailing that year. The following year, the combined Spanish fleet, the famous Armada, set sail. Drake played a leading role in its dispersal and eventual destruction, particularly on July 29th, 1588. That night, Drake organized fire ships against the Armada assembled in Calais, forcing its ships out of that port and into the open sea.
Once on the open sea, the Armada was scattered by a combination of English warships and nasty weather. Drake’s enterprising life finally ended in 1596, when he died of fever during an expedition against Spain’s Caribbean possessions. His career, with its turns from soldier and sailor to outright pirate, illustrates the era’s murky lines between piracy and legalized piracy, also known as privateering. Governments back then issued their seafaring subjects letters of marque during times of war, authorizing them to prey upon enemy shipping. That piece of paper was the fig leaf of legality that separated privateers from outright pirates.