18. Elizabeth I Profited Greatly From Drake’s Piracy
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 Magellan’s expedition. However, scratch the surface of any of Drake’s occupations, and there was a pirate beneath. So unsurprisingly, he endeavored to combine his voyage of exploration with opportunistic plunder of the Spanish. In 1577, Drake led an expedition of five ships to raid the Pacific coast of Spanish South America, which was wholly undefended in those days.
He braved great 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, he 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 80 pounds of gold, 13 chests of coins, and 26 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.