THE GREAT BUCCANEER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 99, 17 October 1911, Page 8

THE GREAT BUCCANEER.

SIR FRANCIS DRAKE. ' The great Francis Drake, foremost of Elizaljethian admirals, has had more literature devoted to his name and fame than any other sailor save Nelson, but the new life written by Lady ElliottDrake stands alone in the extent of the personal information that it supplies. Lady Elliott-Drake, who has hfftl access to family records, says that there is no doubt at all that the hero was th# younger child of John and Margery Drake, of Crowndale, in Devon. He went to sea when quite a child, and in 1567, at the age of twenty-one, he voyaged to the West Indies as second in command under John Hawkins, one of the most distinguished of his contemporaries. When homeward bound they were driven by a storm into the harbor of San Juan de Weloa, and were basely betrayed by the Spanish Governor while refitting. Drake and Hawkins escaped safely to Plymouth, but Drake's cousin was captured and tortured to death by the Inquisition. Four years later Drake sailed from Plymouth in order that he "might right himself" with the King of Spain. Me i had two ships, of seventy tons and I twenty-five tons burden, with seventyI three men and boys, and he seized the Spanish port of Nombre de "Dios. His ' two brothers were killed and Francis Drake himself was so severely wounded in the assault that the venture was abandoned. It was after he had secured the favor of Queen Elizabeth and joined the Navy that his great successes began. In 1578 he passed through the Straits of Magellan in the Golden Hind, of 100 tons, and at Lima heard the joyful news that he was in the wake of the great Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de la Conception, bound for Panama with a cargo of gold and silver. Drake pursued, and on March 1, 1578, he boarded the Spaniard and removed to the Golden Hind gold and silver ingots, emeralds, pearls and diamonds to the value of some £700,000, a sum that represented in those days the ransom of a kingdom. courage of the Spaniards, who outnumbered the English force by at least five to one, disappeared before Drake's fiery zeal.