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Sir Francis Drake Research Paper

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Sir Francis Drake Sir Francis Drake was an English sailor, one of the most famous of the Elizabethan era. Known mostly for being the first Englishman to circle the world between 1577 and 1578, and for helping to defeat the Spanish Armada, Sir Francis Drake was a very important man in history.
No birth record exists for Sir Francis Drake, but he was believed to have been born in 1541. Born in Tavistock, England, in a cottage made of tree branches, Drake was the oldest of his eleven brothers. He was the son of Mary Mylwaye Drake, and his father Edmund Drake who was a farmer. His father farmed on the same estate that Drake was born in, Lord Francis Russell’s estate, who was Francis Drake’s godfather. Francis worked for a merchant who traded with France, this is where he started to master his skills in navigation.
Drake then started to work for his privateer relatives, where he seized merchant ships off the French coast. Around 1560, Drake took charge of his own ship, the Judith. Drake alone with his small fleet and the help of his cousin, went to Africa to join in the slave trade. They then tried to sell the slaves in New Spain, even though it was illegal. In 1568 they got trapped in San Juan Ulua. Many of their men died, but they escaped, and from that day on Drake hated the Spanish. In 1572 Queen Elizabeth I gave Drake a privateers commission, this same year Drake went on his first solo trip to Panama. He planned to attack Nombre de Dios. This is where Spanish

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