Person    | Male  Born 1540  Died 27/1/1596

Sir Francis Drake

Categories: Exploring, Race Issues, Seriously Famous

Countries: Panama

Sea captain, explorer and pirate. Born in Crowndale, near Tavistock, Devon. He spent his formative years in the house of his cousin Sir John Hawkins and by 1565 was voyaging to Guinea and the Spanish Main. In 1572 he plundered on the Isthmus of Panama and became the first Englishman to see the Pacific Ocean. His famous circumnavigation of the globe took place from 1577 to 1580. He played a leading part in harassing the Spanish Armada as it passed through the English Channel. Died of dysentery at Porto Bello, Panama.

Drake and Hawkins were England's first slavers. As early as 1560 they entered the slave trade, travelled to West Africa to buy men and women for onward transportation to the West Indies where they were sold to the Spanish as slaves.

2023: LBC reported: "Sir Francis Drake Primary School to be renamed over slave trading past following BLM protests".

Credit for this entry to: Alan Patient of www.plaquesoflondon.co.uk

Comments are provided by Facebook, please ensure you are signed in here to see them

This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Sir Francis Drake

Commemorated ati

Imperial Hotel - statue 06 - Drake

This statue is surely modelled on the Boehm statue of Drake erected at Tavist...

Read More

Sir Francis Drake

Sir Francis Drake In 1581 Queen Elizabeth I commanded that Francis Drake's sh...

Read More

Show all 6

Other Subjects

Bartolomeu Dias

Bartolomeu Dias

Portuguese nobleman who sailed around the Cape of Good Hope, the southern tip of Africa, in 1488, the first European known to do so since ancient times.

Person, Exploring, Africa, Portugal

1 memorial
Captain Robert Scott

Captain Robert Scott

Born Devonport. Royal Navy Antarctic explorer. With four companions, E.A. Wilson, H.R. Bowers, L.E.G. Oates, E. Evans, died returning from the South Pole, having been pipped at the post by Amundsen...

Person, Armed Forces, Exploring, Arctic & Antarctic

4 memorials
Mary Kingsley

Mary Kingsley

Traveller and ethnologist. Born Islington as Mary Henrietta Kingsley. Only after the death of her parents could she fulfil her aspirations of travel. Her first book, "Travels in West Africa", publi...

Person, Exploring, Africa

1 memorial
William Jerry

William Jerry

Role on the lost expedition: Able seaman on SS Terror. See John Franklin.

Person, Exploring, Tragedy

1 memorial

Previously viewed

Mihaela Otto

Mihaela Otto

Mihaela Draganescu was born on 18 December 1958 in Romania who came to the UK in 1984. She was briefly married but when the marriage broke down she retained her married surname of Otto. Living in M...

Person, Tragedy, Romania

3 memorials