He set sail with five ships and 164 men, after crossing the Atlantic and reaching South America he abandoned two of his ships and sailed into the Straits of Magellan with his remaining three ships. During this passage he encountered a series of devastating storms. One of his ships was wrecked and another was forced to return to England. Only his flagship the ‘Golden Hind’ reached the pacific Ocean. He continued up the western coast of this continent, raiding Spanish settlements and capturing a Spanish ship laden with treasure.

Drake continued further north in search of a route through the North West Passage and back to the Atlantic. He reached as far north as what is now Washington State before heading south once again. He stopped in San Francisco Bay in June 1579 to repair his ship and prepare to voyage across the Pacific. The land around the bay he named ‘Nova Albion’ and claimed the territory for Queen Elizabeth I.

In the July they set off to cross the vast ocean before them and on route visited several islands before rounding the southern tip of Africa and heading northwards once in the Atlantic Ocean. On September 26, 1580, the ‘Golden Hind’ arrived back in Plymouth, England carrying treasure, spices and lots of information about the worlds oceans. Drake became the first captain to sail his ship all the way around the world. The Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan had sailed three quarters of the way around the globe before he was killed in the Philippines, leaving another of his navigator’s to complete that voyage.

Francis Drake was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I in 1581 to become Sir Francis Drake. He was one of the more renowned of English seamen of the Elizabethan era and the son of a tenant farmer later played a crucial role in the defeat of the Spanish Armada.