Nobody's Slave by Tim Vicary5/10/2023 For Francis Drake was a pirate, licensed by the Queen to steal, burn and destroy Spanish ships and colonies in the New World. If they do, I’m sure their history is taught differently to the way I learned it and to an extent, quite right too. I wonder if school children today learn anything about Francis Drake and John Hawkins. The environment is fashionable, the British Empire is nothing to be proud of. Look up Devon County Council on the web and what do you find? No ship – just a logo of two green leaves. The county sign for Devon was an Elizabethan galleon –Drake’s ship – sailing proudly across a blue sea. I was glad to live in the county where these men grew up. Drake was our national savior if ever England were in peril again all we had to do was to sound Drake’s Drum (which was hidden somewhere in Plymouth) and he would rise from the dead like King Arthur and sail back to our rescue. Everything they did, we were taught, was admirable. These men were pioneers, adventurers, founders of the British empire. Drake was the first Englishman to sail around the world, to return with untold riches and be knighted by Queen Elizabeth on the deck of his ship, the Golden Hind Hawkins was the founder of the Royal Navy, the man who designed and built the fast, weatherly galleons which sailed rings around the Spanish Armada. When I was a boy, growing up in Devon, Francis Drake and John Hawkins were great Elizabethan heroes.
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