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The Real Pirates of the Caribbean

Khalid Elhassan January 7, 2020 32 min

31. The First Pirate to Circumnavigate the Globe

A replica of Francis Drake’s ship, The Golden Hind. Wikimedia

In 1577, Francis Drake led an expedition of 5 ships to raid the Pacific coast of Spanish South America, which was wholly undefended in those days. Braving storms, he passed through the Straits of Magellan in his flagship, the Golden Hind, then sailed up the coasts of Chile and Peru. Near Lima, he captured a Spanish ship which yielded 25,000 gold coins, and soon thereafter captured a fabulously rich prize, the Cacafuego, a Manilla galleon which yielded a treasure of 80 pounds of gold, 13 chests of coins, and 26 tons of silver.

Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe. World Topography

With his holds full of loot, Drake crossed the Pacific, sailed the Indian Ocean, rounded the tip of Africa, and returned to England on September 26^th, 1580, having circumnavigated the globe. It was a first for a pirate, and only the second time anybody had accomplished that feat since Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition, over half a century earlier.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.