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The Real Pirates of the Caribbean

Khalid Elhassan January 7, 2020 32 min

30. Singeing the King of Spain’s Beard

Drake during the attack on Cadiz that Singed the King of Spain’s Beard. Historic UK

In 1585, Francis Drake was put in charge of a fleet which harried Spanish shipping, captured Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands, and plundered Spanish settlements in Florida and Hispaniola. In 1587, with King Philip II of Spain threatening to invade England, Drake led daring preemptive raids against Spanish fleets assembling in Cadiz and Coruna for an invasion of England. He inflicted significant damage, which prevented the Spaniards from sailing that year. As contemporaries described it, Drake had “Singed the King of Spain’s Beard“.

The following year, the combined Spanish fleet, the famous Armada, set sail. Drake played a leading role in its dispersal and eventual destruction. Particularly on the night of July 29^th, 1588, when he organized fire ships against the Armada assembled in Calais, forcing its ships out of that port and into the open sea. There, they were scattered by a combination of English warships and adverse weather.

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.