In 1577, the Elizabethan adventurer Sir Francis Drake set out for South America, hoping to frustrate the King of Spain’s war effort by disrupting the flow of gold from Spanish colonies. Queen Elizabeth I, wise enough not to get involved officially, looked the other way as Drake sailed away in his flagship ‘Pelican’.

Drake rounded the southern tip of South America in his flagship (now renamed ‘Golden Hinde’), and continued up the Pacific coast, throwing Spain’s war preparations into confusion. Having staked a claim to what is now California, he sailed steadily west, and became the first commander to complete a circumnavigation of the globe when he returned to England in September 1580.

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