Only this day in 1577, Francis Drake set sail with his flagship Pelican from Plymouth with 4 other ships and 160 men, on his expedition to the Pacific. The Pelican (later named Golden Hinde) was the only ship to make it home after completing the journey (the others were lost or turned back), and sailed along the coasts of Chile and Peru, and Francis Drake later claimed the Californian coast in the name of Queen Elizabeth I before returning to Plymouth via the Indian Ocean and rounding the Cape of Good Hope with treasure worth half a million pounds on 26th September 1580.
Francis Drake was the first Englishmen to sail around the world and was knighted on his ship at Deptford by the Queen
This was one of the most important early British (then English) expeditions and origins of the British Empire. The English wouldn’t permanently establish a colony until around 1607 (Jamestown, Virginia). The Roanoke mystery transpired before in the sixteenth century, so it was therefore that the sixteenth century was the century of English westward exploration, and settlement from the seventeenth.
You can find the replica of Golden Hinde beside the Thames at Borough Market London, it is truly an amazing sight to see!
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