Product Description

In this biography, Harry Kelsey seeks to shatter the familiar image of Sir Francis Drake. The Drake of legend was a pious, brave and just seaman who initiated the move to make England a great naval power and whose acts of piracy against his countries enemies earned him a knighthood for patriotism. Kelsey paints a different picture of Drake as an amoral privateer at least as interested in lining his pockets with Spanish booty as in forwarding the political goals of his country, a man who became a captain general of the English navy but never waged traditional warfare with any success. Drawing on much new evidence, Kelsey describes Drake's early life as the son of a poor family in 16th-century England. He explains how Drake dabbled in piracy, gained modest success as a merchant, and then took advantage of the hostility between Spain and England to embark on a series of pirate raids on undefended Spanish ships and ports, preempting Spanish demands for punishment by sharing much of his booty with the Queen and her councillors. Elizabeth I liked Drake because he was a charming rogue, and she made him an integral part of her war plans against Spain and its armada, but she quickly learned not to trust him with an important command: he was unable to handle a large fleet; was suspicious almost to the point of paranoia and had no understanding of personal loyalty. For Drake, the mark of success was to amass great wealth - preferably by taking if from someone else - and the primary purpose of warfare was to afford him the opportunity to accomplish this.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1770947 in Books
• Published on: 1998-08-11
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 2.19 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 592 pages

From Amazon.com
Remembered in standard history texts as an adventurer who helped extend England's maritime empire to the coasts of Africa and the Americas, Francis Drake roamed the world under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth I. He enriched her coffers by attacking Spanish merchant ships in the Caribbean, raiding ports, looting churches, and taking a cut of the slave trade--the acts not of a military man, Harry Kelsey argues, but of a pirate, and of a cowardly one at that as he was given to fleeing at the first sign of danger, leaving his men behind. Even so, for his services Elizabeth awarded Drake a knighthood and a degree of immunity until he failed to appear at his post during a naval engagement against ships of the Spanish armada. He then lost the queen's favor and disappeared from history's stage. Drake has few champions today, certainly fewer than he did in Elizabethan times. Even then he was none too popular. This well-written revisionist biography explains why. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly
As a pirate he was a fearless improviser. In naval engagements, he tended to hang back and look out for number one. Widely despised by his shipmates, he fascinated his queen and countrymen as the first Englishman to sail around the world. Drake emerges from Kelsey's biography as a paranoid bully who by luck and bluff succeeded in an age that was hungry for heroes. It's too bad that this demythologized Drake is denied a gripping narrative. We too often see him through the squint of a historiographer, as when he's stalled for pages in the Straits of Magellan while Kelsey compares theories on how he got around Cape Horn. When Drake does get moving, his itinerary of raids reads more like a police blotter than a saga. Fittingly, this determinedly unromantic, Dragnet approach works best when Drake is at his worst, as during the summary execution of his partner, Thomas Doughty. And it's useful to doubt such ill-supported myths as Drake's supposed landfall in California. But there should be more attention to the big picture, such as painting Spain and Portugal's relationship before following Drake on his ill-fated expedition to Lisbon?whose outcome Kelsey gives away too soon, for the sake of another statistic. Kelsey's Drake may be truer than others', but he needs more wind in his sails than the "pirate's progress" summations at the end of each chapter. 30 b&w illustrations.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
With 13 Drake biographies currently in print, presenting almost as many differing historical opinions, Kelsey embarks bravely upon a scholarly treatment of a man he calls "a rogue, an able seaman, and a pirate." Strong words indeed for a man who, in popular legend, discovered California for England, circumnavigated the globe, and helped defeat the Spanish Armada in 1588. Tracing Drake's family lineage and early childhood in a seafaring family, Kelsey does a creditable job of drawing Drake's character and the influences that molded him. A natural sailor, fearless, ambitious, and tenacious, Drake was also lacking in family attachment, covetous, and devoid of moral scruples. Kelsey's command of the sources is excellent; the notes are a treasure trove of information on 16th-century exploration, and the bibliography is exhaustive. This work will long stand as the definitive scholarly study of the most famous sea captain and pirate of the era of Good Queen Bess. Recommended for academic and larger public library collections.?Harold N. Boyer, Florence Cty. Lib., SC
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.