and of Africa, and took the island of Djerbeo and various other places from the Spaniards. On one occasion he was blockaded in this island by the combined forces of Doria and Toledo, a general in the service of the Emperor Charles V., and narrowly escaped falling into their hands. On the death of Barbarossa Dragut was nominated to succeed him in the command of the Barbary corsairs, and was also appointed to the government of Tripoli although it seems to be thought that his services were not duly appreciated and rewarded by the sultan. In 1565 he joined Solyman at the memorable siege of Malta, and while leading an attack upon Fort St. Elmo was mortally wounded in the head by a splinter of a stone ball.—J. T.
DRAKE, Sir Francis, a renowned English sailor, was born near Tawstock in Devonshire in 1546. His father was a poor yeoman, and Francis was the eldest of twelve sons. Francis Russell, afterwards the first earl of Bedford, was his godfather; and the expense of his school education was defrayed by John Hawkins the navigator. His father, who was a zealous protestant, was obliged to take refuge in Kent during the Marian persecution. Under Elizabeth he obtained an appointment among the seamen in the royal navy to read prayers to them, and appears to have been employed as a preacher, but without any regular benefice. Young Drake was thus brought up among sailors, and at an early age was apprenticed to the master of a bark who carried on a coasting trade, and sometimes made voyages to Zealand and France. At his death he bequeathed to Drake the bark and its equipments, with which he continued to carry on the coasting trade, and acquired some money. But when he had reached the age of twenty-two, the exploits of his kinsman. Sir John Hawkins, so inflamed his imagination, that he sold his ship and joined that navigator in his last expedition to the Spanish main. The adventure, however, was unfortunate, and Drake lost all the money he had made. A chaplain belonging to the fleet assured him that he had a right to repair his losses upon the king of Spain, whenever and wherever he could. "The case was clear in sea divinity," says Thomas Fuller; "and few are such infidels as not to believe doctrines which make for their profit." Drake, accordingly, determined to repair his shattered fortunes by reprisals upon the Spaniards, and made several voyages to the West Indies, in which "he got some store of money by playing the seaman and the pirate." In 1572, having obtained a commission from Elizabeth, he set sail with two small ships, named the Pasha and the Swan, manned by only seventy-three persons, and with this small force he took and plundered the town of Nombre di Dios, on the Isthmus of Darien. He subsequently captured Vera Cruz, and in addition to the booty obtained in these places, he fell in with fifty mules laden with silver. He returned to England in August, 1573, with his ships laden with plunder. His success in this marauding expedition gained him high reputation as well as wealth; and he raised himself still higher in public esteem by serving with great distinction in Ireland under the earl of Essex, with three frigates fitted out at his own expense. On his return to England he was introduced to the queen by Sir Christopher Hatton, and obtained permission to undertake a voyage into the South Seas, through the Straits of Magellan, on which his heart had long been set. Having collected for this purpose a fleet of only five small vessels, manned by no more than one hundred and sixty-four men, he set sail from Falmouth on the 13th of December, 1577. On the 29th of May he reached Port St. Julian, where he remained two months, in order to refit and lay in a stock of provisions. He entered the Straits of Magellan on the 20th of August, and having by this time parted company with the other vessels, he sailed in his own ship along the coasts of Chili and Peru, attacking and plundering the Spaniards. He then continued his voyage along the shores of California and North America, as far as the forty-eighth degree, in the hope of being able to discover a passage into the Atlantic. Having failed in this attempt, he landed and took possession in the queen's name of the country which he named New Albion. Setting sail from this place on the 29th of September, 1579, he reached the Molucca islands on the 4th of November, and landed at Ternate, where he was well received by the reigning sovereign. He thence proceeded to Java, which he reached on the 16th of March, and resolving to return home, he doubled the Cape of Good Hope on the 15th of June, and arrived at Plymouth on the 3rd November, 1580, having completed his voyage round the world in two years and about ten months. The Spanish ambassador made loud complaints against Drake, denounced his expedition as piratical, and demanded the restoration of his plunder; but Elizabeth, after considerable hesitation, gave her sanction to his conduct by dining on board his ship at Deptford, conferring upon him the honour of knighthood, and declaring at the same time her entire approbation of all he had done. She also ordered his ship to be preserved as a monument of his country's glory, and of the daring and skill of her adventurous captain. In 1585 an open rupture between England and Spain having now taken place, Drake was sent with a fleet of twenty sail, having on board twenty-three hundred soldiers and marines, to attack the Spanish settlements in the West Indies. He captured the cities of St. Jago in Cuba, St. Domingo, Carthagena, and St. Augustine. In 1587 he sailed with a fleet of thirty ships to the coast of Spain, burnt upwards of 10,000 tons of shipping in the harbour of Cadiz, intended to form part of the great armada, and took and destroyed also upwards of a hundred vessels between Cadiz and Cape St Vincent, besides four castles on the shore. This feat he jocularly termed "singeing the king of Spain's beard." Before returning home he captured a rich carrack near Terceira, to the great satisfaction of the London merchants, who had assisted in fitting out the expedition. He employed a portion of the wealth he had thus acquired in bringing water into the town of Plymouth, from a spring distant nearly fifteen miles. In 1588, when the Spanish armada was about to invade England, Sir Francis was appointed vice-admiral, under Lord Howard of Effingham, and by his courage and professional skill contributed not a little to the overthrow of that vaunted enterprise. Drake himself, in the conflict with the Spanish fleet, captured a very large galleon, commanded by Don Pedro de Valdez, the reputed projector of the invasion, who surrendered at once through the mere terror of his name. The following year Sir Francis Drake commanded the fleet sent to support Don Antonio in his pretensions to the throne of Portugal. The land forces were under the orders of Sir John Norris, but the attempt proved abortive, mainly owing to the differences of opinion between the commanders. In 1595 another expedition, under Drake and Hawkins, was fitted out against the Spanish settlements in the West Indies. The fleet consisted in all of twenty-six vessels, partly furnished by the queen, partly fitted out by Drake and his friends. A powerful body of soldiers was embarked in the fleet, under the command of Sir Thomas Baskerville and Sir Nicholas Clifford. The expedition sailed from Plymouth in the month of August. Its main object was to capture and destroy Nombre de Dios, and to seize the treasure lying at Panama. But the commanders disagreed about the plan of operations, and the result was most disastrous. Their first attempt was made upon the Canaries, but it failed, and valuable time was then lost in refitting at Dominica. One of their vessels was captured by the Spaniards, who thus obtained a knowledge of their plans, and conveyed away their galleons from Porto Rico. Hawkins died of a disease brought on by vexation and disappointment; and a desperate attack made by Drake upon the port and shipping of Porto Rico proved unsuccessful, as did an attempt upon Panama, made overland by Sir Thomas Baskerville. Immense damage was inflicted upon the Spaniards. Rio de la Hacha, Nombre de Dios, and many other towns and villages were taken and burnt, together with a great number of vessels. But the expedition failed in accomplishing the end for which it had been fitted out, or in effecting anything of much importance. This disappointment preyed upon the mind of Drake, and aided by the unhealthy climate, threw him into a fever, of which he died 28th January, 1596.—J. T.
DRAKE, Francis, a surgeon and antiquary. He practised in York, and died in 1770. In 1736 he published, in a splendid octavo volume, "Eboracum, or the History and Antiquities of the City of York." Drake was a member of the Royal Society, and also of the Society of Antiquaries, and is said by Cole to have been one of the compilers of the Parliamentary History of England, in 24 vols., 8vo, 1751.—R. M., A.
DRAKE, James, a celebrated political writer and physician, was born at Cambridge in 1667. On going up to London in 1693, he turned his attention to medicine, and received his degree from the College of Physicians in 1696. Soon after he was elected a member of that body, and fellow of the Royal Society. About this time, also, for what reason is not known, he commenced writing for the booksellers. The first publication in which he was concerned, was a pamphlet
