This episode introduces Sir Francis Drake, and describes the moment when he declared a personal war on Philip II of Spain, a war that would change everything.

Sir Francis Drake was essential to the history of the Americans. The father of English sea power, Drake and a small group of English West Country seamen cleared the way for the English settlement of North America. Drake almost single-handedly provoked the Spanish into war with England and then twice beat the Spanish navy, once by ambushing a good part of it in port in 1587 and then doing more than any other English commander to beat the famous Spanish Armada the next year.  Had that war gone the other way, England might never have become a global naval power and thereby an empire, the English language might never have become the lingua franca of commerce around the world, and English settlement in North America would have unfolded very differently, if it had happened at all.

#VastEarlyAmerica

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References for this episode

Samuel Bawlf, The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577-1580

John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake