Sir Francis Drake Analysis

In 1577, Sir Francis Drake famous voyage around the world was set of where Drake was commissioned by Elizabeth I for an expedition against the Spanish colonies on the American Pacific coast. Drake became the first Englishman to navigate the Straits of Magellan and the globe. The writer of the primary source is Francis Pretty, in which Francis Pretty was not appear very much in the story. Although, we could conclude that Drake accompanied Pretty on his voyage possibly as one of Drakes gentleman at arms (bodyguard to the British Monarch). The reason of Pretty’s writing of this account is to describe the outside world, the obstacles and experiences they encountered during the journey to America. This essay will look into Pretty’s writings in depth …show more content…
Mainly, the key character which is Sir Francis Drake. Drake is somehow portrayed to be perfect and impeccable such as the very beginning of the stories when the ship started to sailed and had gone into wrecked or damaged. None of them sees that its Drake’s reckless and miscalculation which led the entire crew directly into the storm, “so vehement that all our ships were like to have gone to wrack.” Page one. When Drake was in Lima, they assaulted numbers of ships where the writer described the battle in a very much favor to Drake’s side. “ Having never been assaulted by enemies, and at this time feared the approach of none such as we were.” Page eight. In some sense, the writer described it in a way that Drake’s never misjudge on when to attack where each time Drake’s won them pretty easily in this case is a surprise attack where we hardly see Drake’s men died or suffered heavy loss. Especially, when Drake confronted with the Spanish, the English hardly suffer any loss because of Drake’s …show more content…
Firstly, the writer him self Francis Pretty is hardly known by anyone nor information available about him. All we know is that he was in the same voyage as Drake as gentlemen at arms. None of his writings were discover apart from this one, which may question about his ability or style of writing where he might be one-sided or exaggerated writer. Furthermore, the writing of this voyage was written after the journey that is likely to reduce the credibility of this writing. Because there could be the trouble of loss of memories which may skip some details or the misinterpretation of the exactly feeling of that certain situation in the story. Another issue is that, there are no comparable work to his which makes the story only comes from Pretty’s perspective. Also, the reading are made for public reading where some information may have been overstate to make it becomes interesting. Especially, the writing at that time were only for England’s reader therefore Drake must sounded more heroic to make it joyful for most population of England to read, so again overstate information to make it sounds epic. But on the other hand, the Spanish refer Drake as El Draque or the dragon, where they see Francis as pirate or demon and they also feared him. In conclusion, this reading may give its reader some real situation of that time but the creditability is still consider to be low due to a very little information