The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake

The Voyage of Sir Francis Drake is a perfect example of a book that achieves its purpose. The intent of the book, as I caught wind of by an interview on the author, is to describe the courage and ambition needed to embark on a half world journey with no modern materials. The information behind the storyline was dug up strictly from old articles found in old harbor records dating hundreds of years ago. This still remains one of the only documentations of this voyage Sir Francis Drake made behind the eyes of the Spanish royalty. Usually, missions or expeditions like this were funded by the government. The expense for food and material were almost unattainable at this time, so the entire mission was almost done primitively. I learned about some background info on this through internet research. Another aid the government provided conquistador like individuals such as Sir Francis Drake was all the information gathered by any voyage pertaining to the geographical landmarks or weather habits observed by previous voyages. There were previous expeditions to this area that could have helped Sir Francis out, but he went at it with the attitude of a true explorer and did it all on his own.

The area in which he traveled to is what we would call British Columbia. The name was created by Englishmen many years after Francis’ expedition. Little is truly known about this expedition. Because of this, for the author to create it into a 350 page book, there needed to be some literal underlying message or meaning to the expedition described in the book. This was, as I stated before, the ambition to carry out a task through shear desire. The book provided me a lot of information on the crew Sir Francis brought with him on the trip. Instead of just a bunch of horsepower like most crews, this voyage was done with fewer more skilled individuals. Most of which have gotten close to this area and were astounded by the beauty of the landscape. For comparison, it would be like the top hitters in the MLB back in the 90s getting together to play a game of pickup baseball now.  It is considered to be Sir Francis’ voyage, but many other well-known explorers were present on the trip.