#33 Sir Francis Drake and the Rise of English Sea Power
The History of the Americans
Jack Henneman
4.9 • 632 Ratings
🗓️ 7 August 2021
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
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References for this episode
Samuel Bawlf, The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577-1580
John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast episode 33. I am your host, Jack Heneman, |
| 0:13.9 | and I'm recording this episode on August 8, 2021 in Austin, Texas. We're a couple days late this |
| 0:20.6 | week. I hope you will forgive me. |
| 0:23.3 | We just got back from a wonderful long vacation in the Adirondacks in upstate New York |
| 0:27.8 | with four days in New Orleans on the way home. In my mind, the Adirondacks in the Crescent City |
| 0:34.4 | are very nearly the opposite ends of the American holiday destination continuum. |
| 0:41.5 | And both places will instantly remind even the least observant person that Americans live in an |
| 0:49.2 | amazing country. Before we begin, I need to confess a bit of trepidation. |
| 1:02.8 | Until now, this podcast is delved into aspects of the history of the Americans, primarily Spanish exploration, |
| 1:07.3 | that even most American history buffs don't know a lot about. |
| 1:10.7 | Neither did I until I did the work for the podcast. That means that my errors, |
| 1:13.8 | whatever they may have been, have mostly gone unremarked upon or even undetected. Now that we're |
| 1:19.6 | moving into the English colonial period, as we have in the last couple of weeks, I expect to raise |
| 1:25.1 | more eyebrows, by which I mean make more visible mistakes that you pick up, |
| 1:30.6 | especially in the significance I assigned to one or another historical factoid. |
| 1:36.6 | By all means, hold me accountable. If I blow it or just offend your cranky sensibilities in some way, |
| 1:43.8 | shoot me an email at the History of the Americans at gmail.com |
| 1:47.9 | or comment on the website, |
| 1:50.8 | the history of the Americans.com. |
| 1:53.3 | The title of this episode is Sir Francis Drake |
| 1:56.2 | in the Rise of English Sea Power Part 1. |
| 2:00.1 | As always, I'm going to follow my muse, so I'm not settled on how many |
... |
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