Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, Episode 34. I'm your host, Jack Heneman.

We're recording this episode very early in the morning from Austin, Texas, on Friday the 13th of August 2021.

May the day not live up to the myth.

I don't know how much more bad luck we want to absorb just now.

Once again, music for the writing of today's episode came from the Guardians of the Groove,

W.W.OZ, in New Orleans.

This episode is the second on our series on Sir Francis Drake.

Last week, we revisited the catastrophic battle of San Juan de Ulua in the harbor near Veracruz, Mexico,

between the English traitor, pirate, John Hawkins, and arriving

ships of the Spanish treasure fleet.

Francis Drake, still with no sir at the front of his name, had limped back to England in one

of the two surviving ships, arriving in January 1569.

He fumed at the duplicity of the viceroy of Mexico, who had breached a guarantee of safe conduct he had given the English. Drake vowed to wage war

against the Spanish and vex Philip of Spain from one end of his realm to the other.

It was not only Drake who wanted to annoy Philip.

In November 1568, as Drake and the fellow survivors of San Juan de Luo were struggling home across the Northern Atlantic,

five Spanish ships carrying the payroll for the soldiers under the

command of the Duke of Alba in the Netherlands, ran into a storm and Huguenot privateers in the

English Channel. Seeking any port in a storm, as it were, four of the Spanish payroll ships, carrying gold worth about

85,000 pounds in English terms, sailed into Plymouth and the fifth into Southampton.

Now we'll turn to John Sugden's narrative from his biography of Sir Francis Drake.

Everyone knew the importance of those ships to Alba. The Duke's soldiers

...