Great Britons. No 2.

Frank Drake one of many children in his family was born sometime in the 14^th century at a young age. He didn’t do a lot. Just sailed about. Found a few places. Magellan Strait springs to mind for some reason. No idea why or how it has anything to do with Frank but it rings a bell. Although I thought Magellan discovered the Magellan Straits, else why would they be named after him? History eh? Weird. Maybe Drake just passed through on his way to somewhere else?

Drake, or Drakey as he was affectionately called, was Queen Elizabeth’s friend, cos he didn’t like the Spanish and neither did she. He was always aggravating the Spanish by sinking their ships and stealing stuff from them. That’s probably why she made him a knight and he became Sir Francis Drake. They had strange ethics in the old days.

After getting knighted he became one of the first slave traders, making a lot of money from it. Then he did a bit more sailing about and a lot of plundering and destroying things he really had no business messing with. Bit of a bleedin’ nuisance to be honest! I can’t take to him personally, but to be fair maybe he wouldn’t have liked me either.

Not much is known about him after that, except he liked to play bowls and he was the Mayor of Plymouth once. It is not known if he was any good at playing bowls or mayoring. Probably people would have said he was good at stuff just to curry favour because he was rich and powerful and they didn’t want their heads chopped off.

Talking of chopping heads off Drake was responsible for having Thomas Doughty -another of the Queen's favourites – beheaded. Accused of witchcraft would you believe? A touch of jealousy maybe?

I don’t know how Drake made it to number two on my list of great Britons? I am thinking about moving him further down or even deleting him entirely.

Sir Francis Drake died in... Oh, I don’t know when exactly, but people didn’t live long in those days. Anyway, he got the shits bad one day and expired soon after.

Good riddance I say. Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe he was a decent bloke? We will never know for sure. If only we could turn back time, we could ask some of the slaves or Thomas Doughty what their feelings towards him were. No, why bother? I know the answer. He is definitely off the list!