WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
Hawkins, Drake and Elizabethan seafarers
The Elizabethan age produced a remarkable generation of seafarers: men who combined exploration, trade, and organised piracy in ways that blurred all three categories. John Hawkins built the navy that would face the Armada and founded the English slave trade. Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe, raided Spanish ports, and became one of the most feared men in the Spanish empire. Walter Raleigh attempted to establish the first English colonies in America. Together, they represent England's first serious entry into the global competition for trade and empire — a competition that would define the following two centuries.
John Hawkins: sailor, slave trader, naval reformer
John Hawkins (1532–1595) was born into a Plymouth seafaring family and became one of the most important figures of the Elizabethan maritime world — in both its celebrated and its darkest aspects.
The slave trade voyages (1562, 1564, 1567): Hawkins made three voyages to West Africa, where he acquired enslaved Africans (through trade and by force), transported them across the Atlantic, and sold them to Spanish colonists in the Caribbean in defiance of Spanish trading monopolies. The second and third voyages had Elizabeth as an investor. The third voyage ended disastrously at San Juan de Ulúa (1568), where a Spanish fleet attacked Hawkins's ships in a Mexican port — the survivors barely escaped. This incident permanently damaged Anglo-Spanish relations and created a personal vendetta for Hawkins and Drake.
Naval reform: After 1568, Hawkins turned to naval administration. Appointed Treasurer of the Navy in 1577, he reformed the English fleet: introducing faster, lower, more manoeuvrable warships; improving pay and conditions for sailors; cutting corruption in naval contracts. The ships that faced the Armada in 1588 reflected his reforms. He died at sea during a Caribbean expedition in 1595.
Difficult legacy
Hawkins and the origins of the English slave trade
Hawkins is sometimes described as the "father of the English slave trade." His three voyages established the template that later traders would follow on a much larger scale in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Elizabeth provided a ship ("the Jesus of Lübeck") for his third voyage — placing the crown's involvement beyond doubt. The transatlantic slave trade that resulted from the commercial model Hawkins pioneered would eventually transport approximately 3.4 million enslaved Africans on British ships. Hawkins's legacy is therefore deeply uncomfortable: his naval reforms helped defeat the Armada, while his commercial innovations helped launch one of the greatest crimes in history.
Francis Drake: privateer, circumnavigator, vice-admiral
Francis Drake (c1540–1596) was arguably the most famous English sailor of his age — celebrated in England as a national hero, vilified in Spain as a pirate (El Draque).
Drake had been on Hawkins's disastrous third voyage and emerged from San Juan de Ulúa with a personal hatred of Spain. He conducted several raids on Spanish settlements in Panama in the 1570s, returning with significant plunder and intelligence about the Pacific trade routes.
The circumnavigation (1577–1580): Drake left Plymouth in December 1577 with five ships and approximately 164 men. He passed through the Strait of Magellan, sailed up the Pacific coast of South America (raiding Spanish settlements along the way, including the capture of a treasure ship carrying 26 tons of silver), crossed the Pacific, sailed through the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope, and returned to Plymouth in September 1580 — with one remaining ship and around 56 men. He brought back around £400,000 in plunder (of which Elizabeth received approximately £160,000). She knighted him on the deck of his ship, the Golden Hind.
The "singeing of the King's beard" (1587): Drake's raid on Cadiz, destroying Spanish ships and delaying the Armada by a year.
The Armada (1588): Drake served as vice-admiral under Lord Howard of Effingham. His precise role in the famous game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe — allegedly finishing his game before sailing to meet the Armada — is probably legendary, but his actual tactical contribution was significant.
Key voyage
Drake's circumnavigation, 1577–1580
Drake's voyage was the second circumnavigation of the globe in history (after Magellan's expedition of 1519–1522, though Magellan himself died en route). It demonstrated England's capability to operate in oceans previously dominated by Spain and Portugal, gathered important intelligence about Pacific trade routes, and returned enormous wealth. Elizabeth's investment generated a return of approximately 4,700%. The voyage made Drake famous across Europe — in Spain, Philip II offered 20,000 ducats (approximately £7 million today) for his capture. For the exam: the circumnavigation is significant both as exploration (showing English capability and daring) and as a cause of Anglo-Spanish tension (raiding Spanish ships in Spain's own Pacific domain).
Walter Raleigh and the Virginia colonies
Walter Raleigh (c1552–1618) was a courtier, poet, and adventurer who became one of Elizabeth's favourites in the 1580s. He sponsored the first attempts at English colonisation of North America.
In 1584, Raleigh sent an expedition to reconnoitre the east coast of North America. The following year, 1585, a colony was established at Roanoke on what is now the North Carolina coast, named "Virginia" in honour of the Virgin Queen. The colony struggled — food shortages, conflict with local Native Americans — and was evacuated by Drake in 1586.
A second colony was sent to Roanoke in 1587, under John White. White returned to England for supplies. When he came back in 1590 (delayed by the Armada crisis), the colony had vanished entirely — no bodies, no evidence of violence, only the word "CROATOAN" carved into a tree. "The Lost Colony" has never been explained with certainty.
Raleigh himself never visited Virginia. He was imprisoned in the Tower in 1592 for secretly marrying one of Elizabeth's ladies-in-waiting. English colonisation of North America would only succeed under James I, with the Jamestown settlement of 1607.
Why this matters for the exam
Elizabethan seafarers: causes and consequences
AQA questions on Elizabethan seafarers often ask about their motivations and impact. Motivations: profit (Drake, Hawkins — privateering and trade were enormously lucrative); national glory; Protestant ideology (defeating Catholic Spain at sea had religious significance); personal ambition. Impact: contributed to Anglo-Spanish tension and the Armada; established early models for English overseas trade and colonialism; built the naval expertise and institutional structures that would support English maritime power in later centuries. The slave trade voyages of Hawkins also have profound long-term consequences that should not be omitted from a full account.
Revision checklist
Before moving on, make sure you can answer:
- Who was John Hawkins? Describe his three slave trade voyages.
- What happened at San Juan de Ulúa in 1568?
- What naval reforms did Hawkins make as Treasurer of the Navy?
- What was Francis Drake's circumnavigation? When did it take place?
- How much wealth did Drake bring back? How did Elizabeth reward him?
- What was Drake's role in the Cadiz raid of 1587?
- What was the Roanoke colony? What happened to it?
- Who was Walter Raleigh? What was his connection to the Virginia colonies?
What's New snippet
Article slug: gcse-history-elizabethan-england-hawkins-drake-seafarers
Title: Slavers, privateers, and circumnavigators — the Elizabethan seafarers who built an empire
John Hawkins carried enslaved Africans to Spanish colonies and called it a business venture; Francis Drake raided Spanish treasure ships, circumnavigated the globe, and burned Cadiz harbour. Both were celebrated as heroes. The Elizabethan seafarers were simultaneously agents of commercial expansion, instruments of state policy, and — by any honest accounting — pirates and slave traders.