voyage was the enhanced respect for Drake's name which had taken
possession of the Spanish race in every part of the world and
subsequently made the defeat of the Armada an easier task.

This eager soul, who was really the pioneer of a new civilization, had
still to face hard fate after the reluctant abandonment of his
intention to visit Panama. The sufferings of the adventurers from bad
weather and shortness of water was severely felt on the passage to
Florida. But the rough leader never lost heart or spared himself in
any way. He was obliged to heave-to at Cape Antonio (Cuba), and here
with indomitable courage went to work, putting heart into his men by
digging with pick and shovel in a way that would have put a navvy to
the blush, and when their efforts were rewarded he took his ships
through the Bahama Channel, and as he passed a fort which the
Spaniards had constructed and used as a base for a force which had
murdered many French Protestant colonists in the vicinity, Drake
landed, found out the murderous purpose of the fort, and blew it to
pieces. But that was not all. He also had the satisfaction of saving
the remainder of an unsuccessful English settlement founded by Sir
Walter Raleigh, and of taking possession of everything that he could
lay hands on from the Spanish settlement of St. Augustine. This was
the last episode of plunder connected with an expedition that was ripe
with thrilling incidents, and added to the fame of the most
enterprising figure of the Elizabethan reign.

In point of profit to those who had financed the voyage it was not a
success; but its political and ultimate commercial advantages were
enormous. These early seamen of the seventeenth century, many of them
amateurs, laid the foundation of the greatest navy and mercantile
marine of the world. It is to these fascinating adventurers, too, that