DRAKE'S GREAT ARMADA

by Captain Walter Biggs


PREPARER'S NOTE

This text was prepared from a 1910 edition, published by P. F. Collier &
Son Company, New York.




INTRODUCTION

Nearly five years elapsed between Drake's return from his Famous
Voyage and the despatch of the formidable armament commemorated in the
following pages. During the last of these years the march of events had
been remarkably rapid. Gilbert, who had been empowered by Elizabeth, in
the year of Frobisher's last expedition, to found colonies in America,
had sailed for that purpose to Newfoundland (1583), and had perished
at sea on his way homeward. Raleigh, who had succeeded to his
half-brother's enterprises, had despatched his exploring expedition to
'Virginia,' under Amadas and Barlow, in 1584, and had followed it up
in the next year (1585) by an actual colony. In April Sir Richard
Greenville sailed from Plymouth, and at Raleigh's expense established
above a hundred colonists on the island of Roanoak. Drake's Great Armada
left Plymouth in September of the same year. It marked a turning-point
in the relations between the English and Spanish monarchs. Elizabeth,
knowing that the suppression of the insurrection in the Netherlands