Hannah Cusworth

What is quite hard, I think, for historians to figure out is how much Drake was really motivated by a hatred of Spain and maybe that hatred was religiously motivated.

There are a number of examples of Drake being quite a strong Protestant, of taking services aboard his ship.

But also it's hard because some of the sources that we have are very much created to portray England as this kind of plucky Protestant nation.

And Drake is positioned as someone very much who's kind of a hero within that narrative.

I think it's also really interesting to notice that he seems to be a really pragmatic guy and an opportunistic guy.

And at this time, Spain was a major European power and had a lot of wealth that it was deriving from its colonies and imperial activities in the Americas.

So whether he really hated Spain or just Spain had the money and he was really good at these kind of smash and grab raids, I don't know if we'll ever be able to determine that one conclusively.

We really get the sense that part of the circumnavigation is for profit, and the route is planned to take these raiding opportunities that Drake excels at.

So they're thinking about crossing the Atlantic and raiding across the coast of what is then Spanish-controlled South America.

I think there's also a real interest in opening up new trade routes and you get this real confluence of profit and exploration, whereby perhaps at the time they weren't really seen as two distinct things.

You were exploring in order to find new trade routes or new opportunities to make money.

The command when they set out appears to be like a little bit unclear in terms of whether they're joint captains or whether Dauti is more senior but there is a number of accusations that Drake levels against Dauti which range from like stealing to witchcraft so really the full gamut and Drake strips Dauti of part of his command which is obviously really offensive to Dauti

I think it's important we remember that Drake comes from relatively humble beginnings, and Doughty would have definitely seen himself as like Drake's kind of social superior.

So that gives us a bit of an insight into his character.

Now, some people could say like, yeah, but he had to maintain order.

And he was about to go into a really treacherous part of the voyage.

If the plan was to kind of round the tip of South America, that is incredibly tough for challenging sailing water.

And you need to have your crew being united because people's lives are very much at risk.

Or you could say, yeah, he's paranoid, he's quite authoritarian.

So again, I think like with most things with Drake, there are kind of two different or multiple different ways you could interpret that event.