Hannah Cusworth

I think when you take a big assessment of his role, it was perhaps smaller than we would at first imagine for someone who was second in command.

And I think this big naval command was not really Drake's strong suit.

He was much more in it for doing the kind of smaller smash and grab raids, going in, finding the money, taking it home, than he was a kind of strategy guy or someone who was good at leading a really big fleet.

So, yeah, he was definitely there and played a role.

Maybe not such a big deal as he wanted us to think.

He then goes into Drake's wilderness years.

He is not in favor with the crown, with Queen Elizabeth.

He's not particularly successful.

Some historians have said that's because people started to get the measure of him and the Spanish became better at fortifying their colonial possessions and being able to know what Drake was up to.

We think he probably dies of dysentery.

I think one thing that is really amazing about Francis Drake is how many times he manages to avoid illness, injury, or is injured or does get ill and manages to survive and make it back to England.

But this time in 1596, off the coast of Panama, he is taken seriously ill and dies at sea.

He doesn't make it back to England, this time ruled.

I think people are still so interested in Francis Drake today because of his complexity I think is one of them.

Because there are different aspects to his story that people can pull out depending on the point that they're trying to make about England as a nation.

I think more recently particularly there's been quite a reassessment of Francis Drake and

People have been at pains to emphasize the fact that alongside his skills as a sailor and as a circumnavigator, he very much was involved in the transatlantic slave trade.

And in that kind of point in English history where England turns to the Atlantic very much and becomes involved in trafficking of enslaved people and in trying to kind of build itself up

in competition to Spain, who have developed this big empire in the Americas.

So I think we're going to be interested in Francis Drake for a little while yet, if we're interested in thinking about England and its role and how we remember that kind of time in English history.