John Hopkins

But they're not just any voyages.

Hawkins is notorious nowadays for his involvement in the burgeoning transatlantic slave trade.

Drake sails on a number of such expeditions, each following a similar pattern.

Hawkins buys or captures people in West Africa before shipping them to the Americas and selling them to Spanish colonists.

In this period, seven decades after Columbus first reached the so-called New World, Spain's empire is vast, encompassing most of the Caribbean as well as much of Central and South America.

And though the Spanish crown disapproves of unlicensed English merchants trading with its colonies tax-free, it is to these Spanish possessions that Hawkins and Drake ship the Africans they have enslaved.

Hawkins pioneers English involvement in the slave trade at a very early date, and is estimated to have trafficked 1,500 Africans to the Americas.

And though some historians have sought to downplay Drake's culpability in this abhorrent practice, there is no doubt that he participates in and profits from the ventures.

It is in fact Hawkins who gives Drake his first command, making him captain of the Judith, part of a four-ship fleet that set sail from Plymouth in 1567.

In many ways, it is a repeat of previous journeys, but events take a turn for the worse off the coast of modern-day Mexico at a place called San Juan de Olua.

By this time, Hawkins is firmly in the bad books of the Spanish, having repeatedly violated their trade monopoly in the Americas.

But though right now he believes he's negotiated a truce, while he's repairing his ships, he is ambushed by the Spanish.

The fleet, under heavy fire, Drake orders the Judith to set sail and return to England.

Both men eventually make it home, although many crewmen are killed in the fighting.

Hawkins will later write that Drake forsook us in our great misery.

But within a few years, they are sailing together once more.

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