Drake became England's new national hero, but to the Spanish he was a pirate and a terrorist, and the two nations' diametrically opposed views of him reveal him as the central figure in the Tudor Cold War between Protestant England and Catholic Spain.

0:00Ever since Elizabeth the First came to the throne, England and Spain have officially been at peace. But at sea, a shadow war has already begun. At its center is a young sailor from Devon called Francis Drake. Driven by militant Protestantism, wounded pride, and a profound loathing for Spain, Drake begins launching raids against the Spanish Empire in the Americas. He fast becomes England's new national hero. But to the Spanish, he is a pirate and a

0:38terrorist. The raids grow bolder, the bounty ever greater. Then on one particularly bold mission in the heights of a tree above the jungles of Panama, Drake glimpses something astonishing. For the first time, an Englishman beholds the Pacific Ocean. Immediately, he begins dreaming of an expedition that will be the most remarkable in the whole of English history and make him the most famous adventurer, if not the most

1:12famous person. full stop in the whole of Europe. Drake, he was a Devon man and ruled the Devon seas. Captain, are those sleeping there below? Roven, though his death fell, he went with heart at ease. A dreaming all the time a Plymouth hoe. Take my drum to England. Hang it by the shore. Strike it when your powder's running low. If the dawn sighted Devon, I'll quit the poor heaven and drum them

1:54up the channel as we drum them long ago. So that is Drake's drum by Tom Holland's favorite poet, Sir Henry Newbolt. And it was written in 1897. The high point of late Victorian patriotism. the high point of faith in the British Empire and indeed in the Royal Navy. But it's a point in Britain's history, the late 1890s, when people are beginning to get a little bit worried that the next

2:18century, the 20th century, might not be as good as the 19th. And so they're looking for reassurance. They're worried that the foundations of the British Empire are crumbling. And they're looking for reassurance back to the glory days of the Virgin Queen and the origins of English sea power. And in particular, they're looking back to the great maritime hero of the Elizabeth and age, probably the greatest English hero

2:41between Henry V and Horatio Nelson, and that is Sir Francis Drake. So Nelson had beaten the French. Sir Francis Drake was famous, was celebrated in endless story books and textbooks for children as the man who had seen off the Spanish, the Dons as they're called, specifically in the Spanish Armada of 1588. But Tom, there's more to him than that, isn't there? Because he was also the great

3:06English explorer at the time. The only man in history who had set off to circumn the world and had been in command of the expedition from the very start of it to the end. So he'd gone up the coast of California. He'd almost gone to Canada. And in fact, in San Francisco, there is still well there is St. Francis Drake Boulevard. There's Drake's Bay. It's brilliant that in San

3:29Francisco, which you would think of as very woke, >> they love Sir Francis Drake. Actually, we might touch on this in a second, but when he died, he died at sea. He died off the coast of Panama and he was consigned to the waters. So, the poem says slung between the roundshot in Numbre Dios Bay. And the story goes, so the the myth which is celebrated by this