Description :: |
Handcrafted, scratch built and ready
made. Absolutely nothing to do, except to remove from their boxes!
Please click here for a ship model of the Golden Hind in our Gold Range.
Model is out of stock at the moment.
Original
specifications:- (ex-Pelican), Galleon (3m), L/B/D 21.3m * 5.8m * 2.7m,
Hull: Wood, Complement: 80-85, Armament: 18 guns, Built: Plymouth,
Eng., 1576.
Famous for being the galleon in which Sir Francis Drake encompassed the World
on the first circumnavigation by an English ship.
Drake’s command consisted of about one hundred and eighty men in five
ships with the flagship being the Pelican. The expeditions cleared
Plymouth on December 13, 1577.
The crew sailed for the Cape Verde Islands, capturing half a dozen
Spanish ships and more importantly, the Portuguese pilot, Nuno da
Silva. His Santa Maria was renamed Mary and first put under the command of Thomas Doughty, one
of the several “gentlemen adventurers” on the voyage. However the
latter proved a trouble maker and Drake soon relieved him of command
altogether.
Whilst moored at Puerto San Julian for one
month, the crisis came to a head and the mutinous Doughty was tried and
found guilty. He was executed on the spot. It was at this point that
Drake delivered his celebrated sermon enjoining the “gentlemen to haul
and draw with the mariner and the mariner with the gentlemen” .
After the execution, Drake abandoned three of the ships and set sail with the Pelican, Marigold and Elizabeth on August 17.
Drake re-christened his ship to Golden Hind on August 20, after rounding the Cape of Virgins.
The choice of name was political, for the Golden Hind was found on the
coat of arms of Sir Christopher Hatton, one of the voyage’s principal
bankers and a friend of the late Thomas Doughty.
After only fourteen days in the Strait, the English flag first flew in
the Pacific on September 6, 1578. A serious storm cost the expedition
the other two ships. Marigold was lost with twenty-nine crew, and
Elizabeth turned back to England.
Drake pressed on along the West Coast of Spanish America and captured
the treasure ship Nuestra Sierra de la Concepcion off Cape Francisco
Colombia on March 1, 1579.
The cargo, which was made up of eighty pounds of gold and twenty-six
tons of silver bars, was equal in value to £126,000 or equivalent to
about half the English crown’s revenues for one year.
Drake captured a few more ships on his return journey to England. The
captured crew were almost unanimous in the respect for Drake’s
fairness. They were also impressed by his cartographic skills, as “for
everything was depicted so naturally that anyone who used these
paintings as a guide could not go astray”.
On June 17, 1579, Golden Hind anchored at what came to be known as
Drake’s Bay, just North of San Francisco Bay. As he found a good
country and a fruitful soil, this land was claimed for his Majesty and
named “New Albion” .
On July 25, 1579, he set sail cross the Pacific and arrived at Sierra Leone on July 22, 1580.
The first English circumnavigation of the Globe ended on September 26,
1580, when Golden Hind sailed into Plymouth after a voyage of 2 years,
10 months and 18 days with 59 of her crew aboard.
Drake
was finally received by Queen Elizabeth on April 4, 1581 and knighted
on the decks of the Golden Hind at Deptford dock. The ship remained on
public view until 1660s.
Hampden, Francis Drake Privateer. Sugden, Sir Francis Drake.
(CD B1502 - Large)
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