The Voyage of Sir Francis Drake Around the Whole Globe
Ratings2
Average rating2.5
This book would have really benefitted from some form of commentary to place these short accounts in a wider context, or even some notes expanding on points which seem interesting but are largely glossed over, usually in favour of listing the loot pillaged by Drake and Cavendish.
I think what surprised me more than anything in this short excerpt from Richard Hakluyt's Voyages and Discoveries, is how much Drake and his entourage were bloodthirsty pirates!
In the first three pages they have forcibly taken, robbed eight boats. These occupants (mostly fishermen in this case) yielded, and as there is no mention of their slaughter, so we will give Drake the benefit of the doubt and consider they were left alive.
Others were much less lucky, and were slaughtered, their ships, boats or villages torched.
To be fair, I have no doubt the Spanish were equally aggressive, but the repeated scenarios are documented in such a way that they are as eventful as sailing up a coastline for a week, or massacring 300 flightless birds on an island to store for food!
I couldn't tell with this book whether the excerpts selected were consistent with the rest of the book, but these weren't gripping in the way other of these Little Black Classics are.