A Seafaring Spirit

"There is a statue near the gatehouse of Francis Drake, pirate and slave trader and national hero. Here is your English legend, a man as happy to murder and pillage as he was to defend his country from foreign invaders. This is your hero, a man who stole negroes from Africa and shipped them over to the hot lands of the Spanish Main to work like beasts in fields of sugarcane and tobacco. Celebrate him. Cast his memory in bronze so he can be venerated for ever more."

The Children of Powerful Men, by Lawrence McNeela

Sir Francis Drake, Elizabethan Hero and Privateer

Sir Francis Drake was born on a farm just outside Tavistock in rural west Devon. The exact date of his birth isn’t clear but is generally believed to be 1540. At the age of 55, in the year of our lord 1596, he died of dysentery whilst anchored off the coast of Panama. Buried at sea, his ghost is said to haunt a number of places in his homeland.

 

Buckland Abbey, Devon Home of Sir Francis Drake

There are few figures in English history as controversial as Drake. On the one hand, he is a man whose genius for naval conflict saved his nation from the Spanish Armada, whose skills as a sailor took the tiny Golden Hind around the globe. But on the other, he was a slave trader, murderer and pirate. A man so wicked, even his fellow countrymen feared he was in league with the Devil.

Generations of English schoolboys grew up with tales of his heroism ringing in their ears. I can remember my own fascination with the legend of bowls on Plymouth Hoe, the thrill I received when seeing a replica of his famous ship on a primary school visit to London.

Of course, the Spanish talk about the man in a very different way.

El Draque, they call him: The Dragon. And well-earnt it is, this epithet, for he burnt the coastal city of Vigo to the ground in 1585, plundered Santiago in the Cape Verdes and ransacked Santo Domingo. His almost insatiable greed is evident from the huge ransoms he demanded in return for leaving these communities standing. The fact that, at Santiago, he even stole the cathedral’s bronze bells!

Drake’s Drum

It’s claimed that Drake, shortly before he succumbed to illness, ordered his war drum returned to home, Buckland Abbey in Devon. He gave the command that it be beat when England was next in peril, promising to return from the grave to fight once more.

Mysteriously, there are those who say they’ve heard the drum sound on a number of occasions since, as though it were struck by ghostly hands. It was heard when the Mayflower left nearby Plymouth, when the captured Napoleon Bonaparte was brought ashore as a prisoner and, most tellingly, when World Wars One and Two commenced. During the latter conflict, it was spirited away from Buckland Abbey for safekeeping, on the face of it a wise decision given the danger Plymouth faced from the Luftwaffe. However, there were those who thought the two events keenly related.

An old legend warned the city would fall if the drum ever left its Abbey home. Suddenly, and with this having recently occurred, Plymouth’s historic centre was turned into rubble by Nazi bombs. Heeding the threat, the drum was returned and the blitz soon ceased. Of course, the deployment of radar and fighter squadrons from the new RAF Harrowbeer might have been responsible for that.

Ghostly Sightings

A man in league with the Devil can expect no rest, and Drake’s ghost is said to haunt a number of places. One is The Ship Inn on St Martin’s Lane in Exeter. An old, probably forged, letter proved a connection betwixt salty pub and seadog. According to one legend, the landlady of The Ship actually barred Drake because he could be a nuisance when drunk. His spirit now haunts the place, in apparent defiance of her instructions.

He is also seen at Nutwell Court, a country house standing on the east bank of the Exe estuary at Lympstone. Interestingly, one of his descendants is said to haunt the road outside, having been thrown from his horse during an ill-advised race to a local alehouse.

His unhappy spirit is thought trapped by some within Buckland Abbey, but it’s also known to stalk the wilds of Dartmoor of a night. Fleeing the black hunt, pursued by a pack of spectral wisht hounds, Drake races across the tors to avoid giving up the eternal soul he promised the evil one in return for his famed seafaring prowess.