On September 26, 1580, Francis Drake brought the Golden Hind into Plymouth Sound and asked some fishermen whether the Queen was alive and well. He had been gone two years and ten months, he had sailed round the world, and he had no way of knowing whether the country he came back to was still at peace. It was, and Elizabeth I knighted him on his own deck at Deptford the following April.
He had left Plymouth in December 1577 with five ships and about 160 men, on an expedition that was officially bound for the Mediterranean or somewhere else and was really aimed at Spanish shipping in the Pacific. By the time he reached the Strait of Magellan in August 1578 he had two ships left. One turned back. Only his own, the Pelican, renamed Golden Hind partway through, went on.
What he did in the Pacific was the reason for the voyage. The Spanish had been shipping silver from Potosi and Mexico across the Pacific to Manila and across the Atlantic to Seville for 50 years, and their Pacific coast had never been attacked. Drake took Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion, a treasure ship known as the Cacafuego, off Cape San Francisco in March 1579, and it was carrying about 26 tons of silver, 80 pounds of gold and 13 chests of royals of plate. He also raided ports and took a pilot who knew the route.
The northern part is obscure. He went up the coast as far as somewhere on the west coast of North America, possibly as far as what is now Oregon or British Columbia, spent five weeks careening the ship, and claimed the land for England as Nova Albion. The exact landing place has been argued about for 400 years.
He came home across the Pacific, round the Cape of Good Hope, and up the west coast of Africa, and he was the first commander to bring his ship all the way round, since Magellan had died in the Philippines and Elcano had brought the Victoria back. He had about 59 men left of the 80 who had crossed into the Pacific.
The plunder was enormous. The cargo was said to be worth more than a year of the crown's ordinary revenue, and about half of it disappeared, or was never recorded, or went to the Queen. The Spanish ambassador demanded Drake's head and Elizabeth did not give it. Twelve years later Drake was second in command against the Armada, and he died of dysentery off Panama in January 1596.