Sir Francis Drake, Courageous Privateer or Scandalous Pirate?

Sir Francis Drake is a prominent figure that can be found all throughout history textbooks. These texts reflect on his naval prowess and paint him to be a virtuous commander that is loyal to his home country serving the queen dutifully. However, like most things in life there is another side of the story. Under the Black Flag makes Sir Francis Drake out to be a legendary privateer who preyed on the Spanish near the treasure port of Nombre de Dios and returning all of his spoils loyally back to queen Elizabeth in England. It describes the bounty as being worth over 68 million dollars in today's day and age. It then goes on to say that he deposited 5 tons of silver into the Royal English courts even though he really kept 21 tons for himself. This begs the question, "Was Sir Francis Drake really as noble as history likes to say he is?" It is a hard question to answer because of the sheer variation of facts about Sir Francis Drake but in my opinion based on the fact that he kept the vast majority of the silver that he was supposed to claim for his queen and country prove to me that he is more of a textbook pirate that a textbook nobleman.

Connection between Under the Black Flag and Bucanners and Pirates

Under the Black Flag and Buccaneers and Pirates are both books which delve into the topic of pirates and the stories that surround them. However, this two books could not go about accomplishing this task in more different manners. On the one hand, Under the Black Flag is a factual assessment of Pirates giving vast amounts of historical background and debunking many of the various stereotypes that glorify the life of a pirate.  This book focuses on many small and often times seemingly insignificant little tidbits that aim to fully discover what exactly a pirate's life was like during the "Golden Age of Piracy". On the opposite end of the spectrum, Buccaneers and Pirates is a historical fiction that attempts to bring to life many of these concepts by attaching a narrative along with. This book can be seen as the "bigger picture" of the story of what a pirate's life really was like because instead of focusing on the various minute details and facts, this book analyzes such facts and incorporates them all in a story the readers can follow and can genuinely invest themselves in. There are many connections between these two books which goes to show that both books are probably very valid accounts of what it truly was like to be a pirate. For instance, both books tell of the same origin of the term "Buccaneer". The books tell of how many merchant ships would slowly started getting involved in the cattle trade and the drying of beef, which is where the term actually comes from. They also go on to describe how the original fighting characterized of pirates began over this cattle trade when the Spanish became angered over the vast amount of riches that were being made by the buccaneers in what they thought to be their possession. This of course is just one of the many similarities between the two books just presented in an entirely different manner, one presented very factual with specific places and dates ( Under the Black Flag) and the other presented in a story like manner attempting to give a larger overview of what happened ( Buccaneers and Pirates).