Sir Francis Drake's Voyage Around The World: Its Aims And Achievements

by Henry Raup Wagner

Reprint of the 1926 edition. Octavo. x, 543 p. illus., ports., maps (part fold.) 28 cm. San Francisco, Calif., J. Howell, 1926. Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral, (c. 1540 - January 28, 1596) was an English privateer, navigator, naval pioneer and raider, politician and civil engineer of the Elizabethan era. He was the first captain to circumnavigate the Earth (Magellan died on his voyage, which was completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano). He was second-in-command of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada in 1588. He died of dysentery while unsuccessfully attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1596 Wagner's work is arguably the most comprehensive assembly of texts and detailed analysis of Drake's voyage.

543 pages, Hardcover

First published June 15, 2006

Reviews

[David Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I own an original edition of this book. Voyage is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in the Drake circumnavigation. The book, however, has one startling and fatal flaw. Wagner made a point of extensively including source documentation about the voyage but OMITTED ALMOST EVERY PASSAGE ABOUT THE DOUGHTY AFFAIR in the Cooke account. There is no excuse for such poor scholarship. His bias for Drake is as blatant as Zelia Nuttall's, who edited New Light on Drake. Thus, to learn what did go on between Drake and Doughty, which is arguably central to an understanding of the voyage, you have to go to the Cooper Square edition of The World Encompassed and Analogous Contemporary Documents, which contains an unexpurgated version of Cooke's relation.