After nearly three years at sea, Francis Drake returned to Plymouth aboard the Golden Hind, laden with plundered Spanish silver and spices worth a fortune to the English crown. He was only the second commander to circle the globe, following Magellan's expedition, but the first to survive the entire voyage himself. Queen Elizabeth I knighted him aboard his ship the following year, infuriating Spain.
Drake had left Plymouth in December 1577 with five ships and secret orders from Elizabeth I to raid Spanish colonies and shipping along the Pacific coast of the Americas—territory Spain considered its private lake. By the time the Golden Hind limped home, only one ship remained, the others lost, wrecked, or sent back, and Drake had become the terror of the Spanish Main, seizing treasure galleons and coastal towns from Chile to Mexico.
The voyage's return cargo—an estimated 600,000 pounds of silver, gold, and spices—was so valuable that Elizabeth's investors saw returns of roughly 4,700 percent. She quietly kept much of the plunder herself rather than provoke open war with Philip II of Spain, though war came anyway eight years later with the Armada.
When Drake anchored at Plymouth on this day, he reportedly asked local fishermen the first question of a man long at sea and out of touch: whether the Queen was still alive and whether England was at peace. Told yes to both, he proceeded ashore to a welcome that made him a national hero and, to Spain, a pirate worth a king's ransom to capture.