Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World

Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World is a narrative by Francis Pretty, one of Drake's gentlemen at arms. The narrative says that on the 15th day of November, in the year of our Lord 1577, Master Francis Drake, with a fleet of five ships and barks and to the number of 164 men, gentlemen and sailors, departed from Plymouth. The narrator says the ships were forced to put into Falmouth Haven, in Cornwall, where such and so terrible a tempest took them, so vehement that all the ships were like to have gone to wrack.

Of a group that failed not to come again to the water's side, the narrator says they set violent hands on one of the men who leapt over-rashly ashore, offering a dagger to his throat if he made any resistance. The narrator says that on the 17th day of January the ships arrived at Cape Blanco, where they found a ship riding at anchor with but two simple mariners in her. A pilot brings the ships to the haven of Guatulco, whose town, as he told them, had but 17 Spaniards in it.