1631 [Drake’s attack on Santiago, Cape Verde.]

On completing his circumnavigation in 1585, Drake focused his attention on Spanish holdings in the West Indies in 1585 -1586. The raid showed that the Spaniards’ were almost as lacking in defense of their Atlantic coast holdings as those on the Pacific. Drake’s fleet, which sailed from Plymouth on 14 September 1585, consisted of seven large ships and twenty two smaller vessels. They reached Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands on 17 November 1585. On finding no gold there, Drake ordered the town plundered and burned. The fleet departed on 29 November, setting sail across the Atlantic. This is a scarce engraved view of Drake’s attack of Santiago, based on the famous map by Baptista Boazio. The Boazio version, which was intended to accompany a book describing Drake’s 1586 expedition, commands many thousands of dollars when it rarely appears on the market. This version comes from the first abridgement, which was published by Johann Ludwig Gottfried in 1631. The original Boazio illustration