Francis Pretty
OccupationMan-at-Arms
LanguageEnglish
NationalityEnglish
PeriodElizabethan
GenreDiarist
SubjectExploration
Title page of the 1617 edition of Emanuel van Meteren's publication of Pretty's diaries in Dutch
Title page of the 1617 edition of Emanuel van Meteren's publication of Pretty's diaries in Dutch

Francis Pretty was a Suffolk gentleman,[1] diarist, sailor, and man-at-arms, who wrote a detailed account of the circumnavigation of the globe with Thomas Cavendish (1588). Due to the dubious legality of the expedition, accounts were officially suppressed; the earliest unofficial accounts were published in Dutch by Emanuel van Meteren who purchased the diary. Excerpts of the diary were also included in Richard Hakluyt's 1582 and 1589 treatises on British explorations of North America, before he published the Cavendish diary in its entirety in 1600.

Pretty is also often credited for the account of Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation (1577–1580).[2][3][4][5] According to Henry Raup Wagner however, it is highly unlikely if not impossible for Pretty to have written the account, as there is no evidence that he took part in that expedition, while there is evidence that he did not do so.[6] This is the account of Drake's expedition, in which the privateer's contact with native peoples along the coast near 38°N (present-day California) is mentioned. There Drake would have left "a plate, nailed upon a faire great poste, whereupon was ingraven her Maiesties name, the day and yeere of our arrivall there, with the free giving up of the province and people into her Maiesties hands, together with her highnes picture and armes, in a peece of six pence of current English money, under the plate, where under was also written the name of our Generall."[7] This description provided the basis for the Drake's Plate hoax.

References

  1. ↑ Hart, Albert Bushnell; Curtis, John Gould (1897). American History Told by Contemporaries. Macmillan. p. 81.
  2. ↑ Thompson, Gunnar (2010). Commander Francis Drake & the West Coast Mysteries. Lulu.com. p. 103. ISBN 978-0-557-49486-6.
  3. ↑ Kelsey, Harry (2001). Sir Francis Drake: The Queen's Pirate. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. pp. 88 (footnote 97). ISBN 0300084633.
  4. ↑ Thrower, Norman Joseph William, ed. (1984). Sir Francis Drake and the Famous Voyage, 1577–1580: Essays commemorating the quadricentennial of Drake's circumnavigation of the Earth. University of California Press. p. 201. ISBN 978-0-520-04876-8.
  5. ↑ The widely distributed Harvard Classics, Volume 33 of 1910 led to this generally-accepted error. C.W. Eliot, ed. (1910). "Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Around the World". Harvard Classics. Vol. 33. Voyages and travels, ancient and modern. P.F. Collier and Son. p. 207. Retrieved 19 March 2022.
  6. ↑ Wagner, Henry Raup (1926). Sir Francis Drake's Voyage Around the World, Its Aims and Achievements. San Francisco: John Howell. pp. 238–240.
  7. ↑ Hakluyt, Richard (1589). The famous voyage of Sir Francis Drake into the South Sea and there hence about the whole Globe of the Earth.
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