Mary Frear Keeler — Sir Francis Drake’s West Indian Voyage, 1585-86

33 published claims from this book.

• A prize ship taken at Santo Domingo was later abandoned
• A single cannon shot collapsed a newly built stone church in Cartagena.
• Carleill dictated the Tiger’s log to clerk Powell
• Cartagena’s land neck was defended by a stone fortification only fifty paces wide.
• Drake and New Year’s Gift entered the fleet after its original departure
• Drake captured sixty-two brass artillery pieces at Cartagena
• Drake paid each accompanying gentleman 100 pounds sterling from the voyage proceeds
• Drake promised a full official account of the voyage beyond the newsletter
• Drake’s fleet carried John White home from Roanoke, where he and Boazio exchanged artwork.
• Drake’s men killed a hundred turtles in two nights at the Cayman Islands.
• Elizabethan navy complemented ships at about three men per five tons
• Mary’s execution shortened Drake’s next venture to Cadiz.
• Naval galleys and barricaded sally ports failed to stop the English assault.
• Outfitting a 2,500-man expedition cost about 31,000 pounds plus 12,000 in wages by 1595
• Poisoned caltrops planted on the road were defeated by marching along the shore.
• Poisoned stakes planted by defenders could be avoided by marching along the shoreline
• Religious scruples likely shaped Knollys’s refusal of the November oaths.
• Santo Domingo’s fall stung Philip more than Cartagena’s capture.
• Ship tonnage figures are reconstructed from several modern scholarly sources
• Sixteenth-century expeditions deliberately carried artists to document what they saw.
• Spaniards, Indians, and English all ate the green iguana as a delicacy
• Spanish defeat at Cartagena led them to cede western Hispaniola to France
• The anonymous Leicester journal-keeper moved within Drake’s inner circle of commanders.
• The artist Boazio sailed on the 1585-86 expedition itself.
• The Folger MS L.b. 344 provides the master ship list for Drake’s voyage
• The French overestimated Drake’s booty by over threefold
• The Leicester journal is the sole account of a near mutiny on the voyage.
• The newsletter was likely addressed to Secretary Walsingham
• The Primrose and London pinnaces answered to Frobisher as the merchants’ representative
• The published Summarie likely served as an official propaganda report for the voyage.
• The published Summarie was likely a Walsingham-orchestrated official account, edited to serve propaganda purposes
• The Spanish castle at Saint Domingo commanded the harbour with fifty cannon.
• Turtles can be flipped onto their backs and left helpless overnight.