“I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. “For Elizabeth,” writes the author, “the expedition was a challenge to the global order, which ranked Spain dominant and England a second-rate island kingdom.” The narrative is long but never boring, as Bergreen masterly portrays the principal characters in this drama: the relentless, arrogant Drake the cautious, cunning Elizabeth and the mortified Spanish king, Philip II, and his spy in London, Bernardino de Mendoza, who informed his liege of Drake’s every outrageous move.Ī smooth, dramatic, and well-fleshed world history perfect for library collections.Ī former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.ĭiscovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. Drake’s success allowed England to challenge the seemingly invincible Spanish empire for the first time-and begin to establish its own.

Drake also delivered a staggering amount of gold and jewels, which, Bergreen shows, essentially saved the queen from an ill-suited marriage to a French duke, bolstered the state’s woeful finances, and allowed her to build up the English navy in preparation for the eventual invasion by the Spanish Armada in 1588. In 1580, Drake returned along with a handful of survivors, having successfully circumnavigated the globe, a feat that Magellan, murdered in the Philippines, was unable to accomplish. Demonstrating his deep knowledge of the era, the author energetically recounts Drake’s action-packed journey, which included a near mutiny and the execution of the ringleader.

A Protestant preacher’s son who cut his teeth on slaver ships (under his cousin John Hawkins) and decided that accumulating booty from the Spanish was his preferred trade, Drake took off from Plymouth in 1577 with a small fleet and the tacit approval of Queen Elizabeth I to drive the Spanish from mineral-rich regions of South America and beyond. In his latest wide-ranging work, Bergreen, who has written biographies of Columbus, Marco Polo, Magellan, Casanova, and others, trains his well-honed historical eye on Francis Drake (circa 1540-1596). The swashbuckling life and times of the explorer who achieved what Magellan could not-and made England’s fortune in the process.

Laurence bergreen magellan