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Fandom

A fandom is a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of camaraderie with others who share a common interest. Fans typically are interested in even minor details of the objects of their fandom and spend a significant portion of their time and energy involved with their interest, often as a part of a social network with particular practices, differentiating fandom-affiliated people from those with only a casual interest.

A fandom can grow around any area of human interest or activity. The subject of fan interest can be narrowly defined, focused on something like a franchise or an individual celebrity, or encompassing entire hobbies, genres or fashions. While it is now used to apply to groups of people fascinated with any subject, the term has its roots in those with an enthusiastic appreciation for sports. Merriam-Webster's dictionary traces the usage of the term back as far as 1903.

Many fandoms are overlapped. There are a number of large conventions that cater to fandom such as film, comics, anime, television shows, cosplay, and the opportunity to buy and sell related merchandise. Annual conventions such as Comic Con International, Wondercon, Dragon Con, and New York Comic Con are some of the more well-known and highly attended events that cater to overlapping fandoms.

Origins of Fandom
Fans of the literary detective Sherlock Holmes are widely considered to have comprised the first modern fandom, holding public demonstrations of mourning after Holmes was "killed off" in 1893, and creating some of the first fan fiction as early as about 1897 to 1902. Outside the scope of media, railway enthusiasts are another early fandom with its roots in the late 19th century that began to gain in popularity and increasingly organize in the first decades of the early 20th century.

A wide variety of modern organized Western fan subcultures originated with science fiction fandom, the community of fans of the science fiction and fantasy genres. Science fiction fandom dates back to the 1930s and maintains organized clubs and associations in many cities around the world. Fans have held the annual World Science Fiction Convention since 1939, along with many other events each year, and has created its own jargon, sometimes called "fanspeak". In addition, the Society for Creative Anachronism, a medievalist re-creation group, has its roots in science fiction fandom and was founded by members thereof. Many science fiction and fantasy authors such as Marion Zimmer Bradley, Poul Anderson, Randall Garrett, David D. Friedman, and Robert Asprin have been members of the organization.

Media fandom split from science fiction fandom in the early 1970s with a focus on relationships between characters within TV and movie media franchises, such as Star Trek and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. Fans of these franchises generated creative products like fan art and fan fiction at a time when typical science fiction fandom was focused on critical discussions. The MediaWest convention provided a video room and was instrumental in the emergence of fan vids, or analytic music videos based on a source, in the late 1970s. By the mid-1970s, it was possible to meet fans at science fiction conventions who did not read science fiction, but only viewed it on film or TV.

Anime and manga fandom began in the 1970s in Japan. In America, the fandom also began as an offshoot of science fiction fandom, with fans bringing imported copies of Japanese manga to conventions. Before anime began to be licensed in the U.S., fans who wanted to get a hold of anime would leak copies of anime movies and subtitle them to exchange with friends in the community, thus marking the start of fansubs. While the science fiction and anime fandoms grew in media, the Grateful Dead subculture that emerged in the late 1960s to the early 1970s created a global fandom around hippie culture that would have lasting impacts on society and technology.

Music fandom in the 20th century coincided with the rise of popular music culture, and revolves around the collective enthusiasm and dedication of fans towards specific musical artists, bands, or genres. Common forms of engagement for music fandoms include attending concerts, creating fan art, participating in online communities, and consuming media related to their preferred artist. These communities play an important role in promoting and supporting the careers of artists, as well as shaping cultural trends within the music industry. Some popular examples of music fandom include Beatlemania, Swifties, Deadheads and The Barbz.

The furry fandom refers to the fandom for fictional anthropomorphic animal characters with human personalities and characteristics. The concept of the furry originated at a science fiction convention in 1980, when a drawing of a character from Steve Gallacci's Albedo Anthropomorphics initiated a discussion of anthropomorphic characters in science fiction novels, which in turn initiated a discussion group that met at science fiction and comics conventions.

Additional subjects with significant fandoms include comics, animated cartoons, video games, sports, music, films, television shows, pulp magazines, soap operas, celebrities, and game shows.

Participating in fandom
Members of a fandom associate with one another, often attending fan conventions and publishing and exchanging fanzines and newsletters. Amateur press associations are another form of fan publication and networking. Originally using print-based media, these subcultures have migrated much of their communications and interaction onto the Internet, which is also used for the purpose of archiving detailed information pertinent to their given fanbase. Often, fans congregate on forums and discussion boards to share their love for and criticism of a specific work. This congregation can lead to a high level of organization and community within the fandom, as well as infighting. Although there is some level of hierarchy among most of the discussion boards, and certain contributors may be valued more highly than others, newcomers are most often welcomed into the fold. Most importantly, these sorts of discussion boards can have an effect on the media itself, as was the case in the television show Glee. Trends on discussion boards have been known to influence the writers and producers of shows. The media fandom for the TV series Firefly was able to generate enough corporate interest to create a movie after the series was canceled.

Some fans write fan fiction ("fanfic"), stories based on the universe and characters of their chosen fandom. This fiction can take the form of video-making as well as writing. Fan fiction may or may not tie in with the story's canon; sometimes fans use the story's characters in different situations that do not relate to the plot line at all.

Especially at events, fans may also partake in cosplay, the creation and wearing of costumes designed in the likeness of characters from a source work, which can also be combined with role-playing, reenacting scenes, or inventing likely behavior inspired by their chosen sources.

Others create fan vids, or analytical music videos focusing on the source fandom, and yet others create fan art. Such activities are sometimes known as "fan labor" or "fanac" (an abbreviation for "fan activity"). The advent of the Internet has significantly facilitated fan association and activities. Activities that have been aided by the Internet include the creation of fan "shrines" dedicated to favorite characters, computer screen wallpapers, and avatars. The rise of the Internet has furthermore resulted in the creation of online fan networks who help facilitate the exchange of fanworks.

Some fans create pictures known as edits, which consist of pictures or photos with their chosen fandom characters in different scenarios. These edits are often shared on social media networks such as Instagram, TikTok, Tumblr or Pinterest. In edits, one may see content relating to several different fandoms. Fans in communities online often make gifs or gif sets about their fandoms. Gifs or gif sets can be used to create non-canon scenarios mixing actual content or adding in related content. Gif sets can also capture minute expressions or moments. Fans use gifs to show how they feel about characters or events in their fandom; these are called reaction gifs.

The Temple of the Jedi Order, or Jediism, a self-proclaimed "real living, breathing religion," views itself as separate from the Jedi as portrayed in the Star Wars franchise. Despite this, sociologists view the conflation of religion and fandom in Jediism as legitimate in some sense, classifying both as participatory phenomena.

There are also active fan organizations that participate in philanthropy and create a positive social impact. For example, the Harry Potter Alliance is a civic organization with a strong online component which runs campaigns around human rights issues, often in partnership with other advocacy and nonprofit groups; its membership skews college age and above. Nerdfighters, another fandom formed around Vlogbrothers, a YouTube vlog channel, are mainly high school students united by a common goal of "decreasing world suck". K-pop fans have been involved in various online fan activism campaigns related to Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the Black Lives Matter movement.

In film
Notable feature-length documentaries about fandom include Trekkies and A Brony Tale. Slash is a movie released in 2016 about a young boy who writes slash fan fiction. The SiriusXM-produced audio documentary Comic-Con Begins was launched as a six-part series starting June 22, 2021. It presents the history of both the San Diego Comic-Con and the modern fandom scene it helped to spawn, as told by nearly 50 surviving foundational SDCC members, fandom experts, and special guests such as: Kevin Smith, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Felicia Day, Trina Robbins, Maggie Thompson, the Russo brothers, and Bruce Campbell. Cosplay pioneer, scream queen, and foundational SDCC member Brinke Stevens hosts the series. Comic-Con Begins was expanded into the book See You at San Diego: An Oral History of Comic-Con, Fandom, and the Triumph of Geek Culture by creator Mathew Klickstein and published by Fantagraphics on September 6, 2022. The book includes forewords by cartoonists Stan Sakai and Jeff Smith, and an afterword by Wu-Tang Clan's RZA.

In books
Fangirl is a novel written by Rainbow Rowell about a college student who is a fan of a book series called Simon Snow, which is written by a fictional author named Gemma T. Leslie. On October 6, 2015 Rainbow Rowell published a follow-up novel to Fangirl. Carry On is a stand-alone novel set in the fictional world that Cath, the main character of Fangirl writes fan fiction in.

Relationship with the media industry
The film and television entertainment industry refers to the totality of fans devoted to a particular area of interest, organized or not, as the "fanbase".

Media fans, have, on occasion, organized on behalf of canceled television series, with notable success in cases such as Star Trek in 1968, Cagney & Lacey in 1983, Xena: Warrior Princess, in 1995, Roswell in 2000 and 2001 (was canceled with finality at the end of the 2002 season), Farscape in 2002, Firefly in 2002, and Jericho in 2007. (In the case of Firefly the result was the movie Serenity, not another season.) It was likewise the fans who facilitated the push to create a Veronica Mars film through a Kickstarter campaign. Fans of the show Chuck launched a campaign to save the show from being canceled using a Twitter hashtag and buying products from sponsors of the show. Fans of Arrested Development fought for the character Steve Holt to be included in the fourth season. The Save Steve Holt! campaign included a Twitter and Facebook account, a hashtag, and a website. In the music industry, fandoms have played vital roles in shaping the music of their favorite artists. In 2023, Lana Del Rey was featured in Taylor Swift's song "Snow on the Beach", a track off of her popular album Midnights. Both Swifties, Taylor Swift's loyal fan base, and Lana Del Rey fans were disappointed with the feature, as they felt her contribution was not long enough or sufficiently prominent in the mix. In response, Taylor Swift released an updated version of the track titled "Snow on the Beach (Feat. More Lana Del Rey)", where she sings the entire second verse.

Such outcries, even when unsuccessful, suggest a growing self-awareness on the part of entertainment consumers, who appear increasingly likely to attempt to assert their power as a bloc. Fan activism in support of the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike through Fans4Writers appears to be an extension of this trend.

Science Fiction writers, editors and publishers have participated in science fiction fandom themselves, from Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison to Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Toni Weisskopf. Ed Brubaker was a fan of the Captain America comics as a kid and was so upset that Bucky Barnes was killed off that he worked on ways to bring him back. The Winter Soldier arc began in 2004, and in the sixth issue in 2005 it was revealed that the Winter Soldier was Bucky Barnes. Many authors write fan fiction under pseudonyms. Lev Grossman has written stories in the Harry Potter, Adventure Time, and How to Train Your Dragon universes. S.E. Hinton has written about both Supernatural and her own books, The Outsiders. Movie actors often cosplay as other characters to enjoy being a regular fan at cons; for example, Daniel Radcliffe cosplayed as Spider-Man at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con. Before the release of The Amazing Spider-Man, Andrew Garfield dressed up as Spider-Man and gave an emotional speech about what Spider-Man meant to him and thanking fans for their support.

The relationship between fans and professionals has changed because of access to social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. By giving their follows a glimpse into their everyday life, public figures have a new way of expressing themselves and engaging with their fanbases on a deeper level. Online platforms also give fans more ways to connect and participate in fandoms.

Some fans have made their work in fandom into careers. The book Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James was originally a fan fiction of the Twilight series published on FanFiction.Net. The story was taken down for mature content that violated the site's terms of service. James rewrote the story to take out any references to Twilight and self-published on The Writer's Coffee Shop in May 2011. The book was published by Random House in 2012 and was very popular, selling over 100 million copies. However, many fans were not happy about James using fan fiction to make money and felt it was not in the spirit of the community.

There is contention over fans not being paid for their time or work. Gaming companies use fans to alpha and beta test their games in exchange for early access or promotional merchandise. The TV show Glee used fans to create promotional materials, though they did not compensate them.

The entertainment industry has promoted its work directly to members of the fandom community by sponsoring and presenting at events and conventions dedicated to fandom. Studios frequently create elaborate exhibits, organize panels that feature celebrities and writers of film and television (to promote both existing work and works yet to be released), and engage fans directly with providing Q&A sessions, screening sneak previews, and supplying branded giveaway merchandise. The interest, reception, and reaction of the fandom community to the works being promoted have a marked influence on how film studios and others proceed with the projects and products they exhibit and promote.

Fandoms, for example at Comic Con, can sometimes lead to toxic behavior, including harassing other fans or media creators.

Fandom and technology
The rise of the Internet created new and powerful outlets for fandom. While the principles of fandom largely remain the same, internet users now have the ability to engage in discourse on a global scale, creating an even stronger sense of community among fans. Mark Duffet touches on this point in Popular Music Fandom: Identities, Roles and Practices: "Online social media platforms... have operated as a forthright challenge to the idea that electronic mediation is an alienating and impersonal process".

Fandoms engaging with technology began with early engineers trading Grateful Dead set lists and discussing the setup of the band's concert speaker system, called the "Wall of Sound," on ARPANET, a precursor to the Internet. This led to tape trading over FTP, and the Internet Archive began to add Grateful Dead shows in 1995. Online tape trading communities such as etree evolved into P2P networks trading shows through torrents. After the birth of the World Wide Web, many communities adopted the practices of Deadhead fandom online.

Fandoms by medium
• Anime and manga fandom and Anime

• Cinephilia

• Furry fandom

• Gamers

• K-pop fans

• Vidding fandom

List of notable fandoms
• A Song of Ice and Fire fandom (fans of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire including A Game of Thrones)

• Beatlemaniacs (fans of the Beatles)

• Bondians (James Bond)

• Bronies (fans of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic)

• Browncoats (fans of Firefly)

• Deadheads (fans of The Grateful Dead)

• Directioners (fans of One Direction)

• Disney fandom

• Fandom culture in South Korea (fans of Korean pop idols and anime)

• Janeites (fans of Jane Austen)

• Juggalos (fans of Insane Clown Posse)

• Larries (shipping fans of Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson)

• Madonna wannabes (part of Madonna's fandom)

• Marvel fandom

• Moonwalkers (fans of Michael Jackson)

• MSTies (fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000)

• Parrotheads (fans of Jimmy Buffett)

• Potterheads (fans of Harry Potter)

• Railfans

• Science fiction fandom

• Shakira fandom

• Sherlockians (fans of Sherlock Holmes)

• SRKians (fans of Shah Rukh Khan)

• Stargate fandom

• Star Wars fandom

• Swifties (fans of Taylor Swift)

• Tifosi (fans of Italian sports teams or motor vehicles)

• Toonheads

• Tolkien fandom (also known as Tolkienites, or, if only fans of The Lord of the Rings, Ringers)

• Trekkies (fans of Star Trek)

• Ultras, fanatic sports supporters

• Whovians (fans of Doctor Who)

title: Fandom


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Fort Collins, Colorado

Fort Collins is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Larimer County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 169,810 at the 2020 census, an increase of 17.94% since 2010. Fort Collins is the principal city of the Fort Collins, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and is a major city of the Front Range Urban Corridor. The city is the fourth most populous city in Colorado. Situated on the Cache La Poudre River along the Colorado Front Range, Fort Collins is located 56 mi north of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver. Fort Collins is a midsize college town, home to Colorado State University and Front Range Community College's Larimer campus.

History
The Northern Arapaho were centered in the Cache la Poudre River Valley near present-day Fort Collins. Friday, who attended school in St. Louis, Missouri in his youth, was a leader of the band of Arapahos as well as an interpreter, negotiator, and peacemaker. He made friends of white settlers who moved into the area, but was pushed out of Colorado in the 1860s.

Fort Collins was founded as a military outpost of the United States Army in 1864. It succeeded a previous encampment, known as Camp Collins, on the Cache la Poudre River, near what is known today as Laporte. Camp Collins was erected during the Indian wars of the mid-1860s to protect the Overland mail route that had been recently relocated through the region. Travelers crossing the county on the Overland Trail would camp there, but a flood destroyed the camp in June 1864. Afterward, the commander of the fort wrote to the commandant of Fort Laramie in southeast Wyoming, Colonel William O. Collins, suggesting that a site several miles farther down the river would make a good location for the fort. The post was manned originally by two companies of the 11th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry and never had walls.

Settlers began arriving in the vicinity of the fort nearly immediately. The fort was decommissioned in 1867. The original fort site is now adjacent to the present historic "Old Town" portion of the city. The first school and church opened in 1866, and the town was platted in 1867. The civilian population of Fort Collins, led by local businessman Joseph Mason, led an effort to relocate the county seat to Fort Collins from LaPorte, and they were successful in 1868.

The city's first population boom came in 1872, with the establishment of an agricultural colony. Hundreds of settlers arrived, developing lots just south of the original Old Town. Tension between new settlers and earlier inhabitants led to political divisions in the new town, which was incorporated in 1873. Although the Colorado Agricultural College was founded in 1870, the first classes were held in 1879.

The 1880s saw the construction of a number of elegant homes and commercial buildings and the growth of a distinctive identity for Fort Collins. Stone quarrying, sugar-beet farming, and the slaughter of sheep were among the area's earliest industries. Beet tops, an industry supported by the college and its associated agricultural experiment station, proved to be an excellent and abundant food for local sheep, and by the early 1900s the area was being referred to as the "Lamb feeding capital of the world". In 1901 the Great Western sugar processing plant was built in the neighboring city of Loveland.

Although the city was affected by the Great Depression and simultaneous drought, it nevertheless experienced slow and steady growth throughout the early part of the twentieth century. During the decade following World War II, the population doubled and an era of economic prosperity occurred. Old buildings were razed to make way for new, modern structures. Along with revitalization came many changes, including the closing of the Great Western sugar factory in 1955, and a new city charter, adopting a council-manager form of government in 1954. Similarly, Colorado State University's enrollment doubled during the 1960s, making it the city's primary economic force by the end of the century.

Fort Collins gained a reputation as a very conservative city in the twentieth century, with a prohibition of alcoholic beverages, a contentious political issue in the town's early decades, being retained from the late 1890s until student activism helped bring it to an end in 1969. During that same period, civil rights activism and anti-war disturbances heightened tensions in the city, including the burning of several buildings on the CSU campus.

During the late 20th century, Fort Collins expanded rapidly to the south, adding new development, including several regional malls. Management of city growth patterns became a political priority during the 1980s, as well as the revitalization of Fort Collins' Old Town with the creation of a Downtown Development Authority. In late July 1997, the city experienced a flash flood after and during a 31-hour period when 10 - 14 in of rain fell. The rainfall was the heaviest on record for an urban area of Colorado. Five people were killed and $5 million in damages were dealt to the city. The waters flooded Colorado State University's library and brought about $140 million in damages to the institution.

Geography
Fort Collins is situated at the base of the Rocky Mountain foothills of the northern Front Range, approximately 60 mi north of Denver, Colorado, and 45 mi south of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Elevation is 4982 ft above sea level. Geographic landmarks include Horsetooth Reservoir and Horsetooth Mountain—so named because of a tooth-shaped granite rock that dominates the city's western skyline. Longs Peak can also clearly be seen on a clear day to the southwest of the city.

The Cache La Poudre River and Spring Creek run through Fort Collins.

At the 2020 United States Census, the town had a total area of 151.444 km2 including 3.265 km2 of water.

Climate
Fort Collins has a cold semi-arid climate (Köppen climate classification 'BSk'). Its climate is characterized by warm to hot summers and long and moderately cold winters (with frequent warm spells due to downslope winds, and somewhat less common intervals of severe cold). The average temperature in December, the coldest month, is 31.1 °F. Annual snowfall averages 51.4 in, and can occur from early September through the end of May. Average precipitation overall is 15.88 in.

Demographics
Fort Collins is the fourth most populous city in Colorado and the 156th most populous city in the United States. The Census Bureau estimates that the city's population was 161,175 in 2015, the population of the Fort Collins-Loveland Metropolitan Statistical Area was 310,487 (151st most populous MSA), and the population of the Front Range Urban Corridor was 4,495,181.

As of the census of 2000, there were 118,652 people, 45,882 households, and 25,785 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,549.3 PD/sqmi. There were 47,755 housing units at an average density of 1,026 /mi2. The racial makeup of the city was 82.4% White, 3.01% Black or African American, 0.6% Native American, 2.48% Asian, 0.12% Pacific Islander, 3.61% from other races, and 2.53% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino residents of any race were 10.79% of the population.

There were 45,882 households, out of which 29% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 44.9% were married couples living together, 7.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 43.8% were non-families. 26% of all households were made up of individuals, and 5.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.45 and the average family size was 3.01.

In the city, the population was spread out, with 21.5% under the age of 18, 22.1% from 18 to 24, 31.5% from 25 to 44, 17% from 45 to 64, and 7.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 28 years. For every 100 females, there were 100.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 99.7 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $64,459, and the median income for a family was $110,332. Males had a median income of $60,856 versus $48,385 for females. The per capita income for the city was $32,133. About 5.5% of families and 14% of the population were below the poverty line, including 8.3% of those under age 18 and 5.8% of those age 65 or over.

Major industries and commercial activity
Fort Collins' economy has a mix of manufacturing and service-related businesses. Fort Collins manufacturing includes Woodward Governor, Anheuser-Busch, Walker Mowers, and Otterbox. Many high-tech companies have relocated to Fort Collins because of the resources of Colorado State University and its research facilities. Hewlett-Packard, Intel, AMD, Broadcom, Beckman Coulter, Microsoft, Rubicon Water and Pelco all have offices in Fort Collins. Other industries include clean energy, bioscience, and agri-tech businesses.

According to the city's 2020 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers are:

Regional economic development partners include the City of Fort Collins Economic Health Office, Northern Colorado Economic Development Corporation, Small Business Development Center, and Rocky Mountain Innovation Initiative (RMI2).

Retail
The city's major shopping mall is The Shops at Foothills.

Sustainability programs
FortZED was a zero energy district encompassing the Downtown area of Fort Collins and the main campus of Colorado State University. The district's public-private partnerships employed smart grid and renewable energy technologies to manage the local use and supply of energy. FortZED relied upon energy demand management techniques to encourage use of energy at the most efficient times.

Federal, state, and local funding made the project a reality. The U.S. Department of Energy contributed $6.3 million and the Colorado Department of Local Affairs provided $778,000. Locally, private companies and foundations committed nearly $8 million.

The program ended in 2017 after a majority of its projects had been completed.

Brewing
Fort Collins has over 20 breweries. Notable breweries in the city include Anheuser-Busch, New Belgium Brewing Company, Intersect Brewing and Odell Brewing Company. The local chamber of commerce estimates that in 2010, the industry generated $309.9 million in output, 2,488 jobs and $141.9 million of local payrolls in Larimer County.

Arts and culture
Much of Fort Collins's culture is centered around the students of Colorado State University. The city provides school year residences for its large college-age population; there is a local music circuit which is influenced by the college town atmosphere and is home to a number of well known microbreweries. The Downtown Business Association hosts a number of small and large festivals each year in the historic Downtown district, including Bohemian Nights at NewWestFest in late summer (permanently discontinued in 2021) which featured local cuisine, music, and businesses. The Fort Collins Lincoln Center is home to the Fort Collins Symphony Orchestra and regularly attracts national touring companies of Broadway plays.

Brewing and cycling figure in local culture. The Colorado Brewer's Festival is held in late June annually in Fort Collins. The festival features beers from as many as 45 brewers from the state of Colorado and averages around 30,000 attendees. New Belgium Brewing Company hosts the Tour de Fat which draws over 20,000 people riding bikes and dressing in costume.

The Colorado Marathon is a yearly event running down the Poudre Canyon and finishing in downtown Fort Collins. The FORTitude 10K run, a partner running event of the Bolder Boulder, is held on Labor Day each year. The Horsetooth Half Marathon has been a fixture of the local running scene since 1973.

The Fort Collins Museum, established in 1941, is a regional center focusing on the culture and history of Fort Collins and the surrounding area. The Fort Collins Museum houses over 30,000 artifacts and features temporary and permanent exhibits, on-going educational programs and events, and is home to four historic structures located in the outdoor Heritage Courtyard.

The arts are represented by The Center for Fine Art Photography, University Center for the Arts, Fort Collins Museum of Art (FCMOA), and the Bas Bleu Theatre Company. The Arts Incubator of the Rockies (AIR), founded in Fort Collins in 2012, was acquired in 2016 by Berea College in Kentucky, where it became part of the College Crafts Program.

Parks and recreation
The Gardens on Spring Creek is an 18 acre botanical garden. The site includes several themed gardens ranging from a children's garden to a rock garden, to several themed demonstration gardens.

There are also many parks in Fort Collins including community parks and neighborhood parks, totaling 875 acre of developed park areas. Some of these parks have facilities such as public tennis courts, frisbee golf courses, golf courses, dog parks, baseball diamonds, basketball courts and picnic shelters. In total, there are 6 community parks. These include City Park, Edora Park, Fossil Creek Park, Lee Martinez Park, Rolland Moore Park, and Spring Canyon Park. There are also many smaller neighborhood parks. These parks often host events such as marathons, community activities and holiday celebrations. Fort Collins is home to a whitewater park alongside the Poudre River.

The city purchased the Soapstone Prairie Natural Area, a park and conservation area north of the city. Within the park is the Lindenmeier site, a stratified multi-component archaeological site most famous for its Folsom component.

Government
Fort Collins has a council-manager form of government. The mayor, who serves a two-year term and stands for election in municipal elections held in April of odd-numbered years, presides over a seven-member City Council. The current mayor of Fort Collins is Jeni Arndt, who was elected to a first term in April 2021. The six remaining council members are elected from districts for staggered four-year terms; even-numbered districts in April 2023, and odd-numbered districts are up for election in April 2025.

Fort Collins is the largest city in Colorado's 2nd Congressional district, and is represented in Congress by Representative Joe Neguse (Democrat). On the state level, the city lies in the 14th district of the Colorado Senate, represented by Joann Ginal and is split between the 52nd and 53rd districts of the Colorado House of Representatives, represented by Cathy Kipp and Andrew Boesenecker, respectively. All three of Fort Collins' state legislators are Democrats. Fort Collins is additionally the county seat of Larimer County, and houses county offices and courts.

Education

K–12 public education is provided through Poudre School District (PSD). The district operates and manages the public schools in the city of Fort Collins, as well as in the surrounding towns of Wellington, Timnath, Windsor, Laporte and Livermore. The district is one of the fastest growing in Northern Colorado, adding 400-500 students — about the size of an elementary school — each year. To accommodate growth, the district plans to build three new schools in the next few years.

Poudre School District includes four comprehensive high schools that serve neighborhoods around Fort Collins, including Fort Collins High School, Rocky Mountain High School, Poudre High School, Fossil Ridge High School. The district also operates four alternative high schools: Centennial High School, Polaris School for Expeditionary Learning, Poudre Community Academy and Poudre School District Global Academy, a dual in-person/online school. Additionally, four public charter schools are chartered through PSD, including Ridgeview Classical Schools, and Liberty Common High School, Mountain Sage Community School and Fort Collins Montessori School.

The Poudre School District is also home to ten middle schools (Lesher Middle IB World School, Blevins Middle School, Boltz Middle School, Cache La Poudre Middle School, Kinard Core Knowledge Middle School, Lincoln IB World Middle School, Polaris Expeditionary Learning School, Preston Middle School, Webber Middle School, and Wellington Middle School) and 32 elementary schools.

In addition to PSD schools, several state charter schools serve Fort Collins, including Academy of Arts and Knowledge, Colorado Early Colleges, and Global Village Academy. Private schools include Heritage Christian Academy, Rivendell School, and St. Joseph's Catholic School.

Public libraries
The Poudre River Public Library District operates three branch locations in the city of Fort Collins—Old Town, Harmony, and Council Tree. The Library District was established in 2006 by voter approval, and aims to serve the more than 207,000 people in northern Larimer County, Colorado. The district is governed by a board of volunteer trustees, jointly appointed by the city of Fort Collins and Larimer County.

The library participates in cooperative projects with the local Poudre School District and Colorado State University.

Facilities
The Old Town Library (formerly, the Main Library) is a 43,000 square foot facility that has served the Fort Collins Community since 1976. It is located in the Fort Collins Old Town Historic District at 201 Peterson Street.

The Harmony Library is a 30,000 square foot joint-use facility located on the Front Range Community College campus, at 4616 South Shield Street in Fort Collins. Since its opening in 1998, the facility has served both the Community College (students, faculty, and staff) and the general public.

The Council Tree Library is a nearly 18,000 square foot facility that opened in 2009 in the Front Range Village (a retail commons) and is located at 2733 Council Tree Avenue in Fort Collins. The facility has a unique neighborhood atmosphere with an emphasis on families with young children.

The Webster House Administration Center opened in 2011 and houses the administration, collections, systems administration, maintenance, communications, and outreach staff. The center's opening freed up 3,000 square feet in the Old Town Library, space that is now used for library materials and services.

History
The library as an institution in Fort Collins dates back to the late 19th century, where reading rooms were established in churches or other rented locations. In 1882, for example, a reading room was established in the back of a Presbyterian Church on Whitton Block. The Fort Collins Public Library was officially established in 1900, the sixth public library in the state. The city received $12,500 from philanthropist Andrew Carnegie to build the library, with the condition that it would be maintained as a free public library. It was completed in 1904 at a total cost of approximately $15,000. When the Library opened, there were 2,770 books on hand. In 1937, the Library was awarded a grant from the Work Projects Administration for an annex to the building that would double its space, allowing for the construction of an auditorium/community room that opened in 1939.

As the Fort Collins community grew, so too did the need for more library space. In 1973, the City Council adopted a seven-year master plan which included a new library building. Voters approved a one percent tax increase to fund the plan. The new library building, named the Fort Collins Public Library (now, the Old Town Library), opened in 1976 and remains to this day in Library Park at 201 Peterson Street in Fort Collins.

In 2006, with ongoing city budget cuts impacting library services, residents voted to create and fund a library district with a 62% majority. This initiated a transition period in 2007 of separating the library from the city, for example, transferring finances, staff, and property to the Library District. The library was also given a temporary name, the Fort Collins Regional Library District. An intergovernmental agreement was finally signed in December 2007, that detailed each party's responsibilities during the transfer. In 2009, after asking for ideas from the public, the Poudre River Public Library District was approved as the library's permanent name.

Higher education
Colorado State University heads up the choices in higher education. Front Range Community College also maintains a campus in the city, and grants associate's degrees in arts, science, general studies, and applied science. The college offers 17 high school vocational programs and more than 90 continuing education classes.

The Institute of Business & Medical Careers provides professional training in the business and medical professions. The institute's first campus was established in the city in 1987.

Fort Collins has a range of research institutes. Facilities are maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, the Center for Advanced Technology and the Colorado Water Resource Research Institute. Other facilities include the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, the Institute for Scientific Computing, the U.S. Forest Service Experimental Station, the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation (NCGRP), and the U.S.D.A. Crops Research Laboratory.

Air travel
From nearby Northern Colorado Regional Airport, Avelo Airlines served both Burbank (BUR) and Las Vegas (LAS) from October 2021 until June 24, 2022, and June 16, 2022, respectively. Elite Airways resumed commercial air service at the airport on August 27, 2015, providing non-stop flights to the Chicago Rockford International Airport in Illinois. The airline ended service to the airport in 2017. Denver International Airport, which is 70 mi to the south, is served by twenty-three airlines.

The city's former general aviation airport, known as Fort Collins Downtown Airport (3V5), opened in 1966 and closed in 2006.

Streets
Fort Collins' downtown streets form a grid with Interstate 25 running north and south on the east side of the city. Many of the streets are named after the town's founders. U.S. Highway 287 becomes College Avenue inside the city and is the busiest street; It runs north and south, effectively bisecting the city, and serving as the east–west meridian, while Mountain Avenue is the north–south. SH 14 runs concurrent with US 287 at the northern city limit to Jefferson Street, running southeast along Jefferson (later turning into Riverside Avenue), then turning east onto Mulberry Street where it goes east out of the city after an interchange with Interstate 25.

Transit and taxi
Fort Collins also once had a municipally owned trolley service with three branches from the intersection of Mountain and College avenues. The trolley was begun in 1907 by the Denver and Interurban Railroad, which had the intention of connecting the Front Range of Colorado. It was closed in 1951 after ceasing to be profitable. In 1983–84, a portion of the Mountain Avenue line and one of the original trolley cars, Car 21, were restored as a heritage trolley service, under the same name used by the original system, the Fort Collins Municipal Railway. This has been in operation since the end of 1984 on weekends and holidays in the spring and summer, as a tourist and cultural/educational attraction. A second car, number 25, was returned to service on July 4, 2020. A small fee applies to ride.

The city bus system, known as Transfort, operates more than a dozen routes throughout Fort Collins Monday through Saturday, except major holidays.

The MAX Bus Rapid Transit is a bus rapid transit that provides service on the Mason Corridor Transitway parallel to College Avenue from Downtown Fort Collins to a transit center just south of Harmony Road. The trip takes approximately 15 minutes from end to end with various stops between. The service began in May 2014. The Mason Corridor and the Mason Express are intended to be the center of future transit-oriented development.

Fort Collins is connected to Loveland, Berthoud, Longmont, and Boulder via the FLEX regional bus route. Greeley-Evans Transit operates a service called the Poudre Express connecting Fort Collins with Windsor and Greeley.

Bustang provides additional intercity transportation for the city. Fort Collins is the northernmost stop on the North Line, which connects southward to Denver. Planning for restoration of regional passenger rail recommenced in earnest in 2017. Fort Collins would be an intermediate stop for the proposed north–south Front Range Passenger Rail corridor between Pueblo and Cheyenne, Wyoming, though it would be the northern terminus of most trips.

Taxi service is provided by Northern Colorado Yellow Cab. Pedicabs are also available from HopON LLC and Dream team Pedicabs.

Railroads
Freight service is provided by Union Pacific and BNSF.

Currently there is no intercity passenger service; the last remaining services connecting the Front Range cities ceased with the formation of Amtrak in 1971. Front Range Passenger Rail is a current proposal to link the cities from Pueblo in the south, north to Fort Collins and possibly to Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The Fort Collins Municipal Railway was a streetcar system from 1919 to 1951, and from 1984 has been partially reinstated as a seasonal Heritage Streetcar service, under the same name.

Cycling
Bicycling is a popular and viable means of transportation in Fort Collins. There are more than 280 mi of designated bikeways in Fort Collins, including on-street designated bike lanes, and the Spring Creek and Poudre River Trails, both paved. There is also a dirt trail, the 5.8 mi Foothills Trail, parallel to Horsetooth Reservoir from Dixon Reservoir north to Campeau Open Space and Michaud Lane.

The Fort Collins Bicycle Library lends bicycles to visitors, students, and residents looking to explore the city of Fort Collins. There are self-guided tours from the "Bike the Sites" collection, including a Brewery Tour, Environmental Learning Tour, and the Historic Tour. The Bike Library is centrally located in the heart of downtown Fort Collins in Old Town Square. The City of Fort Collins also encourages use of alternative transportation, like cycling and using public transit, through FC Moves.

In 2009, the Fort Collins-Loveland metropolitan statistical area (MSA) ranked as the third highest in the United States for percentage of commuters who biked to work (5.6 percent).

In 2013, the League of American Bicyclists designated Fort Collins a Platinum-level Bicycle Friendly Community – one of four in the United States. In 2018, the PeopleForBikes foundation named Fort Collins the no. 1 city in the United States for cycling.

Electric scooters
In early 2019, the City of Fort Collins and Colorado State University (CSU) were preparing regulations for the eventual arrival of electric scooters, in order to avoid the problems other cities have had with these. After a City Council session on Feb 19, the City Government approved scooter regulations, such as specific areas in which scooters must be parked and the observation of dismount zones. in October 2019, The City of Fort Collins and CSU announced a 12-month e-scooter share pilot program partnering with Bird company.

Commercial shipping
Parcel service for Fort Collins is provided by FedEx, Airport Express, DHL, Burlington Air Express, UPS, and Purolator. Fort Collins has two-day rail freight access to the West Coast or the East Coast and has eight motor freight carriers. Many local industrial sites have rail freight spur service. The city is served by Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroads.

Facilities

 * NIST time signal transmitters WWV and WWVB are near the city
 * Poudre Valley Hospital has helped make Fort Collins into a regional health care center.
 * The National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation (NCGRP) (Human Genome Project)
 * The city is the headquarters of Roosevelt National Forest
 * Atmospheric Chemistry and Aerosol Laboratory
 * Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Division of Vector-Borne Diseases
 * USDA Seed Lab Storage
 * Headquarters for SCUBA Schools International (SSI)
 * National Wildlife Research Center
 * USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Western Regional Headquarters
 * Community Foundation of Northern Colorado

Police
The Fort Collins Police Services is headed by Chief Jeffrey Swoboda. it had 214 sworn individuals and 115 civilian personnel.

Notable people

 * Wayne Allard, former U.S. senator from Colorado
 * Scott Anderson, racing driver
 * James B. Arthur, pioneer, entrepreneur, mayor, councilman, Colorado state senator
 * John Ashton, actor
 * Carol Berg, fantasy author
 * Biota, music ensemble
 * Jason Blakely, political philosopher
 * Frank Caeti, repertory cast member on sketch comedy series MADtv
 * Allen Bert Christman, cartoonist and American Volunteer Group pilot killed in Rangoon, Burma, during World War II
 * Jon Cooper, center for NFL's Minnesota Vikings
 * Olivia Cummins, professional cyclist
 * Joy Davidson, opera singer
 * Janay DeLoach, professional track and field athlete and Olympian
 * Rick Dennison, NFL linebacker
 * Jeff Donaldson, NFL defensive back
 * Becca Fitzpatrick, author
 * Lamar Gant, powerlifter
 * Harper Goff, artist, musician, and actor
 * Marco Gonzales, Major League Baseball pitcher for the Seattle Mariners
 * Temple Grandin, author, professor, subject of film Temple Grandin
 * Chad Haga, professional cyclist
 * JD Hammer (born 1994), Major League Baseball pitcher
 * Jon Heder, actor, Napoleon Dynamite
 * Ed Herman, mixed martial artist fighting for the UFC
 * Katie Herzig, folk musician
 * Immortal Dominion, heavy metal band known for soundtrack to Teeth
 * Korey Jones, CFL player
 * Darwood Kaye, actor who portrayed Waldo in the Our Gang short subjects series from 1937 to 1940
 * Jake Lloyd, actor, young Anakin Skywalker in 1999's Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace
 * Sonny Lubick, former head football coach at Colorado State University
 * Gavin Mannion, professional cyclist
 * Ross Marquand, actor best known for portraying Aaron in The Walking Dead
 * David Mattingly, science fiction illustrator
 * Hattie McDaniel, first African-American to win an Academy Award (Best Supporting Actress 1939)
 * Darnell McDonald, Major League Baseball player
 * Donzell McDonald, former Major League Baseball player
 * Mark D. Miller, photographer
 * Edward S. Montgomery, journalist
 * Pete Monty, NFL linebacker
 * John Mortvedt, soil scientist and professor emeritus at Colorado State University
 * Blake Neubert, artist
 * Carl B. Olsen, U.S. Coast Guard rear admiral
 * Holmes Rolston III, 2003 Templeton Prize winner
 * Steve Simske, engineer, inventor, scientist
 * Derek Vincent Smith, electronic music artist who performs under name "Pretty Lights"
 * Bill Stevenson, musician (Descendents), record producer, and owner of The Blasting Room Studios
 * Travis Lane Stork, television personality, emergency physician, and author
 * Pat Stryker, billionaire heiress and philanthropist
 * Thomas Sutherland, Colorado State professor and former Beirut hostage
 * Ryan Sutter, bachelor chosen as a groom by Trista Rehn in 2003's The Bachelorette
 * Shane Swartz, boxer
 * Derek Theler, actor in ABC family show Baby Daddy
 * Haeley Vaughn, top 25 finalist of American Idol
 * Byron Raymond White, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
 * Jason Wingate, composer
 * Ben Woolf, actor

In popular culture
Along with Marceline, Missouri, Fort Collins is known as one of the towns that inspired the design of Main Street, U.S.A. inside the main entrance of many theme parks run by The Walt Disney Company around the world.

Fort Collins was the setting of the infamous balloon boy hoax of October 15, 2009.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Fort Collins, Colorado


text:
Francis Drake

Sir Francis Drake (c. 1540 – 28 January 1596) was an English explorer and privateer best known for his circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition between 1577 and 1580. This was the first English circumnavigation, and second circumnavigation overall. He is also known for participating in the early English slaving voyages of his cousin, Sir John Hawkins, and John Lovell. Having started as a simple seaman, in 1588 he was part of the fight against the Spanish Armada as a vice-admiral.

At an early age, Drake was placed into the household of a relative, William Hawkins, a prominent sea captain in Plymouth. In 1572, he set sail on his first independent mission, privateering along the Spanish Main. Drake's circumnavigation began on 15 December 1577. He crossed the Pacific Ocean, until then an area of exclusive Spanish interest, and laid claim to New Albion, plundering coastal towns and ships for treasure and supplies as he went. He arrived back in England on 26 September 1580. Elizabeth I awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581 which he received aboard his galleon the Golden Hind.

Drake's circumnavigation inaugurated an era of conflict with the Spanish and in 1585, the Anglo-Spanish War began. Drake was in command of an expedition to the Americas that attacked Spanish shipping and ports. When Philip II sent the Spanish Armada to England in 1588 as a precursor to its invasion, Drake was second-in-command of the English fleet that fought against and repulsed the Spanish fleet. A year later he led the English Armada in a failed attempt to destroy the remaining Spanish fleet.

Drake was the Member of Parliament (MP) for three constituencies: Camelford in 1581, Bossiney in 1584, and Plymouth in 1593. Drake's exploits made him a hero to the English, but his privateering led the Spanish to brand him a pirate, known to them as El Draque ("The Dragon" in old Spanish). He died of dysentery after his failed assault on Panama in January 1596.

Birth and early years
Francis Drake was born at Crowndale Farm in Tavistock, Devon, England. His birth date is not formally recorded – such writers as E. F. Benson have claimed that he was born while the Six Articles of 1539 were in force, but British naval historian Julian Corbett, writing of William Camden's account, on which this information is based, writes that "As a slip of memory, too, we must put down his difficult assertion that Edmund Drake was driven from Devonshire during a persecution under the Six Articles Act of 1539." His birth date is estimated from the wording of texts in contemporary sources such as: "Drake was two and twenty when he obtained the command of the Judith" (1566). This would date his birth to 1544. A date of c. 1540 is suggested from two portraits: one a miniature, painted by Nicholas Hilliard in 1581, when he was allegedly 42, which would place his birth c.  1539, while the other, painted in 1594 when he was said to be 52, would give a birth year of c. 1541.

He was the eldest of the twelve sons of Edmund Drake (1518–1585), a Protestant farmer, and his wife, Mary Mylwaye. The first son was said to have been named after his godfather, Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford.

Due to religious persecution during the Prayer Book Rebellion in 1549, the Drake family fled from Devon to Kent. There Drake's father obtained an appointment to minister to the men in the King's Navy. He was ordained deacon and was made vicar of Upchurch Church on the Medway.

Early career at sea
At an early age, Drake was placed into the household of a relative, sea-captain William Hawkins of Plymouth, and began his seagoing training as an apprentice on Hawkins' boats. By 18, he was a purser, according to the English chronicler Edmund Howes, and in the 1550s, Drake's father found the young man a position with the owner and master of a small barque, one of the small traders plying between the Medway River and the Dutch coast. Drake likely engaged in commerce along the coast of England, the Low Countries and France. The ship's master was so satisfied with the young Drake's conduct that, being unmarried and childless at his death, he bequeathed the barque to Drake.

Slave trade

In 1562, the West African slave trade was a duopoly dominated by the Portuguese and the Spanish. Sir John Hawkins devised a plan to break into that trade, and enlisted the aid of colleagues and family to finance his first slave voyage. Drake was not part of that group of financiers, though his presence as one of hundreds of seamen on Hawkins's first two slaving voyages has been assumed. There is some anecdotal evidence to support Drake serving as a common seaman on the first two voyages, and good evidence of his presence for the last two of four slaving voyages made by Hawkins' ships between 1562 and 1569.

In 1562, Hawkins sailed to the coast of the Sierra Leone, seized Portuguese slave ships, and sold the Africans in the Spanish Indies. It was highly profitable, so for his second slave voyage in 1564, Hawkins gained Queen Elizabeth I's support. She lent him one of her ships, Jesus of Lübeck, which served as his flagship. Hawkins attacked an African native town and sold many of its inhabitants in Spanish ports on the Caribbean mainland, making another large profit for himself, the Queen and the consortium of investors from her court. Sources vary on the dates and the age of Drake at the time; Harry Kelsey says he was twenty years old, "[a]ccording to Howes" (in reference to the English chronicler Edmund Howes writing in 1615). Drake was not a member of that consortium, but the crew would have received a small share of the profits. Based on this association, scholar Kris Lane lists Drake as one of the first English slave traders.

The Spanish and Portuguese were aggrieved that the English had entered into the slave trade and were selling slaves to their colonies despite being forbidden from doing so. Queen Elizabeth I, under pressure to avoid an armed conflict, forbade Hawkins from going to sea for a third slave voyage. In response, he set up a slave voyage with a relative, John Lovell, in command in 1566. Drake accompanied Lovell on this voyage. The voyage was unsuccessful, as more than 90 enslaved Africans were released without payment.

In 1567, Drake accompanied Hawkins on their next and last joint voyage. The crew attempted to capture slaves around Cape Verde, but failed. Hawkins allied himself with two local kings in Sierra Leone who asked for help against their enemies in exchange for half of any captives they took. Attacking from both sides, they took several hundred prisoners, though Kelsey says the kings kept "the larger share of slaves and dared Hawkins to do anything about it".

Events worsened for the fleet as it faced storms, Spanish hostility, armed conflict, and finally a hurricane that separated one ship from the rest, and it had to find its own way home. The remaining ships were forced into the port of San Juan de Ulúa near Vera Cruz so they could make repairs. Soon afterward the newly appointed viceroy of New Spain, Martín Enríquez de Almanza, arrived with a fleet of ships. While still negotiating to resupply and repair, Hawkins' ships were attacked by the Spanish ships in what became known as the Battle of San Juan de Ulúa. The battle ended in an English defeat with all but two of the English ships lost. The Spanish launched a fireship against Hawkins' flagship Jesus of Lübeck, and the crew of Minion in panic and fear cut the lines securing them to Jesus. Hawkins was among those who jumped from the flagship's bulwarks to Minion's decks. Drake, by this time the captain of Judith, fled leaving Hawkins behind. Hawkins escaped on Minion and limped back to England with dozens of his men dying along the way, and arriving with a crew of just 15. Hundreds of English seamen were abandoned.

After arriving back in England, Hawkins accused Drake of desertion and of stealing the treasure they had accumulated. Drake denied both accusations asserting he had distributed all profits among the crew and that he had believed Hawkins was lost when he left. The bitter end of the fourth voyage turned Drake's life in a different direction: thereafter he would not pursue trading and slaving but would, instead, dedicate himself to attacking Spanish possessions wherever he found them. Drake's hostility towards the Spanish is said to have started with the battle and its aftermath.

The voyage of 1567–1569 was Drake's last association with slaving. In total, approximately 1,200 Africans were enslaved on these four voyages, and an estimated three times as many Africans were killed (based on the contemporaneous accounts of slavers). On the issue of slaving, scholar John Sugden writes that "Drake was in his twenties and did not question what his elders accepted", but must share some culpability for his participation.

Expedition of 1572–1573
In 1572, Drake embarked on his first major independent enterprise. He planned an attack on the Isthmus of Panama, known to the Spanish as part of Tierra Firme and to the English as part of the Spanish Main. This was the point at which the silver and gold treasure of Peru had to be brought ashore and transported overland to the Caribbean Sea, where galleons from Spain would take it aboard at the town of Nombre de Dios. Drake left Plymouth on 24 May 1572, with a crew of 73 men in two small vessels, Pascha (70 tons) and Swan (25 tons), to capture Nombre de Dios.

Drake's first raid was late in July 1572. Drake captured Nombre de Dios, but he was badly wounded when the Spanish arrived from Panama, and his forces had to retreat without the gold, silver, pearls and jewels stored in the royal treasury. Rather than sacking Nombre de Dios again, Drake raided Spanish galleons along the coast and with his Cimarrón (African slaves who had escaped from their Spanish owners) allies looted the mule trains that transported gold, silver and trade goods from Panama City. One of these men was Diego, who later became a free man after years of service under Drake.

Among Drake's adventures along the Spanish Main, his capture of the Spanish silver train at Nombre de Dios on 1 April 1573 made him rich and famous. Near Cabo de Cativas he encountered a French privateer, Guillaume Le Testu, who was in command of the 80-ton warship Havre, and joined forces with him in a combined fleet. Drake had determined to intercept the mule train at the Campos River, two leagues from Nombre de Dios, and instructed the captains of his pinnaces to meet them at the Francisca River on 3 April to carry them off after the raid. The combined English and French raiding parties marched through the forest towards the trail, to within a mile of the city while the Cimarróns performed reconnaissance. The next morning, 1 April, they surprised the mule convoy and seized more than 200,000 pesos' worth of treasure.

After their attack on the richly laden mule train, Drake and his party found that they had captured around 20 tons of silver and gold. They buried much of the treasure, as it was too much for their party to carry, and made off with a fortune in gold. (An account of this may have given rise to subsequent stories of pirates and buried treasure). Badly wounded, Le Testu was captured and beheaded. The small band of adventurers dragged as much gold and silver as they could carry back across some 18 mi of jungle-covered mountains to where they had left the raiding boats. When they got to the coast, the boats were gone. Drake and his men, downhearted, exhausted and hungry, had nowhere to go and the Spanish were not far behind.

At this point, Drake rallied his men, buried the treasure on the beach, and built a raft to sail in a heavy swell with four men twelve miles along the coast to where they had left two pinnaces. When Drake finally reached them, his men were alarmed at his bedraggled appearance. Fearing the worst, they asked him how the raid had gone. Drake could not resist a joke and teased them by looking downhearted. Then he laughed, pulled a quoit of Spanish gold from his clothes and said, "Our voyage is made." By the second week of August 1573, he had returned to Plymouth.

It was during this expedition that on 11 February Drake and his lieutenant John Oxenham climbed a high tree in the central mountains of the Isthmus of Panama and thus became the first Englishmen to see the Pacific Ocean, mirroring the achievement of the Spaniard Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513. The Cimarróns had cut steps into its trunk, on which Drake and the Cimarrón leader Pedro ascended to a platform at the top of the giant tree, where they were joined by Oxenham. The Englishmen vowed when they saw the Pacific Ocean that one day they would sail its waters – which Drake would do years later as part of his circumnavigation of the world.

When Drake returned to Plymouth after the raids, the government signed a temporary truce with King Philip II of Spain and so was unable to acknowledge Drake's accomplishment officially. Drake was considered a hero in England and a pirate in Spain for his raids.

Rathlin Island massacre
Drake was present at the 1575 Rathlin Island massacre in Ireland. Sir John Norris (or Norreys) and Drake, acting on the instructions of Sir Henry Sidney and the Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux, laid siege to Rathlin Castle. Despite its surrender, Norris' troops killed all the 200 defenders and several hundred more men, women and children of Clan MacDonnell. Meanwhile, Drake was given the task of preventing any Gaelic Irish or Scottish reinforcements reaching the island. Therefore, the remaining leader of the Gaelic defence against English power, Sorley Boy MacDonnell, was forced to stay on the mainland. Essex wrote in his letter to Queen Elizabeth's secretary that following the attack Sorley Boy "was likely to have run mad for sorrow, tearing and tormenting himself and saying that he there lost all that he ever had."

Circumnavigation (1577–1580)
Following the success of the Panama isthmus raid, Drake's so-called "Famous Voyage" – an expedition against the Spanish along the Pacific coast of the Americas – was organized and financed by a private syndicate that included Francis Walsingham, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, John Hawkins, Christopher Hatton, and Drake himself. Drake acted on the plan authored by Sir Richard Grenville, who in 1574 had received a royal patent for that purpose; just a year later this patent had been rescinded after Elizabeth I learned of Grenville's intentions against the Spanish. Elizabeth likely invested in Drake's voyage to South America in 1577, but never issued him a formal commission. This would be the first circumnavigation in 58 years.

Diego was once again employed under Drake; his fluency in Spanish and English would make him a useful interpreter when Spaniards or Spanish-speaking Portuguese were captured. He was employed as Drake's servant and was paid wages like the rest of the crew. Drake and the fleet set out from Plymouth on 15 November 1577, but bad weather threatened him and his fleet. They were forced to take refuge in Falmouth, Cornwall, from where they returned to Plymouth for repair.

After this major setback, Drake set sail again on 13 December aboard Pelican with four other ships and 164 men. He soon added a sixth ship, Mary (formerly Santa María), a Portuguese merchant ship that had been captured off the coast of Africa near the Cape Verde Islands. He also kidnapped its captain, Nuno da Silva, a man with considerable experience navigating in South American waters.

Drake's fleet suffered great attrition; he scuttled both Christopher and the flyboat Swan due to loss of men on the Atlantic crossing. He made landfall at the gloomy bay of Puerto San Julián, in what is now Argentina. Ferdinand Magellan had called there half a century earlier, where he put to death some mutineers. Drake's men saw weathered and bleached skeletons on the Spanish gibbets. Following Magellan's example, Drake tried and executed his own "mutineer" Thomas Doughty. The crew discovered that Mary had rotting timbers, so they put the vessel ashore, stripped it, and abandoned it. Drake decided to remain the winter in San Julián before attempting the Strait of Magellan.

Execution of Thomas Doughty
On his voyage to interfere with Spanish treasure fleets, Drake had several quarrels with his co-commander Thomas Doughty and on 3 June 1578, accused him of witchcraft and charged him with mutiny and treason in a shipboard trial. Drake claimed to have a (never presented) commission from the Queen to carry out such acts and denied Doughty a trial in England. The main pieces of evidence against Doughty were the testimony of the ship's carpenter, Edward Bright, who after the trial was promoted to master of the ship Marigold, and Doughty's admission of telling Lord Burghley, a vocal opponent of agitating the Spanish, of the intent of the voyage. Drake consented to his request of Communion and dined with him, of which Francis Fletcher had this account:

"And after this holy repast, they dined also at the same table together, as cheerfully, in sobriety, as ever in their lives they had done aforetime, each cheering up the other, and taking their leave, by drinking each to other, as if some journey only had been in hand."

Drake had Thomas Doughty beheaded on 2 July 1578. In January 1580, when Drake became stranded upon a reef off the Celebes Sea, the ship's chaplain, Francis Fletcher, in a sermon suggested that the woes of the voyage were connected to the unjust demise of Doughty, Drake chained the clergyman to a hatch cover and pronounced him excommunicated.

Entering the Pacific (1578)
The three remaining ships of his convoy departed for the Magellan Strait at the southern tip of South America. A few weeks later in September 1578 Drake made it to the Pacific, but violent storms destroyed one of the three ships, Marigold (captained by John Thomas) in the strait and caused another, Elizabeth, captained by John Wynter, to return to England, leaving only Pelican. After this passage, Pelican was pushed south and discovered an island that Drake called Elizabeth Island. Drake, like navigators before him, probably reached a latitude of 55°S (according to astronomical data quoted in Richard Hakluyt's The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation of 1589) along the Chilean coast. In the Magellan Strait Francis and his men engaged in skirmishes with local indigenous people, becoming the first Europeans to kill indigenous peoples in southern Patagonia. During their stay in the strait, crew members discovered that an infusion made of the bark of Drimys winteri could be used as remedy against scurvy. Captain Wynter ordered the collection of great amounts of bark – hence the scientific name.

Historian Mateo Martinic, who examined records of Drake's travels, credits him with the discovery of the "southern end of the Americas and the oceanic space south of it". The first report of his discovery of an open channel south of Tierra del Fuego was written after the 1618 publication of the voyage of Willem Schouten and Jacob le Maire around Cape Horn in 1616.

Raids on Spanish American west coast
Drake pushed onwards in his lone flagship, now renamed Golden Hind in honour of Sir Christopher Hatton (after his coat of arms). Golden Hind sailed north along the Pacific coast of South America, attacking Spanish ports and pillaging towns. Some Spanish ships were captured, and Drake used their more accurate charts to inform his navigation. Before reaching the coast of Peru, Drake visited Mocha Island off the coast of what is now Chile, where he and his manservant Diego were seriously injured by hostile Mapuche who shot them with arrows. Later he sacked the port of Valparaíso further north in Chile, where he also captured a ship full of Chilean wine.

Near Lima, Drake captured a Spanish ship with 25,000 pesos of Peruvian gold, amounting in value to 37,000 ducats of Spanish money (about £7m by modern standards). Drake also discovered news of another ship, Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, which was sailing west towards Manila. It would come to be called Cacafuego. Drake gave chase and eventually captured the treasure ship, which proved his most profitable capture.

Aboard Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, Drake found 80 lb of gold, a golden crucifix, jewels, 13 chests of silver reals and 26 LT of silver. Drake was naturally pleased at his good luck in capturing the galleon, and he showed it by dining with the captured ship's officers and gentleman passengers. He offloaded his captives a short time later, and gave each one gifts appropriate to their rank, as well as a letter of safe conduct.

Drake continued north, raiding more Spanish settlements and ships as he went. His last stop in this phase of the voyage was in the town of Guatulco, where he and his crew stayed from 13 to 16 April, looting provisions and other materials. From here, Drake began to consider how best to return to England. One possibility was to sail back south, along the Spanish coast, and return to the Atlantic Ocean via the Strait of Magellan (or possibly Cape Horn); this route was ruled out, however, to avoid the dangerous weather near the strait and presumed Spanish resistance all along the coast. This left two possible routes – continue north up the American coast, and return to the Atlantic by the rumored Strait of Anián; or, sail across the Pacific, making for the East Indies, and from there return to England by completing a circumnavigation of the world.

Coast of California: Nova Albion (1579)
In May, Drake's two ships passed the Baja California peninsula and continued north. Prior to Drake's voyage, the western coast of North America had only been partially explored in 1542 by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo who sailed for Spain. So, intending to avoid further conflict with Spain, Drake navigated north-west of Spanish presence and sought a discreet site at which the crew could prepare for the journey back to England. The northernmost extent of this leg of the expedition has been the subject of much scholarly debate, but most sources agree that Drake reached a latitude of at least 48° north before turning back and heading south.

On 5 June 1579, the ship briefly made first landfall at what is now South Cove, Cape Arago, just south of Coos Bay, Oregon, and then sailed southward. On 17 June, Drake and his crew found a protected cove when they landed on the Pacific coast of what is now Northern California. While ashore, he claimed the area for Queen Elizabeth I as Nova Albion or New Albion. To document and assert his claim, Drake posted an engraved plate of brass to claim sovereignty for Elizabeth and every successive English monarch. After erecting a fort and tents ashore, the crew laboured for several weeks as they prepared for the circumnavigating voyage ahead by careening their ship, Golden Hind, to effectively clean and repair the hull. Drake had friendly interactions with the Coast Miwok and explored the surrounding land by foot. When his ship was ready for the return voyage, Drake and the crew left New Albion on 23 July and paused the journey the next day when anchoring the ship at the Farallon Islands where they hunted sea lions or seals.

Across the Pacific and around Africa
Drake left the Pacific coast, heading south-west to catch the winds that would carry his ship across the Pacific, and a few months later reached the Moluccas, a group of islands in the western Pacific, in eastern modern-day Indonesia. Harry Kelsey maintains, against scholarly consensus, that because of the contrary prevailing winds and currents, it is much more probable that Drake careened his ship on the shore of Magdalena Bay in Lower California, and sailed to the Moluccas and Spice Islands from there. At this time Diego died from wounds he had sustained earlier in the voyage; Golden Hind later became caught on a reef and was almost lost. Afterwards, the sailors waited three days for convenient tides and had dumped cargo. Befriending Sultan Babullah of Ternate in the Moluccas, Drake and his men became involved in some intrigues with the Portuguese there. He made multiple stops on his way toward the tip of Africa, eventually rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and reached Sierra Leone by 22 July 1580.

Return to Plymouth (1580)
On 26 September 1580, Golden Hind sailed into Plymouth with Drake and 59 remaining crew aboard, along with a rich cargo of spices and captured Spanish treasures. The queen's half-share of the cargo surpassed the rest of the crown's income for that entire year. Drake was hailed as the first Englishman to circumnavigate the Earth, and his was the second such voyage arriving with at least one ship intact, after Elcano's in 1520.

Queen Elizabeth declared that all written accounts of Drake's voyages were to become the queen's secrets of the Realm, and Drake and the other participants of his voyages on the pain of death sworn to their secrecy; she intended to keep Drake's activities hidden from the eyes of rival Spain.

Drake presented the queen with a jewel token commemorating the circumnavigation. Taken as a prize off the Pacific coast of Mexico, it was made of enamelled gold and bore an African diamond and a ship with an ebony hull.

To show her gratitude the queen gave him the Drake Jewel, a valuable pendant surrounded by diamonds, rubies and pearls. It was an unusual gift to bestow upon a commoner, and one that Drake wore in a 1591 portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts. On one side of the pendant is a state portrait of Elizabeth by the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard, on the other a sardonyx cameo of double portrait busts, a regal woman and an African male. The Drake Jewel is a rare documented survivor among sixteenth-century jewels; it is conserved at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Knighthood and arms
Queen Elizabeth awarded Drake a knighthood aboard Golden Hind in Deptford on 4 April 1581; the dubbing being performed by a French diplomat, Monsieur de Marchaumont, who was negotiating for Elizabeth to marry the King of France's brother, Francis, Duke of Anjou. By getting the French diplomat involved in the knighting, Elizabeth was gaining the implicit political support of the French for Drake's actions. During the Victorian era, in a spirit of nationalism, the story was promoted that Elizabeth I had done the knighting. After receiving his knighthood Drake unilaterally adopted the coat of arms of the ancient Devon family of Drake of Ash, to whom he claimed a distant but unspecified kinship. The right to use the arms was disputed in court so Queen Elizabeth awarded Drake his own coat of arms.

Drake's heraldic achievement and coat of arms contains the motto, Sic Parvis Magna, which means: "Great achievements from small beginnings". A hand coming out of the clouds is labelled Auxilio Divino, which means "By divine aid".

Political career
Drake first became a member of parliament for the last session of the 4th Parliament of Elizabeth I, on 16 January 1581, for the constituency of Camelford. He did not actively participate at this point, and on 17 February 1581 he was granted leave of absence "for certain his necessary business in the service of Her Majesty".

Drake became the Mayor of Plymouth in September 1581. During his tenure, he installed a compass in the town's Hoe, and passed a law regulating the local pilchard trade. During his term as lord mayor, Drake contracted to construct a leat, or canal, to bring water from the River Meavy, and to build six new gristmills on it from which he derived a substantial profit.

Drake became a member of parliament again in 1584 for Bossiney, on the forming of the 5th Parliament of Elizabeth I. He served the duration of the parliament and was active in issues regarding the navy, fishing, early American colonisation, and issues related chiefly to Devon. He spent the time covered by the next two parliamentary terms engaged in other duties and an expedition to Portugal.

He became a member of parliament for Plymouth in 1593. He was active in issues of interest to Plymouth as a whole, but also to emphasise defence against the Spanish.

Great Expedition to America
War broke out between England and Spain in 1585, after the signing of the Treaty of Nonsuch. Queen Elizabeth I, through her principal secretary Francis Walsingham, ordered Sir Francis Drake to lead an expedition to attack the Spanish colonies in a kind of pre-emptive strike. An expedition left Plymouth in September 1585 with Drake in command of twenty-one ships with 1,800 soldiers under Christopher Carleill. He first attacked Vigo in Spain and held the place for two weeks ransoming supplies. He then plundered Santiago in the Cape Verde islands after which the fleet then sailed across the Atlantic, sacked the port of Santo Domingo, and captured the city of Cartagena de Indias in present-day Colombia. At Cartagena, Drake released one hundred Turkish slaves. On 6 June 1586, during the return leg of the voyage, he attacked the wooden Spanish fort at San Agustín in Spanish Florida and burnt the town to the ground.

After the raids he then went on to find Sir Walter Raleigh's settlement much further north at Roanoke which he replenished and also took back with him all of the original colonists before Sir Richard Grenville arrived with supplies and more colonists. He finally reached England on 22 July, when he sailed into Portsmouth, England to a hero's welcome.

Conflict with the Spanish Armada

In part to prevent future such attacks by English and Dutch privateers against Spanish interests in the Americas, Philip II ordered a planned invasion of England.

Cádiz raid
On 15 March 1587, Drake accepted a new commission with several purposes: to disrupt the shipping routes in order to slow supplies from Italy and Andalucia to Lisbon, to trouble enemy fleets that were in their home ports, and to capture Spanish ships laden with treasure. Drake was also to confront and attack the Spanish Armada had it already sailed for England. When arriving at Cádiz on 19 April, Drake found the harbour packed with ships and supplies as the Armada was readying and waiting for a fair wind to launch the fleet to attack. In the early hours of the next day, Drake pressed his attack into the inner harbour and inflicted heavy damage. Claims of the exact Spanish ship losses vary: Drake claimed he had sunk 39 ships, while the Spanish admitted the loss of only 24. The attack became known as the "singeing of the King's beard" and delayed the Spanish invasion by a year.

Over the next month, Drake patrolled the Iberian coasts between Lisbon and Cape St. Vincent, intercepting and destroying ships on the Spanish supply lines. Drake estimated that he had captured around 1,600 to 1,700 tons of barrel staves, enough to make 25000 to 30000 oilbbl for containing provisions. The expedition resulted in a total profit for England of around £140,000, £18,235 of which went to Drake.

Defeat of the Spanish Armada

The Spanish Armada set sail for England in May 1588, and arrived on the English coast on 29 July, near Cornwall. An English fleet consisting of 55 ships set out from Plymouth to confront the Armada, under the command of Lord Howard of Effingham, with Sir Francis Drake serving as vice admiral, commanding from the galleon Revenge. As the English fleet pursued the Armada up the English Channel in closing darkness, Drake broke off and captured the disabled Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora del Rosario, along with Admiral Pedro de Valdés and most of his crew. The Spanish ship was known to be carrying substantial funds to pay the Spanish Armada. Drake's ship had been leading the English pursuit of the Armada by means of a lantern. By extinguishing this for the capture, Drake put the English fleet into disarray overnight. The Duke of Medina Sidonia, whom Philip had appointed to command the Armada despite his complete lack of military experience on land or at sea, made his way up the Channel towards the French shore in his flagship San Martín with the English in pursuit, thinking that if he anchored in the roadstead of Calais they would not dare molest the Spanish ships in French waters.

A council of war was held aboard Howard's flagship Ark, where Howard, Drake, Seymour, Hawkins, Martin Frobisher, and two or three others, decided to launch fire ships. That night the English launched eight fire ships into the midst of the Armada at its moorings, forcing its captains to cut their anchors and sail out of Calais into the open sea. The decisive action was fought the next day on the shoals off Gravelines, where Frobisher, Drake, and Hawkins pounded the Spanish ships with their guns. Drake's squadron gave Medina Sidonia's flagship San Martin a single broadside and moved on; Frobisher, directly behind him in the English line, stayed with the San Martin at close range and poured cannon shot into her oaken flanks, but failed to take her. Five Spanish ships were lost.

Drake wrote as follows to Admiral Henry Seymour after coming upon part of the Spanish Armada, whilst aboard Revenge on 31 July 1588 (21 July 1588 OS):

"The 21st we had them in chase, and so coming up unto them, there hath passed some cannon shot between some of our fleet and some of them, and as far as we perceive they are determined to sell their lives with blows."

The Armada, having failed in their aim, were unable to sail back via the English channel. The English ships, including Revenge, pursued them to prevent any landing on English soil, although by this time most of Howard's ships were almost out of shot. Nevertheless, the battered Spanish fleet were forced to sail instead around the British isles and encountered heavy storms off the coast of Ireland. The fleet eventually limped back to Spanish ports having lost overall some 63 ships and vessels.

The most famous (but probably apocryphal) anecdote about Drake relates that, prior to the battle, he was playing a game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe. On being warned of the approach of the Spanish fleet, Drake is said to have remarked that there was plenty of time to finish the game and still beat the Spaniards, perhaps because he was waiting for high tide. There is no known eyewitness account of this incident and the earliest retelling of it was printed 37 years later. Adverse winds and currents caused some delay in the launching of the English fleet as the Spanish drew nearer, perhaps prompting a popular myth of Drake's cavalier attitude to the Spanish threat.

English Armada
In 1589, the year after the failure of the Spanish Armada, the English sent their own armada to attack Spain. Drake and Norris were given three tasks. First, to destroy the battered Spanish Atlantic fleet, which was being repaired in ports of northern Spain. Second, to make a landing at Lisbon, Portugal and raise a revolt there against King Philip II (Philip I of Portugal) installing the pretender Dom António, Prior of Crato to the Portuguese throne. And, third, to take the Azores if possible so as to establish a permanent base.

In the siege of Coruña, Drake and Norris destroyed a few ships in the harbour of A Coruña in Spain but were repelled. This defeat in all fronts delayed Drake for two weeks, and he was forced to forgo hunting the rest of the surviving ships and head on to Lisbon.

Norris led his army on a difficult march over the rocky coast to Lisbon, while Drake sailed around the peninsula to join Essex with his heavy artillery. Norris's troops were sick and exhausted by the time they reached the western limits of the city, consequently he demanded that Dom António raise provisions and men to fight for his cause from amongst the local populace, or the army would retreat. Drake, against their agreed plans, had anchored his fleet in the mouth of the Tagus estuary, rather than running the risk of sailing past the well-defended stretches of the Tagus to bring the desperately needed heavy cannon and ordnance. The anticipated rebellion never materialised and the ground campaign was a total failure, so Norris, with his army and António, re-embarked to make an attempt at capturing the treasure fleet. The weather was not in their favour so they eventually sailed for home.

However, Drake wanted to atone for such a bitter setback and, in order not to return empty-handed and with the morale of his troops sunk, he made a fleeting stop in the Galician rías, or coastal inlets, pillaging the defenceless town of Vigo for two days and razing it to the ground. This abusive demonstration did not leave the corsair unharmed, as he lost hundreds more men on land, in addition to as many as two hundred wounded. The growing defences of the inhabitants, and the arrivals of militias from Portugal, put the ships in retreat again. Two of the vessels sailing back to Plymouth were captured in the Bay of Biscay by a squadron of zabras led by Captain Diego de Aramburu.

The failure cost the lives of 11,000 English soldiers and sailors, according to Bucholz and Key; Robert Hutchinson says between 8,000 and 11,000 died; while Gorrochategui Santos calculates the number at over 20,000. Upon his return, Drake's behaviour in the expedition was increasingly called into question, culminating in his being charged by England's Privy Council of deliberate failings and a mishandling of his command. Despite never being publicly admonished on these charges, he nevertheless fell out of favour, and was not given command of another naval expedition until 1595.

Defeats and death
Drake's seafaring career continued into his mid-fifties. In 1595, he failed to conquer the port of Las Palmas, and following a disastrous campaign against Spanish America, where he suffered a number of defeats, he unsuccessfully attacked San Juan de Puerto Rico, and lost the Battle of San Juan. The Spanish gunners from El Morro Castle shot a cannonball through his stateroom on the expedition's flagship, but he survived.

He and his second-in-command, Thomas Baskerville, captured and burned Nombre de Dios, and started an overland crossing of the isthmus to attack the city of Panama, but were repulsed by the well-entrenched Spaniards who had barricaded the road; suffering heavy casualties, they gave up the attempt. A few weeks later, on 28 January 1596, Drake died (aged about 56) of dysentery, a common disease at the time, while anchored off the coast of Portobelo where some Spanish treasure ships had sought shelter. Following his death, the English fleet withdrew defeated.

Before dying, he asked to be dressed in his full armour. He was buried at sea in a sealed lead-lined coffin, near Portobelo, a few miles off the coastline. It is supposed that his final resting place is near the wrecks of two British ships, Elizabeth and Delight, scuttled in Portobelo Bay. Efforts by researchers and treasure hunters to discover the location of his remains are ongoing, while divers continue to search the seabed for the coffin.

Family and heritage
Francis Drake married Mary Newman at St Budeaux church near Plymouth, on 4 July 1569. She died about 24 January 1583. In 1585, Drake married Elizabeth Sydenham, born around 1562, the only child of Sir George Sydenham, of Combe Sydenham, who was the High Sheriff of Somerset.

In 1580, Drake purchased Buckland Abbey, a large manor house near Yelverton, Devon, via intermediaries from Sir Richard Grenville. He lived there for fifteen years, until his final voyage, and it remained in his family until 1946. Buckland Abbey is now in the care of the National Trust and a number of mementos of his life are displayed there. His coat of arms and full achievement is depicted in the form of a large, coloured plaster overmantel in the Lifetimes Gallery at Buckland Abbey.

Drake was one of twelve children. His brother Thomas accompanied him on voyages, and named his son after him. That nephew eventually became Sir Francis Drake, 1st Baronet.

Legacy and honors
Historical sources on Drake's early life are scarce, and tend to be obscure. Two common scholarly traditions concerning his life and contributions have resulted. The older tradition can be found in Julian Corbett's biography, Drake and the Tudor Navy (1898) which identifies Drake as the single most important figure in the founding and triumph of the British navy. The alternative approach locates Drake squarely within privateering. The first has tended to laud only his successes, while Sugden writes that the second approach, which emphasises his flaws and failures, has sometimes been less than just. Drake left behind no words of his own, only his actions and their interpretation which, as Peter Whitfield says, "is open to deep disagreement". According to Whitfield, scholarship on Drake has moved "from the hero worship of the Victorians to the cold iconoclasm" of the twenty-first century.

Drake's will was the focus of an extensive confidence scam which Oscar Hartzell perpetrated in the 1920s and 1930s.

Drake's Drum has become an icon of English folklore with its variation of the classic king asleep in mountain story motif.

Drake was a major focus in the video game series Uncharted, specifically its first and third instalments, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, respectively. The series follows Nathan Drake, a self-proclaimed descendant of Drake who retraces his ancestor's voyages.

Drake was the subject of a TV series, Sir Francis Drake (1961–1962). Terence Morgan played Drake in the 26-episode adventure drama.

In Valparaíso, Chile, folklore associates a cave known as Cueva del Pirata (lit. "Cave of the Pirate") with Francis Drake. A legend says that when Drake ransacked the port, he was disappointed with the scant plunder, and proceeded to enter the churches in fury to sack them and urinate on the chalices. Supposedly he still found the plunder to be not worth enough to take on board his galleon, and hid it in the cave.

Geographical names
Drake Passage, a strait connecting the southern Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, is named after him.

There are various places in the United Kingdom named after him, especially in Plymouth, Devon. Places there carrying his name include Drake's Island, Drake Circus Shopping Centre, and the Royal Navy base HMNB Devonport (also known as "HMS Drake"). Plymouth Hoe is also home to a statue of Drake. The Sir Francis Drake Channel is located in the British Virgin Islands.

Various mountains in British Columbia were named in the 1930s for Drake, or in connection with Elizabeth I or other figures of that era, including Mount Sir Francis Drake, Mount Queen Bess, and the Golden Hinde, the highest mountain on Vancouver Island. Fringe theorists suggest he may also have landed to the north of the usual site considered to be Nova Albion – among them Canadian Samuel Bawlf, who claims that its true location was on Vancouver Island at latitude 50 degrees north.

Several landmarks in northern California were named after Drake, beginning in the late 19th century and continuing into the 20th century. American historian Richard White posits that the origins of these commemorations to 19th-century Anglo-Saxonism. Public scrutiny of these memorials intensified in 2020 after the George Floyd protests drew critical attention to place names and monuments perceived to be connected to white supremacy, colonialism, or racial injustice. Several California landmarks that commemorated Drake were removed or renamed. Citing Drake's associations with the transatlantic slave trade, colonialism and piracy, Sir Francis Drake High School, in San Anselmo, California, changed its name to Archie Williams High School, after former teacher and Olympic athlete Archie Williams. A statue of Drake in Larkspur, California was also removed by the city authorities. Multiple jurisdictions in Marin County considered renaming Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, one of its major thoroughfares, but left the name intact when they failed to reach a consensus. In San Francisco, the Sir Francis Drake Hotel was renamed the Beacon Grand Hotel.

title: Francis Drake