Born in a protestant commoner family under fanatically Catholic queen Mary Tudor, Francis had a miserable youth without prospects. The cloth trade breakdown drove him to see, where literacy helped him rise to captain. Under protestant queen Elisabeth I, he was 'discretely' chartered to plunder the American colonial treasures, lifeline of the Habsburg anti-protestant crusader king Philip II of Spain, Mary's vindictive widower. Consorting with runaway slaves, he managed to raid the Panama caravan to load gold and silver. When Philip prepared a Great Armada to invade, crippled by lack of canon standardization, Drake advised a new, mobile fleet type and promised to help finance it. He succeeded by raiding the Spanish fleet in South America via the surprising Magelhaes route, but had to abandon part of the rich prize when reef-wrecked in Insulind after failing to find the legendary Northwest passage.