During the comparatively few years he spent on shore Drake constructed the still-existing leat or water-course for bringing drinking-water into Plymouth, and he also represented that town as Member of Parliament.
In 1595 he and Hawkyns set out for the West Indies on what proved to be their last expedition. Misfortune dogged the fleet from the outset. Both commanders died at sea, Hawkyns off Porto Rico, late in 1595, and Drake off Porto Bello, early in 1596.
A greater man in some ways than even Drake himself was the gentle, noble, lovable, gallant Sir Walter Ralegh, a man who won renown in many fields, not only as soldier, sailor, and explorer, as courtier and administrator, but as historian and poet; whose whole life was crowded with adventure and romance, and who is one of the most picturesque figures in the entire range of English History.
Born in 1552, in a house that still stands at Hayes Barton, he was only 17 when he left Oxford to fight for the Huguenots; and from that time, except for brief intervals at Court, and even shorter periods of quiet enjoyment of his property in Ireland, or of his home at Sherborne, or when he was a prisoner in the Tower, the rest of his life was spent in action; now fighting the rebel Desmonds in Ireland, now harrying the ships and towns of Spain and Portugal, now helping in the attack on the Armada, now engaged with his half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert in perilous and fruitless exploration in the far north of America, now attempting to colonise Virginia—an enterprise whose sole result was the introduction to this country of tobacco and potatoes—and now sailing up the Orinoco in the vain quest of the fabled golden city of Manoa.
Sir Walter Ralegh and his signature