Lesson video

Hello.

Hi, welcome.

If you haven't already noticed from the wives of Henry VIII and the historical document behind me, I'm welcoming you today into my history class, and I'm very excited today to be taking you forward into our journey into Elizabeth and England's place in the wider world.

So without further ado, let's get started and learn about these people called the Sea Dogs.

So let's begin our lesson.

If you haven't already, grab a pen and grab some paper and let's get started.

So over the course of these coming lessons, I'm going to be teaching you the enquiry: Why was the world 'opening up' to Elizabeth I and her people? But today we are going to be considering this question: Who were Elizabeth I's Sea Dogs? Sounds like a weird name for a person, maybe even a little bit of an insult.

So let's grab our pen, grab a paper, and get this title written down.

Who were Elizabeth I's Sea Dogs? I'll give you a couple of seconds to do that now.

Pause the video if you need to.

You've grabbed your pen, you've grabbed your paper, you've written your title.

So let's get started with some history.

So what you can see in front of you is a historical item.

All I would like you to do to start our lesson is a little bit like in the previous lesson where we looked at the image of Henry VIII and his family.

I would like you to look at this historic item called the Drake Jewel.

And I would like you to jot down everything you think you can see and what you think this might mean.

Pause the video now and have a go at that.

Okay, well done, welcome back.

I'm sure you've wrote lots of really, really wonderful and brilliant things down that you could see in this piece of jewellery.

So let's have a talk through now what or who you can see in this item.

So firstly, it's really important to know that this is a composite jewel.

That means that it's basically made up of lots of different materials, lots of really, really expensive materials as well.

And you might have just noticed that at the top, there looks to be a little ring, like the ring that you can see on my little piece of jewellery here, that makes it appear that it could be worn as a pendant, so as a necklace.

So this jewel we know could either be worn as a necklace like mine or alternatively, as we can see in this portrait of Sir Francis Drake, who owned this piece of jewellery, it could also be worn around the waist from a belt.

And it's really, really significant that Sir Francis Drake owned this piece of jewellery, and we are going to learn an awful lot about him today.

So it's a composite jewel.

What do I mean by that? So it's made up of lots of different materials that were really, really expensive.

So if we look, we can see in the centre, a black and a white figure.

Surrounding them is a frame.

And this frame that keeps those two figures within the jewel is made of ebony wood.

Ebony, really, really dark wood.

Ebony is super, super expensive, and it was very, very expensive in the Tudor period 'cause it had to be imported from either India or Africa.

We also know that the gold that makes up this jewel, which you can see throughout, was probably stolen from a Spanish ship somewhere near Mexico.

We can also see diamonds, which we can presume were from Africa, because that was one place in the world in the Tudor period where diamonds were taken from.

And we can also see as I've already said, so you can see the gold there, as I've already said, you can see two figures in the centre, a black and a white figure.

Now this is a cameo carving and I'm wearing a cameo today, which is of an ancient Greek goddess.

Cameos are carved out of shell, and so you get two, when you have a shell, you have the different colours in the shell and specialists, craftsmen are able to actuate the shell to create two images by separating the layers within the shell.

And so this particular artist has created a black figure and a white figure.

Now, historically speaking, this period of history and these figures have been really, really misunderstood.

It was initially thought that perhaps the black figure might represent a slave, or alternatively that the two figures might represent ancient gods.

However, historians now think that actually, because this jewel was given to Sir Francis Drake, that actually this jewel was created and given to him by Elizabeth I as a commemoration of his alliance, so his working with the Cimarron people of Panama in Central America.

And it's this story of Sir Francis Drake's alliance with the Cimarron people that we are going to be investigating for the most part in today's lesson.

So who were the Cimarron? The Cimarron were a group of formerly enslaved people from Africa who'd ended up in the Spanish Empire after being taken from Africa by the Spanish.

And they managed to escape slavery into the mountains of Panama.

And Panama, you can see on my map in red here.

And Panama was really, really, really important to the Spanish Empire because by 1513, the isthmus of Panama had become a really central part of the Spanish Empire.

An isthmus is a small bridge of land that connects two larger pieces of land.

And it was so, so important to the Spanish because if you have a look at my map, I've got a pink arrow.

This represents the movement of Spanish treasure from Peru, where it was mined, back to Spain.

And so the Spanish had a really big issue in this period.

They had a massive empire and in that empire in Spain, they had mines full of silver and gold, but they needed to get it back to Spain and to travel by boat in this period was really, really dangerous.

And so to get from Peru, which is on the west coast of South America, back towards Spain, the Spanish would either have to go all the way around South America, which would take months and be really, really dangerous.

Their ships might get wrecked and all their treasure might get lost, or alternatively, they could sail ships from Peru up to Panama.

And then when they got to Panama, they would offload all the gold onto donkeys and they would take those donkeys on a short trek across the isthmus or across that thin strip of land that makes up Panama, to then await ships that waited on the east coast to sail back to Spain.

And this gold and silver was taken across Panama on a road called the Camino Real, which in Spanish means the Royal Road.

And so the Cimarron are enslaved people, formerly enslaved people who have managed to flee from their Spanish masters and are living in the mountains in Panama.

Sir Francis Drake was a Privateer.

So, Sir Francis Drake was a Privateer.

That meant he had a special job from Elizabeth I, which was he was basically a pirate, but he wasn't a criminal because he had permission to do what he did.

And so Elizabeth I gave the Privateers permission to attack and raid Spanish shipping.

And so he also was known as a Sea Dog.

The Privateers were known as Elisabeth's Sea Dogs.

And so Sir Francis Drake is around in the Spanish Caribbean, and he's around South America, and he is on the lookout for treasure, for Spanish treasure.

And so he hears in 1572 that if he could get to Panama, he could perhaps lay in wait and seek out the gold and the treasure as it crosses Panama.

So in 1572, what he decides to do is go to Panama and he lays in wait near a town called Nombre de Dios, which is where the Spanish treasure will end up on its journey across Panama.

And he waits there with his crew and he hears to his shock, the sound of a voice with a Spanish accent, calling, "Drake, Drake, Drake." And it's a man called Diego.

Diego was a Cimarron who'd escaped Spanish enslavement and knew some English.

And so he found Sir Francis Drake as he was waiting to steal this treasure.

And he warned him that not only were there lots of Spanish soldiers around, but also that it seemed as though the treasure had already left that year.

And so Diego and Sir Francis Drake came up with a plan.

Diego hated Spain, the Cimarron who he was part of hated Spain, Drake wanted Spain's treasure.

So both sides work together to attempt a plot to steal the Spanish treasure in 1573.

And it works.

So the Cimarron and Drake work together, they lay in wait outside of Nombre de Dios.

And in 1573, they manage to raid the treasure train.

They managed to raid all those donkeys loaded, laden with gold, when they get to the town of Nombre de Dios, and they take most of the treasure back with them to England.

It's also thought that Drake stole so much treasure, that actually it's where the myth of pirates burying their treasure comes from, because he had so much of it he couldn't get it all back to England, and so he buried some of it in Panama, supposedly.

So Drake works with the Cimarron, works with Diego to steal this treasure.

And so now our jewel makes more sense, because Drake gets 150,000 piece, pesos, sorry, of Spanish silver back to Elizabeth, the equivalent of millions of pounds.

And as a consequence of that, Elizabeth then gives him this jewel to commemorate his voyage and his journey and his work with Diego and the Cimarron.

But that's not where our story ends.

We're going to come back to the life of Diego when we do our reading, because his relationship with Drake doesn't just end with the capturing of the treasure.

But let's put a pause on this for a second and let's think about what we've already learned.

So we're going to have a go through some pause questions.

So the Cimarron were? Option one, formerly enslaved people who had escaped into the mountains of Panama.

Option two, former members of the Spanish army in Panama.

Option three, enslaved people living in Panama.

Or option four, the name given to Spanish colonists, whoa, I can speak, in Panama.

What do you think? Put a pause and write your answer now.

Okay, number two.

A Privateer was? Option one, a captain with permission from the Queen to raid enemy ships.

Option two, a captain who works privately for his own profits.

Option three, a type of pirates.

Or option four, the Elizabethan name for a sailor.

Again, put a pause on the video if you need to, and write down your answer.

Okay, number three, gettin' a bit geographical here.

Whoa, I thought this was a history lesson.

An isthmus is? Option one, a type of island.

Option two, a slither of land that acts as a bridge between two larger areas.

Option three, a type of country.

Or option four, another word for a continent.

What do you think it is? Again, put a pause on the video and write down your answer.

Okay, so let's go back for these answers then.

So the Cimarron where option one, formerly enslaved people who had escaped in Panama.

Number two, a Privateer was option one, a captain with permission from the Queen to raid enemy ships.

So Sir Francis Drake had permission to raid Spanish ships.

An isthmus is a sliver of land that acts as a bridge, option two.

So give yourself a tick for each of those.

I'm sure you did brilliantly.

Okay, so when we pick up the story of Sir Francis Drake and Diego, it's really important that we understand the Spanish Empire.

So let's think back to last lesson.

So if we remember, the Spanish Empire had been established from 1492 with the voyage of Christopher Columbus to the Caribbean, and by the time of the reign of Elizabeth I, the Spanish Empire stretched from the Caribbean through Central America.

So what we would today call Mexico through Guatemala, through Panama, et cetera, and down into South America as well, with large sections of Peru being in control of the Spanish.

This empire had been seized by conquistadors, so soldiers, and there was an awful lot of wealth extracted from the Spanish Empire through indigenous and enslaved labour.

So the Spanish, particularly in Peru, used both African people who were enslaved, and the local indigenous populations, and forced them to work in mines, pulling out all that treasure, all that gold from the land.

So this was a really, really wealthy empire, and it was a bit of a source of jealousy for Elizabeth I.

And so if we think back to what we learned last lesson, we've got these increasing tensions with England and Spain.

So we have the religious differences where Spain was Catholic and England was Protestant.

We had Elizabeth upsetting the Spanish by supporting Protestant rebels in the Netherlands.

And we have Philip annoying Elisabeth by supporting Catholic plots.

And when this all came together, it meant that by the reign of Elizabeth I, we have a lot of rivalry and warfare between Elizabeth I in England and Phillip II in Spain.

And as a consequence of that, Elizabeth sent her Privateers, her Sea Dogs, to the New World, the New World 'cause it wasn't actually new to the people that already lived there, to try and steal as much wealth from the Spanish as possible.

Okay, so now that we have recapped some of our knowledge of the Spanish Empire, and we've learned a little bit more about the story of Sir Francis Drake and Diego, what I would like you to do now is pause the video, read the slides on the next page about the Elizabethan Privateers, and answer the comprehension questions for me.

Resume once you're finished.

Okay, welcome back from being at sea with the Sea Dogs and the Privateers Diego and Drake.

Let's go over some of these comprehension questions now.

Now remember, if your answer doesn't quite match what I've written, that's absolutely fine.

As long as you've got the basic gist, you can give yourself a tick.

And remember, if you're the sort of person that likes to be a superstar historian, you might also decide to have a go at editing some of your answers as well.

If you want to do that, just make sure you pause the video as we go.

So, I'm not going to let you leave my lesson today without understanding what an isthmus is.

I'm obsessed.

So what is an isthmus? An acceptable answer would be a thin bit of land.

A really, really good answer though would be an isthmus is a thin bit of land between two bodies of water or that connects two larger continents.

So the isthmus of Panama, for example, connects South America to North America and lies in between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans.

Why was Panama important to the Spanish? So an acceptable answer might have been that they transported treasure there or they transported their treasure from Peru across Panama.

A really, really good answer might say the thin isthmus allowed them to take treasure from Peru over land to ships waiting to go back to Spain instead of making a dangerous voyage all the way around South America.

Number three, what did Sir Francis Drake steal in Panama? So you might have said in 1573, Sir Francis Drake stole treasure.

A really good answer though would've been really specific, so you might have said in 1573, Sir Francis Drake, also known as El Draque, stole 150,000 pesos of Spanish treasure as it crossed Panama.

All right, I'm going to have to disappear now because my face is going to show on the screen.

So number four, next one.

Why were the Cimarrons happy with Sir Francis Drake's arrival? An acceptable answer might have been they knew the Spanish hated him.

But a really good answer would have been the Cimarron were happy, as they had a mutual enemy in Spain who had enslaved them and brought them to the Spanish Empire.

They were happy to work with Drake as they knew the Spanish hated him.

And number five, what happened to Diego after the Panama raids? So what happened to him after that treasure was stolen in 1573? An acceptable answer might have been he joined Sir Francis Drake's crew.

However, a really good answer would have been after the Panama raid Diego joined Drake's crew and travelled to England.

Diego then sailed with Sir Francis Drake around the world on his circumnavigation voyage.

And finally, our challenge.

So why is it difficult for historians to understand Sir Francis Drake's relationship with Diego? This is what I would have written.

So the relationship is difficult to understand, as Sir Francis Drake had previously been involved in slave trading, yet was happy to work with formerly enslaved people in the pursuit of treasure.

He also welcomed Diego, a formerly enslaved person, into his crew.

Sir Francis Drake's story is really difficult for historians, and it's really difficult for us to get across because Sir Francis Drake was happy to welcome black members of his crew, and he was happy to welcome formerly enslaved people into his crew as free men.

However, he was also happy to be a slave trader.

So he's a really, really complex figure in English history.

Sir Francis Drake was not the only Elizabethan Sea Dog and Privateer.

In fact, there were many.

One of them, and one of the most famous alongside Sir Francis Drake was Sir Walter Raleigh.

Sir Walter Raleigh was a favourite of the Queen, just like Sir Francis Drake.

And like Drake, he'd explored the Caribbean and South America, but he was more obsessed with colonisation.

So finding places which the English could take over kind of to rival the Spanish Empire.

And he was obsessed with the legend, the legend of El Dorado.

He believed that somewhere in Central or South America, in what is today Columbia, there was a legendary City of Gold, and he wanted to find it to make England wealthier.

He was also involved in the establishment of the first ever English colony in the New World, at a place called Roanoke.

And Roanoke is now one of the most famous ghost stories in American history because when the colonists first arrived in 1585, they quickly fell into conflict with the local indigenous peoples.

And when after the wars with Spain broke out in the 1580s, after 1588, English sailors first arrived at Roanoke Colony again in 1590.

They found that every single one of the over 100 colonists had disappeared into thin air.

So let's pause and have a quick think.

What similarities can we see from what I've just said between the stories of Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh? Put a pause on the video and resume when you're finished.

Okay, so what similarities could we have come up with? So a favourite of the Queen, Sir Francis Drake was also a favourite of the Queen, if we think back to the Drake Jewel, which she gave him.

Both had explored the Caribbean and South America.

Both were obsessed with finding treasure and gold.

And finally both worked against the Spanish.

And my favourite similarity, which you may not have noticed, is if you look at both of their portraits, they both loved a pearl earring.

So let's come back to this question.

Our inquiry that we are looking into over the coming lessons is this: Why was the world opening up to Elizabeth I and her people? And we're tracing these themes, so how did wealth, how did religion and how did warfare contribute to the Elizabethan period and the Elizabethan people exploring the world and trying to foster links? So if we think about our Privateers, our Sea Dogs, a main aspect of the reasons why they are exploring the world is in pursuit of wealth.

And in particular, they're looking for wealth in the Spanish Empire.

They're looking to steal as much gold as possible from the Spanish.

Underpinning that, the reason the Privateers are even allowed to do that is because of the religious tensions between Spain and England, Protestant England and Catholic Spain, which had also contributed to warfare.

So all three of these themes kind of interlink, and the underlying reason behind all of these sort of areas of expansion was rivalry with the Spanish.

So let's come back to our image from the start of the lesson.

Let's come back to our image of the Drake Jewel from the Victoria and Albert Museum.

What I would like you to do as your challenge task is pause the video, and I would like you to write an exhibition label for the Drake Jewel.

So what I would like you to do is imagine you're creating the little piece of paper, the little bit of information that sits beside this jewel in the gallery and tells the viewer the story of the item.

I would like you to use my sentence starters that I have created.

So this item is known as the Drake Jewel.

It was given to Sir Francis Drake by blank.

Sir Francis Drake was a blank.

This jewel represents.

So at that point, I want you to tell me about the story of Diego, Sir Francis Drake and the Cimarron.

Put a pause on the video now and resume when you're finished.

Well done.

I'm sure you wrote lots of brilliant things and I'm sure you've wrote down lots of ideas related to what we had learned in today's lesson.

Now remember, when I go through a model answer, your words might not be exactly the same as mine, but if you've got the general gist, well done.

And also remember, if you are a bit of a perfectionist and you want to do as well as possible, you can always pause the video and rewrite what you have written based upon my suggestions.

So let's have a read of my model answer.

This is what I might've written.

So this item is known as the Drake Jewel.

It was given to Sir Francis Drake by Elizabeth I.

Sir Francis Drake was an English Privateer.

You might also have called him a Sea Dog.

He spent his career raiding Spanish ports in the Caribbean and South America, as well as Spanish ships on behalf of the Queen.

This jewel supposedly represents his alliance, so working together with the Cimarron in Panama.

The Cimarron were a community of people who'd escaped enslavement in Panama.

Working with the Cimarron, Sir Francis Drake was able to steal 150,000 pesos worth of treasure from the Spanish as it crossed the isthmus of Panama.

This jewel was given as a gift to celebrate this successful voyage.

Okay, well done on all your hard work today.

You have been absolutely fabulous.

I would love to see some of your work.

So if you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

And I will see you again next lesson.

Bye.