Sir Francis Drake

To some, Sir Francis Drake was a noble figure, while to others, he was a renegade sailor. According to the BBC, Drake, who was born in Devon, England, approximately 1540, was the first Englishman to sail around the world. But this achievement was more of a result of his intention to raid Spanish ships than a deliberate exploration.

According to Elaine Murphy, an associate professor of marine and naval history at the university in England, the stealing of Spanish ships was legal from an English perspective, but to the Spanish, Drake was a threatening pirate they called "El Draque." Drake shared his wealth with Queen Elizabeth I, by whom he was knighted, and returned from his circumnavigation with a lot of loot. The Spanish Armada, a group of Spanish ships that attempted to remove the queen in 1588, was fought by him as a prominent naval leader.

Drake's role in slavery further tarnishes his legacy. According to Murphy, he made several expeditions to Guinea and Sierra Leone with his cousin, naval commander Sir John Hawkins, and helped establish the English slave trade in Africa by enslaving up to 1,400 Africans. In 1596, Drake perished from illness off the coast of Panama.