The Voyage of Sir Francis Drake Around the Whole Globe

I’ve kind of gotten used to these books that are essentially translated copy and pastes of in-ship journals for historical voyages. I read them most for their value of how these events were represented to European populations after they were over as public relations documents, rather than as believable primary sources. Hakluyt was known as the chief PR man of Elizabethan seafaring, during a time where spinning tales about the success of such voyages were paramount to continuing to receive the funding necessary from the throne.  Obviously not much has changed in that regard.

Particularly of note here is how mundanely different events are described from one another. An accounting of the price of local goods or the state of the ship is written as manner-a-fact as murder and exile of local populations. It’s a bit disorienting — you do a double take halfway through the page when the subject changes so abruptly. The other noticeable theme was how accounting-like the journal was written. It was a reminder that above all, this was a political and corporate excursion, and the livelihoods and reputations of the crew, in part, depended on what was brought back, not just what was discovered.