He spent his early career privateering in Spanish seas. He was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe; he set off in 1577 with five ships under the sponsorship of Elizabeth I to investigate the Strait of Magellan, tried unsuccessfully to find the North-West Passage, and finally returned to England via the Cape of Good Hope with only his own ship, the Golden Hind, in 1580. He was knighted the following year. Drake’s raid on Cadiz in 1587 delayed the sailing of the Armada for a year by destroying its supply-ships, and the next year he played an important part in its defeat in the English Channel.