For Elizabeth I, Francis Drake made the impossible real, serving as a brilliantly adaptable instrument of her ambitions to transform England from a third-rate island kingdom into a global imperial power. Also the biographer of Columbus, Magellan, and Marco Polo, Laurence Bergreen charts how this short-tempered pirate defeated the seemingly invincible Spanish Armada, completed a secret circumnavigation of the globe to shore up British interests, and made a fortune for himself and his queen.