The Wind Commands Me Away Our

Sir Francis Drake wrote this in a letter as he prepared to sail against the Spanish Armada in 1588, framing his command in explicitly Protestant and providential terms. Drake's deep Calvinist faith was evident throughout his career: he held religious services daily at sea and understood the conflict with Catholic Spain as a holy as well as a national contest. The fleet he helped command defeated the Armada in a series of engagements in the English Channel in July–August 1588, though storms ("the Protestant Wind," as contemporaries called them) did as much damage to the Spanish fleet as English gunnery.