Sir Francis Drake, a Devon privateer, sailed with his flotilla from Plymouth Harbor on August 5, 1577, bound for the River Plate. He raided Spanish shipping and treasure houses around South America, including Valparaiso, Peru, and Acapulco roads. On June 5, 1579, the renamed 78 foot Golden Hind was sailing with a consort toward a Northwest Passage home, but contrary winds forced the treasure laden ships landward, and they first sighted the American coast at this latitude. Drake dropped behind this headland to escape gale winds, anchoring in a bad bay near South Cove, where through thick and stinking fogs he described what seemed to be a low plain land clad and covered with snow, as the Oregon dunes were also reported by Captain Cook 199 years later. Frustrated in his northern passage, Drake turned south to careen at California, then sailed west by way of the Moluccas around the Cape of Good Hope, becoming the first English sailor to span the globe. Queen Elizabeth I knighted him in 1581, and seven years later he fought the Spanish Armada from Ushant and Plymouth to Northern Scotland.