Francis Pretty


Francis Pretty was a Suffolk gentleman, diarist, sailor, and man-at-arms, who wrote detailed accounts of two separate circumnavigation of the globe, first with Sir Francis Drake and later with Thomas Cavendish. Due to the dubious legality of these expeditions, accounts were officially suppressed; the earliest unofficial accounts were published in Dutch by Emanuel van Meteren who purchased both diaries and mixed elements of one with the other. Excerpts of both diaries were also included in Richard Hakluyt's 1582 and 1589 treatises on British explorations of North America, before he published the Cavendish diary in its entirety in 1600.
While Pretty is often credited for the account of Drake's circumnavigation, the Haklyut Society has established that this is a mis-attribution.