Brixham lighthouse, Iron Age fort and national nature reserve. Warships have been seen in Torbay from the days of the Vikings, up until 1944 when part of the D-Day fleet sailed from here. In 1588, Brixham watched Sir Francis Drake attacking the Spanish Armada after he had (so the legend goes) finished his game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe. Today in Brixham harbour, there is a full-sized replica of the ship, the "Golden Hind", in which Drake circumnavigated the globe; visitors can go on board. For centuries, ships going down the English Channel have come into Torbay to seek refuge from
Emery Molyneux fortify the Strait of Magellan after Francis Drake had passed through it. In 1584, the Spaniard was Raleigh's guest in London for a few weeks, after being captured by Raleigh on a journey to Europe. Molyneux accompanied Francis Drake on his 1577–1580 circumnavigation of the world; as Ubaldini reported, "[h]e himself has been in those seas and on those coasts in the service of the same Drake". A legend in Latin on the terrestrial globe, explaining why Molyneux had left out the polar lands and corrected the distance across the Atlantic Ocean between The Lizard and Cape Race in Newfoundland,