The Ship That Changed Its Name

“The Golden Hind”, the flagship in which the English explorer Sir Francis Drake sailed round the world in 1577- 80, started the voyage with a different name. It was originally named “The Pelican”. The renaming happened after Drake suppressed a threatened mutiny and had their ringleader, Thomas Doughty, beheaded.  The execution created a political problem for Drake because Doughty had been secretary to Sir Christopher Hatton, a major shareholder in the expedition and a man who was high in Queen Elizabeth’s favour. Drake solved the problem by an astute gesture of flattery. The crest on Hatton’s coat of arms was ‘a hind statant or’, which means a standing gloden deer without antlers. And by the time Drake’s ships had entered the Strait of Magellan, a few days of Doughty’s execution, “The Pelican” had become “The Golden Hind” in Hatton’s honour.