Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hind Half-Penny

Minted about 50 years ago, these British half-pence coins proudly display the engraver's rendering of Sir Francis Drake's mighty Golden Hind.

Golden Hind was an English galleon best known for its circumnavigation of the globe between 1577 and 1580, captained by Sir Francis Drake. She was originally known as Pelican, but was renamed by Drake mid-voyage in 1578, as he prepared to enter the Strait of Magellan, calling her Golden Hind to compliment his patron, Sir Christopher Hatton, whose armorial crest was a golden ‘hind’ (the heraldic term for a female deer).