Drake's Island

Drake's Island is a 6.5-acre island lying in Plymouth Sound, the stretch of water south of the city of Plymouth, Devon. The rocks which make up the island are volcanic tuff and lava, together with marine limestone of the Devonian period. For more than 400 years the island was fortified.

The first recorded name for the island was in 1135, when it was referred to as St Michael's after the chapel erected on it. At some later date the chapel was rededicated to St Nicholas and the island adopted the same name. From the latter part of the 16th century the island was occasionally referred to as Drake's Island after Sir Francis Drake, the English privateer who used Plymouth as his home port. Even well into the 19th century, maps and other references continued to refer to the island as St Nicholas's Island and it is only in about the last 100 years that this name has slipped into disuse and the name Drake's Island has been adopted.

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