Francis Pretty

Francis Pretty was an English gentleman from Suffolk, active in the late 16th century. He is remembered as a diarist, sailor, and man-at-arms whose surviving narratives helped preserve detailed eyewitness accounts of major voyages in the age of exploration.

Pretty is especially associated with Thomas Cavendish's circumnavigation of the globe in 1586–1588, for which he wrote a detailed account. He is also often linked to Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World, a work long attributed to him and widely read as a firsthand narrative of Drake's expedition.

Because so little is known about his personal life, Pretty stands out mainly through his prose: practical, observant, and close to the action. For modern readers, his work offers a rare ground-level view of Elizabethan seafaring, where danger, ambition, and curiosity all meet on the page.