Many thousands of people began to converge

on Appledore in the morning of the launch from the Watertown shipyard of Messrs J. Hinks and Son. The public holiday atmosphere was heightened by the presence of the Dartington Morris Men and the Totnes Folk Club and by the costumes of the Totnes Elizabethan Society, the Torrington Cavaliers and Bideford Buccaneers and others.

Prior to the launching by the Countess of Devon, who, true to period, used a bottle of mead, there were speeches and the prayer said by Sir Francis Drake before he set out in 1587 recited by the Bishop of Crediton. A flotilla of small craft was there to greet the ship as helicopters hovered above, flares soared into the sky and cannons roared. The Golden Hinde was soon on her way to the yard of Appledore Shipbuilders where her masts will be stepped. She will leave Plymouth in the late autumn for San Francisco where she is to become a floating museum.

Gazette article 13 April 1973