 When the ship's chaplain Francis Fletcher in a sermon suggested that the woes of the voyage in January 1580 were connected to the unjust demise of Doughty, Drake chained the clergyman to a hatch cover and pronounced him excommunicated.The three remaining ships of his convoy departed for the Magellan Strait at the southern tip of South America.A few weeks later (September 1578) Drake made it to the Pacific, but violent storms destroyed one of the three ships, the "Marigold" (captained by John Thomas) in the strait and caused another, the "Elizabeth" captained by John Wynter, to return to England, leaving only the "Pelican".