AMBITIOUS plans to locate and even retrieve the body of Tavistock's most famous son, Sir Francis Drake, are prompting controversy over his eventual resting place.

The project, costing many thousands of pounds, is the brainchild of Drake enthusiast Michael Turner, founder of the Sir Francis Drake Exploration Society, and former ITN chairman Sir David Nicholas.

The scheme recently gained impetus when Sir Bob Geldof's TV production company agreed to get involved, along with Blue Water Recoveries, which discovered the lost remains of HMS Hood in the Denmark Straits this summer.

Drake was buried at sea in a lead-lined coffin off the coast of Panama in Janurary 1596, after he died from dysentery.

But even if the casket can be located, the question remains over what should happen to it.

Sue Jackson, for the Drake Exploration Society, believes Drake, 'very much' a Plymouth man, should be buried at St Andrew's Church in the city.

Tavistock historian Gerry Woodcock said there was 'no question' that if Drake's body was brought back, the famous seafarer should be returned to Tavistock, his birth town, though he could not predict how successful the search would be.

And history teacher Helen Joy Harris, who wrote the book Drake of Tavistock as part of the Armada 400 celebrations in 1988, believes the seafarer's former home of Buckland Abbey would be the most appropriate final resting place.

Mrs Harris said: 'Buckland is only four miles from where he was born as the crow flies. There's a ready made place because there's a chapel there and he probably lived at Buckland for longer than he lived anywhere.'

And she did not believe there was any legal problem in bringing his body back to this country.

'He has no direct descendants, he was an English subject and since we were at war with Spain at the time, it would be analogous to bringing back perhaps an aircrew now,' she said.

Sir Francis Drake was born at Crowndale in 1540, the first of a large family of sons born to a farming family.

His first taste of the seafaring life came as a young apprentice — after inheriting the ship on which he first sailed, he completed several voyages to the Caribbean.

He undertook a three-year circumnavigation of the world in 1577, during which he regularly, brazenly and successfully attacked Spanish ships, seizing their treasure.

So successful was he, that Queen Elizabeth's share of the resulting booty from just one attack paid off the national debt for a year.

Drake bought Buckland Abbey, became mayor of Plymouth, MP for the city and a deputy lord lieutenant of Devon before setting out on his last, ultimately fateful, voyage to the Caribbean in 1595.

The expedition to the area, where the Elizabeth and the Delight, two wrecks from Drake's fleet are also said to lie, is now dependent on finding backers to the tune of some £500,000.