the historiography of the activities of francis drake

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The Historiography of the Activities of Francis Drake along the Pacific Coast of NorthAmerica in 1579Author(s): Kenneth L. HolmesReviewed work(s):Source: Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1969), pp.30-36Published by: The North American Conference on British StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4048173 .Accessed: 06/01/2012 23:01

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THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE ACTIVITIES OF FRANCIS DRAKEALONG THE PACIFIC COAST OF NORTH AIMERICA D 1379

Kenneth L. Holmes

Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the world (1577-1581) marks the firstcertain approach of Europeans to what later became known as the NorthwestCoast of America. Historical research on this voyage has stemmed fromGreat Britain and the United States. British scholars concerned with thesubject as part of English mnaritime activity have included Richard Hakluyr,James Anthony Froude, E. G. R. Taylor, James A. Williamson and A. L.Rowse. The latest British scholar to inqwure into the motives and events of

the great voyage is Kenneth R. Andrews. 1 These writers have generally givenlittle space to Drake's experiences on the Northwest Coast. However, the lateCalifornia scholar Henry Raup Wagner published a monumental study of thesubject in 1926. This work and two volumes published by the Hakluyt Societyprovide most of the documents relating to the voyage. 2

The pertinent passages describing Drake's activities in the North Pacificare as follows:3

From Guatulco i village near Acapulco on the Mexican

west coast] we departed the day following, viz. April 16.setting our course directly into the sea: whereon we sayled500. leagues in longitude, to get a winde: and between thatand June 3. 1400. leagues in all, till we came into 42. deg.of North latitude. . . .* * . . * e * 0 . . * * a * * * *

Kenneth R. Andrews, Drake's Voyage: A Re-Assessment of Their Placein Elizabethan Maritime Expansion (New York, 1967), and by the same author,

The Aims of Drake's Expedition of 1577-1580, ' American Hlistorical Review,L.XXI (Feb. 1968), 724-41.

Henry Raup Wagner, Sir Francis Drake's Voyage Around the Worid: ItsAims and Achievements (San Francisco, 1926); The World Encompassed(London, 1854; Hakluyt Society, Series I, vol. XVI; W. S. Vaux, ed.); ZeliaNuttall, Fresh Light on Drake (London, 1914; Hakluyt Society, Series II, vol.XXXIV).

3From the facsimile edition of The World Encompassed published inCleveland, 1966. See also the explanatory pamphlet accompanying thefacsimile by A. L. Rowse, 62-64, 80. The quote is exactly as printed exceptfor the modernizing of certain letters, e.;., s and u.

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The land in that part of America, bearing farther outinto the West, then we before imagined, we were neerer onit than wee were aware; and yet the neerer still wee cameunto it, the more extremitie of cold did sease upon us. Thea. day of June, wee were forced by contrary windes, to runin with the shoare, which we then first descried; and castanchor in a bad bay, the best roade we could for the presentmeete with: where wee were not without some danger, byreason of the many extreme gusts, and flawes that beate uponus; which if they ceased and were still at any time, immediatelyupon their intermission, there followed most vile, thicke, andstinking fogges; against which the sea prevailed nothing, tillthe gusts of wind were againe remowed them, which broughtwith them, such extremitity and violence when they came, thatthere was no dealing or resisting against them.

From the height of 48. deg. in which now we were, to 38.we found the land by coasting alongst it to bee but low andreasonable plaine: every hill (whereof we saw many, butnone verie high) though it were in June, and the Sunne in hisneerest approch unto them being covered with snow.

In 38 deg. 30. min. we fell with a convenient and fit har-borough, and June 17. came to anchor therein: where we con-tinued till the 23. day of July following. During all which time,notwithstanding it was the height of Summer, and so neere theSunne; yet were wee continually visited with like nipping colds,as we had felt before: insomuch that if violent exercises of ourbodies, and busie imployment about our necessarie labours,had not sometimes compeld us to the contrary, we could verywell have beene contented to have kept about us still our Winterclothes; yea (had our necessities suffered us) to have kept ourbeds; neither could we at any time in whole fourteene dayestogether, find the aire so cleare as to be able to take the heightof Sunne or starre.

0 . . . . . Is . . 0 . . .P .1 . . . . . . .

This country our generall named Albion and that for twocauses; the one in respect of the white bancks and cliffes,which lie toward the sea: the other, that it might have someaffinity, even in the name also, with our owne country, whichwas sometime so called.

Before weewent from thence, our generall caused to be setup, a monument of our being there; as also of her majesties,and successors right and title to that kingdome, namely, aplate of brasse, fast nailed to a great and firme post; whereonis engrav-en her graces name, and the day and yeare of ourarrivall there, and of the free giving up, of the province andkingdome, both by the king and people, into her majesties

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hands; together with her highnesse picture, and aremsin a piece of sixpeace currant English monie, shewingit selfe by a hole made of purpose through the plate:underneath 'was likewise engraven the name of ourgenerall &c.

Although there are descriptions of the local Indians, the above comprise thekey passages relating to Drake's approach to the Pacific coast of NorthAmerica.

American scholars have made three distinct contributions to the knowledgeof Drake's activities described above. First, they have identified and certifiedthe Plate of Brasse by which Drake claimed New Albion for his sovereign.Second, they have mapped Drake's general course in the DNorth Pacific andconfirmed that the northern extent of his voyage was somewhere near forty-eight degrees north latitude. Third, they have identified Drake's Bay, just

north of San Francisco Bay, as the careenage where the Golden Hind wasprepared for the trans-Pacific voyage, and which Drake claimed as PortusNovae Albionis.

Let us consider these in turn:The brass plate, now in the Bancroft Library at the University of Califor-

nia, Berkeley, was discovered in 1936 near San Rafael near the northwestshore of San Francisco Bay. Herbert Eugene Bolton, Professor of History atBerkeley, went to great lengths to determine the authenticity of the artifact.4Moreover, electrochemical and metalurgical investigation revealed that:D

(1) There is no doubt whatsoever that the dark coating on the surf aceof the plate is a natural patina formed slowly over a period of many years.

(2) Numerous surf ace defects and imperfections usually associatedwith old brass were found on the plate.

(3) Particles of mineralized plant tissue are f irmly imbedded in thesurface of the plate. This is likewise a very positive proof of the age ofthe plate.

(4) Cross sections of the brass plate show (a) an excessive amount ofimpurities; and (b) chemical inhomogeneity; as well as (c) variation in

grain size. All three of these characteristics indicate a brass of old origin.

4See Herbert Eugene Bolton, Drake's Plate of Brass: Evidence of hisVisit to California in 1579 (San Francisco, 1937; California Historical Society,Special Publication No. 13).

5Colin G. Fink and E. P. Polushkin, Drake's Plate of Brass Authenticated(San Francisco, 1938; California Historical Society, Special Publication No.14), reprinted with other related articles by the California Historical Societvin 1959 under the title The Plate of Brass. See the scientists' summary,

Report on the Plate of Brass, 48-67, and numerous photographs ofdetails.

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(5) Among the impurities found in the brass of the plate there ismagnesium, which is present far in excess of the amount occurring inmodern brass.

(6) There are numerous indications that the plate was not made byrolling but was made by hammering, as was the common practice in Drake'stime.

The scientists could thus conclude: On the basis of the above six distinctfindings, as well as other data herewith recorded, It is our opinion that thebrass plate examined by us is the genuine Drake Plate. . . .'

The inscription on the Plate of Brass reads as follows:0

BEE IT KN'OWNE VNTO ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS

IVNE. 17. 1579.

BY THE GRACE OF GOD AND IN THE NAME OF HERR MAIESTYQUEEN ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND AND HERR SVCCESSORS FOR -EVER I TAKE POSSESSION OF THIS KINGDOME WHOSE KING ANDPEOPLE FREELY RESIGNE THEIR RIGHT AND TITLE IN THEWHOLE LAND V7NTO HERR MAIESTIES KEEPEING NOW NAMEDBY ME AN TO BEE KNOWrNE NTO ALL MEN AS NOVA ALBION.

G [or C] FRANCIS DRAKE

Hole for silver sixpence

The phraseology of the inscription [according to Bolton] in nearlyevery particular is that of The World Encompassed, our fullestversion of Fletcher's account. (1) The inscription claims NovaAlbion for the Virgin Queen and her successors, just as theChaplain says. (2) The plate is of brass, just as the Chaplainsays. (3) Not the province and people but the province andkingdome, and the right and title in the whole land were givenup, just as the Chaplain says. (4) They were granted not by anameless nobody-, but bv king and people, . . . just as theChaplain says. (5) Finally, there is a hole through the plate'made of purpose to hold the sixpence, just as the Chaplain says.

The apparent authenticity of the brass plate led anthropologists to studythe descriptions of the Indians given in the Drake documents. Robert F.Heizer suggests the evidence indicates almost conclusively that Drake

6Plate of Brass, 10.

7Ibid.

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visited a region mib-ted by the Coast Miwok Indians, for All the question-able native words are of Coast Miwok derivation. 1'8 This would limit the

ssble locale of the ('er ening to either Bodega Bay or Drake's Bay, and thelatter is the one possessitng the white cli-ffs.

Vhat of Drae's corse in the northeastern Pacific? Froude, Rowse andAndrews have maintained. tha-t Drake kept near to the North American- Pacificcoast, perhaps seariing for a North-West Passage.9 Willamson, howeveradvaced a differenc ireiepretation, Along the coast the north--westw indsprevailed, ad he saieil. foa out into the ocean and then turned easwardsacross the wind ItIO

The definitive study of this niatter was miade by the late R. P. Bishop, aBritish Columbia land surveyor. B1Bishop used a knowledge he had acquiredof- the sailing routes frxmn San Francisco to Vancouver Island and especiallya remarkable study nade foi the International Fisheries Commission byWilliamin F. Thompson and Richard Van Cleve. 1 These researchers had used

drift bottles to learn about the winds and currents in the northeastern Pacific,In addition, useful research on the shore wind patterns has been undertaken byWilliam S. Cooper 13 During the summer the prevailing winds along thecos t are from the noA-h or northwest. A great clockwise-turmnng highweather system, known as Fleurieuns Whirlpool, moves south in the winterand then north in the summer, 14

The great Scandinavian meteorologist, J. Bjerknes, has pointed outthat the oceanic cireation (clockwise in the northern latitudes; counter-clocwise south of the equator) has its focus, not in the center of the ellipse,

Robert T. Heizer, Francis Drake and the California Indians (Berkeley,1947, University of California Publications in American Archaeology andEthnography, vol. 42, no. 3), esp. 277-79.

9James Anthony Froude, English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century (NewYork, 1895) 95; Rowse, panphlet enclosed in the facsimile ed, of The WorldEncompassed, esp. 12; Andrews, Drake's Voyages, 76 ff.

10James A. Williamson, Sir Francis Drake (London, 1951), 76.

R. P. Bishop, Drake's Course in the North Pacific, 1 British

Colwmbia Historical Quarterly, M (July 1949), 151-82.

12William F. Thompson and Richard Van Cleve, The History of thePacific Halibut, Ln ort of the International Fisheries Commission, Num-ber 9 (Seattle, 1936).

13William S. Cooper, Coastal Sand Dunes of Oregon and Washington

(Washington,, D. C., 1958; Geological Society of America,Memoir 72).

14Bishop, Drake's Course, t 163-66.

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but toward the eastern end. 15Drake navigated by capturing Spanish pilots and learning all he could

from them. They taught him, as they had already learned in the ManilaGalleon trade, that one could encompass the Pacific best by sailing westwardalong the trade-wind route from Mexico, then turning north to the prevailingwesterly belt, and then coming toward the north Pacific coast from the west.This was called the Spanish course. Fletcher says, From Guatulco wedeparted. . . setting our course directly into the sea: whereon we sayled500 leagues in longitude, to get a winde. ,,16

Sometimes the Spaniards in their more leisurely explorations did moveslowly up the California coast, stopping for several days while the northwind blewu, then sailing for a day or two northward until the north wind cameup again. Observe the words of Father Antonio de la Ascension, in hisaccount of the Vizcaino voyage in 1603: From the time the fleet sailed fromthe Puerto de San Diego in pursuit of its voyage, the northw-est wind, the king

and absolute master of this sea and coast, commenced its work anew. *t17Bishop's conclusion is that Drake approached the coast not far on either

side of the 48th parallel, probably to the northward, and that the bad baywhere he stopped was on the coast of Vancouver Island. 18 This seemsreasonable, for north of Gray's Harbor on the coast of Washington State andalong the western shore of the Olympic Peninsula there is not a harbor goodenough even to be called a bad bay. A real appreciation of the problemsfaced by Drake along the coast of the Olympic Peninsula gay be realized bystudying the pertinent entries in the Pacific Coast Pilot. Bishop points out

another feature of Fletcher's narratives that the coast where they approachedit trended toward the northwest. That could only happen along the Californiacoast north to Cape Mendocino or along the Washington coast north of Gray'sHarbor, thence all the way to the Alaskan peninsula. Drake deduced, and theFletcher testimony reflects this deduction, that the northwestward trend ofthe coast precluded the possibility of sailing east through a North-WestPassage. He turned south, taking advantage of the north wind, and coasted

15J. Bjerknes and J. Holboe, On the Theory of Cyclones, Journal of

Meteorology, I (Sept. 1944), 1-27. The present author is also indebted toProfessor Wayne White of the geography faculty at Oregon College of Educa-tion for information on the Bjerknes theory.

16World Encompassed, 62.

17Henry Raup Wagner, Spanish Voyages to the Northwest Coast ofAmerica in the Sixteenth Century (San Francisco, 1929), 234.

18Bishop, Drake's Course, 170-71.

19Pacific Coast Pilot (Washington, D. C., 1948).

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along the shore of present Washington, Oregon, and northern California untilat 38 degrees and 30 minutes he found a convenient and fit harborough, andthis brings us to the solution of the third problem.

The identification of the careening beach has been done by an organiza-tion formed in the early 1950's, Drake Navigators Guild, ' with headquartersat Point Reyes, California. The first honorary president of this group wasAdmiral Chester Nimitz, who took as a special hobby after retirement thestudy of the Drake circumnavigation in minute detail. Using an adaptation ofthe geologists' principle that the present is the key to the past, the Admiralfound that Drake was surprisingly accurate as to latitude, but very inaccurateas to longitude. 20 This is to be expected as the Longitude problem was notsolved until the mid-eighteenth century by the invention of an accuratechronometer. Nimitz studied ali the careenages used by Drake throughoutthe voyage, as well as records of careenages irn other journals. He used the'imariner's approach, his purpose being to establish coordinates which,

when found to converge at a common point must pinpoint the location of thecalreenage. Because of the lack of the primary coordinate of longitude, hebrought to bear additional coordinates of weather conditions, distinguishinglandmarks, channel depths, and other physical conformation data to supplycircumstantial coordinates that could be accepted in place of longitude. Heconcluded that the harbor was Drake's Bay, the spot so designated by GeorgeDavidson, the surveyor of the coast who narned the locale a century earlier.and the one bay with white cliffs.

There is much more, but, to use the Admiral's term, the coordinates'of Pacific coast scholars converge on the Drake voyage; and as historiansbecome debtors to archeologists, anthropologists, metallurgists, meteor-ologists, fisheries commissioners, compilers of the Pacific Coast Pilot,retired admirals and other navigators, the nautical events that took placenearly four hundred years ago during the Elizabethan Age become more andmore clear.

20Admiral Chester Nimitz, Drake's Cove, Pacific Discovery, 1958,reprinted by Drake Navigators Guild, Point Reyes, Calif., n. d. See also

Adolph S. Oko, Francis Drake and Nova Albion, California HistoricalQuarterly, XLIII (June 1964) and Noel B. Martin, The Drake NavigatorsGuild and the Quest for Portus Novae Albionis (Berkeley, May 7, 1959;mimeograph).

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