I don't want to divert the thread too much, but just some further comments about Drake.
Queen Elizabeth I would be pleased and surprised that her Royal plot to disguise Drake's movements is still working well enough to fool a smart cookie like Cornelius.
If anybody still believes that Drake did not search for the Northwest Passage and that he went anywhere near San Francisco, they have not examined the evidence clearly enough. Let me point you in the right direction.
Drake's voyage was shrouded in secrecy from the start. His crews and most of the officers were recruited for a trading voyage through the Mediterranean to Alexandria in Egypt. It was only later that they found at they were in for a somewhat longer trip.
Then when Drake returned to England, the secrecy continued. All his logs and charts were confiscated by the Queen and never seen again, his crew was sworn to secrecy about their movements under pain of death, and no accounts of the voyage were allowed to be published, even though this was England's greatest maritime achievement to date.
When an official account was published some time after 1589, by Richard Hakluyt, who worked for the Queen's devious Secretary of State Sir Francis Walsingham, it was deliberately falsified in several places for political reasons. This is easy to demonstrate.
For example, when Drake first entered the Pacific, he was driven south by a storm and found that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans joined below Tierra del Fuego. No mention of this in the official account: far too important a discovery to share with Spain!
Then when off Costa Rica he came across the ship belonging to Rodrigues Tello, the account says that Drake took a few items from her before leaving her to go on her way. Not so. We know from Spanish interviews with the crew that Drake took the ship with him, saying that his need was greater than theirs, and left them, instead, with one of his pinnaces. We also know from statements hiscousin John made to his later Spanish captors that Drake left this ship at New Albion when he returned to England. No mention of this in the Hakluyt account.
There are two, almost identical versions of the Hakluyt account. One written circa 1589 and the other slightly revised in 1600. You need to look at both for this next, very important, piece of evidence. both versions say that when Drake left Mexico, he considered only two ways of returning to England. The first was to re-trace his route through the Magellan Strait, the second to sail home west via the Moluccas. The account says that he chose the latter, but in the 1589 version, there is a (printed) marginal note that reads "A purpose in Sir Francis to return by the North West Passage." This is the exact opposite of what the text says. These marginal notes occur throughout Hakluyt's works, and are summaries of the main text. Therefore, at one stage the main text must have reflected this marginal note, and said that Drake decided to search for and return to England via the Passage. When the text was changed, almost certainly on the instruction of Walsingham, Hakluyt simply forgot to change or delete the telltale marginal note as well. He deleted it when he issued the 1600 version.
During the course of his voyage, Drake took many Spanish prisoners, and when they were interviewed by the authorities, several said that Drake had produced a map which showed the Northwest Passage, or Strait of Anian, and told them that was how he intended to return home. It was probably the 1570 Ortelius World Map. Tudor England was heavily focused on discovering this supposed searoute through or around North America, which would have offered a much shortened route to the rich new trading areas of China and the East Indies. When Drake left, Frobisher had just completed the second of his three voyages to find the Atlantic entrance, and reported that he had found it in what is now Canada, but that he could not go through it because the water was semi-frozen and there were large icebergs, and this in mid-July. Also, Sir Richard Grenville had argued that it would be better to search for the Passage from the Pacific side, sailing through the Magellan Strait and up the west coast of the Americas, just as Drake actually did. Queen Elizabeth had actually granted Grenville a license to do this, but withdrew it, supposedly because she did not trust him not to attack the Spanish settlements on that route. Instead she secretly gave the contract to Drake, and this was the purpose of his voyage.
Back to the voyage. On Tello's ship was a pilot who had his charts for sailing between Mexico and the East Indies, so Drake would have known that to reach the Moluccas, you sailed south west, then west along the equator for several thousand miles, and then north. Instead he headed north, supposedly to "take a Spanish course" but actually to reach the Pacific North West, where he could search for the Passage, as the Marginal note implies and the main text originally stated.
Hakluyt says that when they reached 42 degrees (the California-Oregon border) they encountered extremely cold weather, and were forced to run back to the American coast, where they found a "good and faire harbor" at 38 degrees, which is in the region of San Francisco.
However, the only two detailed, handwritten account of the voyage, which are preserved in the British Library, were unpublished in Drake's time and therefore not subject to the same kind of censorship, tell a different story. They say that Drake went in search of the strait, but being afraid to spend too long looking for it (remember Frobisher's warning that the eastern end of the Passage was frozen by mid July) so he turned south and sailed as near to the coast as he could, until he came across a suitable harbor, where he stayed until the end of August. Both these accounts say he went up to 48 degrees (as opposed to Hakluyt's 38 degrees) and both say that his anchorage was at 44 degrees (not 38 degrees) which is on the mid-Oregon coast. Te Hakluyt account says that Drake stayed at New Albion from early June to mid July, but these handwritten account place it six weeks later. The Hakluyt account was altered to disguise the time Drake spent looking for the Passage. Both of these accounts are unsigned, but I have matched the writing of the longer 17 page account, and established that it was written by Reverend Philip Jones, who assisted Hakluyt in compiling his accounts. Indeed, it is the main source for that part of the voyage from when Drake entered the Pacific until he left Mexico, but not for the part where he was at New Albion. I think the other, three page account, was written by John Marten, Drake's senior steward.
So, do you choose to believe the official account, which is known to have been falsified in other places, or believe the handwritten accounts, when it comes to the location of Drake's anchorage.
And what about Drake himself? In 1592 he wrote to the Queen asking permission to publish his own account of his voyages. He refers to other accounts "whereby many untruths have been published, and the certain truth concealed, as I have thought necessary myself." Out of the horse's mouth!
All sorts of rumors filled the vacuum of information created by the Queen after Drake's return, some of them fueled by Drake himself. Within months of his return,he was planning a new voyage to the Pacific, offering investors seven pounds for every one invested and saying that he would be back within a year as he had found a new way home. We know this only from a letter sent by the Spanish Ambassador to his King.
So what was so important that the Queen should go to all this trouble to keep Drake's movements secret? It obviously has something to do with the things that were altered in the Hakluyt account. Drake's search for the Northwest Passage was one element, but the other was the fact that Drake had left Tello's ship behind at New Albion. We know from reliable Spanish reports that Drake had 85 people on board when he left Mexico, and that he only had 50 when he got to the Moluccas. The only place he had been in between was the west coast of America. My theory is that he went as far as the British Columbia coast, sailed into the Juan de Fuca Strait and mistakenly thought that it was the start of the Northwest Passage, could not find the next section (because it does not exist) and then left Tello's bark and a crew of about two dozen to man her, and to resume the search for the Passage after wintering on the Oregon coast. He and the Queen wanted keep Drake's search and supposed discovery of the passage secret from arch-rivals Spain, and also did not want them to know that there was still an English presence on the American west coast.
So now you know the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say.
Sorry it was such a long post. If I had known it would take so long, I probably would not have started it!
Mariner
HMMM funny thing, drake pulled into a bay called port desire, [google it]named by magellin some 57 years ealier, i park my sail boat in port desire.hmmm the gaff boat in my profile picture is leaving the bamfield harbour and the entrance to port desire. the boat is robert lewis stevensens boat. hmmm. barkly sound is hi defination on google eatrh, military uses the sound and knows more then we give them credit for.. my oldest coin is from 1428 , minted befor columbis set foot on america. know about the area, that i do. hmmm
