On the Waterfront: Was Drake here first?
Rewriting history: Was Francis Drake here first?
As maritime heroes go, Sir Francis Drake ranks right up there with Columbus and Cook, even Capt. Jack Sparrow. So who can resist the controversial theory that Drake was the first European to lay eyes on the shores of Puget Sound – 200 years before George Vancouver and company?
Beware, though, where you bring up this insurgent notion. It drives folks crazy down in San Francisco to even think that Drake, when he sailed the Pacific 426 years ago, snubbed SFO and cruised north to spend his summer in the Pacific Northwest. But so goes the argument of one Samuel Bawlf, a former British Columbia cabinet minister who lives and writes a day’s sail north of here on Saltspring Island, B.C. He lays out his extensive argument in his recent book, “The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577-1580" (Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver BC.)
Some of his evidence comes from our back yard, and he believes more clues remain buried along the shores of the Olympic Peninsula.
Bawlf’s bottom line: In 1579, Drake sailed up the West Coast, bypassed California, and explored the Strait of Juan de Fuca and all the way to Southeast Alaska before turning west to cross the Pacific and eventually circumnavigate the globe. And he sailed these waters 40 years before the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Alas, “the greatest voyage in English history was kept a secret,” Bawlf says. The British didn’t want to share any of Drake’s geographical discoveries with their Spanish rivals.
Drake, of course, was Queen Elizabeth’s favorite sea captain, the swashbuckling “Scourge of the Spanish Main” who captured treasure-laden galleons in the Caribbean, then circled the globe at the helm of the Golden Hinde, becoming the first English circumnavigator. History has told us he sailed through the Strait of Magellan and northward up the coast, raiding Spanish ships and settlements along the way. When he reached Northern California, the story goes, he beached his ship for repairs. Five weeks later, he set off again, headed for Asia.
Unfortunately, none of Drake’s journals have survived to tell us precisely where he put ashore. Californians have always insisted it was just north of San Francisco Bay. But Bawlf and friends say there is a period of several weeks in the summer of 1579 when it’s not clear where he was or what he was doing.
Over many years, Bawlf has tried to solve that mystery, traveling to Britain to study historical maps and accounts that were attributed to Drake or members of his crew. Using fragments of information, he has pieced together a theoretical route that took the Englishman up the coast and into the straits, where he hoped to find the fabled Northwest Passage across the top of the continent. And, if he got this far, there’s no way the skipper could have resisted the temptation to come ashore in Port Townsend for a microbrew, or a slice of pie at the Chimacum Café.
Bawlf devotes a couple hundred pages to his argument, laying out the evidence as he goes. For example:
– Bits of metal, including Elizabethan coins and a 16th century English sword have been found in Northwest Indian village sites, all suggesting an English visit long before Cook and Vancouver. Some of those metal fragments, dug from the 300-year-old archeological dig at Ozette, still reside at the Makah museum in Neah Bay.
– On his northward voyage, Drake was eventually turned back by extremely cold weather, which seems to describe the northern coast, not California.
– A map of “Port New Albion,” where Drake beached his ship, closely resembles a bay on the Oregon Coast. And an anonymous account of the voyage has Drake sailing to 48 degrees north, which would put him at Cape Flattery.
– Maps credited to Drake or his crew show geography that matches nothing in California, but resembles the Northwest Coast.
And Bawlf is intrigued by stories of an ancient anchor, raised from local waters, that sat on a Port Townsend dock for years. Bawlf would love to find that anchor, and investigative any possible link to the Golden Hinde.
Perhaps the strongest evidence is that Drake was supposed to be looking for the Northwest Passage, and it stands to reason he would have sailed north until he found something promising – the Strait of Juan de Fuca.. This, Bawlf says, also explains why the Northwest voyage was never reported. The government took possession of any maps and journals returned by Drake and his crew, and they are believed to have been destroyed in a subsequent fire.
Bawlf’s theory overlaps with others, especially that of Bob Ward, an English engineer and amateur historian who argues that Drake sailed north as far as Depoe Bay on the Oregon Coast, where he repaired his ship and sailed on. But Ward does not believe he got as far north as Alaska.
Still, their theories have received mixed receptions from academic historians, and particularly those around San Francisco, which long ago adopted the Scourge of the Spanish Main with all the emotional attachment it gives to, say, Barry Bonds. Drake’s name is attached to landmarks, highways and a luxury hotel. To suggest that Englishman never actually visited is, well, unthinkable.
So no wonder the theory has sparked any number of articles and websites seeking to debunk it. Outraged historians argue that mavericks like Bawlf pick carefully through the available evidence, selecting only those fragments that support their idea and carefully ignoring those that don’t. Good point. We’ve all seen people do that. Witness our President’s explanation of more recent history in the Middle East.
So perhaps Drake’s Northwest cruise is pure fantasy. Chances are we’ll never know for sure. In the meantime, we can’t afford to entrust history entirely to people with PhDs, any more than we can hand a monopoly on politics to politicians, or religion to priests. Historians bring to their craft plenty of academic discipline, and precious little imagination. History is laced with gaps, lingering mysteries that cry for people like Bawlf and Ward who are willing and able to employ both sides of their brains to the challenge of unraveling those mysteries. If they show some imagination in that effort, all the better. This, after all, is the Age of Wikipedia, where knowledge belongs to the people, and we’re all empowered to expand it.
Besides, here on the cobbled shores of the Quimper Peninsula, Bawlf’s version of Drake’s voyage is far more fun than the conventional wisdom.
