Autumn 2004 Volume 18
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CON TROVERSY LOOKOUT #17 • a forum for writers 3516 W. 13th Ave., Vancouver, BC V6R 2S3 LOOKOUTLOOKOUT LOOKOUT7REASONS why the British explorer didn’t reach British Columbia in 1579. Edward Von DOUBTING der Porten is one of many and named them the Isles of ? Saint James. Saint James’ Day naval schol- is July 25. So Drake did not ars who have leave the islands on August 25 as Bawlf claims, but on July 25. The calendar as given taken extremeDRAKE objection to in the contemporary accounts is the correct one. This leaves Drake 14 days—not 44—to carry out his explorations Samuel Bawlf’s The Secret between his arrival on the coast and his arrival at the port. Voyage of Sir Francis Drake With no stops, his day-and-night speed to travel 2,000 miles would have had to be 5.95 knots average, or 142.8 (D&M 2003). Its marketing miles per day in a three-to-four-knot ship capable of less leads one to assume Francis than one knot in daylight along an unknown shore. For Drake to explore 2,000 miles of the northwest coast in Drake was the first European 14 days—the amount of time he had available to spend on exploration—is impossible. to reach British Columbia. 4. The Native-American peoples Drake met were de- “Bawlf’s book is fantasy on the same plane as 1421, Vi- scribed in great detail in the accounts. Bawlf claims Drake kings in Minnesota and ancient astronauts,” says Von der Porten. “Serious research has long resolved the issues of where met the peoples who inhabited the shore from southern Drake traveled in the Pacific, and British Columbia could Alaska to central Oregon: northwest-coast peoples with not have been a place he visited.” huge cedar canoes, split-plank communal houses and to- Given that Bawlf’s book received ample coverage in B.C. tems. No such peoples or artifacts are mentioned in the BookWorld and won a B.C. Book Prize, here is Von der Porten’s accounts. Ethnographers have shown that the people Drake rebuttal to the book. ✍ met at his port were the Coast Miwok People, a California group living at and near latitude 38 degrees north who 1. Bawlf brings Drake to the Northwest Coast from had a completely different lifestyle than the northwest coast Guatulco, Mexico, by using distances in leagues given in Francis Drake peoples. Drake’s chroniclers could not have described the the accounts of the voyage. The measurement of the league costumes, ceremonies, artifacts, words and lifeways of a used by Bawlf is the modern league of 18,228 feet, which people they had not seen. Bawlf can not move a Native- would place Drake on the coast in southern Washington, Samuel Bawlf, according to American people north 400 nautical miles. not Vancouver Island. However, Drake used the Elizabethan 5. Drake’s port of Nova Albion is given by Bawlf as league of 15,000 feet, which would put him on the coast in Edward Von der Porten, has Whale Cove, Oregon. This site does not have the Native southern Oregon, the latitude accepted by a broad consen- Americans, the prominent white cliffs, the offshore Is- sus of modern scholars. Drake never reached the coast of ignored much of the extensive lands of Saint James, the beach-level fortification loca- British Columbia. evidence about Francis Drake’s tion, explorer-period artifacts, an open-bay anchorage 2. Bawlf states that Drake sailed 2,000 miles in 44 days adjacent to the sheltered careening port, the characteris- along the shores of southern Alaska, British Columbia, visit to the Pacific Coast. tics shown in Drake’s drawing of the port, a safe location Washington and Oregon, and made discoveries that later to careen the Golden Hind, or reasonable safety of en- explorers took 20 years to work out. He allows 10 days for “His conclusions are fantasies trance or exit. Whale cove is not even mentioned in the stops, leaving 34 days of sailing time. Traveling day and night, modern Coast Pilot. Whale Cove could not have been his average speed would have had to be 2.45 knots, or 58.8 built on speculation derived Drake’s port. miles per day. The Golden Hind averaged three to four knots 6. Bawlf ignores most of the evidence in the accounts in the open ocean in good conditions with favourable winds. from hypotheses based on the and early maps and claims those few pieces of evidence Along the shore, Drake could have operated only in day- he deems ‘true’ have been changed following a series of light. Allowing for contrary winds and currents, unpredict- thinnest of intensively ‘rules’ created by an Elizabethan conspiracy which he has able tide races, unknown shoals and pinnacle rocks, fog, manipulated evidence.” decoded. Yet the accounts of Drake’s voyage have long rain, and all the other vicissitudes of sailing along complex been shown to be remarkably straightforward, detailed and dangerous unknown coasts and in narrow waterways and accurate—notablyMichael by English Smith scholar ofMichael Turner, among islands and peninsulas in one of the coldest years of the Little Ice Age, his who has located and confirmed by personal field workyesteryear more than takes 95 locations a visited average speed could not have reached one knot in daylight—well under 20 miles per by Drake. Bawlf provides no evidence to supportbreak his claim from of too a vast much Elizabethan day. Bawlf’s idea that Drake explored 2,000 miles of the northwest coast in 34 days conspiracy. science. is impossible. 7. Bawlf apparently is not aware of much of the modern research about Drake in 3. Bawlf gives Drake 44 days to explore the coast by accepting the date Drake the North Pacific, as his bibliography does not mention numerous publications known arrived on the coast which is given in the surviving Elizabethan accounts of the expe- to most scholars of the field. These publications analyze much evidence that Bawlf dition. This is June 3, 1579. Bawlf, however, changes the date when Drake ended his does not even mention in his books. Bawlf does not deal with a large body of evi- exploration and arrived at his Port of Nova Albion from June 17 to July 17. Then he dence and analysis about Drake’s voyage to the west coast of North America. changes Drake’s departure date from the port from July 23 to August 23. However, Museum director Edward Von der Porten of San Francisco is President of the Drake Navigators Detail from Paolo Forlani’s 1562 map of the world. Drake visited a group of islands just after leaving his port, according to the accounts, Guild. Its members study early exploration of the west coast of North America. 19 BOOKWORLD • LOOKOUT • AUTUMN 2004 ACTIVISM THETHE FIGHTFIGHT TTOO SASAVEVE 1970- EAREAREAREAREAREAR1979 THTHTHTHTHTH andhi be praised. The fantastical, life affirming, death defying, heart-stoppingly erratic and distinctly Crew of the first Greenpeace voyage from left: British Columbian story of flawed heroes, the Terry Simmons, Jim Bohlen, Lyle Thurston, Dave Birmingham, Richard Fineberg, Bill Darnell, Bob power of belief and ballsy propaganda, all for a Hunter, Patrick Moore and Capt. John Cormack. GGgoodG cause, has been gathered responsibly and well, into one reliable Misssing : Ben Metcalfe. Photo by Bob Keziere. volume, as Greenpeace (Raincoast $39.95), by Rex Weyler, to go Single women weren’t allowed on the first protest voyage to Amchitka simply be- alongside Robert Hunter’s revived version of events, The Greenpeace cause the old fashioned skipper of the Phyllis Cormack (named after his wife Phyllis Cormack) owned the goddam boat and he was implacable. Hunter dubbed the to Amchitka: An Environmental Odyssey (Arsenal Pulp $24.95), with crew ‘Captain Cormack’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’. At first the boys happily debated the merits of Herbert Marcuse while listening to Moody Blues and Beethoven, photographs by Robert Keziere. but they were soon perplexed because somebody on board was stealing chocolate. Fre- If Greenpeace could be made into a movie, it could only be directed by Peter quently seasick, they worried that one of their kind was a CIA operative. For two days Jackson as a trilogy. In the early ‘70s, the environmental protest movement was Tolkien they escaped detection by the US Coast Guard simply because they had steered too far for real.Even at the time, Hunter referred to Vancouver as the Shire and he dubbed their in the wrong direction. The captain terrorized them. The crew became divided. Me- crusty-but-trusty Captain John Cormack ‘Lord of the Piston Rings’. It all started chanics vs. mystics. Canadians vs. Americans. when a bunch of boys went on a quest on a converted halibut seiner. Amid the pot Jeez, did all that stuff really happen? Yes, Virginia, a bunch of guys really did get into smoke and rhetoric, the depths of Mordor were somewhere in the Aleutian Islands. an old fishboat in 1971 and sail towards the Bering Sea to prevent the evil Richard Ben Metcalfe (the ‘Alpha Intellectual’) manipulated the world media and Bob Nixon and the U.S. military from detonating an experimental blast 400 times greater Hunter launched his ‘mind bombs.’ It was Hunter than the one that levelled Hiroshima. who coined the slogan Don’t Make A Few people recall there was a second Greenpeace vessel, the Greenpeace Too, that Wave to galvanize global fears that a made it into the danger zone of Amchitka, only to have the bomb explode anyway. Just tidal wave might ensue if the U.S.