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Book Reviews BOOK REVIEWS Samuel Bawlf. Sir Francis Drake's Secret these places to a few foreign map makers in Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America, AD contravention of English policies of secrecy. 1579. Salt Spring Island, B.C.: Sir Francis Drake It is a meticulously detailed study, and Publications, 2001. x + 149 pp., illustrations, to discuss all his points would require a book as tables, appendix, notes, bibliography. CDN long as his first one. Bawlfs principal ideas are $100.00, cloth; ISBN 0-96885-280-7 and The clear, however. This is a conspiracy theory, in Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, 1577-1580. which Bawlf claims to have "decoded" Vancouver, B.C.; Douglas & Mclntyre Publishing deliberately "encyphered" "cryptograms" in the Group, www.douglas-macintvre.com. 2003. 464 maps and discovered Elizabethan "rules" pp., illustrations, table, notes, bibliography, enabling him to do so. One such "rule" is that index. CDN $24.95, paper; ISBN 1-55365- no latitude higher than 48 degrees was permitted 0417. to be mentioned in any Elizabethan document for fear of disclosing that Drake had really Samuel Bawlfs self-published Sir Francis discovered the coast of Canada leading to the Drake's Secret Voyage is a handsomely hoped-for Northwest Passage, or Strait of Anian produced book, lavishly illustrated with many - Drake's true and overriding objective in the sharply reproduced late-sixteenth- and early- voyage of circumnavigation, according to Bawlf. seventeenth-century maps. In this 2001 book, Another "rule" is that the latitudes given in the Bawlf claims that during his 1577 to 1580 maps and documents must be raised by 10 voyage of circumnavigation, Francis Drake degrees to identify the true locations of Drake's traveled 2,000 miles exploring the northwest activities. Once he has stated these "rules," he coast of North America from southern Alaska to changes every piece of information that does not northern Oregon - instead of the generally conform to his ideas until it matches, starting accepted 400 miles along the coasts of southern with his four key islands which are off northern Oregon and northern California . California and southern Oregon on the sixteenth- Unlike his previous book, Bawlf aims century maps and must be moved north six the more recent, commercially published The hundred nautical miles to create the framework Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake at a more for the rest of the work. general audience. It contains a short Nowhere does he cite any source for introduction to Drake and his times and a these "rules." conventional history of the circumnavigation, its Bawlf assumes that the policy of aftermath, and Drake's later life. These are falsification was maintained by many well followed by a 70-page narration of Bawlfs informed Continental mapmakers who had no version of Drake's voyage in the North Pacific. reason to bow to any English edict. Especially End-note references to his earlier book serve as notable are the detailed charts by Robert Dudley, evidence for his hypotheses. who had acquired much information before he At the heart of Bawlfs case are two moved to Italy and converted to Catholicism. small world maps of Drake's circumnavigation Dudley places Drake's port of Nova Albion at 38 of circa l585 and 1588. They derive from the degrees in northern California, consistent with same source and show four islands, each less much other documentary and cartographic than one-sixteenth of an inch long, which Bawlf evidence. equates with Prince of Wales Island, the Queen As the first book progresses, Bawlfs Charlotte Islands, Vancouver Island and the presentation shifts from hypotheses through Olympic Peninsula. Once he has decided on that probabilities to certainties, with such words and correlation, he goes to other world maps and phrases as, Drake "must have speculated," "now globes and identifies named locations on them revealed," "now identified," "undoubtedly," with specific points along the shores of those "obviously," "no doubt," "now we know," islands and peninsula and adjacent mainland - "must," and "we now know is actually." and attributes all these points to Drake's As a lead-in to his Northwest Coast explorations, ignoring other possible sources, ideas, Bawlfs description of Drake's passage and ignoring sixteenth-century map makers' from Guatulco in southern Mexico to the predilections for inserting cosmographers' Northwest Coast contains a significant error. He speculations where information was unavailable. applies the modern league of 18,228 feet to Along the way, Bawlf develops ideas of how Drake's accounts, instead of the Elizabethan Drake treasonably provided information about league of 15,000 feet. The Elizabethan 299 300 The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord measurement would put him on the coast in a group of islands on 24-25 July and named southern Oregon, the latitude accepted by them the Isles of Saint James. Saint James's day modern scholars, while even the modern league is 25 July, confirming the conventional would only give a landfall in northern chronology of the accounts. This leaves Drake Washington, not Vancouver Island as Bawlf 14 days - not 44 - to carry out his explorations. claims. With no stops, his day-and-night speed to travel Bawlf emphasizes Drake's search for 2,000 miles would have had to average 5.95 a Northwest Passage and his desire to found a knots, or 142.8 miles per day in a ship capable of colony near its western entrance. There is no less than one knot in daylight along a complex doubt that Drake looked for such a strait, but it unknown shore. is equally obvious that he did so only as long as Bawlf remarks in wonder at Drake's that appeared to offer a practical passage to the supposed achievement of discovering the Atlantic. Drake was in possession of the first complex relationships of many hundreds of great treasure to fall into the hands of miles of islands, straits, river mouths, and Elizabethan seamen. Bringing the treasure home mainland in a mere month's travel, when safely was of transcendent importance, not only diligent explorers - including Perez, Bodega e to Drake and his crewmen, but to his backers, Quadra, Cook, Dixon, Galliano, and Vancouver including his queen, and to the English nation. - collectively took two full decades to achieve Yet Bawlf claims that Drake traveled 2,000 the same understanding. The wonder is that miles in unknown waters, sometimes across anyone could believe that Drake could have open water to islands he could not have known done it. existed, frequently through difficult straits Bawlf endorses Whale Cove, Oregon, between islands and peninsulas, repeatedly as Drake's careenage harbour, and identifies hazarding his ships in unpredictable tide races randomly placed stone piles on a mountain in and currents and among unknown shoals and Oregon as "Drake's survey markers." There is pinnacle rocks, often in foul weather, and often no evidence that associates Drake with either traveling in directions not calculated to find the site, and much evidence that Drake never saw desired Northwest Passage through the continent them. - in a leaking ship needing careening. On one In his nearly complete reliance on occasion, Bawlf places Drake at the Yucalta very-small-scale world maps, Bawlf uses little of Rapids, where: "... they would have spent an the extensive evidence in the accounts of the anxious time waiting for the moment of slack voyage written in Drake's lifetime. Where he water and then making a dash through the does use them, he concentrates on the shorter treacherous bottleneck...". AH this would have accounts and downplays the longest, The World been foolhardy and irrational behaviour for a Encompassed, which was prepared under man known as a thoroughly practical seaman. Drake's direction and published by his nephew Such explorations also would have after Drake's death. been impossible in the time available. After That extensive account does not manipulating the accounts, Bawlf gives Drake describe Northwest Coast Native-American 44 days to explore 2,000 miles by adding 30 peoples, with their huge cedar canoes, split- days to the 14 days given in the voyage plank communal houses, and totems, who lived accounts. Deducting ten days for stops, as from northernmost California to Alaska - the Bawlf does, leaves 34 days. Traveling day and peoples with whom Bawlf claims Drake night, Drake's average speed would have had to interacted for 44 days. be 2.45 knots, or 58.8 miles per day. The That account, and others, do provide Golden Hind averaged three to four knots in the detailed descriptions of a unique location at 38 open ocean in good conditions. Along shore, degrees north, complete with a harbour within a Drake could only have operated in daylight. bay, offshore islands, and distinctive white Allowing for contrary winds and currents, tides, cliffs. They also describes distinctive costumes, fog, rain, and all the other vicissitudes of sailing ceremonies, artifacts, words, and Iifeways of a along dangerous unknown coasts and in narrow specific tribe of Native Americans - Coast waterways, his average speed could not have Miwok - whose way of life differed sharply from reached one knot: less than 24 miles per day. the Northwest Coast peoples. Bawlf cannot But Drake did not have 44 days to explain how someone who (as he claims) had explore the coast despite Bawlf s changes to the not visited the California coast, could have dates of Drake's arrival at his harbour after his invented these descriptions, which match reality explorations and when he departed. In fact, point-for-point without the need for conspiracy immediately after leaving harbour, Drake visited theories, cryptograms, evidence suppression, and Book Reviews 301 imagined "ten-degree rules." and inland craft, ancient ship sheds and Bawlf s conclusions are fantasies built shipyards to large open ocean vessels are on speculation derived from hypotheses based entertained with a clear focus on archaeological on the thinnest of intensively manipulated examples.
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