New Albion
New Albion, aswell accepted as Nova Albion, was the name of the arena of the Pacific coast of North America explored by Sir Francis Drake and claimed by him for England in 1579. The admeasurement of New Albion and the breadth of Drake's landing accept continued been debated by historians, with the a lot of prevailing approach that he landed on the bank of arctic California. Albion, "the white", is an ancient name for the island of Great Britain, a advertence to the book cliffs lining the English Channel.
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History
During his circumnavigation of the apple (1577–1580), in which he was ordered to abort the Spanish flotillas in the New World and boodle settlements, Sir Francis Drake landed on the western bank of North America and claimed the breadth for Queen Elizabeth I as New Albion. Historians abide to altercation the exact breadth of his landing. It is generally appropriate that Drake landed in modern-day Marin County, California, just arctic of San Francisco, conceivably at Drakes Estero or Bolinas Bay. Added theories suggests that the landing website was further up the coast, and at atomic one has posited the Santa Barbara area1. One contempo approach advocates abreast Whale Cove in Oregon. No close archaeological affirmation has yet been begin anywhere on the bank that would authorize the breadth of Drake's landing. Assertions that he larboard some of his men abaft as an antecedent "colony" are founded alone on the bargain amount who were with him in the Moluccas.2
The western bank of North America had been partially explored in 1542 by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo who sailed for the Spanish, but as England was in battle with Spain Drake absitively to affirmation the region. Wherever his absolute landing abode was, it was able-bodied arctic of San Diego Bay breadth Cabrillo had asserted Spain's claim. Spain had claimed the absolute Pacific bank of the Americas back the Inter caetera apostolic balderdash of 1493, able in 1513 if Vasco Núñez de Balboa formally claimed all acreage abutting the Pacific Ocean for the Spanish Crown. However, England did not admit the ascendancy of the Inter caetera and Balboa's affirmation covered a all-inclusive and mostly alien area.
Upon his acknowledgment to England on 4 April 1581, Francis Drake was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I for his accomplishments adjoin the Spanish during the circumnavigational voyage. However, in adjustment to accumulate an afraid accord with Spain, and to abstain accepting Spain abuse England's added claims in the New World, Drake's logs, charts, and added writings were confiscated. Thus, the assay and affirmation on New Albion was ordered by the Queen to be advised a accompaniment secret. Drake and his aggregation were affidavit to blackout on affliction of death. Alone years later, afterwards England's abolition of the Spanish Armada in 1588 (in which Drake played a cogent role), did Queen Elizabeth acquiesce an official annual of Drake's boating by Richard Hakluyt to be arise — admitting with abounding of the data obscured.
However, Drake was consistently afraid with the misrepresentations in the "official" account, and in 1592, he wrote to Queen Elizabeth in advertence to "the assertive accurateness concealed, as I accept anticipation it all-important myself." and requesting that the annual be rewritten accordingly. The Queen denied his request.
After Elizabeth's death, maps began to mark the breadth of Arctic America aloft New Spain and New Mexico as Nova Albion, although the boundaries and locations abundantly alter a allotment of maps. However, Drake's claiming acreage on the Pacific bank became the acknowledged base for consecutive colonial charters accepted by English monarchs that claimed acreage from "sea to sea" (i.e. from the Atlantic breadth English colonies were aboriginal settled, to the Pacific). However, admitting these claims, the English did not authorize a colonizing attendance on the west bank of Arctic America until the backward 18th aeon in the anatomy of the explorations and asserted claims of Captains Cook and Vancouver and the associated Nootka Conventions, anon after, the enactment of the Columbia Fur District of the Hudson's Bay Company and its address at Fort Vancouver.
Location
Despite accepted acceding a allotment of historians that Drake landed on the west bank of Arctic America, the exact breadth of New Albion has continued remained a mystery, circuitous by the abridgement of any close archaeological evidence.
Most Accustomed Theory
Drake's Cove, Drakes Bay, California
The a lot of accustomed approach has been that Drake landed in Marin County, California, abreast Point Reyes, just arctic of the Golden Gate. The approach that Drake landed there has continued been advocated by the Drake Navigators Guild in California, and a lot of conspicuously by its longtime aloft admiral Raymond Aker, who fabricated abundant studies reconstructing Drake's ambit voyage. Advocates of this approach adduce the actuality that the official arise annual placed the antecedents at 38 degrees north. The cartography of Drakes Estero, which lies forth the bank of Marin County, has generally been appropriate as getting agnate to the anchorage declared by Drake, including the white cliffs that attending like the south bank of England. The bounded fit is by no agency complete, however, abrogation accessible the question, even a allotment of those who abutment the Marin County theory, as to the breadth of the colony. Aker maintained that the criticisms of the cove's cartography were unfounded, because the agreement of the sandbars in the anchorage was circadian over the decades. He accurately predicted in 2001 that a discharge of acreage would reappear in the anchorage which had abolished 53 years ago and which added carefully resembles that one that appears on the Hondius map.
Other Theories
Sixteen added locations accept been avant-garde as the website of Drake's port. 3
Point San Quentin, San Francisco Bay, California
Robert H. Power (1926–1991), co-owner of the Nut Tree in Vacaville, CA, answer the abstraction that Drake’s New Albion was central San Francisco Bay abreast Point San Quentin. A allotment of his arguments was that the Hondius Broadside map akin a allotment of the cartography if locations were adapted application a 2:1 correction.4 A allotment of the problems with Power’s abstraction is the adversity of sailors award San Francisco Bay from the ocean (it was aboriginal credible by acreage and the aboriginal sea attempts to again locate the Bay failed) and the acute dangers of entering such a bay on an alien basis.
Tomales Bay, California
Historian Robert Becker begin a breadth to which the Hondius Broadside map could administer at Tom’s Point on the east ancillary of Tomales Bay.5
Whale Cove, Oregon
In 1978 British abecedarian historian Bob Ward, afterwards authoritative an all-embracing abstraction of the cartography of the Pacific bank of the U.S. and Canada, appropriate that Drake in actuality landed abundant further north, in Whale Cove in abreast Oregon. Advocates of the Whale Anchorage approach altercate that if Captain James Cook aboriginal sighted the American bank at Cape Foulweather two centuries later, he declared it in his log, with absent accuracy, as "the long-looked for bank of New Albion." Whale Anchorage lies just arctic of Cape Foulweather. Cook afterwards sailed on to Friendly Anchorage on Vancouver Island, for which he is accustomed acclaim for advertent western Canada. Advocates of the Whale Anchorage approach abolish the breadth accustomed by Drake on the breadth that he may accept advisedly biased it in adjustment to deceive the battling Spanish. Although the official annual of Drake's boating gives the anchorage breadth as 38 degrees, the alone two accepted hand-written accounts of the voyage, preserved in the British Library, say that it was at 44 degrees, which is on the mid-Oregon coast. Drake and Queen Elizabeth, they argue, biased the breadth because he afield anticipation he had credible the North West Passage if he found, and sailed into, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which today separates Vancouver Island, British Columbia from the acreage Olympic Peninsula of Washington state.
Cambell Cove, Bodega Harbor, California
In 1997 California ecology architect Brian Kelleher arise Drakes Bay: Unravelling California's Greatest Maritime Mystery. Kelleher fabricated a actual able case for the Drake landing at Campbell Anchorage at the access of Bodega Harbor—latitude arctic 38 degrees 14 minutes. Kelleher's statistical assay of Drake's determinations of breadth fabricated on acreage showed that they were aural +/- 11 annual of arc, which fabricated Campbell Anchorage the alone accessible anchorage aural the bent ambit of absurdity of The World Encompassed's "38,deg. 30.min." The antecedent of Drake's absurdity in breadth assurance was arise in a 1999 assay by Bob Graham. Graham retrocalculated solar declinations to acquisition errors in the arise tables of Drake's time, and if acclimation those declinations for 123 degrees west of London (which Drake could not do), begin that at Campbell Cove, in the accurate canicule abreast the acme in 1579, Drake would accept bent a breadth of 38 30, had he been at Campbell Anchorage (N38 14).
Preliminary magnetometer sweeps of the website by the University of California in 1999 yielded absolute results. The website has yet to be advised in detail by Accompaniment of California archaeologists.
Nehalem Bay, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada
In 2003 Canadian R. Samuel Bawlf appropriate in The Abstruse Boating of Sir Francis Drake (see Jodocus Hondius 6 Bury Map of Nehalem Bay) that Drake's New Albion was Vancouver Island and that Drake erected a column absolute such a announcement at what is today Comox, British Columbia, amid on Vancouver Island in the Strait of Georgia. Bawlf credibility to a amount of pieces of affirmation in abutment of his appearance that the official arise almanac of Drake's boating was advisedly adapted to abolish the accurate admeasurement of his discoveries. Bawlf aswell relies heavily aloft the agreement of the bank as depicted in some of the maps and globes of the era, including the alleged French and Dutch Drake Maps which characterize his boating as accepting accomplished a point arctic of a alternation of islands to the northwest of New Spain and added maps depicting New Albion at latitudes aloft those of arctic California, such as Richard Hakluyt's 1587 map of the New World assuming Nova Albion at 50 degrees arctic latitude. Bawlf aswell placed accent on the actuality that on an antecedent arrangement of his apple in 1592 Emery Molyneux depicted the band of the bank of Arctic America abaft Vancouver Island with arresting accuracy, although the islands themselves, depicted on the French and Dutch Drake maps, do not appear.
Although Bob Ward initially drew some of the discrepancies amid the official arise accounts of Drake's boating and added abstracts to Bawlf's attention, and assured that Drake acceptable sailed abundant further to the arctic than arctic California, he has been analytical of some of Bawlf's conclusions, such as Drake's architecture a column proclaiming New Albion at what is now Comox Bay.
Bawlf's plan has aswell been criticized by Edward Von der Porten, Admiral of the Drake Navigators Guild. Von der Porten calculates that Bawlf's approach requires the Golden Hinde to accept catholic "an boilerplate of 5.95 knots... in a address able of beneath than one bond in those conditions." Further, Bawlf fails to analyze the white cliffs, the Islands of St. James or the Bank Miwok People. Von der Porten states that Bawlf "has no affirmation for either the cabal or his 'ten amount rule.'"7
Francis Pretty's annual of Drake's Landing
The afterward is an extract of an annual by Francis Pretty:
Our all-important business getting ended, our General with his aggregation travelled up into the country to their villages, breadth we begin herds of deer by a thousand in a company, getting a lot of large, and fat of body. We begin the accomplished country to be a warren of a aberrant affectionate of coneys; their bodies in aggregate as be the Barbary coneys, their active as the active of ours, the anxiety of a wish [mole], and the appendage of a rat, getting of abundant length. Beneath her button is on either ancillary a bag, into the which she gathereth her meat, if she hath abounding her abdomen abroad. The humans eat their bodies, and accomplish abundant annual of their skins, for their king's covering was fabricated of them. Our General alleged this country Nova Albion, and that for two causes; the one in account of the white banks and cliffs, which lie appear the sea, and the other, because it ability accept some affection with our country in name, which ancient was so called. There is no allotment of apple actuality to be taken up, wherein there is not some credible appearance of gold or silver.At our abandonment appropriately our General set up a cairn of our getting there, as aswell of her Majesty's appropriate and appellation to the same; namely a plate, nailed aloft a fair abundant post, whereupon was engraved her Majesty's name, the day and year of our accession there, with the chargeless giving up of the arena and humans into her Majesty's hands, calm with her Highness' account and arms, in a section of six pence of accepted English money, beneath the plate, whereunder was aswell accounting the name of our General.
It seemeth that the Spaniards ahead had never been in this allotment of the country, neither did anytime ascertain the acreage by abounding degrees to the southwards of this place.
—8
Pretty's description of some of the animals in the breadth as searching like strange affectionate of Conies with the appendage of a Rat, getting of abundant length advance that of a muskrat. The credible description of a muskrat is important as it indicates that New Albion was at atomic as far arctic as Arctic California *.
For about four decades afterwards the alleged "Drake's Bowl of Brass" came to accessible absorption in 1936, it was believed that the "plate" that Pretty describes had been found. The alleged "Drake's Plate" was arise to be a practical joke a allotment of bounded historians that got out of ascendancy and became a absolute accessible hoax.
Legacy
The association of Albion, British Columbia, now allotment of the District of Maple Ridge and just beyond the river from Fort Langley, was alleged to bless the abstraction that Drake had explored that far arctic and that British Columbia was, as British colonists would accept admired to accept or confirm, the breadth of Nova Albion.
See also
Related links
References
Footnotes
- ^ See, e.g., Harry Kelsey, Sir Francis Drake; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998; pp. 182-83.
- ^ Dismissed by John Cummins, Francis Drake: The Lives of a Hero 1997:118: "In appearance of the bulge accustomed in altered versions to the consummate of Drake it would be odd if the enactment of a antecedents had gone unrecorded."
- ^ San Francisco Chronicle: Again a safe anchorage / Tiny anchorage abounding accept Sir Francis Drake repaired to 422 years ago al of a sudden reappears: July 18, 2001: Nolte, Carl
- ^ Power, Robert H., Francis Drake & San Francisco Bay: a Beginning of the British Empire, University of California, Davis, 1974.
- ^ Gilliam, Harold and Philip Hyde, ‘’’Island in Time’’’, The Point Reyes Peninsula, Sierra Club / Scribner Library, revised additional edition, 1973, p. 14.
- ^ Francis Drake in Nehalem Bay 1579, Setting the Historical Almanac Straight, by Garry D. Gitzen 2008"
- ^ Von der Porten, Edward, A New Drake Myth,Sea History, National Maritime Historical Society, No. 106, Winter 2004, pp. 10-12.
- ^ Modern History Sourcebook: Francis Pretty: Sir Francis Drake's Famous Boating Round the World, 1580
Notations
- "The Abstruse Boating of Sir Francis Drake, 1577-1580", by R. Samuel Bawlf (Douglas & McIntyre, 2003)
- "National Audubon Society Field Guide to Arctic American Mammals" 649-652. 2nd ed. Knopf publishing 1980