Product Description

In December 1577, a fleet of five small ships left Plymouth with Sir Francis Drake in command. By the time the expedition reached the Pacific Ocean only one remained - the Golden Hind. The adventures of Drake as he devastated Spanish treasure ships, charted unknown lands and became the first captain safely to circumnavigate the globe make this one of the most compelling of all human adventures, but Samual Bawlf adds more. He suggests that Drake had secret orders, which he fulfilled and which make him - 200 years before Cook - one of the greatest explorers the world has known.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1233570 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Samuel Bawlf first went public in 2000 with his sensational discovery of evidence indicating that Sir Francis Drake may have detoured as far north as Alaska on his famous circumnavigation of the globe. If correct, these assertions would completely change Canadian history and detractors were quick to argue that the claims were little more than an elaborate conspiracy theory.

Bawlf strikes back with The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, a persuasive, 400-page volume illustrated with dozens of historical and modern maps and documented with extensive references to sources written in Drake's lifetime, all suggesting that the British admiral and pirate may indeed have travelled to areas of North America's western coast, including Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands, 200 years before the first Europeans officially explored the region.

Bawlf, geographer, sailor and former British Columbian cabinet minister, convincingly argues that Drake's ambitious around-the-world voyage was, in fact, an elaborate cover for a scouting mission to find the elusive Northwest Passage. Afraid that spies for King Phillip II of Spain might learn of the venture, which was intended to open an important trade route, Queen Elizabeth insisted that the mission remain absolutely secret.

When Drake set out with five ships from Plymouth in 1577, the official story was that they were headed to the Mediterranean. Instead, they sailed directly to the Straight of Magellan and returned almost three years later after circling the globe. "Reworking his narrative", Bawlf writes in his dense and informative prose, "[16th-century British propagandist Richard] Hakluyt eliminated all mention of a search for the northern strait and said upon departing Guatulco, Drake had taken a 'somewhat northerly' course to the Moluccas, but after encountering bitterly cold winds at latitude 42 degrees, he turned back toward land and found the harbour he called Nova Albion at 38 degrees. However, Hakluyt neglected to instruct the printers to remove the note in the margin of the old page which read 'the purpose of Sir Francis to return by the Northwest passage', and this incongruous statement was printed alongside the carefully expurgated account."

Bawlf also demonstrates how official accounts of the voyage appear to describe many coastal features exactly 10 degrees of latitude south of where they actually occur, and these same accounts leave a gap of almost six months between Drake and his company leaving Mexico and arriving in the Philippines--just long enough for a quick hop up to Alaska and back. --Deirdre Hanna, Amazon.ca

Review
Eleven years before the Spanish failed to interrupt his game of bowls, Drake set out on a mission that makes the Armada episode seem tame in comparison. To his indignation, that earlier adventure was one he could never talk about. Elizabeth I, who called the shots, would have had his head cut off if he leaked details of what he had been up to on her orders. And the Queen had her reasons for secrecy. Those reasons remained hidden for centuries but geographer and North American expert Bawlf has uncovered irrefutable proof that Drake had a hidden agenda during his great voyage of 1577-80. The sailor's own coded writings and similarly clandestine documents from the late 16th century show that Queen Elizabeth entrusted her favourite mariner with a mission even his closest confidants were not to be told about. For a time it was feared that Drake and the Golden Hinde had been lost, so the whole of England celebrated when they returned to Plymouth in 1580 with a haul of Spanish treasure and wealth from four continents. Drake had become the first captain to circumnavigate the globe - but mystery remained about what had happened to captain and crew in the summer of 1579. Drake's documents and charts were impounded, the crew threatened with torture if they divulged anything. It now emerges that Drake had ventured from his 'official' course, leaving the South Pacific and going in search of a new sea route in the far north that would undermine Spanish global influence and begin to establish England as a colonial power. Bawlf follows Drake's route to Alaska and details the dramas that unfolded. He shows how Spanish ships and ports were plundered, how Drake attempted (sometimes with success) to woo fierce natives of far-flung islands, and how the darker side of his character was revealed through torture, execution and other forms of brutality. The story is a remarkable one of craftiness, courage and discovery, revealing that Elizabeth I came into possession of maritime secrets 200 years before Captain Cook 'officially' revealed them. An enthralling, well-paced and superbly illustrated book. (Kirkus UK)

About the Author
Samuel Bawlf has had a life-long obsession with Elizabethan explorers, ships and maps. He lives in British Columbia.

Customer Reviews

Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake
Don't be put off by the sometimes academic content in this description of Drake's epic voyage. I'm a layman in terms of navigation and sailing but I was rewarded by getting a glimpse of just how huge were Drake's achievements.
My rudimentary and inaccurate 'schoolboy' knowledge of Drake's voyage went nowhere near to explaining, as this book does, the difficulties Drake faced while venturing into uncharted waters and unexplored territories. And in indescribably awful weather conditions. But above all this was done without even the use of longitude fixing tehniques. Imagine that!
I'm also still reeling from the realisation of the scale of danger Drake and his crew put themselves in by having to 'careen' the Golden Hinde. Careening is basically the job of cleaning off the rubbish that accumulates on the bottom of a boat on a long voyage. They first had to take everything off the ship (including their gold and silver spoils of war from the Spanish), run her up onto a beach so she could dry out to get scraping. How vulnerable did that make them with curious but hostile Indians in the vicinity!
For me this book was a wonderful personal discovery not just of what Drake himself found out about the world but also the immense man-management skills he possessed to carry it all through. Brilliant.

A great navigator under a prudent Queen
This is an essential book if you want to understand Queen Elizabeth I's maritime policy. England was late on the oceans and Spain and Portugal were all powerful. They had conquered an immense empire all around the world. Philip II put Elizabeth under pressure with the war in Flanders and the Netherlands against the rebellious protestants, with his capture of the Portuguese crown, and with his maritime power and the promised invasion of England (Invincible Armada) to put Mary Stuart on the throne. Elizabeth will use Sir Francis Drake and other English navigators to build her maritime power and defenses, and to haunt the oceans, seize Spanish ships and their cargoes of gold, silver, spices and other goods, and even raid harbours in New Spain, the West Indies and even Spain and Portugal. But this constant pressure prevented Elizabeth from engaging in the colonial conquests her navigators were ready to do. She remained cautious in front of the menace. But she intelligently worked hand in hand, and particularly purse in purse, with the navigators and London merchants to pay for the investment in her fleet and her defenses. She introduced the practice of « joint-stock companies » to develop her maritime power and her first colonies. This will shape the future for many centuries. On the other hand Sir Francis Drake was the first English navigator to go through Magellan's Strait, up Chile, Peru and Mexico, then to discover and explore the west coast of what is today Canada, Washington and Oregon, from the southern limit of Alaska to Whale Cove in Oregon. He never discovered the northern passage from the Pacific to the Atlantic, though he believed he had, but he then crossed the Pacific Ocean and came back to England around the Cape of Good Hope. What was clear with him is that he tried to have good relations with the natives he discovered, when they were not hostile, with the idea in mind that the future colonists will have to work along and establish good commercial relations with them. He envisaged the necessity, later on, to convert them to the good God, the protestant God, but that was not his immediate objective. He also had good relations with ex-slave escapees and even took some under his protection on his ship. He did not envisage slavery. That was to come from the connection between free enterprise plantations in southern colonies and the desire to survive against the Indians in the puritan northern colonies that will lead to slavery, the rejection of Indians, and eventually the War of Independence, the Civil War and the Indian Wars. The book is rich in details and the author's method is good and productive as for acceptable hypotheses about the dark points of Drake's big voyage that was kept mostly secret by decision of Elizabeth.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU