The Handwritten Accounts
“…in the British Museum are two hand-written accounts of the voyage, written shortly after Drake’s return … These both say that Drake’s anchorage was at 44°, which places it on the mid Oregon Coast. .”
A Little Latitude
There are at least five further probable falsifications in Hakluyt’s official account of Drake’s voyage, and these all concern Drake's movements along the American West Coast. At the moment, these have to remain probable and not definite falsifications, because of the lack of hard, independent evidence to substantiate them, but the circumstantial evidence is compelling.
The first probable falsification concerns the latitude of Drake’s anchorage, which Hakluyt gives as 38°. However, in the British Museum are two hand-written accounts of the voyage, written shortly after Drake’s return, but not made public and so not subject to the same kind of Royal censorship clearly applied to the official account. These both say that Drake’s anchorage was at 44°, which places it on the mid Oregon coast.
The extract shown on the far left is from a seventeen pages long account, which is based on the testimony of eight senior members of Drake’s crew, whose names are listed. Because it is unsigned, it is generally referred to as the Anonymous Narrative, but Bob Ward has been able to match the handwriting to a letter signed by Rev. Philip Jones, who assisted Hakluyt in compiling his naval chronicles. This is shown later, but it makes the Anonymous Narrative an even more important and reliable document. In fact, the section of Hakluyt’s account from entering the Pacific to leaving Mexico clearly uses the Anonymous Narrative as its main source.
The other is from a three page account, also unsigned, that has previously not been documented, and is made public here for the very first time. It was found by Mr. Ward a few years ago, and was almost certainly written by John Marten, Drake’s senior steward on the Golden Hinde. More of this later.
The question is: which is more likely to be truthful: the Hakluyt account that we know was falsified in at least five other places, or these two hand-written accounts? We will show later that there are layers of deception in the mystery of Drake’s movements, but first we will examine these other two accounts in more detail.
Given the knowledge that there were at least five instances where the Hakluyt account was falsified, it is reasonable in examining the evidence of Drake’s movements and anchorage to put to one side the assumption that the latitude of the anchorage was correctly reported.