4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL MARCH 15, 2017
O PINION
Offbeat Oregon History
Did Sir Francis Drake actually visit Oregon in 1579?
By Finn JD John
For The Sentinel
I
f Newport resident and Brit-
ish-born historian Bob Ward is
correct, Oregon has another name
— an older one:
Nova Albion.
That’s the name Sir Francis Drake gave to the spot on the West
Coast where he dropped anchor for a fi ve-week rest-and-refi t in
1579 during his famous trip around the world.
Drake wrote that he pulled his ship, the Golden Hind, into a little
bay with cliffs and a creek and a tiny island peninsula protecting it
from the surf. Before he resumed his journey of circumnavigation,
he claimed the nearby land for England and explored around it a
little, and built a fort.
Historian Ward is convinced that the little bay where Drake spent
the summer was, in fact, Whale Cove. And he’s assembled an im-
pressive array of circumstantial historical evidence to support the
theory.
Now, when Ward fi rst started developing this theory, it was very
much an “alternative” view. The historical community had pretty
much settled the question of where Nova Albion was. And any lin-
gering doubts had been decisively laid to rest in 1937, when a stu-
dent brought a mysterious old brass plate found near Drake’s Bay,
just north of the Golden Gate, to Herbert Bolton, a distinguished
professor at the University of California.
The plate appeared to be the one that Drake wrote that he had left
to mark Nova Albion, back in 1579. Bolton, who had been search-
ing for that plate for his entire professional life, got very excited,
bought the plate for $3,500, and immediately proclaimed to the
world that he had proof that Drake’s Bay was Nova Albion.
Subsequent analysis, using the best techniques 1930s science had
to offer, seemed to authenticate the plate, despite the fact that some
of its wording seemed suspiciously modern — for instance, “the”
and “this” were used, rather than the contemporary “ye” and “yis.”
The fi nd confi rmed what most scholars believed at the time (and
still do), that Drake’s Nova Albion was just north of San Francisco.
But in 2002, rumors that the plate was a hoax — in fact, a prac-
tical joke gone horribly wrong — were confi rmed. It seems Prof.
Bolton was a member of a jocose local-history club. Some of
Bolton’s fellow club members, knowing his obsession with fi nding
the brass plate, had made the thing and planted it in a spot where
they expected him to fi nd it during a club function; whereupon they
expected to have a jolly good day or two stringing him along before
giving the bad news.
But someone else found it fi rst. So instead of being found by
Bolton under controlled conditions, the thing bounced around in
the hands of various beachcombers for several years before fi nding
its way into the hands of Bolton’s student — neatly scrubbed of any
hint of connection to the club.
Before anyone from the club even knew what had happened,
Bolton had joyfully announced his fi nd to the public and pro-
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
A take on tiny homes
I have been following the
progress of the Cottage Village
Coalition since it began, and
now even more so since they
have purchased the property on
Madison 2 blocks behind my
house. As chairman of Friends
of Coiner Park, I am very con-
cerned about any development
that may affect the quality of life
in my neighborhood. Friends
of Coiner Park has worked very
hard to advocate improvements
in Coiner that keep it a wonder-
ful family friendly place for our
children to play.
I have also volunteered in the
feeding programs that help feed
hungry people in the Grove and
have met many of the veterans
and families that hope to apply
for this program once it is avail-
able. These people didn't just
hop off the Eugene bus. Most
of them have families that have
been in the Grove a long time,
one family has been here 3 gen-
erations. A minimum wage job
won't get you very good hous-
ing here, and many of these vet-
erans and families have strug-
gled with adequate and safe
housing their whole lives.
I have carefully scrutinized
the designs of these small
homes and they are nothing
like the 'tiny houses" in Eugene.
These are regular homes built
to code with kitchens and ev-
erything, just on a smaller scale
than what we are used to.
I have also viewed the appli-
cation process and the rules that
will govern this Village, and I
am satisfi ed that the people who
occupy these little homes will
be a good and dependable addi-
tion to my neighborhood.
Maybe our school district
should consider a cottage vil-
lage project on school proper-
ty for new young teachers. I
ADMINISTRATION:
JOHN BARTLETT, Regional Publisher..............................
GARY MANLY, General Manager................942-3325 Ext.
207 • publisher@cgsentinel.com
SPORTS DEPARTMENT:
SAM WRIGHT, Sports Editor...................942-3325 Ext.
204 • swright@cgsentinel.com
AARON AMES, Sales Repersentative...............942-3325
Ext. 216 • aames@cgsentinel.com
TAMMY SAYRE, Sales Repersentative......... 942-3325
Ext. 213 • tsayre@cgsentinel.com
claimed it genuine. Knowing his professional reputation would be
trashed if they revealed what they’d done, the club members kept
mum about it.
It wasn’t the sort of secret that can be kept forever. Nonetheless,
it was kept for some 70 years, even after close examination in the
1970s revealed it to be a probable fake.
But, in 2002 when the story was fully told, there could be no fur-
ther doubt: Exhibit A in the case for Drake’s Bay had turned out to
be a fraud. The fi eld was now wide open.
Ward’s case for Whale Cove is a particularly interesting one. It’s
based largely on the similarities between Whale Cove and the map
Drake made of the little bay.
Ward thinks Drake was on a secret mission to fi nd the Northwest
Passage, and that’s why he was sailing so far up the West Coast.
The idea is, Drake sailed up the coast until he found something he
thought was the Northwest Passage — perhaps the Strait of Juan
de Fuca. But he wasn’t prepared to actually explore the passage on
the spot, so he sailed back southward, looking for a secure spot to
anchor and refi t the Golden Hind for the planned continuation of its
trip around the world. He sailed south until he found Whale Cove,
and put in there; a month and a half later, he was on his way home
to England via the Far East.
Upon his return to Britain, Ward says, Drake and Queen Eliza-
beth conspired to fake up the record so that Spanish spies wouldn’t
fi nd out how close he’d been to fi nding a Northwest passage. This,
Ward suggests, is why some documents say the bay was at 38 de-
grees latitude, and others say it’s at 44. Drake had planned to return
later and explore the passage; but political developments with the
Spanish forced him to stay close to home, and he never made it
back.
Ward has spent 30 years and a signifi cant amount of his own
money trying to confi rm this theory. There have been archaeologi-
cal digs, ground-penetrating radar, and bay dives. Nothing has been
found, other than an old English coin found decades ago in the pos-
session of a native.
It should be pointed out that Whale Cove is a notoriously treach-
erous place to navigate — as at least one rumrunner learned, to
his dismay and to the locals’ delight, during Prohibition, when
an attempted booze delivery went on the rocks and left the beach
strewn with bottles of Scotch. It’s also in a very dangerous part of
the coast. For Ward’s theory to be correct, Drake would have had to
sail directly past a number of great natural harbors — Willapa Bay,
Tillamook Bay, Nestucca Bay, and Depoe Bay, just to name a few
— and chosen as his sanctuary one of the least navigable spots on
the coast. (Of course, fog may have played a role in cloaking these
from view.)
Moreover, Ward is not the only one working on an alternative
Nova Albion theory. Nehalem resident Gerry Gitzen has built an
impressive case for Nova Albion being Nehalem Bay, a little farther
north. He’s even found some artifacts — carven stone survey mark-
understand we are losing great
teachers because they cannot a
fi nd affordable housing so they
can stay here.
We have a housing crisis in
the Grove, and its time to start
thinking outside of our current
paradigms of what housing
should look like.
Sherry Adams
Cottage Grove
ers — that might be old enough to be evidence of Drake’s presence.
And a Canadian, R. Samuel Bawlf, has advanced a theory that
Nova Albion was actually Vancouver Island, and that the cove
Drake dropped anchor in was Comox Bay.
The proponents of the California site, naturally, are feeling a little
hard-pressed by all this.
“He’s working on a fantasy,” scoffed a former president of the
Drake Navigators Guild in California, when he heard of Ward’s
theory.
More recently, the Navigators Guild lent its support to an applica-
tion to have Drake’s Bay designated as a national landmark. When
this was approved, in 2012, Edward von der Porten, the current
president of the Guild, said it was tantamount to offi cial recognition
of the Drake’s Bay theory.
“We’re very pleased the National Park Service has chosen to say
yes,” he told reporter Guy Kovner of the Santa Rosa Press Dem-
ocrat. “Were there any scholarly debate, this would not have hap-
pened.”
That’s not what the Parks Department said, though. In an e-mail
to Kovner for the same story, Park Service spokesman Mike Litterst
noted that the nomination form for the site didn’t even mention the
controversy over where Drake landed, and added, “(This) should
not be interpreted as providing a defi nitive resolution of the dis-
cussion.”
Probably the best one-line summary of the question of where
Nova Albion really was came from archaeologist Melissa Darby, in
an interview with Colin Fogarty of National Public Radio. Darby,
at the time, was studying the Whale Cove site.
“Darby says that as a scientist, she doesn't trust anyone who's 100
percent sure of something that happened more than four centuries
ago,” Fogarty reported.
Irony
The irony of members of Congress working diligently to strip
Obama Care of anything worthwhile, while at the same time,
THEY receive the benefi ts of a WELL paying job that includes the
best medicine taxpayers can pay for, in the form of Single Payer
healthcare! It’s criminal.
Robin Bloomgarden
Eugene
What if
✩
America
didn’t NOTICE?
Public notices help expose:
● fraud in government!
● dishonest businesses!
● unfair competitive practices!
Find out about these
and much more in your local newspaper!
Participate in Democracy.
Read your Public Notices.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
CARLA WILLIAMS, Office Manager.................942-3325
Ext. 201 • cwilliams@cgsentinel.com
LEGALS.............................................................942-3325
Ext. 200 • cwilliams@cgsentinel.com
NEWS DEPARTMENT:
CAITLYN MAY, Editor......................................942-3325
Ext. 212 • cmay@cgsentinel.com
GRAPHICS:
RON ANNIS, Graphics Manager
(USP 133880)
Subscription Mail Rates in Lane and Portions of Douglas Counties:
Ten Weeks ................................................................$9.10
One year .................................................................$36.15
e-Edition year..........................................................$36.00
Rates in all other areas of United States: Ten Weeks $11.70; one year, $46.35, e-Edition $43.00.
Letters to the Editor policy
In foreign countries, postage extra.
No subscription for less than Ten Weeks. Subscription rates are subject to change upon 30 days’ notice.
All subscritptions must be paid prior to beginning the subscription and are non-refundable.
Periodicals postage paid at Cottage Grove, Oregon.
Postmaster: Send address changes to P.O. Box 35, Cottage Grove, OR 97424.
Local Mail Service:
If you don’t receive your Cottage Grove Sentinel on the Wednesday of publication, please let us know.
Call 942-3325 between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Advertising Ownership:
All advertising copy and illustrations prepared by the Cottage Grove Sentinel become the property of the
Cottage Grove Sentinel and may not be reproduced for any other use without explicit written prior approval.
Copyright Notice: Entire contents ©2017 Cottage Grove Sentinel.
The Cottage Grove Sentinel receives many letters to the editor. In order to ensure that your letter will be
printed, letters must be under 300 words and submitted by Friday at 5 p.m. Letters must be signed and
must include an address, city and phone number or e-mail address for verifi cation purposes. No anony-
mous letters will be printed. Letters must be of interest to local readers.
Personal attacks and name calling in response to letters are uncalled for and unnecessary.
If you would like to submit an opinion piece, Another View must be no longer than 600 words.
To avoid transcription errors, the Sentinel would prefer editorial and news content be sent
electronically via email or electronic media. Hand written submissions will be accepted, but we may
need to call to verify spelling, which could delay the publishing of the submission.