Global Positioning System Reference
In-Depth Information
iards were used to sole possession of these waters, they made few defensive
preparations. Soon the Golden Hind was overloaded with gold, silver, and
jewels. ''El Draque,'' as he was called by his Spanish enemies, sailed further
up the coast, leaving a monument at ''New Albion,'' probably near San
Francisco. He described the coastline here and made latitude measure-
ments from his ship with a mariner's astrolabe, and perhaps while on shore
with a larger and more accurate astrolabe. Much e√ort has been made in
recent years to determine the exact whereabouts of New Albion: basically,
the uncertainty is due to the inaccuracy of Elizabethan navigational instru-
ments, and in particular of the mariner's astrolabe. (Drake's estimates of
latitude were accurate to perhaps 11 minutes of arc, which corresponds to a
positional error of 20 km.)
Drake may have followed the coast as far north as Vancouver Island and,
according to one controversial account, perhaps even farther north in an
attempt to discover a northwest passage. He then sailed west across the
Pacific, arriving in the Philippines after 68 days, in October 1579. The
Golden Hind moved on to the Moluccas, where Drake made a treaty with
the Moluccan sultan for trade in spices. By March 1580 he was in Java; he
rounded the Cape in June and arrived back at his home port, Plymouth, on
September 26, 1580, with 56 of his original crew. Drake was the first
person to sail his ship around the world (del Cano changed ships after
Magellan's death) and perhaps the first to circumnavigate the world from
west to east. He was later knighted on board his ship, played a prominent
role fighting the Spanish Armada, made a fortune from the slave trade, and
died at age 50 in Panama (again on an expedition to fight Spaniards) of
dysentery.
Of Drake's abilities, we have the word of his pilot. On his most famous
expedition, Drake was fortunate in capturing a Portuguese captain, Nuno
da Silva, o√ the Cape Verde Islands early in the voyage, in 1578. Da Silva
knew the South American coast very well and was a great asset to the
expedition. He described his new captain thus: ''The first thing he did
when he captured a vessel was to seize the charts, astrolabes and mariner's
compasses. . . . He carries three topics of navigation, one in French, one in
English, and another, the account of Magellan's voyage, in a language I do
not know. . . . He is a very skillful mariner.'' 17 Da Silva was freed after
15 months' captivity, on the coast of Mexico, and was later questioned by
the Inquisition about El Draque.
17. Thrower (1984), p. 182.
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search