The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577-1580

When Sir Francis Drake returned to England in 1580, many questions concerning his momentous voyage were left unanswered—his journals were impounded and his men were forbidden, on pain of death, to divulge where they had been. Drawing on newly uncovered evidence, geographer and maritime historian Samuel Bawlf masterfully reconstructs Francis Drake’s historic round-the-world expedition, exploring the drama surrounding the voyage and offering intriguing insights into life at sea in the sixteenth century. But it is Bawlf’s assertion of Drake’s whereabouts in the summer of 1579 that gives the book even greater originality: from an intensive study of maps of the period, Bawlf shows with certainty that Drake sailed all the way to Alaska—much farther than anyone has heretofore imagined—thereby rewriting the history of exploration in North America.

Note to the Reader

Prologue

Part One: The Quest for Riches

1. San Juan d'Ulúa

2. Letters of Marque

3. Drake's Private War

4. A Passage to Cathay

5. The South Sea Project

Part Two: Round About the Whole Globe of the Earth

6. The Preparations

7. A Troubled Beginning

8. The Coast of Barbary

9. Land of Giants

10. Island of Blood

11. Into the South Sea

12. Chile

13. Peru

14. New Spain

15. News from the South Sea

16. The Moluccas

17. Homeward

Part Three: Celebrity amid Secrecy

18. "A Very Short Way"

19. "Islands of Good Land"

20. "Seen and Corrected by Sir Drake"

21. "That Posterity Be Not Deprived"

22. A Forgotten Secret

Part Four: The Northern Voyage, April to September 1579

A Record of Discovery

23. Drake's Strait of Anian

24. Nova Albion

25. Point of Position

26. A Sorrowful Farewell

Postscript: An Old Sailor's Yarn

Notes

Bibliography

Art Credits

Index