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LONGCAMP.COM'S
NOVA ALBION ANNEX
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The Drake Navigators
Guild
www.drakenavigatorsguild.org
Their Position on the Latitude and Location of the 1579
California Drake Landing Site
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  After
conducting and publishing my own
independent study of the problems of
determining latitudes in the coast of
Sixteenth Century California in 1999, I
received a letter from Raymond Aker, the
then president of The Drake Navigators
Guild.
Inspired by the discovery of the
so-called Plate of Brasse in 1937, the
Drake Navigators Guild was formed in 1949
by two San Francisco Bay area business
partners with naval backgrounds and an
interest in Francis Drake to show that the
site of Drakes Bay suggested by George
Davidson of the US Coast Survey in 1890
was indeed the correct location of Drake's
37-day summer sojourn in 1579.
Raymond Aker, president of the Guild
from 1963 through 2003, was a graduate of
the California Maritime Academy and
licensed master mariner who had
served as a deck officer with Matson
Shipping from 1942 to 1949, and was
subsequently employed by the Marine
Division of Westinghouse Corporation for
twenty-nine years before retiring.
I was extremely pleased to have Mr.
Aker's compliments on my own study of late
16 Century celestial navigation.
The letter is reproduced below with
added footnotes referenced my
comments.
But first...
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Some
History of the Latitude Discussions
The World Encompassed
[latitude] clue, on careful analysis,
may have more to offer than meets the eye."
Warren L. Hanna, Lost Harbor, University
of California Press, Berkeley, 1979
Mr. Hanna was referring to the largely
disregarded Tenet 2 of the California
Historical Society landing site debates conducted
in 1974:
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Tenet 2: Several early accounts
of the Drake Voyage report conflicting
latitude designations [38° 30'
vs. 38°] for Drake's Landing
site. How are these to be reconciled
with the proposed landing site?
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The sites represented in the 1974 debates
were:
San Francisco Bay, San Quentin Cove
(37° 56')--Robert H. Power
Bolinas Lagoon, (37° 55')--V. Aubrey
Neasham
Drake's Bay, Estero (38° 02')--Raymond
Aker, the Drake Navigators Guild.
There was no supporter of, and little discussion
of, Bodega Bay, or Bodega Harbor, (38° 18'
19").
The debates were published in Volume LIII of
The California Historical Quarterly, The
California Historical Society, San Francisco, 1974.
They were later reviewed in Hanna's Lost
Harbor, University of California Press,
Berkeley, 1979. Hanna was unable to reach any
conclusion of his own as to a winner in the
debates, and concluded his book with the comment
that
"After four hundred years of mystery,
including nearly two hundred years of
controversy, we still have no solution to the
Drake anchorage riddle."
Nor was the Sir Francis Drake Commission,
established by the State of California in 1974 to
investigate and the various claims, able to make a
determination for any particular landing site after
four years of review. This was followed in 1978 and
1979 by rejections by the State of California
Historical Resources Commission of the Drake
Navigator Guild's formal petitions for registration
of Drakes Bay as an historical landmark, the
commission concluding that to accept the Guild's
position would constitute a "leap of faith rather
than fact."
Mr. Hanna, in his evaluation of the participants
non-discussion of Tenet 2 lamented the
following:
"Since the debaters are satisfied that
38° was the correct latitude, the express
request for Tenet 2 for reconciliation of
latitudes given by principal accounts has been
disregarded. Whether it was a matter of
oversight or simply felt not to be necessary was
not made to appear. No one would suggest that it
was in any way influenced by the fact that
latitude 38° constitutes an integral factor
in the anchorage theory of each of the
participants. Whatever the reason, the evidence
of the narrative which offers more information
than any other [The World Encompassed]
on the subject of anchorage latitudes has
quietly been relegated to limbo."
We are not convinced that Mr. Hanna was entirely
sincere in his statement that "no one
[Hanna] would suggest" that the lack of
discussion of 38° 30' was not influenced by
the fact that all of the three landing sites
discussed were located at or just under
38°--quite obviously, the thought had come to
Hanna's mind. This is in nowise better demonstrated
than in the Drake Navigators Guild's 1974 rejection
of their own completely objective 1970 latitude
analysis:
1970: In Report of Findings Relating
to Identification of Sir Francis Drake's
Encampment at Point Reyes National Seashore,
in which Mr. Aker analyzed 36 lines of latitude
given in The World Encompassed. He
rejected two obviously erroneous lines
(Valparaiso and Arica) of the thirty-six, and
concluded (p. 447) that "The true latitude
given here is for the landing site. World
Encompassed implies that at Drake's Bay an
observation [38 deg. 30. min.] was taken
on shore."
1974: Along with the other two site
proponents in the California Historical Society
debates, the Guild's position became that "38
deg toward the line," from the abbreviated
Hakluyt account must be correct--that 38 deg.
30. min. from The World Encompassed was
an imprecise "sea-reading" taken from "dead
reckoning" in a period of fog--thus a selective
rejection of the one single latitude in their
own analysis which failed to support their own
proposed landing site at located at 38°
02'.
But that is not at all how the account of
the
latitude of the anchorage reads in The World
Encompassed
On to the letter.
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Raymond Aker
Drake
Navigators Guild
Palo Alto, CA
August 11, 2000
Dear Bob:
About a week ago one of the Drake
Navigators Guild members copied for me
your determination of latitude by Drake on
the coast of California. I much appreciate
your writing to us and sending your copy,
which has additional information at the
back on the astrolabe and your
experiments. I was hoping that we could
have your address so that I could
respond.
*Here my omission of 16 lines
of text unrelated to either latitude or
to the Guild's supported landing site.
Your own work with the latitude is
superb. You would be well advised to
separate it from Campbell Cove (1)
- It applies equally as well to
Drakes Bay.
(2)
As far as 38' 30'N. goes, the Nova Albion
account comes largely from Francis
Fletcher, the chaplain. No observation was
obtained for two weeks after arrival
(3)
, therefore the only latitude that he
could have used must be assumed to be dead
reckoning. (4)
We can see that Drake's observed latitude
[from land] would be much closer.
Also, we can assume that Drake took a
latitude on the SE Farallon, but we do not
know that, or know what it was. (5)
The reasons for the Drakes Estero site
are well laid out in the booklet (6)
but you may find my analysis of
latitudes from the Guild's 1970 Report
of Findings to be of interest.
(7)
If one did not know where to start looking
for the landing site, then because of
inherent error, the latitude is only good
for getting into the range of sites from
Bodega Bay to San Francisco Bay.
Many thanks for sending us your
material.
Most sincerely,
Raymond Aker
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My
footnotes added to the letter:
(1)
Aker: You would be well advised to
separate it from Campbell Cove.
This refers to the work done by Brian Kelleher:
Drake's
Bay, Unraveling California's Great Maritime
Mystery, Day Publishing, San Jose,
1997. Mr. Kelleher's examination of the evidence
for the location of the Drake landing lead him to
determine that the site was at Campbell Cove at the
entrance to Bodega Harbor. The site championed by
Mr. Aker, and the Drake Navigators Guild, is the
estero at Drake's Bay.
My own work on these latitude determinations was
independent of Mr. Kelleher's work, but did turn
out to support Mr. Kelleher's findings.
I met Mr. Kelleher in October, 1998, a year
after the publication of his work.
Learning that I had an interest in Drake, and that
I had previously used published historical
astronomical and hypsometrical observations from
Frémont's expeditions to locate a number of
related lost
sites---
by lines of geographical
position.
by hypsometrical
data.
by graphic
record.
by GIS
(Geographic Information System).
---Mr. Kellerher asked me if I would "take a
look at Drake's latitude determinations."
(2)
Aker: It applies equally as well to Drakes
Bay.
It does not. My study shows that at the estero
at Drake's Bay the June/July 1579 determination
would have been 38°, or 38° 10',
depending on the size of the instrument used. At
Campbell Cove the determination would have been
38° 30' using an astrolabe of either 7" or 20"
diameter.
(3)
Aker: No observation was obtained for
two weeks after arrival.
This information comes from The World
Encompassed. But, in fact, these conditions were
said to have occurred for fourteen days, out of
thirty-seven days:
 "In
38 deg. 30. min. we fell with a conuenient and
fit harborough, and Iune 17. came to anchor
therein: where we continued till the 23. day of
Iuly following. During all which time,
notwithstanding it was the height of Summer, and
so neere the Sunne; yet were wee continually
visited with like nipping colds...neither could
we at any time in whole fourteene dayes
together, find the aire so cleare as to be able
to take the height of Sunne or starre."
If the sun was obscured at noon on "fourteene
days together" during the period from June 17
through July 1, there were still twenty-two days
outside that 14-day sequence. It is most likely
that at least a few of those twenty-two days would
have provided the opportunity.
An analysis of the determinations of latitude
that would have been made on the particular days
in that period.
(4)
Aker: the only latitude that he
could have used must be assumed to be dead
reckoning.
Mr. Aker here contradicts his own conclusion in
his published study on latitudes (see footnote 7
below), wherein Mr. Aker states (p.447) that
Drake's determination recorded as "38. deg. 30.
min." in The World Encompassed...
"...implies that at Drake's Bay an
observation was taken on shore." The accepted
authority Mr. Aker cited in 34 of 36 reported
latitudes was The World Encompassed.
It is worth noting that of the seven lines of
latitude given in Hakluyt's The Famous
Voyage, six are given only in whole degrees; to
the seventh is added "and a terce
[third]."
In contrast, of the 50 lines of latitude given in
The World Encompassed, 32 are given in
degrees and minutes. Of those containing minutes,
twenty-three of contain minutes that represent
fractions of a degree that can be easily estimated
on a scale divided in whole degrees: 1/4=15',
1/3=20', 1/2=30', 2/3=40', 3/4=45'. In the
remaining nine cases, the minutes given in The
World Encompassed seem to represent a precision
that lies outside the resolution of that one degree
scale. However, rather than representing false
precision, these nine lines of latitude which
contain minutes of arc expressed as 32', 55', 55',
5', 27', less 3-4', 6', 13', 4' suggest two
possibilities: (1) they were calculated
means of a series of
observations--remembering that at the resolution of
these instruments there is a window of some several
minutes of time preceeding and following meridian
transit in which to take multiple altitudes of the
single event; (2) they were estimated when it was
apparent that the index pointer did not come quite
to, or was just over, a division of the scale.
Re. "dead [deduced] reckoning," It is
interesting to note that the log and line, though
described in theory by Bourne in 1574, was not in
use at this peiod.
On sighting error.
(5)
Aker: we can assume that Drake took a
latitude on the SE Farallon, but we do not know
that, or know what it was.
According to The World Encompassed after
departing the port of Nova Albion on July 23, 1579,
Drake arrived at certain islands the next day out,
July 24. From there he set sail on July 25 en route
across the  Pacific
for the Mollucas. Assuming Drake did indeed harbor
in the San Francisco area, these certain islands
had to have been today's Farallon Islands, the
largest of which stands at about 37° 42'--thus
marking the southern extent of Drake's exploration
of the California Coast which The World
Encompassed reports to have been "38. deg."
By modern calculation the altitude of the sun at
noon at that latitude on July 24, 1579 (old
calendar) was 68° 50'. If Drake had taken an
astrolabe sighting for the Farallons that
particular day, he probably would have measured the
altitude of the sun as 70° even, and,
after reduction using the best published tables of
solar declintaion of the time (Bourne, 1574), and
not being able to correct those declinations for 8
hours west of London, calculated the latitude as
"38. deg." Given the relatively short distance from
port (38. deg. 30. min.), Drake may also have
reckoned the "38. deg." If so, this would be
consistent with a July 23 departure from Campbell
Cove under Bodega Head, which is roughly a half
degree north of the Farallons--such is not the case
for having departed from Drakes Estero, however,
which is only about 1/4 degree north of the
Farallons.
(6)
Aker: The reasons for the Drakes Estero site are
well laid out in the booklet
Aker, Raymond, & Von Der Porten, Edward,
Discovering
Francis Drake's California Harbor* Drake
Navigators Guild, Palo Alto, 2000.
(7)
Aker: you may find my analysis of
latitudes from the Guild's 1970 Report of
Findings to be of interest.
Enclosed were sent his photocopies of pages
436-450 of Report of Findings Relating to
Identification of Sir Francis Drake's Encampment at
Point Reyes National Seashore, Raymond Aker,
Drake Navigators Guild, 1970 (reprinted 1976).
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Two Examinations of the Latitudes in The World
Encompassed
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Raymond
Aker
 1970
(and 1976)
17 June -23 August,
1579, Drake's Bay, Coast of
California.
The true position given
here is for the landing site.
World Encompassed implies that an
observation for latitude was
taken on shore.
In summary,
[Drake's] average error
in latitude for places that can
be reasonably pinpointed (36),
excluding the doubtful latitudes
of Valparaiso and Arica, is about
16'. Of these, the average error
for latitudes that were probably
obtained on shore is about 09'
with nearly half of them being of
less than 10' error. The average
error of latitudes probably taken
at sea is about 21'.
Report of
Findings Relating to
Identification of Sir Francis
Drake's Encampment at Point Reyes
National Seashore
Ed. note: The
authority cited for all of the
latitudes referred to in Aker's
analysis, except for Valparaiso
and Arica, is The World
Encompassed.
But then, in 1978...
1978
The question as to
whether to consider 38° 30'
[The World
Encompassed] or
38° is almost conclusively
resolved in favor of the lower
figure which Haklyut, who may
have consulted with Drake and had
access to the same source as the
compiler of The World
Encompassed, chose
to use a totally different
description of the discovery of
Drake's haven and apparently
rejected "38 deg. 30. min." in
favor of "38 degrees towards the
line."
Sir
Francis Drake at Drakes Bay: A
Summation of Evidence Relating to
the Identification of Sir Francis
Drake's Encampment at Drakes Bay,
California.
2000
No observation was obtained for
two weeks after arrival (3) ,
therefore the only latitude that
he could have used must be
assumed to be dead reckoning."
Letter
above.
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Brian
Kelleher
 1997
My own analysis confirmed
Aker's [1970] findings. I
found twenty-seven that identify
locations which can be reasonably
pinpointed without inciting the
wrath of most current Drake
scholars. Of these, eleven of the
associated measurements were
likely made on land and the other
sixteen aboard ship. For the 16
readings likely made aboard ship,
fourteen appear to be accurate
within plus or minus thirty
minutes with a standard deviation
of nineteen minutes. Based on
this simple statistical analysis,
assuming "38 deg 30 min" came
from a latitude made on land, as
seems highly likely, there is
better than a 95 percent
probability that Drake made port
either at Bodega Harbor or
Tomales Bay. Conversely, the
probability is less than 5
percent he made a port at Drake's
Estero or points south.
Not only did Aker's
[1970 latitude] findings
contradict the findings of the
venerable [George]
Davidson, but according to
The World
Encompassed, on
which the Guild relied heavily
for most of its corroborating
evidence, Francis Drake did not
appear to land in Drakes Bay!
The World
Encompassed reports
Drake's fit harbor was at "38.
deg. 30. min." With Drake's Cove
located at thirty-eight degrees
two minutes, according to Aker's
findings, the twenty-eight minute
discrepancy is outside the
expected average error for
measurement made either on land
or sea.
Drake's
Bay, Unraveling California's
Great Maritime
Mystery
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DNG site--N38° 02' 03"
Drakes Estero, Drake's Cove,
Drakes Bay
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Kelleher site--N38° 18' 16"
Campbell Cove, Bodega Harbor,
Bodega Bay
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A chronology of the DNG interpretation
of 
1970 and 1976. Raymond Aker, Report of
Findings Relating to Identification of Sir Francis
Drake's Encampment at Point Reyes National
Seashore, p. 447: "The World
Encompassed [38.deg
30.min]...implies that at Drake's Bay an
observation was taken on shore."
1974 Historical Society debates: Tenet 2
being agreeably disregarded in favor of 38° by
all three participants, the Guild offered no
discussion of "38. deg 30. min."
1978. Raymond Aker, A
Summation of Evidence Relating to the
Identification of Sir Francis Drake's Encampment at
Drakes Bay, California, p. 11-12: "within 38
degrees" from 'The Famous Voyage'" reflected an
exceptionally precise navigational reading taken on
land, while "38 deg. 30. min." from The World
Encompassed was an imprecise sea-reading
taken from dead reckoning in a period of
fog.
2000. Raymond Aker, Letter,
(above): "No observation was obtained for two weeks
after arrival [out of the 37 days of the
sojourn--ed.], therefore the only latitude
that he could have used must be assumed to be dead
reckoning."
On pages 440-450 of Aker's Report of
Findings Relating to Identification of Sir
Francis Drake's Encampment at Point Reyes
National Seashore, he presents a comparison
of actual latitudes with the latitudes published
in The World Encompassed for the same places,
and on page 450 states that the average error
for the published latitudes, when taken from
land, was "about 9'."
Yet the error for Drake's landing site
determination of N38 30 compared to the Guild's
proposed site at the estero was 28
minutes--three times the expected error of the
study. So for the Guild's purpose, their
"Drake's Cove" site at the estero (N38 02) had
to be "assumed to be dead reckoning."
Text of The World Encompassed and The
Famous Voyage in parallel. This is work in
progress.
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While the latitude examinations by
Raymond Aker in 1970, and by Brian
Kelleher's in 1997 (Brian also  included
probability analysis in his book), are in
in very close agreement for the potential
accuracy of the Drake latitude
determinations reported in The World
Encompassed, neither determined the
source of the seeming random plus and
minus errors in those 16C
determinations.
Let's roll back the calendar to
1579, leave England and sail eight
hours in longitude into the next day, and
go to these very locations armed with
period instrumentation, period
astronomical and geographical knowledge,
period published tables of solar
declination, and re-make these
observations ourselves?
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* Discovering Francis Drake's
California Harbor is available from The
Drake
Navigators Guild at the address of its
president: Edward Von der Porten, 143
Springfield Drive, San Francisco, CA
94132-1456. e-mail: edandsaryl
@aol.com
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Some of the Drake Navigators Guild
publications:
- Nova Albion Rediscovered, Aker,
Raymond, Dillingham, M. P., Parkinson, R.,
1956.
- A Review of the Findings of Dr. Adan E.
Treganza Relative to the Site of Drake's Landing
in California, Dillingham, Matthew P.,
1960.
- Drakes Bay Shellmound Archaeology
1951-1962 (two volumes, Von der Porten,
Edward P., 1963.
- Francis Drake and Nova Albion, Oko,
Captain Adolph S, 1964
- Drake-Cermeño: An Analysis of
Artifacts, Edward Von der Porten, 1965.
- Portus Nova Albions, 1966.
- The Porcelains and Terra Cotta of Drakes
Bay, Von der Porten, Edward P., 1968
- Identification of Sir Francis Drake's
Encampment At Point Reyes National Seashore;
Report of Findings Relating to Identification of
Sir Francis Drake's Encampment At Point Reyes
National Seashore; A Research Report of the
Drake Navigators Guild, Aker, Raymond,
1970.
- Sir Francis Drake at Drake's Bay,
Aker, Raymond, 1970.
- Identificaion of the Nova Albion
Cony, Allen, Robert and Pakenson, Robert W.,
1971.
- An Examination of the Botanical
Referrences in the Accounts Relating to Drake's
Encampment at Nova Albion, Allen, Robert W.,
1971.
- Identification of 'An Herb Much Like Our
Lettice', Allen, Robert W., 1971
- Report of Finding Relating to
Identification of Sir Francis Drake's Encampment
at Point Reyes National Seashore, Aker,
Raymond, 1976.
- Sir Francis Drake at Drakes Bay. A
Summation of Evidence Relating to the
Identification of Sir Francis Drake's Encampment
at Drakes Bay. California, Aker, Raymond,
1978.
- Discovering Portus Novae Albionis,
Francis Drake's California Harbor, Aker,
Raymond and Edward Von Der Porten, 1979.
- The Drake and Cermeno Expeditions'
Chinese Porcelains at Drake's Bay, California
1579 and 1595, Shangrew, Clarence & Von
der Porten, Edward P., 1981
- Discovering Francis Drake's California
Harbor, Aker, Raymond and Edward Von de
Porten, 2000
- Who Made Drake's Plate of Brass?
(CaliforniaHistorical Society magazine), Von der
Porten,Edward, Aker, Raymond, and Spitz, James
M., 2002
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These publications (except the last) were the
foundation of a decades long unsuccessful effort by the
Drake Navigators Guild to lobby the National Park Service to
designate their proposed 1597 Drake landing site at Drakes
Estero as a National Historic Landmark.
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DETERMINATION
OF LATITUDE BY FRANCIS DRAKE ON THE COAST
OF CALIFORNIA IN 1579
