The First British Visitor to the San Francisco Bay Area

The following is the text of an article that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle of Sunday May 20, 1951 describing the first visit to the Bay Area (or to California for that matter) by an Englishman - one Captain (later Sir) Francis Drake. The British Consulate-General can neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of every detail of the text, but we like to believe that it is all true. We particularly cherish the notion that Francis Drake took possession of Nova Albion which he put in the keeping of the first Queen Elizabeth and her successors "forever".

From San Francisco Chronicle, May 20, 1951

Drake’s “Plate of Brasse:”1579-1951
From Pirate Ship to Flat Tire in Marin, by Ruth Newall

This story begins with a pirate ship loaded with gold and silver and winds up with a flat tire in Marin County.
On a foggy June day in 1579 the little ship Golden Hinde was sailing southward along the Marin County coast looking for a place to anchor. The captain of the ship was a man in his thirties named Francis Drake. He was in the process of carrying out a difficult and disappointing decision. He had decided that in order to get out of the Pacific Ocean and sail back to England, he would have to sail westward and around the Cape of Good Hope as Magellan had done 50-odd years before. He could not go back the way he came- through the Straits of Magellan- because between California and the Straits, were thousands of angry Spaniards searching the seas for him.

It happened that the ample cargo of gold, silver and jewels below the Golden Hinde’s decks had been lifted out of Spanish galleons en route home from the Indies, and out of churches which his men had torn to pieces in the name of their Protestant Queen Elizabeth.

So Drake had sailed north, hoping to find a passage over the top of the New World that would lead him home to England. He went northward nearly to Puget sound, which, had he seen it, he might have mistaken for the passage. But the coast showed no sign of dipping eastward, and he turned south. Before heading out on the long, scurvied voyage, he had to recondition his ship. He looked for a harbour.

On June 17 he spotted some white bay cliffs, and behind them a bay. The Golden Hinde sailed and dropped anchor.
The crew went ashore, set up tents and went promptly about constructing some stone fortifications at the foot of the high, barren hills. The fort turned out to be un-necessary. The natives approached in numbers but the only alarming thing about them was their only wearing apparel was the white paint on their faces. Drake hastily ordered a general issue of clothing.

The Golden Hinde stayed at the bay for six weeks. The natives staged a ceremony , including the presentation of a sceptre and crown to Drake, and the Englishman responded by demonstrating the forms of Christian worship. Fortunately for history, Drake’s chaplain Francis Fletcher, kept voluminous notes on the voyage which were later compiled into a narrative entitled “The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake”. Fletcher recorded as follows what happened before they set sail.

“Our generall caused to be set up a plate of brasse, fast nailed to a great and firme poste; whereon is engraven her Grace’s name and the day and years of our arrival there, and of the free giving up of the province and kingdome, both by the king and people into her Majesties hands, together with her highnesses picture, and armes in a piece of sixpence currant English monie, showing it selfe by a hole made of purpose through the plate; underneath was likewise engraven the name of our generall”

The Golden Hinde sailed away, and for two centuries the Indians and their descendants were undisturbed by the white man.
Behind him, Drake left a great historical puzzle. Where did he land? Some historians claimed it was San Francisco Bay, but others quarrelled with this. Eventually the name “Drakes Bay” given to the land below Point Reyes represented the consensus that he had never entered the gate.

The next chapter of the story took place in 1936, when Beryle Shinn, an Oakland department store employee, took a Sunday drive to Marin County.

It was Shinn’s second visit to Marin, and he drove his friends south from San Rafael on the Greenbrae road, which parallels the main highway about a mile or so to the west. At the intersection with the road, which runs from San Quentin to Kentfield, Shinn had a flat tire.

It was just about lunchtime, and the party decided it was as good a place as any for a picnic. They climbed up the dry grassy hill and sat down near some scattered stones. Shinn began idly pitching the stones downhill toward a gully.

As he lifted one of the rocks, he saw the square end of a piece of metal sticking out from under it. He picked it up. It was about five by seven inches with small notches on the centre of the long sides and a hole roughly punched in one corner.

It was just about the right size, he thought, to fit over a hole in the bottom of his car. He threw it in the bottom of the car when he left. The following winter he decided to get around to the repair job. He got out the old piece of metal and washed it, and then noticed that it was covered with strange marks and seemed to be some sort of inscription which he could not decipher.

He put off the car repair job and showed the plate to some of his friends. One of them was a former student of Dr. Herbert Eugene Bolton, Professor of history and Curator at the University of California. Shinn telephoned for an appointment with Dr. Bolton.
“As soon as the plate was described to me on the telephone” Dr. Bolton said later, “I suspected what it was”. Dr. Bolton listened carefully to Shinn’s story, and examined the plate. The inscription was irregular and the letters composed of straight lines had apparently been made with a chisel.

He deciphered the inscription:

“BEE IT KNOWNE UNTO ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS
JUNE 17, 1579
BY THE GRACE OF GOD AND IN THE NAME OF HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND AND HERR SUCCESSORS FOREVER I TAKE POSSESSION OF THIS KINGDOM WHOSE KING AND PEOPLE FREELY RESIGNE THEIR RIGHT AND TITLE IN THE WHOLE LAND UNTO HERR MAJESTIES KEEPING NOW NAMED BY ME AND TO BEE KNOWNE UNTO ALL MEN AS NOVA ALBION

FRANCIS DRAKE”

With ill-concealed excitement Dr. Bolton checked historical references, embarked on a trip to Marin County with Shinn to visit the scene of the find and showed it to his associates and to Allen L. Chickering, president of the California Historical Society.

At a meeting of the society on April 7, 1937, Dr. Bolton announced the find. He and other historians looked over the site of the find about a mile from San Quentin Prison.
Perhaps, they concluded, they and other historians had been wrong. The location of the plate indicated that Francis Drake had indeed entered San Francisco Bay and the later Portola expedition were not the first white men, after all, to see the Bay.

But another chain of circumstances opened up. One of the people who read the newspaper reports of Dr. Bolton’s announcement was a San Francisco chauffeur by the name of William Caldeira. Caldeira called Dr. Bolton. He said that about four years earlier he had driven his employer, Leon Bocqueraz, Vice Chairman of the Bank of America, to a spot on Murphy Ranch, near the shore of Drake’s Bay, to hunt.

While waiting for Bocqueraz to return, Caldeira ambled down a road. At an intersection in two dirt roads about a mile and a half inland from Drakes Bay he had kicked at a clod of dirt. Some mud had fallen away revealing a piece of metal. The chauffeur thought it might be useful for his automobile. He washed it in a creek and found it was covered with what he described it as “foreign writing of some sort”. He noticed a word that looked like Drake at the bottom. Caldeira showed it to his employer when he returned from hunting. “Probably something off a ship”