The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake 1577-1580

Samuel Bawlf

Douglas & McIntyre

The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake 1577 – 1580, by Samuel Bawlf (Douglas & McIntyre), com­pletes the story of European adven­ture in the north of North America in the six­teenth cen­tury. Here for the first time the voy­ages of Frobisher to Baffin Island can be fully under­stood in the con­text of the strug­gle for empire between England and Spain. Drake’s secret voy­age to the west­ern mouth of the Northwest Passage was the strate­gic com­ple­ment to Frobisher’s voy­ages to Baffin Island made at the same time, and we can under­stand now that the two men expected, or at least were pre­pared, to meet each other at the top of the world. The story of Drake’s voy­age north, which car­ried him past the Queen Charlotte Islands, was sup­pressed by the British Navy, and has been a rumour for three cen­turies. Only now is it part of the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion. Bawlf’s account casts much light on the geopol­i­tics of the time and puts the search for a north­west pas­sage into a gras­pable — that is to say, human — form.