What to Find at Point Reyes, CA

May 8


How the bay below the Point Reyes sea cliffs came to be called Drakes is a seemingly unlikely story.  The Spanish influence of the western American seaboard is a well known story – the Spanish had

Modern Drakes Bay

been exploring the south American continent as part of trade, plunder and religion for some time – but Sir Francis Drake, an English sea captain and privateer, was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth in 1577 to circumnavigate the globe and wherever possible harass the Spanish fleet and and settlements along the western edges of south and north america.  And so the great journey began in Plymouth England, scuttled along the northern African coast, across to Salvador South America, underneath Cape Horn and finally northward, toward the virtually unknown waters of Lima, Panama and stretching out, like a bow, the western U.S., finally landing at the San Francisco Bay area.

Stories vary, and historians dispute, but Francis Drake, in his renamed ship the Golden Hind, likely landed at what they called Nova Albion (New Britain) below modern Point Reyes seashore.  Drake's fleet had been decimated along the long and taxing journey and, in order to complete the last stretch of the trip west, the Golden Hind had to careen for repairs for six weeks in the naturally protective bay north of San

Golden Hind Replica

Francisco in order to carry-on.  "On September 26, Golden Hind sailed into Plymouth (England) with Drake and 59 remaining crew aboard, along with a rich cargo of spices and captured Spanish treasures.  The Queen's half-share of the cargo surpassed the rest of the crown's income for that entire year.  Drake was hailed as the first Englishman to circumnavigate the Earth."

As the visitor to Point Reyes will hopefully attest, as you walk around the abundance of the landscape, tour the wildflower trails, visit the descending steps to the lighthouse, and overlook the vast lush panorama of nearly old-world farms and ranches, it will be only a slight imaginative leap to picture some 425 years ago as an enormous, if embattled, ship of the sea landed, tipped itself purposefully radically sidewise for the sake of hull repairs and engaged the local tribes in trepidation.  It might not have been thoroughly understood by Drake's paltry crew, especially after such extreme hostility along the upper contours of South America, but the Coast Miwok natives

Artistic rendition of Drake's crew and Miwok at San Francisco area

indigenous to the area were an ancient and peaceful hunting and gathering tribe that sought no trouble with the white strangers but instead tended to approach with local offerings.  It would be this voyage that opened up the ocean routes to San Francisco for English speaking people.  San Francisco would become the epicenter of the merging Spanish and English cultures as we see to this day.