Revised September 2015. At times along our historical path important events get lost, witnesses die, fire consumes written accounts, or someone hides the truth. The 430-year-old mystery of where English privateer Francis Drake landed on the Northwest Coast of America involves a case of deceit: a cover-up took place from the start and was renewed again 200 years later. Preceded only by the fleet of Magellan, first to sail around the world, Drake covered more of the globe than Magellan when he turned his ships north in the Pacific and entered a hidden sea where no Chinese junks or Russian explorers had ever navigated before. In the late 16th century, Francis Drake made a daring and profitable three-year voyage around the world. He returned to England with a ship named the Golden Hind, loaded with stolen Spanish treasure. Elizabeth I knighted him for his rich accomplishment, but she seized all of his logs, and they were never seen again. All of his crew was sworn to secrecy under penalty of death, and she never allowed any publications of his voyage during her lifetime. But information did leak out.
