page_title: New Albion
section_title: 20th century identifications
hierarchical_section_title: New Albion / Site recognition and identification / 20th century identifications
caption_attribution_description: English: Drakes Bay © 2004 Matthew Trump
context_page_description: New Albion, also known as Nova Albion, was the name of the continental area north of Mexico claimed by Sir Francis Drake for England when he landed on the North American west coast in 1579. This claim became the justification for English charters across America to the Atlantic coast and soon influenced further national expansion projects on the continent. Today, Drake's landing site is known as Point Reyes, California, a marine environment which is the setting of several small towns, ranches, and Point Reyes National Seashore.
  Drake, after successfully sacking Spanish towns and plundering Spanish ships along their eastern Pacific coast colonies, sought safe harbour to prepare his ship, Golden Hind, for circumnavigation back to England. He found it on 17 June 1579, when he and his crew landed on the Pacific coast at what is now Point Reyes in Northern California. While encamped there, he had friendly relations with the Coast Miwok people who inhabited the area near his landing. Naming the area Nova Albion, or New Albion, he claimed sovereignty of the area for Elizabeth I of England, an act which would have significant long-term historical consequences.
context_section_description: In 1947, following up on work by archaeologists A. L. Kroeber and William W. Elemendorf, archaeologist Robert F. Heizer analyzed the ethnographic reports of Drake's stay at New Albion. Confirming their work Heizer states that "Drake must have landed in territory occupied by the Coast Miwok-speaking natives." In his full analysis, Heizer concludes, "in June 1579, then, Drake probably landed in what is now known as Drake's Bay."
  
  Since 1949, the theory that Drake landed at Drakes Bay has been advocated by the Drake Navigators Guild in California, and by former president Captain Adolph S. Oko, Jr., former honorary chairman Chester W. Nimitz, and former president Raymond Aker. Oko wrote, "Many other correlative facts have been ... found true to the Drake's Cove site as part of the total body of evidence. The weight of evidence truly establishes Drake's Cove as the nodal point of Nova Albion." Nimitz stated that he did "not doubt that in time the public will come to recognize the importance and value of this long-lost site, and will rank it with other National Historic Sites such as Roanoke, Jamestown, and Plymouth." In 1956, Sir Alex A. Cumming, who was the curator of Buckland Abbey, Drake's past home and current museum, also recognised Drake's landing: "That little cove at the mouth of the Estero, sheltered from the wind, protected from the sea and hidden from hostile eyes, must have been a welcome sight, and I believe that Divine Providence guided him to it." In 1978, two time Pulitzer Prize winning historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote "...that Drakes Bay is correctly so named, that here he spent five weeks, repaired the Golden Hind, sang songs for the Indians, and marched up country." 
  Aker conducted detailed studies reconstructing Drake's circumnavigating voyage, and advocated for the site at Point Reyes citing the fact that the official published account placed the colony at 38 degrees north. The geography of Drake's Cove, which lies along the coast of Marin County, has often been suggested as being similar to the cove described by Drake, including the white cliffs that look like the south coast of England and the specific configuration of the Cove. Responding to questions about the geographical fit of the cove, Aker maintained that criticisms—those based on the inconsistent configuration of the sandbars in the cove—were unfounded. He maintained the configuration of the sandbars in the cove was cyclic over the decades. Accordingly, Aker effectively answered the questions when he predicted that a spit of land that disappeared in 1956—one which closely resembles one on the Hondius map—would reappear. Aker's assertions were confirmed when the spit formed again in 2001.
  Artefactual evidence emerged when nearly one hundred pieces of sixteenth-century Chinese porcelain wares were found in the vicinity of the Drake's Cove site which, according to Clarence Shangraw of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and archaeologist Edward Von der Porten, "must fairly be attributed to Francis Drake's Golden Hind visit of 1579." These ceramic samples, found at Point Reyes, are the earliest datable archaeological specimens of Chinese porcelains transported across the Pacific in Manila galleons. The artefacts were found by four different agencies beginning with the University of California, the Drake Navigators Guild, then the Santa Rosa Junior College, and finally San Francisco State College. These porcelain shards are the remains of porcelain dishes Drake took from a Spanish treasure ship in the Pacific. Off-loaded during the careening process and abandoned when Drake sailed from Point Reyes, the porcelain wares were the heaviest items of unknown value that he carried.
  The porcelains were first identified by Shangraw and then later by Von der Porten. These researchers specifically distinguished the Drake porcelains, which were found in middens associated with the Coast Miwok, from those of Sebastian Rodriguez Cermeño's San Agustin, the 1595 Manila galleon shipwreck which rests at the floor of Drakes Bay. Unlike the Drake porcelains, shard
caption: Drakes Bay, northwest of San Francisco
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