Oregon Coast History -- Did Capt. Cook Take The Golden Hind-Most?

DEPOE BAY, Ore. - Bob Ward figures he's just a few rocks short of proving history books wrong.

Since 1978, Ward, of London, has been trying to prove that Sir Francis Drake landed in Oregon two centuries before Capt. James Cook, long credited with telling the Old World of Oregon, Canada and Hawaii.

Ward thinks Drake spent part of the summer of 1579 repairing and reprovisioning his ships in Whale Cove in Lincoln County, Ore., just south of Depoe Bay.

History books say the landing was in Drakes Bay, just north of San Francisco, where the explorer is believe to have claimed the land for his monarch, Queen Elizabeth.

Ward's evidence is circumstantial, but he has state permission for an underwater archaeology project in Whale Cove, where he thinks he'll find unusual rocks, the cast-off ballast of Drake's ship, the Golden Hind, or another vessel traveling with him.

This year, a sport diver reported that he'd found unusual rocks in Whale Cove 10 years ago.

High on Ward's list of evidence is a pair of maps of the bay where Drake stayed. The bay on the maps more closely resembles Whale Cove than Drakes Bay.

In studying an anonymous, handwritten journal well known to Drake scholars, Ward found a notation placing Drake's anchorage at 44 north, the approximate latitude of Whale Cove.

He recently located a second, handwritten, anonymous journal that also notes 44 north as the summer anchorage. Ward says he found the shorter account in the papers of the Earl of Leicester, a financial backer of Drake's voyage.

If he is successful, it would be a tourism bonanza for the Oregon coast, says Ward, who founded his nonprofit Drake in Oregon Society in 1995.

But first, he has to find the rocks. Ward, who does not dive, has contracted the project to Portland archaeologist Alison Stenger.

Ward, who published his Drake theory in 1981 in the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society, thinks a royal plot has kept the world from knowing before about Drake's stop in Oregon.

In the 16th century, England lagged behind Spain and Portugal in establishing an empire. England desperately wanted to find a route around the newly discovered continents of North and South America.

One of England's most famous sailors - and pirates - of his day, Drake raided ships and Spanish settlements to collect treasure for his queen. When Drake left England on the journey that would make him the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, his mission was not widely known.

Now, however, scholars think one of Drake's goals was to find the fabled Northwest Passage and keep it a secret, giving England a better trading route to the Orient.

The official account of Drake's journey says he sailed west from Mexico, then north to what is now the California-Oregon border, and then south to 38 degrees, the approximate location of Drakes Bay - beaching Golden Hind there for repairs before setting off across the Pacific Ocean.

When Drake returned, Queen Elizabeth took his original journal and locked it in the Tower of London. Ward thinks the queen or her ministers cooked up a false account to throw off rivals.