hopes the English had of establishing an outpost on America's west coas t. Published long after Drake and Elizabeth were gone, the Farrer Map illustrated a direct ro ute to get to Drake's port at Nova Albion and on to the Indies. According to the map, this could be accomplished by an easy trek across North America. At the sam e time, Dutch and French explorers were still actively seeking the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic. The Farrer m ap includes general details from the New England coastline west to the Appalachian Mountains, "those hills at the head of the leames River," and on to the Great Lakes, ''A mighty Great Lake." The distance berween the land west of the Appalachian Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, "the Sea of C hina and the Indies," was reduced to cover 43 modern Mercator degrees of longitude. The author believes that Farrer would have used the longitude scale that was common at that time if he felt it was needed. Farrer did not, in compressing the continent, use the example set by th e cartographer Henry Briggs, a noted mathematician who had published Tables
for the Improvement of Navigation (1610) and North-west Passage to the South Sea (1622). The Farrer map was drawn for a specific purpose-to show the quick and easy way to Cathay! Farrer did depict a Norchwest Passage at the head of the Hudson River, but this was not stressed; at best it was indirect. The longitudinal scale of the French Drake Map, drawn seventy-one years before the Farrer map, demonstrates approximately 100 degrees of longitude. This represented the area across the continent, similar to the Hondius Broadside map circa 1595, (see figure below) which is of the same scale as the French map. The lack of information concerning the interior of North America in Farrer's day is shown by his map's lack of pictorial representation of the vast rivers, deserts, and mountains encompassed in that transco ntinental corridor from sea to sea. This area was claimed by both the Virginia C ompany in 1609 and thir ty years earlier by Drake. This claim is shown on both the French Drake Map as "Nova Albio" and the Domina Virginia map as "new Albion."
Circumnavigation ofthe Globe 7his world map, circa 1595, was published by the D utch cartographer, ]odocus Ho ndius. 7his double-hemisphere map tracks Drake's circumnavigation as well as that of 7homas Cavendish, the third person (and second Englishman) to circumnavigate the globe from 15861588. 7he map shows the coasts ofthe continents but leaves the interiors blank. 7he drawing in the upper-left corner shows Drake's landing at Nova Albion in present-day California.
Queen Elizabeth I After Francis D rake returned to England in 1580, the British monarch imposed a ban of secrecy on information regarding the world voyage to keep her rivals at bay. With Spain's claim on so much of the land in the Americas and control ofthe trade across the Pacific, England, France, and the Netherlands were actively sending out voyages of exploration to stake their own claims on territory to the west and to find a northern sea route to Asia. D rake's landing in Nova Albion and his subsequent return to England allowed the Queen to claim the lands from Virginia clear across the continent to the Pacific Coast.
Both maps clearly show the importance of Francis Drake's role in establishing America's first and second New England . The early American colonists, most of them of English origin , eventually succeeded in crossing the vast North American continent nearly 200 years later. English sh ips fo llowed in Drake's wake with further expeditions to encircle the wo rld on voyages of exploration. .!, Robert Allen is a member ofthe D rake Navigators Guild, a non-profit research organization, founded in 1949, which brings together individuals from many fields of scholarship to study the early exploration ofthe west coast of North America. See www.drakenavigatorsguild.org for more information.
SEA HISTORY 119, SUMMER 2007
15