The Principal Account
“…there are at least five, and probably ten or more, places where the Drake account was deliberately falsified. This was done mostly to keep secret from arch-rivals Spain Drake's search for the North West Passage.”
Falsified.
Richard Hakluyt was the most famous and respected naval chronicler in English History. He published the official account of Drake’s famous voyage in the 1589 edition of his seminal work “The Principal Voyages, Navigations and Discoveries of the English Nation,” a full nine years after Drake’s return.
However, it can easily be shown that there are at least five, and probably ten or more, places where the Drake account was deliberately falsified. This was done mostly to keep secret from arch-rivals Spain Drake's search for the North West Passage.
This was the fabled sea route thought to lie above or across North America, and which would have dramatically reduced the long journey from Europe to the rich new trade areas of China and the East Indies. Hakluyt effectively worked for Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's devious Secretary of State and Spymaster, and it was undoubtedly Walsingham, acting on behalf of the Queen, who directed Hakluyt to falsify his accounts, the only ones allowed to be published in England during the lifetime of Drake and Elizabeth.
The title page to the 1589 edition is shown above.
In his preface to the 1589 edition, Hakluyt says that he was not including an account of Drake’s voyage, though he had wanted to do so, because somebody else was compiling a complete account of all his voyages. However, after some of the books had already been distributed, he inserted in the rest a short account, on twelve unnumbered pages, which he placed between pages 643 and 644.
Drake had plundered Spanish ships and settlements in the Pacific, and it is no coincidence that this first account of his voyage appeared very shortly after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, when the need for Elizabeth to appease the Spanish Crown had greatly reduced.
At the time, there was no way of the average reader telling that the Hakluyt account had been falsified, but now there is additional, independent evidence that enables us to show clearly that it was the case.
In 1599/1600 Hakluyt issued an updated and expanded version of his great work, which incorporated the account of Drake’s voyage. Few changes were made to the account, but some of these were significant, as will be shown later.