#113 Sidebar Conversation: Melissa Darby on Sir Francis Drake and the Search for Novo Albion
The History of the Americans
Jack Henneman
4.9 • 632 Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2023
⏱️ 76 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is a fun one, especially for fans of Sir Francis Drake!
Longstanding and attentive listeners will remember Melissa Darby as the author of the 2019 book, Thunder Go North: The Hunt for Sir Francis Drake’s Fair & Good Bay, which was the primary source for our episode “Novo Albion and Drake’s Legacy,” which goes back to early December, 2021. It wouldn’t hurt to listen or (re)listen to that episode before this one, but I don’t think it is essential. Another way might be to go back and listen to it after you have heard this interview.
In the interview Melissa and I talk about the documents discovered by two women scholars, Zelia Nuttell and Eva Taylor, around a century ago, that upended the evidence for Francis Drake having claimed Novo Albion in the area of San Francisco; the ethnographic and linguistic evidence in support of the Golden Hind landing on the coast of Oregon or Washington instead of California; the plot by a famous University of California historian to manufacture Drake’s “plate of brass” to refute Nuttell’s claims and obstruct the publication of her paper; the remarkable point that the crew of the Golden Hind spent between five and ten weeks on the Northwest coast, interacting with Indians routinely, without ever having fought with them; and Drake’s legacy more generally.
Twitter: @TheHistoryOfTh2
Books referred to in this episode
Melissa Darby, Thunder Go North: The Hunt for Sir Francis Drake’s Fair & Good Bay
Samuel Bawlf, The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577-1580
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast episode 113. |
| 0:11.5 | I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and we are recording this episode on April 27, 2023. |
| 0:18.3 | We are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United States from the beginning without presentism. |
| 0:25.3 | This episode is a sidebar, which is our term for an episode that is off the timeline of the history of the Americans, |
| 0:33.3 | really our way of signaling that the episode need not be listened to in sequence. |
| 0:38.7 | Today I'm in Austin, Texas, and my guest, Melissa Darby, is in a secure, undisclosed location |
| 0:45.6 | in Oregon. Melissa is an anthropologist, archaeologist, and historian on the faculty at Portland |
| 0:52.0 | State University. Longstanding and attentive listeners will remember |
| 0:56.9 | her as the author of the 2019 book, Thunder Go North, The Hunt for Sir Francis Drake's Fair |
| 1:03.7 | and Good Bay, which I've now read twice, and which was my primary source for our episode, |
| 1:10.1 | Novo, Albion, and Drake's Legacy, |
| 1:12.8 | which goes back to early December, 2021. |
| 1:16.4 | It wouldn't hurt to listen to or re-listen to that episode before this one, |
| 1:21.0 | but I don't think it's essential. |
| 1:23.0 | Another way might be to go back and listen to it |
| 1:25.1 | after you've heard this interview. |
| 1:28.1 | Thundergo North is really two books in one. In one respect, it's an argument based on historical |
| 1:35.2 | documents, anthropology, and linguistic analysis that Sir Francis Drake and his crew careened |
| 1:41.5 | the Golden Hine on the coast of Oregon or perhaps Washington in the |
| 1:46.5 | summer of 1579, not on the coast of California as has long been claimed by patriotic Californians. |
| 1:56.2 | As Melissa Darby demonstrates in her book, this is actually an argument that ought to have |
| 2:00.8 | carried the day more than a hundred years ago. When a Mexican the Darby demonstrates in her book, this is actually an argument that ought to have carried |
... |
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