Francis Drake and Nova Albion: Elizabethan Voyaging on the Far Side of the World

Sir Francis Drake was one of England’s greatest and most controversial maritime heroes, celebrated as a daring explorer and a feared privateer. Knighted by Queen Elizabeth I after circumnavigating the world (1577–1580), he was the first English mariner to explore the Pacific coast of North America.

In this richly detailed narrative, acclaimed naval historian Barry Gough revisits the swashbuckling “Age of Drake,” focusing on the explorer's circumnavigation and his 1579 landfall at Drakes Bay, California, where he claimed “Nova Albion” for England.

Drawing on decades of maritime research and firsthand study of the coast’s perilous geography, Gough combines vivid seafaring narrative with incisive political history. He explores how English mariners learned pilotage and navigation from Spanish and Portuguese seafarers, battled storms and shoals on an uncharted Pacific coast and used nautical skill to undermine the world’s dominant power, Spain. He brings to life not only the perilous voyage of Drake’s Golden Hind, but also the fierce imperial struggle hidden behind it—a contest fought with maps, secrecy and the armed sailing ship, the newest technology of empire.

Gough also charts the long shadow of Nova Albion, examining how later British navigators—including Cook and Vancouver—searched for and reaffirmed Drake’s claim, extending Britain’s imperial footprint from Alaska to California and shaping what would one day become Canada’s Pacific province.

Authoritative and deeply researched, Francis Drake and Nova Albion is a must-read for anyone with an interest in one of maritime history’s most colourful heroes and his ties to the Pacific coast of North America.

“Once again, Gough delivers a page-turning account of epic proportions, peopled with the great, the God-fearing, and the greedy, and detailed with the deft touch of the sailor historian. I particularly rejoice in revisiting Drake’s ‘Backside of America’, once my particular cruising ground aboard the 1812 privateer Lynx and 1778 replica Swift. Indeed, I have anchored in Drake’s Bay on occasion to await the dawn and the Gate’s fogbound entrance. To do so in the literary company of one who ranks with Magellan and Columbus is an informative delight. Highly recommended!”