Point Reyes Light - February 20, 2003
Drake's 'plate of brasse' proven a hoax
By Ivan Gale
A team from the Drake Navigator’s Guild, along with other researchers, announced Tuesday that they have conclusively proven that the plate of brass found in Marin 67 years ago was not left by Francis Drake.
For many years, the sheet of inscribed brass was generally considered genuine. It became part of the Bancroft Library collection at UC Berkeley. It was pictured in school books. Amateur historians cited it as evidence for their own theories as to where Drake careened the Golden Hind in 1579 during his circumnavigation of the globe.
Drake was the first captain to survive a round-the-world journey. Once the buccaneer had reached this area, he was forced to continue traveling west. Having raided Spanish ports and ships for their gold while rounding South America, he did not dare sail back around Cape Horn.
But before he crossed the Pacific Ocean, the Golden Hind’s hull needed repairs, so the ship was floated ashore at high tide (presumably in Drake’s Estero) and laid on one side of its hull.
While the Golden Hind was careened here, the explorer’s records relate that he posted a plate of brass, claiming this region for Queen Elizabeth of England. The real plate of brass has never been found, but in the 1930s, an imitation of it was placed in Marin as a hoax by a group that included several members of E Clampus Vitus.
After an 11-year study, the researchers this week published an article in California History magazine summarizing their findings.
"We always suspected Clamper involvement," noted Edward Von der Porten, a marine historian, archaeologist, and lead member of the Navigators’ Guild team. However, he added, the hoax was not the work of merely the Clampers: "It was done by a lot of different people."
Hoax went too far
Although Clamper G. Ezra Dane was the instigator, the tricksters included members of the California Historical Society, an art critic, an art dealer, and an artifact dealer. None of them ever expected the prank to be taken seriously, the researchers said this week.
The plate was created from common brass, and the text chiseled on it was taken from Drake’s memoirs.
"Then, the plate was heated over a wood fire to create a dark patina," the researchers wrote. "It was hammered once more, darkened more with dirt, ash, and possibly more chemicals, and possibly subjected to fire once again and buried for a time."
Then the pranksters discarded the plate near Drake’s Estero with the intention of taking Professor Herbert Bolton, a professor of history at UC Berkeley (who was also a member of the Clampers and the California Historical Society) on a hike to discover the blackened plate, said Von der Porten.
Plans to reveal hoax died
Bolton had been telling his students for 30 years to be on the lookout for Drake’s plate of brass.
A true believer, once Bolton had been taken in by the phony plate, said Von der Porten, "I can see them then [planning on] taking him to a Clamper dinner, turning off the lights, and then turning on black lights to expose the ECV [for E Clampus Vitus] painted in fluorescent paint to dramatically reveal the joke."
However, what actually happened was far different. In 1933, a chauffeur named William Caldera took his passenger to hunt quail on Point Reyes. Caldera found a metal plate, washed it in a creek and found the inscription "D-R-A-K-E." Thinking nothing of it, he put it in the trunk of his car but several weeks later discarded it on the road between Kentfield and San Quentin.
Odd twist to saga
Then, in 1936 a young Oakland resident Beryl Shinn found a metal plate on the shore of San Quentin Bay. Shinn later took the plate to Berkeley where it was shown to Professor Bolton in 1937. Two months after seeing it and without having told his Clamper and Historical Society friends (who had actually forged the plate), Bolton declared to the world that Shinn’s find was none other than the original plate of brass.
"The realization that Bolton was almost unquestionably supporting the plate’s authenticity must soon have changed jubilation to shock and – quickly – deep concern," the researchers wrote in California History magazine. "Their inside joke ... had escaped from their control."
Though metallurgical tests in 1977 showed the brass was milled in the 20th century, it wasn’t fully explained until a team from the Drake Navigators’ Guild in 1992 began unraveling what Van der Porten called "the greatest hoax of California history."
Professor ignored warnings
Providing clues to the researchers that the Clampers were involved were several instances when the hoax’s instigator and prominent Clamper, G. Ezra Dane, tried to warn Bolton indirectly that his plate was fake.
Dane enlisted other Clampers to help, and one member illustrated how easily a plate could be created by making one himself. Another member issued a spoofing letter, while another, a UC Berkeley paleontologist wrote Ye Preposterous Booke of Brasse, a booklet published by the Clampers that was full of warnings to study the plate closely.
"Pranks are, and always will be, part of E Clampus Vitus," said the group’s noble grand humbug Rick Saber at Tuesday’s press conference. "The fact is we never take ourselves seriously," he added while looking a little ridiculous in a top hat festooned with a tiny American flag and an ostrich feather. "This [prank] fits us like a hand in glove."
Clamper plaques usually real
Saber and Von der Porten noted, however, that the Clampers deserve credit for more than just tomfoolery. The organization has marked more than 1,400 lesser-known historic sites around California with commemorative plaques.
Although the Navigators’ Guild, the County of Marin, and the National Seashore believe Drake landed at Drake’s Estero, uncertainty over the site where he careened his ship and posted the real plate of brass has prompted some far-fetched theories over the years.
‘Wild’ theories about landing
Point San Quentin, Año Nuevo, Bodega Bay, Whales’ Cove (subdivision) in Oregon, and Bolinas’ Agate Beach have all had their advocates.
The "wildest theory" to date, Von der Porten said Tuesday, comes from a former minister in British Columbia’s cabinet, Samuel Bawlf. In a soon-to-be-self-published book, Bawlf claims says Drake really landed on Vancouver Island and even reached southern Alaska as he looked for a northwest passage back to the Atlantic.
In fact, 1579 happened to be the coldest winter during a mini-Ice Age which chilled that era, and navigating around icebergs in the Inland Passage, and Queen Charlotte Sound would have been nearly impossible, Von der Porten noted this week.