Drake's Plate of Brass

frame|right|Drake's Plate of Brass

Drake's Plate of Brass is a forgery that purports to be the brass plaque that Francis Drake posted while anchored in Drake's Bay in Northern California in 1579. The hoax was successful for 40 years, despite early doubts. After the plate came to public attention in 1936, historians raised questions regarding the plate's wording, spelling, and manufacture. The hoax's perpetrators, members of the fraternal organization E Clampus Vitus, attempted to apprise the plate's finders as to its origins. Many presumed the plate to be authentic after an early metallurgical study concluded it was genuine. In the late 1970s, scientists determined that the plate was a modern creation after it failed a battery of physical and chemical tests. Much of the mystery surrounding the plate continued until 2003, when historians advanced a theory about who created the plate and why, showing the plate to be a practical joke by local historians gone awry. The plate was acquired by and is often on display at the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley.

Historical plate

thumb|right|200px|Sir Francis Drake, by [[Nicholas Hilliard, 1581]]

Drake landed at Drake's Cove in Drakes Bay, California. According to a contemporary account by Francis Fletcher, a member of Drake's party, Drake left behind "" as "a monument of our being there" that claimed "". The memoirs also say that the plate included the date of the landing, and under it Drake's name, and the queen's portrait on a sixpence coin.

Fletcher's detailed description of the plate became the recipe for the prank that became the Drake Plate hoax.

Hoax plate: description and text

The plate that came to light in the 1930s matched the description in the historical record in many ways. It was made of brass, with lettering that appeared to have been chiseled into its face. There was the hole for a sixpence coin, and the text contained all the content that Fletcher described:

:(Hole for sixpence)

Origins

Working for ten years, a team of four researchers pieced together a complete narrative of the out-of-hand joke. The four—Edward Von der Porten, Raymond Aker, Robert W. Allen, and James M. Spitze—published their account in California History in 2002.

Creation

According to the 2002 account, the plate was intended to be a joke among members of a playful fraternity of California history enthusiasts, the Ancient and Honorable Order of E Clampus Vitus ("ECV"). The ECV had originated during the 1849 California Gold Rush and was revived in the 1930s by Carl Wheat, George Ezra Dane, and Leon Whitsell as a fraternity of historians and Western lore enthusiasts. Pranks at fellow Clampers' expense were a regular part of the group's activities.

George Ezra Dane, an ECV leader, was blamed for initiating the hoax as a joke intended for fellow "Clamper" Herbert Eugene Bolton to find.

The target of the hoax, Herbert Bolton, had a special interest in the plate. Bolton was a distinguished professor of California history and director of the Bancroft Library at the University of California. Over his career, he exhorted students to look for the plate—and to contact him if they ever heard of an artifact matching the historical description.

Dane initiated the plot. George Haviland Barron, a former curator of American history at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, designed the plate and bought the brass at a nearby shipyard, where a worker cut the plate from modern brass with a modern guillotine shear. George Clark, an inventor, art critic, and appraiser, hammered the letters into the plate with a simple cold chisel. Clark told his wife that the "C.G."—later taken to stand for "Captain General"—before Drake's name was essentially his own signature. As a final mark of the gag, Lorenz Noll (1891–1962) and Albert Dressler (1887–1960) painted "ECV" on the back of the plate in paint visible under ultraviolet light. Shinn showed it to a friend, a Berkeley student, who suggested that he take the plate to Bolton. In February 1937, Shinn brought it to Bolton, which to Bolton was the fulfillment of a decades-old professional dream. Bolton compared it to Francis Pretty's contemporaneous description of the plate. He alerted Robert Gordon Sproul, the University of California president, and Allen L. Chickering, the president of the California Historical Society, to the possibility of a major find. Chickering and Bolton negotiated to buy the plate, offering to pay $2,500 () and to assume all risk regarding the authenticity of the plate.

"Confirmation"

While Bolton and Chickering continued to defend the plate, doubts and rumors continued to circulate. Sproul, the University president, had become concerned as well. Bolton played down concerns while challenges to the plate’s authenticity were numerous and authoritative, as were demands for analysis of the relic. Journalists at home and abroad, as well as historians and archaeologists, sent requests for at least a good photograph of the plate. Bolton demurred, put off analysis, and did not follow up with experts on specific questions they had about the plate that could help determine its authenticity. A good photograph was not available even by August of 1937 when the editor of Antiquity wrote to Bolton “surely in the case of an object which, if genuine, is of the highest historical importance, at least one really adequate photograph should be made available!”

Bolton chose Professor Colin Fink, chair of the Division of Electrochemistry of Columbia University, to authenticate the plate. While the California history community, and certainly Bolton, would have been aware of the Clampers' book of clues, Fink may not have been. In any case, in 1938 Fink and his colleague E. P. Polushkin confirmed the plate as genuine in no uncertain terms: "[I]t is our opinion that the brass plate examined by us is the genuine Drake Plate." Cyril Stanley Smith of MIT examined the plate under a stereo microscope and found the edges to be consistent with modern cutting equipment.

References

External links

Plateofbrass.com: The Mystery of the Plate of Brass: California's Greatest Hoax and The Search for its Perpetrators
Edward Von der Porten, Raymond Aker, Robert W. Allen, and James M. Spitze, "Who made Drake's plate of brass? Hint: it wasn't Francis Drake", California Monthly, March 22, 2002.
Fletcher's account of Drake's landing and the real plate (While this is often misattributed to Pretty, the Hakluyt Society has studied this and determined that the Pretty attribution came much later. The original was published by Drake's nephew, also "Sir Francis Drake," using records from voyage chaplain Francis Fletcher.)
University of Berkeley press release, including a Flash animation of the story
Cyril Stanley Smith's 1976 Metallurgical Report on Francis Drake's Brass Plate
Abstract for article "Chemical Study of the Plate of Brass," H. V. Michel and F. Asaro