[p. 6] The command devolved on the chief pilot, Bartolome Ferrelo, who prosecuted the voyage with a courage and daring equal to that shown by Cabrillo. On Feb. 28th he discovered a point of land which he named Cape Mendocino in honor of his Viceroy. Passing this cape he encountered a furious storm, which drove him violently to the northeast and greatly endangered his ships. On March 1st the fogs lifted and he saw Cape Blanco in the southern part of what is now Oregon. The weather continuing stormy and the cold increasing, Ferrelo was compelled to turn back. Off the coast of San Clemente the ships were driven apart and did not come together again until they reached the Cerros Islands. In sore distress for provisions they arrived at Natividad, April 18, 1543.
The next navigator who visited California was Sir Francis Drake, an Englishman. He was not so much seeking new lands as trying to find a way of escape from capture by the Spanish. Francis Drake, the sea-king of Devon and one of the bravest of men, sailed from Plymouth Dec. 13, 1577, in command of a fleet of five small vessels on a privateering expedition against the Spanish settlements of the Pacific Coast. When he sailed out of the Straits of Magellan into the South Sea, he had but one ship left, all the others had been lost or had turned back. With this small vessel he began a career of plundering among the Spanish settlements that for boldness, daring and success has had no equal in the world's history. The quaint chronicler of the voyage sums up the proceeds of his raids at "eight hundred and sixty-five thousand pesos of silver, a hundred thousand pounds of gold and other things of great worth," Plundering as he moved, he reached the port of Guatulco on the coast of Oaxaca. Surfeited with spoils and with his ship laden to her fullest capacity, it became a necessity for him to find a new way home. In the language of the chronicler, "He thought it was not good to return by the straits, lest the Spaniards should attend for him in great numbers." So he sailed away to the northward to find the Straits of Anian, which were supposed to connect the North Pacific with the Atlantic. For two hundred years after the discovery of America, navigators searched for that mythical passage. Drake, keeping well out to sea, sailed northward for two months. The cold, the head winds and the leaky condition of his craft compelled him to turn back and he sailed down the coast until he found a safe harbor under the lee of a promontory, now Point Reyes. Here he repaired his ship, took formal possession of the country in the name of his sovereign, Queen Elizabeth, and named it New Albion, from a fancied resemblance to his homeland. He had his chaplain, Parson Fletcher, preach a sermon to the natives; this did not greatly impress them, we are told, but they took delight in the psalm singing. After a stay of thirty-six days, on July 23rd, 1579, Drake sailed for England and after nearly three years of absence, during which he had circumnavigated the globe, he reached home safely and was knighted by Elizabeth.
[p. 7] Sixty years passed after Cabrillo's voyage before another Spanish explorer visited California. The chief object of Sebastian Viscaino's voyage was to find a harbor of refuge for the Phillippine galleons. These vessels on their return voyage sailed northward until they struck the Japan current, which they followed across the ocean until they reached the vicinity of Cape Mendocino, then sailed along the coast to Acapulco. Viscaino started from Acapulco May 5, 1602, with three ships and 160 men. Following substantially the course that Cabrillo had taken, he anchored in Cabrillo's Bay of San Miguel, which he called San Diego, in honor of his flagship. He remained there ten days, then proceeded up the coast and on the 26th anchored in a bay which he called Ensenada de San Andreas, now San Pedro. He visited Cabrillo's San Salvador, to which he gave the present name of Santa Catalina and changed the name of Vitoria to San Clemente. He gave the name of Santa Barbara to that channel and visited the channel islands. He saw many towns on the mainland and the natives came off in their canoes and visited the vessels. On Dec. 16th Viscaino entered Monterey Bay, as he named it in honor of the Viceroy who had fitted out the expedition. The scurvy had broken out on ship and sixteen men were already dead. The San Tomás was sent back to Acapulco with the sick; with his two remaining vessels Viscaino continued his voyage northward, reaching Cape Blanco. But at this point he, too, was compelled to turn backward. The scurvy had made fearful inroads on his crews and after eleven months' absence, Viscaino reached Mazlatan, having lost nearly half of his crew. He wrote the King a glowing account of the Bay of Monterey and the surrounding country, which he pictured as almost a terrestial paradise. His object was to induce the King to establish a settlement on Monterey Bay. In this he was doomed to disappointment; delay followed delay until hope vanished. Finally, in 1606, orders came from Philip III to the Viceroy to fit out immediately an expedition for the occupation and settlement of Monterey, of which Viscaino was to be the commander. In the midst of his preparation for carrying out the dearest object of his life, Viscaino died and the expedition was abandoned. Had it not been for the untimely death of this explorer, a colony would have been planted upon the Pacific coast of California, a year before the first settlement was made on the Atlantic coast of North America.
Two hundred and twenty-seven years had passed since the ships of Cabrillo had first cut the waters that lap the shores of Alta California and yet through all these years the interior of the vast country whose seacoast he had visited remained unknown. For more than two centuries the Manila galleons had sailed down the coast on their return voyage from the islands; yet after the death of Viscaino no other attempt had been made to find a refuge on the California coast for the storm tossed and scurvy afflicted mariners of the Phillippine trade.