A scant 87 years after Christopher Columbus found the New World, Sir Francis Drake let a brilliant clandestine exploration of the coasts of British Columbia, southeast Alaska, Washington and Oregon and chose Vancouver Island as the site for England's first oversea colony.

Because Drake believed that he had discovered the Pacific entrance to the strategically vital Northwest Passage, the details of his astonishing journey were shrouded in secrecy by Queen Elizabeth I's order and then were forgotten for another four centuries.

Now, after five centuries of research into ancient maps and documents and an extensive review of my work by experts in the fields of historical cartography and Elizabethan maritime enterprise, it appears certain that the first European sighting of British Columbia occurred some two centuries earlier than previously thought.

I can now begin unveiling an extraordinary chapter in the history of this Northwest Coast of America and, indeed, in the history of global exploration.