# Ancient Web: Michael Turner Followed Francis Drake's Anchorages Michael Turner's In Drake's Wake preserves the notes and travel archive of a long personal effort to locate Francis Drake's historic routes, anchorages, and shore landings. 2026-10-07 :: Switchboard Tech Services ![Ancient Web: Michael Turner Followed Francis Drake's Anchorages](https://switchboardtechservices.com/static/images/defaults/articles.webp) Part of the [Ancient Web Collection](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/ancient-web-collection/). Most history projects examine where somebody went by reading a book. Michael Turner decided he needed to go to those places himself. [Visit In Drake's Wake](https://www.indrakeswake.co.uk/) Turner's long-running **In Drake's Wake** project is a geographic investigation into the life and voyages of **Sir Francis Drake**. The [homepage](https://www.indrakeswake.co.uk/) states that Turner started retracing Drake's movements in **1980**, documenting locations on slide film. Its old-style footer carries a **1997–2006** copyright range, while the pages continue to be accessible under their original-style menus. Turner credits the late **Raymond Aker**, a merchant mariner and president of the Drake Navigators Guild in California, with helping identify anchorages using voyage narratives, charts, and nautical experience. He dates that collaboration from **1983**, and says their work helped build an archive of more than **11,000 photographic slides**. Those figures are Turner's own description of the project, not an independently audited archive inventory. Still, the surviving pages demonstrate a rare amount of personal fieldwork devoted to one historical voyager. ## Shorelines matter as much as ships The site's [Drake research index](https://www.indrakeswake.co.uk/Drake/index.htm) branches into highly specific questions: whether Drake reached **La Rochelle**, where he appeared near **Calais**, what happened to treasure brought to London, and how the sailor's movements can be tracked through **Somerset** and **Kent**. One page asks whether Drake ever went to Germany; another discusses the uncertainty around his birth year and links the problem to early voyages involving the Hawkins family. The index is not a chronological summary of every sea battle. It is a sequence of location problems to be tested against documentary evidence. Turner also describes photographing copies of historical maps as part of the research. This is a useful example of the pre-smartphone method: travel, notebooks, film slides, archives, and patient correspondence becoming a website that readers could visit from anywhere. The site makes strong claims about discoveries and precision. They remain the author's interpretations unless established by further independent historical scholarship; a historic anchorage is not proved simply because a modern traveler found a plausible bay. That distinction does not diminish the Web artifact. It documents how far a committed amateur researcher could carry a project and how a personal website could preserve the resulting trail. [Explore Turner's Drake research index](https://www.indrakeswake.co.uk/Drake/index.htm) and [his project overview](https://www.indrakeswake.co.uk/). Part of the [Ancient Web Collection](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/ancient-web-collection/). - Categories: [Ancient Web](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/categories/ancient-web/) - Tags: [#ancientweb](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/ancientweb/), [#webhistory](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/webhistory/), [#photography](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/photography/), [#francisdrake](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/francisdrake/), [#explorationhistory](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/explorationhistory/) [Articles RSS](https://switchboardtechservices.com/feeds/articles.xml "Subscribe using an RSS reader") --- Canonical URL: https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/ancient-web-michael-turner-followed-francis-drakes-anchorages/ Language: en-us Content type: article Author: Switchboard Tech Services Published: 2026-10-07T08:22:27+00:00 Modified: 2026-10-18T21:03:56.591556+00:00