Description
Leon Bocqueraz was a San Francisco banker and the employer of William Caldeira, who claimed to have been the original finder of Drake’s Plate of Brass. Francis Drake was an English explorer who posted a brass plaque in the location of his 1579 landing in Northern California. Caldeira, who was Bocqueraz’s chauffeur, supposedly found Drake’s Plate during his employer’s hunting trip near the shores of Drake's Bay in 1933. While Drake’s Plate is now considered a forgery, prior to the late 1970s it was considered to be authentic, though the original location of Drake’s posting of the plaque had still been unknown. In this interview, Bocqueraz discusses the night of the 1933 hunting trip when Caldeira showed him the plate.