PETER CARDER'S STRANGE ADVENTURES REVEALED

Abstract

Peter Carder, one of Francis Drake’s sailors during his famous voyage around the world (1577–80), was born in Saint Verian, Cornwall. Carder’s travel account containing his vicissitudes in South America was published in Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas His Pilgrimes (London, 1625), and has apparently been accepted at face value ever since. The purpose of this article is to conduct a brief analysis of major inconsistencies and contradictions found in his narrative, drawing on supplemental factual and ethnographic data. New light will be cast on this Elizabethan seaman who seems to have exaggerated his story to make it more heroic. There is, however, another possibility: Carder’s narrative may have been ‘edited’ by Samuel Purchas to meet the expectations of his adventure-hungry readership.1 (Fig. 1)