Showing the flag

Press, 11 February 1983, Page 16

Showing the flag

The Queen is coming for her first look at a part of America claimed in the name of Elizabeth I more than 400 years ago. Sir Francis Drake, roaming the Pacific to harry and plunder Spanish galleons, careened his Golden Hind on a Marin County beach in 1579 to have the barnacles scraped from its bottom. He stayed long enough to tell the astonished Indians that they were now residents of New Albion and subjects of the English realm.

It was almost 300 years before the English came back to settle. It was then too late; the Spaniards, the Russians, the Mexicans, and finally, the Americans, had moved in. Elizabeth II will arrive at

San Diego aboard the Britannia on February 28, and faces a busy round of social events there, at Palm Springs, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Seattle, before rejoining Britannia on March 7 and sailing to British Columbia. The Queen is said to want to do some walkabouts in the streets of San Francisco, but the national Secret Service and the San Francisco police are nervous about that. This city has a large and sensitive Irish-oriented population. It includes some truculently anti-British elements in which there is some clandestine fund-raising for terrorism in Northern Ireland. When Prince Charles visited San Francisco in 1977,

there were Irish demonstrations against him including the parading of black coffins. San Francisco’s police department has traditionally been largely manned and commanded by Irish descendants, althoug'h the proportion has diminished in recent years, with changes both natural and mandated. The long line of police chiefs has been an almost unbroken roster of Irish names. The chief now is Cornelius Murphy. Two of the four deputy chiefs are James Shannon and James Ryan. The head of the intelligence division, keeping an eye on potential Irish protesters, is Captain Daniel Murphy. From JOHN HUTCHISON in San Francisco