Every sport has its legends, many undoubtedly verging on the apocryphal and bowls is certainly no different in this respect to any other. One of the most enduring and widespread of all sporting tales is that of Sir Francis Drake and his famous roll up on Plymouth Hoe. Whether this comes under the banner of fact or fiction is difficult to say although on available evidence it would seem likely that such a match did indeed take place but not at the spot indicated by Charles Kingsley in his Westward Ho!  Or by the famous Seymour Lucas painting, which must grace the walls of countless, bowling clubhouses all over the world. E J Linney, Official Press Representative of the English Bowling Association during the early thirties, carried out considerable research with regard to the authenticity of the legend for his book A History of the game of Bowls (T Werner Laurie 1933) but was unable to unearth any hard evidence of this game being played at all. A Mr R.J. Tittal, Town Clerk of Plymouth in 1932, informed him that the city?s records contained no mention of the game and C.W.Bracken, author of ?A History of Plymouth?, insisted in a letter that ?any attempt to connect the site of the present bowling green on the Hoe with the present one is absurd. In Drakes days was bounded by the shores of Sutton Port on one side and the Wall, which ran from the Castle in a circle, enclosing St Andrew?s Church and the adjacent buildings to the head of the Old Town, and so back to the Pool. Any bowling green on the ?Hoe? therefore, would necessarily have been on the lower eastern landward slopes. Plymouth archives contain no such record of any Pelican Inn, the hostelry behind which the game was supposed to have taken place and there is general agreement that the true site of the green was in an area close by the towns Citadel, a fortification constructed shortly after the engagement with the Spanish Fleet.