Attribution of a Prayer

Today, the commencement speaker) at my graduation, the Administrator of NASA, (did you know he is an Episcopalian?) quoted from the Prayers of the People of The Book of Common Prayer. Or so he claimed... (I know the Prayers of the People well enough to tell his attribution was incorrect).

I initially thought it was a prayer from Enriching Our Worship . My father thought it was from the New Zealand Prayer Book. A little work with Google suggested It was a slightly modernized version of a prayer of Sir Francis Drake re-posted here and quoted as such in very recently published collections of prayers. (Other prayers are attributed to Drake, including an adaptation of one of his prayers used for propaganda purposes during World War II.)

The earliest reference I can find to the prayer is in a 1985 issue of the newsletter of the National Cathedral. It's quoted in The Witness the next year. Unfortunately, I can't figure out to whom the prayer was attributed in those publications. But its origins do lie at the door of the Episcopal Church, just not in The Book of Common Prayer .