Abstract
In the late summer months of 1797, Tomás Mauricio López, son of famous cartographer Tomás López de Vargas y Machuca, published a beautiful map depicting the archipelago of the Marquesas as well as Easter Island. According to the geo-historical tradition inherited from his father, López was to perform a careful historical study of existing charts in an effort to craft a map by utilizing the longitudinal readings from the Teide Mountain located on the Canary Island of Tenerife.2 López’s map, however, deviated from this accepted geo-historical practice. Although the chart meant to highlight earlier Spanish encounters with the depicted islands in the Pacific, its longitudinal readings were unorthodox. The prime meridian guiding the map derived not from the volcano Teide, but from the Royal Observatory located in Greenwich. In short, López had based his geo-historical analysis almost entirely on the readings of James Cook’s second circumnavigation (1772–1775).
Following in the footsteps of our dear comrades who took the frigate Aguila on her two voyages to Tahiti, we will give testimony of our genuine spirit of discovery, [and prove those wrong] who dwell on the ancient and ponderous narratives of conquest.
Alejandro Malaspina, 17891
I have delivered to [Valdés] an essay, which he ordered me to compile the voyage of an ancient Spanish navigator. My report was not the only one supporting the apocryphal nature of this account, as Malaspina recently confirmed [my findings] during his exploration of the North American coast. A new order is now under way to expand my memorial to include [the results of] Malaspina’s expedition and others that have been performed in this region.
Martín Fernández de Navarrete to José Vargas Ponce, 1792
History is the Nation’s finest apologia
Martín Fernández de Navarrete, 1802
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Notes
Consult in this regard Juan Pimentel, En el panóptico del Mar del Sur: Origines y desarrollo de la visita australiana de la expedición Malaspina (1793) (Madrid: CSIC, 1992).
Robert J. King, The Secret History of the Convict Colony: Alexandro Malaspina’s Report on the British Settlement of New South Wales (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990). The apt term, “floating embassy,” is taken from Pimentel’s chapter 6 entitled, la embajada itinerante.
Aricle CXXIX of Floridablanca’s secret instruction to the State Council, June 8, 1787 in Antonio Ferrer del Rio, Obras Originales del Conde de Floridablanca (Madrid: M. Rivadeneyra, 1867), 253.
Quote stems from Revilla Gigedo to Antonio Valdés, December 27, 1789, AGI, Mexico, 1530; Martínez’s proposal can be found in a letter to Revilla Gigedo dated June 24, 1789, AHN, Estado 2927. See also Donald Cutter, “The Spanish in Hawaii: Gayetan to Marin,” The Hawaiian Journal of History 14 (1980): 16–25.
Quimper’s report can be found in AGI, Estado 20. For an evaluation of the report, consult James Tueller, “A Spanish Naval Tourist in Hawai’i: Manuel Quimper,” Mains’l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History 41/42 (2006): 43–47.
José Cervera Pery, La Marina de la Illustracíon; for more specific projects, consult also the important work by Antonio Lafuente and Manuel Sellés, El Observatorio de Cádiz. For an overview of the hydrographical exploration, consult Salvador Bernabéu Albert, “Las expediciones hidrográficas,” in Manuel Sellés, José Luis Peset and Antonio Lafuente, Carlos III y la ciencia de la Ilustración (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1988), 353–370.
Vicente Tofiño, Antonio Valdes, and José Vargas Ponce, Derrotero de las costas de España en el Mediterraneo y su correspondiente de Africa para inteligencia y uso de cartas esfericas … (Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, 1787).
Vicente Tofiño, Antonio Valdes, and José Vargas Ponce, Derrotero de las costas de España en el Mediterraneo y su correspondiente de Africa para inteligencia y uso de cartas esfericas … (Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, 1787); Vicente Tofiño and Antonio Valdes, Derrotero de las costas de España en el Océano Atlántico y de las islas Azores ó Terceras … (Madrid: Viuda de Ibarra, 1789).
Capel, Geographia y Matematicas, 247–253; Luisa Martín-Meras and Francisco José Gonzáles, La Dirección de Trabajos Hidrográficos (1797–1908) vol. 1. (Madrid: Lunwerg, 2003), 40–41.
Two informative articles on this expedition are Maria Dolores Gonzalez-Ripoll Navarro, “La expedición del Atlas de la América Septentrional (1792–1810) Revista de Indias L (1990): 767–788.
Luisa Martín-Merás, “La expedición hidro- gráfica de la América Septentrional, 1792–1805” Journal of Latin American Geography 7 (2008): 203–218.
Andrew Cook, “Alexander Dalrymple and the Hydrographic Office,” in Alan Frost and Jane Samson, eds, Pacific Empires: Essays in Honour of Glyndwr Williams (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1999), 51–68.
On the diverse European forerunners, consult also Francisco José Gonzáles and Luisa Martin-Merás, La Direccion de Trabajos Hidrográficos (1797–1908) vol. I (Lunwerg, 2003), 25–39.
The external context of the Malaspina expedition is perhaps best explored in Andrew David, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Carlos Novi, and Glyndwr Williams, eds, The Malaspina Expedition, 1789–1794: The Journal of the Voyage by Alejandro Malaspina 3 vols. (London: Hakluyt Society, 2001–2004)
For a more Spanish-centered explanation of the expedition, consult Juan Pimentel, La física de la monarquía. For a critical assessment of the vast Malaspina papers in the Museo Naval, consult María Dolores Higuera Rodríguez, Catálogo crítico de los documentos de la expedicíon Malaspina (1789–1794) 3 vols. (Madrid, 1985–1994).
Nigel Rigby, Pieter van der Merwe and Glyn Williams, eds, Pioneers of the Pacific: Voyages of Exploration, 1787–1810 (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2005), 80–95.
See Cook, Floodtide of Empire, 307; both Maldonado’s original document and Buache’s endorsement of the same can be found in Pedro Novo y Colson, Viaje politico-científico alrededor del mundo por las corbetas Descubierta y Atrevida al Mando de los capitanes de navio Don Alejandro Malaspina y José Bustamante y Guerra desde 1789 y 1794 (Madrid: Viuda e Hijos de Abienzo, 1885), 144–149.
Ricardo Cerezo Martínez, La Expedicion Malaspina 1789–1794, vol. 1 (Madrid: Lunwerg Editores 1987), 131–132. José Espinosa and Tello would eventually publish the metrological observations, omitting all along the name of Malaspina who had fallen from grace. The volume on the Sutil and Mexicana will receive much attention below, since this monograph expertly combined received and encountered knowledge.
Juan Manuel Abascal and Rosario Cebrián, José Vargas Ponce (1760–1821) en la Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 2010), 490.
The importance of Vargas Ponce requires a much needed biography. Sketches of his life exist; see, for instance, “Noticia autobiográfico literario de Jóse Vargas Ponce” in AMN, ms. 1393. His writings occurring during some of most troubled periods of Iberian history deserve a book-length monograph. In absence of such vital biography, I limit my account to his writings and correspondence in connection with the eighteenth-century Pacific. An outline of such bibliography can be found in Fernando Durán López, José Vargas Ponce (1760–1821): Ensayo de una Bibligrafía y Crítica de sus Obras (Cadiz: University of Cadiz Press, 1997); for Vargas Ponce’s role in the Academy of History, consult Juan Manuel Abascal and Rosario Cebrián, José Vargas Ponce.
Francisco José Gonzaléz Gonzaléz, “Don José de Vargas Ponce, la astronomía, la cartografía nautical y la historia de la Marina,” in Fernando Durán López and Alberto Romero Ferrer eds, “Había bajado de Saturno:” Diez calas en la obra de José Vargas Ponce (Cádiz: Universidad de Cádiz, 1999), 199–209.
John Dougall, trans., A Voyage of Discovery to the Strait of Magellan with an Account of the Manners and the Customs of the Inhabitants … (London: Richard Phillips and Co, 1820), italics in the original. Dougall had come across Vargas Ponce’s work while translating Tofiño’s Atlas Maritimo as España Maritima or Spanish Coasting Pilot … (London: W. Faden, 1812).
José Vargas Ponce, Importancia de la historia de la marina española: precision de que se confie a un marinero (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1809).
Juan Pimentel, La física de la monarchia, 262. A critical Spanish edition of Buache’s document followed: Jean Nicholas Buache and Ciriaco Cevallos, Diserationes sobre la navegacíon a las Indias Orientales por el norte de la Europa (Cadiz, 1798); Navarrete, Coleccíon, vol. 1, lix; Warren Cook, Floodtide of Empire, 307.
Martín Fernández de Navarrete and Eustaquio Fernandez de Navarrete. Examen histórico de los viajes y descubrimientos apócritos del Capitan Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado, de Juan de Fuca y del almirante Bartolomé de Fonte (Madrid: Viuda de Caldro, 1849).
Hans Juretschke, Los Afrancesados en la Guerra de Independencia: Su genesis, desarrollo y consequencias historicas (Madrid: Ediciones Rialp, 1962), 233–242.
Fernández de Navarrete, Martín, Coleccion de los Viages y descubrimientos que hiceron por mar los españoles desde finales del siglo XV, 5 vols. Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1825–1837.
Ibid., xii–xiii. Early translators were less discriminating about Navarrete’s geographical locations concerning Columbus’s voyages. Later commentators find fault with his knowledge of Caribbean geography. See, for instance, Samuel Elliot Morrison, “Text and Translation of the Journal of Columbus’s First Voyage,” The Hispanic American Review XIX (1939): 235–261.
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© 2014 Rainer F. Buschmann
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Buschmann, R.F. (2014). On History and Hydrography. In: Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507–1899. Palgrave Studies in Pacific History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304711_6
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