Issue No. 10, June 2002
The cdrom is well worth purchasing and Brian Sandford is to be congratulated on the production of such a wonderful and useful work. It becomes so easy to check old issues of the Society's journal, especially the early ones, which predate one's memnbership.
This seems a bad decision and shows a lack of respect to Cook, typical of local government in New Zealand these days. Given that Gisborne's association with Cook is a major reason for tourists to visit the region and hence a source of money, it is even more insulting.
(This is a version of a paper presented at the 2002 New Zealand Map Society Conference, held in Hamilton, February 2002.)
It comes as a surprise to many New Zealanders when they venture into remote Fiordland in Southwest New Zealand to find names of Spanish origin. Features in Doubtful Sound possess such names and they form a legacy for one of the shortest visits ever made to this country, one of nine hours duration by a Spanish expedition. That visit and a contemporary visit by a British expedition remain largely unknown and, in this paper, I hope to redress the situation by shedding some light on two important pieces of Pacific history.
At the end of the eighteenth century, two expeditions sailed from Europe into the Pacific Ocean. One was from Spain, the other from Britain, and they shared much in common. Both lasted for several years and both made considerable achievements in the fields of science and cartography. They made fleeting visits to New Zealand but, in the short times they were here, both left their mark by producing charts and naming features. The leaders of both expeditions returned to Europe and, instead of being hailed as heroes, both soon fell foul of the establishment.
Map 1: New Zealand and Southeast Australia. The map shows the tracks of Malaspina's and Vancouver's ships in the Southwest Pacific.
Map 2: Fiordland, New Zealand. The map shows in more detail the tracks of the ships around Fiordland.
The Spanish expedition, led by Alessandro Malaspina, left Cadiz in Spain in June 1789 and returned there in September 1794. It touched into Doubtful Sound in Fiordland in February 1793. The British expedition, under the command of George Vancouver, had been in Fiordland 14 months earlier in November 1791. Vancouver was away from Britain from April 1791 until September 1795.
For over 250 years, since the ships of Magellan had crossed the Pacific Ocean, the Spanish had regarded it as their sole preserve. They controlled the Philippine Islands in the west and had conquered the eastern seaboard, America, from Chile in the south to California in the north. Their ships, "the Manila Galleons", plied across the ocean between Callao (the port for Lima in Peru), Manila in the Philippines, Panama, and Acapulco in Mexico. Other Europeans made occasional sorties but were not regarded with much concern by the Spanish.
The Spanish chose, however, not to venture into the North Pacific, north of 50ºN, which allowed the Russians to explore and extend their influence into this region. Very occasionally, Spanish ships did sail north but documentary evidence of these voyages was sketchy so it has always been very unclear where they visited. Then, in 1741, Bering and Chirikov led a Russian expedition, which caused the Spanish to stir themselves. The Viceroy of Mexico had a new port developed at San Blas on Mexico's west coast and slowly ships from here began to sail north to explore the region.
The possibility of a Northwest Passage from the Pacific through to the Atlantic had interested European sailors for many years and in the late eighteenth century several expeditions were deployed to look for it. Among these was that of the British sailor, James Cook. In 1778, on his third Pacific voyage, Cook visited the American coast from 45ºN as far as Alaska and in the course of his voyage north up the coast he traded with the local people for sea otter pelts. These were eventually sold for considerable profit at Macao. The news of this commercial success soon spread and, in 1785, the first of what would soon become a small fleet of British and American ships arrived on the Northwest coast of America to exploit the poor sea otter. Most of the ships based themselves in Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island, where Cook had stayed for several weeks.
Suddenly, the Spanish were jolted from their complacency and they set about restoring their dominance in the region by establishing a base in Nootka. They claimed prior knowledge of the port by dint of the voyage made in 1774 by Perez, who had anchored off the entrance of the sound. Matters reached a head in 1790 when Martinez arrested a British fur trader named James Colnett. John Meares, a partner of Colnett, made representations to the British Parliament and the Nootka Incident nearly became the cause of war between Spain and Britain.
The British had been planning a voyage to the North Pacific and now it was given a new impetus. Its new commander, George Vancouver, as well as carrying out surveying and charting work in the region was directed to go to Nootka to represent the British Government there and ensure that matters did not escalate while the governments continued to negotiate.
George Vancouver was 34 years old and had been to the Pacific twice before on the second and third voyages of Captain Cook, from whom he had learned much about seamanship, surveying and health aboard long voyages. His expedition, which left Falmouth in April 1791, comprised two ships (a third was to meet up with them at Nootka). Vancouver commanded the Discovery while William Broughton was in charge of the Chatham. Vancouver took the ships down the Atlantic and across the Indian Ocean to Southwest Australia. From here, he sailed on to reach Dusky Sound in Southwest New Zealand in November 1791. Vancouver had been there before with Cook in 1773.
At about the same time, Alessandro Malaspina, in command of the Spanish expedition to the Pacific, was in Acapulco in Mexico. Malaspina had been born in 1754 at Mulazzo, near Parma in Northern Italy, then subject to the Bourbon throne in Spain. When he was eight, the family moved south to Sicily where his uncle was a dignitary of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, again under Spanish rule. After schooling in Rome, where he distinguished himself in science and philosophy, Malaspina, at the age of 14, joined the Spanish Navy, enrolling in the Naval College at San Fernando, near Cadiz as a midshipman.
Malaspina was soon fighting the British at Cape St. Vincent and learning the skills of seamanship on a variety of voyages. On his second voyage to Manila in the Philippines in 1787, Malaspina arrived just a month after the French explorer, Jean Francois Galaup de Laperouse had been in the port. Malaspina would have learned of Laperouse's exploits and, coming after those of Cook, he began to form ideas for a similar scientific voyage of exploration that would help restore Spain's reputation. (The Governor of Chile, Ambrosio O'Higgins, was submitting similar plans to Madrid after also meeting Laperouse in 1786).
When Malaspina returned to Spain in 1788, he submitted his plans and they were accepted. He was commissioned to lead a scientific voyage to the Pacific and, in July 1789, Malaspina in the Descubierta (Discovery) and Jose de Bustamente in the Atrevida (Audacious) sailed from Cadiz. They made steady progress down the Atlantic to Argentina and Chile where they began to carefully survey the intricate coasts and many offshore islands. Following stops in Northern Chile, Peru and Panama, the ships arrived in Acapulco in April 1791 where they learned about their new orders. A new Spanish report had appeared claiming to have located the Northwest Passage and Malaspina was ordered to sail north to confirm this report.
Malaspina, therefore, instead of visiting Hawaii, took his two ships north and investigated Yakutat Bay and Prince William Sound in Alaska before heading to Nootka in late July. After a short stay he sailed back to Acapulco, which he reached in the November, about the time Vancouver was in Dusky. The Viceroy of Mexico had issued an order for the Strait of Juan de Fuca, south of Nootka, to be explored properly and Malaspina took responsibility. He commandeered two small vessels, the Sutil and the Mexicana, and placed them under two of his officers, Dionisio Alcala Galiano and CayetanoValdez. These ships left the expedition and sailed north to undertake charting, which would support Spanish claims in the area.
The rest of the Spanish expedition then sailed right across the Pacific to Guam and on to Manila where they stopped for six months. Some of the structure and purpose of the voyage seems to have left the Spanish by then so that, when they left Manila in November 1792, they appear a little aimless. They sailed east, north of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, before heading south. Cook's influence was again to the fore as he had seen and named an inlet in New Zealand, Doubtful Sound.
Cook had not entered the inlet so Malaspina now determined to investigate and, in late February 1793, the Descubierta and the Atrevida reached the New Zealand coast off Dusky Sound. They worked north up the coast and the ships stood off the entrance to Doubtful Sound on the 25 February. Bauza, the expedition's cartographer was sent in a small boat to explore and chart the lower reaches of the sound. He passed to the south of an island that lies in the centre of the sound and landed on its southeastern point to check instruments. After a cursory look further to the east, he returned along the north shore of the island to the ships. Malaspina decided against further exploration and sailed off to Sydney to observe the new British colony there.
Map 3: Doubtful Sound (Puerto Dudoso). The map shows the track of Bauza's investigation of the entrance to Doubtful Sound.
The Spanish visit to Doubtful had only been for nine hours but Bauza produced a reasonably correct chart from his observations. He honoured his companions by naming several features after them, while the small central island was named after him and an inner stretch of the sound was called Canal de Malaspina (Malaspina Reach). In the short time ashore, Bauza met no people or signs of them but discovered the swarms of sandflies and offered the alternative name for the island, Isla de Mosquitos). Bauza was unaware that Vancouver had been in Breaksea Sound, just to the south, a year earlier and had proven that Doubtful and Breaksea Sounds were not connected. He mistakenly postulated that Canal de Malaspina led to Bahia Obscura (Dusky Sound) and this idea persisted through the nineteenth century as Mac's Passage.
Vancouver had sailed into Dusky Sound on 2 November 1791 and positioned his ships in the north of the sound while a safer anchorage was found. A gale blew up making finding a safe anchorage an imperative. They managed to sail the ships into a harbour on the north side of Anchor Island. James Cook had left little to do in Dusky in the way of charting so Vancouver concentrated on restocking and repairing the ships over the three weeks they stayed there. However, the charts for the area around Facile Harbour and Anchor Island were tidied up.
Map 4: Breaksea Sound. The map shows Vancouver's journey from Dusky Sound to Breaksea Sound to finish Cook's works and show "somebody knows what!".
Cook had left one puzzle though in Breaksea Sound to the north and Vancouver determined to solve the mystery. Cook had not pursued that inlet to its head and marked his chart with "nobody knows what". Vancouver set out with a party in several of the small boats and they rowed past Long Island and up Resolution Passage (it was later renamed Acheron Passage) to Breaksea. He found that the inlet divided and he pursued the northern arm while Broughton rowed up the southern one. After a short time they both reached the end of their respective inlets and turned back. They met again and returned to the ships. Dusky and Breaksea Sounds had been shown to be unconnected to any other inlets and Vancouver added the words "somebody knows what" to the chart.
Later, others remembered Vancouver, Broughton and their ships by naming features in Breaksea Sound after them. A point in Dusky was named after Joseph Whidbey, the Master of the Discovery. The ships left Dusky on 22 November and sailed south to clear New Zealand and head for Tahiti. A gale soon struck and the ships were parted.
To the south of New Zealand, the ships separately discovered a group of rocks and islets, which Vancouver called The Snares because of their lurking appearance and in the hope it would cause other ships to give them a wide berth. (Broughton reached them a few hours later and called them Knight's Islands, after a friend). Vancouver sailed on and the next land he saw was in the Austral Islands, south of Tahiti.
Map 5: The Snares. The map shows the separate tracks of Vancouver and Broughton past these islets.
The Chatham, though, sighted land again on 29 November when it approached the island now known as Chatham Island. Broughton steered along the north shore before anchoring off a small bay. He took a small party ashore where they met several hundred Moriori, the local people. Attempts were made at communicating but something happened and the British fired their guns, resulting in one Moriori being killed. Broughton returned to the Chatham and sailed off to Tahiti where he was reunited with Vancouver. The bay was named Skirmish Bay but this has not been retained and it is known by its local name, Kaingaroa Harbour.
Map 6: Chatham Island. The map shows Broughton's track along the north coast of the island and his landing at Kaingaroa Harbour (Skirmish Bay).
Vancouver led his expedition on from Tahiti via Hawaii. He would visit these islands three times and built up a very close relationship with Kamehameha who would soon unite all the islands under his rule. Kamehameha became very pro-British because of Vancouver and this is the reason Hawaii still retains the Union Jack in its flag. Vancouver sailed up the California and Oregon coasts to enter the Strait of Juan de Fuca in late April 1792. He was beginning what would prove, over three years, one of the marine surveys of all time. Beginning with Puget Sound, near present-day Seattle, Vancouver charted the continental shore and most of its offshore islands north to Prince William Sound and Cook Inlet in Alaska.
A few weeks later, after returning from one of his surveying trips, Vancouver was surprised to find two other European vessels at anchor with his own ships at Birch Bay, between present-day Bellingham and Vancouver. They were the Sutil and the Mexicana, under the command of Malaspina's officers Galiano and Valdes. Over the next few weeks the two expeditions worked together and shared information before they all moved on to Nootka Sound where Vancouver began negotiations with Bodega y Quadra to resolve Spanish-British problems about sovereignty of the region. In his journey to reach Nootka, Vancouver had shown that Nootka was on the western shore of a large island. Given the friendship that developed between himself and Bodega, Vancouver named the island Quadra and Vancouver's Island. Subsequently, Quadra was dropped from the name.
Vancouver remained in the North Pacific charting the American and Hawaiian coasts until December 1794 when he set off back for Britain. For some time Vancouver had been ill so that it had prevented him taking part in active surveys and had affected his relationship with and treatment of his crew. He did not receive the acclaim he might have expected on his arrival in London in September 1795, having made several enemies on board. These people had more influence with members of the establishment, such as Sir Joseph Banks, and Vancouver was even derided and lampooned. He set about writing up his journals and logs for publication as the official narrative but he was already dying despite being only 38 years old on his return. Vancouver's brother John had to help him finish the task but George died before its completion. He had never married and was only 40. The "Voyage" was published in 1798.
Meanwhile, after a short stay in Sydney, Malaspina had sailed to Vava'u, the central island group of Tonga where he remained for a month. They then began their slow return to Spain via Callao in Peru, Cape Horn and Montevideo. Cadiz was reached in September 1794.
Malaspina had observed the poor conditions of most people in several of Spain's colonies and believed that changes and improvements were necessary. Without changes Malaspina opined that the colonies would revolt and he was proved correct not long after. On his return to Spain, he made his views known and was openly critical of several prominent politicians, including Manuel Godoy, one of the King's closest advisors. Malaspina was arrested in 1795 and, after a peremptory trial, was sentenced to ten years imprisonment. In April 1796, he was taken to La Coruna and placed in gaol. His journals, logs and papers had been taken away from him so he was unable to write up the narrative of his expedition. The Spanish authorities made no effort to publish the results of the expedition and so it remained and remains largely unknown and unrecognised.
In 1803, Malaspina was released, after representations by Napoleon, but only if he left Spain immediately. He was sent by sea to Genoa and settled in Pontremoli, not far from his birthplace in Mulazzo. He had no immediate family and presumably lived out his days alone until he died there of cancer of the colon in April 1810, aged 56.
So both these seamen died alone and unheralded. The roles of Malaspina and Vancouver in Pacific and New Zealand history remain largely unknown and ignored but it is perhaps fitting though, that as far as New Zealand is concerned, their names are remembered together. They added to our knowledge of this country and now somebody definitely knows what! Two of the peaks on the ridge immediately to the north of Mount Cook have been called Mount Vancouver and Malaspina. They are both worthy of standing side-by-side up there next to Cook.
Map 7: The Mount Cook / Aoraki Massif. The map shows the location of the two peaks that have been named after the two explorers, Vancouver and Malaspina.
Appendix 1: Place names associated with Malaspina.
Appendix 2: Place names associated with Vancouver.
(Only the names, The Snares, Chatham Island, and the features listed for Chatham Island, were ascribed by Vancouver and his colleagues. All the others were given much later).
A book previously announced by Trish Kline has not been published.
Review by John Robson of
Meltzer, Milton. Captain James Cook: three times around the world.
New York: Benchmark Books, 2002. 0761412409.
and
Shields, Charles J.James Cook and the exploration of the Pacific.
Philadephia: Chelsea House, 2002. 0791064220
These are two similar books published in the USA and aimed at children. The books are titles in series about exploration and have a somewhat formulaic feel about them. They have texts that are simple and easy to read, with no glaring errors. Both are well illustrated. They are, however, the latest in a long line of titles aimed at children and offer little that has not been published before.
Vanessa Collingridge's book on Cook has received reasonable coverage, including Vanessa being interviewed on Geoff Robinson's morning show on National Radio. The book has, however, just received two unjustifiably negative reviews in the Evening Post and the Listener. The book has some faults but overall it is a good and fair telling of the Cook story. Personally, I would have liked less Cook and more about George Collingridge, the ideas he proposed, and examples and explanations of the maps Collingridge used to form his views.
Please feel free to contribute to this newsletter and send articles, letters, news, etc for inclusion in future editions. Back issues may be seen at NZ James Cook Journal. Perhaps people would like to introduce themselves and give details about their interest in Cook.
12 June 2002
John Robson
232 b Old Farm Road, Hamilton
home ph 07-856-4807 jcr@quicksilver.net.nz
work ph 07-856-2889 x 6522 j.robson@waikato.ac.nz
