Juan de Fuca’s Strait
Local author and historian Barry Gough tells readers about explorer Juan de Fuca and the history of the strait he claims to have visited in 1592.
Historian and author Barry Gough has been writing about the Pacific Coast for nearly 40 years. He is author of many books, including Fortune’s a River: The Collision of Empires in Northwest America ( Harbour, 2007), which won the John Lyman Book Award for best Canadian naval and maritime history. The Victoria author’s latest book is Juan de Fuca’s Straight: Voyages in the Waterway of Forgotten Dreams. Below, he tells us about the book and why he chose this topic.
Since my earliest days here in these waters as a boater and sailor, I have always been enchanted by the story of the ancient Greek mariner who sailed for the mighty King of Spain for 40 years. I have lived by his waterway most of my life, but I have only recently uncovered his secret past. Like the ancient mariner, his tale tugs at our sleeve while the more exciting events of the wedding are taking place.
He had always expected more from life but was dealt a nasty hand. Robbed by the English pirate Cavendish off of Cabo San Lucas, he felt aggrieved and wanted compensation from Elizabeth Regina. But if that were not all, the story comes right into our waters of the Pacific Northwest, and right into the heart of the story of initial contact with First Nations, and the hot rivalry between Britain and Spain for control of the coast and rights of trade. The story begins one hundred years after Columbus. Juan de Fuca claimed he made a voyage from Acapulco to our waters in 1592. He says he entered the strait which now bears his name, and with uncanny accuracy gave it is correct latitudes. He says he sailed into a great waterway. Boastfully, however, he claims to have sailed all the way to the Atlantic — which was impossible.
At the entrance of his strait he described a great pillar rock — which still exists — and mariners who sailed these seas in the late 1780s were on the look out for it. Charles Duncan found it and identified it as Fuca’s Pillar in 1788.
The name to the strait was given in 1787 by Captain Charles William Barkley. His young bride Frances Hornby Trevor recounted how when the ship in which they were sailing, the Imperial Eagle, was coasting down from Barkley Sound, spied this great waterway opening up grandly before them. Charles immediately put two and two together and said, yes, this is what Juan de Fuca was talking about.
All of these famed mariners were making “Voyages in the Waterway of Forgotten Dreams,” as I call them. Fuca was dreaming of recovering his losses and of becoming famous. Duncan hoped to make a killing in the sea otter trade. Barkley and others opened trade to China in sea otter pelts gathered near the entrance to the Strait. American traders came into the waterway, too — notably Robert Gray in the ship Columbia, the first to carry the Stars and Stripes around the world. History is about forgotten dreams, and that leads me to the next point.
I love writing about characters. Their lives are worth looking at. Even the lesser characters, who often tell us so much about the big heroes, the ones that get all the attention. How many books do we need about Franklin and his ships? I thought Pierre Berton had ended that years ago. Or the Titanic? There’s an insatiable interest from the consumer’s point of view. Fair enough.
But what about those of us who want to write original history and biography? Are there new stories to tell? Do we continue to reinvent the wheel? Or should we spend our time trying to tell other, equally compelling stories — about strange and wonderful lives lived, about trials and tragedy, about unrequited love or of a great mariner who sailed the Pacific and ended his life as the subject of bitter sweet fame?
I suppose as an historian and boater I have a natural inclination to say something new.
We need to enrich our historical fabric. We need to understand that we have come from a very complex past. And, oh yes, the mariner in question came from Cephelonia, and his real name was Apostolos Valerianos, which means Gallant Messenger. I would like to see this most famous Greek of Canadian history given his rightful place. He was a “gallant messenger” in more ways than just in his name. His story opens up the Pacific world to us — and how we were first linked to Asia, and especially to China by way of the sea otter trade.
Barry Gough will be giving a slide show, talk and book signing in the Alma Van Dusen & Peter Kaye rooms at the Vancouver Public Library, 350 W. Georgia St., on Nov. 26 at 7 p. m. For more information, please call the library at 604- 331- 3603.