Acapulco, Sebastian Vizcaino, Junipero Serra.

Another excursion was organized In 1596. Sebastian Vizcaino headed north and reached the port of Santa Cruz and renamed it La Paz, the name he also gave to the bay. Six years later he again faced new oceanic hazards, setting sail from Acapulco. There, Diego de Santiago, an important scribe in New Spain, began a report in the following manner: “Jesus, Mary and Joseph. In the ship named His Majesty’s ‘San Diego’, which serves as a lead vessel toward the aim of the new discovery of the ports and bays and coves along the coast of the Southern Sea, from Cape Mendocino to the Port of Acapulco, on the twentieth day of the month of May in the year 1602, General Sebastian Vizcaino, under whose command and order are these people of the sea and war and the vessels disposed to said discovery in the name of the King, Our Lord, said: that he bears orders and instructions of YImo, Lord Count of Monterrey, Viceroy and Captain General of New Spain, to the manner and disposition of said discovery ...”

Vizcaino explored beyond Cape Mendocino, until he reached the mouth of a river in which he thought he had found the western extreme of the imagined Straits of Anian, the Northwest Passage. And, of course, he also found the California port that he called Monterrey, in honor of his Viceroy, Gaspar de Zuniga y Acevedo, Count of Monterrey.

During the rest of the Seventeenth Century and for a good part of the Eighteenth, there were no similar discoveries. In 1774 the commander Juan Perez set his keels against the ocean currents from San Blas, in Nayarit. His purpose was “an expedition of discovery which is commonly called ‘goin from here to Russia” as he said in a letter, but in fact he was headed toward Alaska, which then belonged to the Czars. With him sailed Fray Jumpero Serra, who put ashore in San Diego. Serra had worked over the previous seven years toward what he called his “spiritual conquest of New or Upper California.” Perez and his crew were the first Americans of European descent to set foot on Alaskan soil. Other sailors from New Spain were to travel still farther, to the distant Aleutians.

Another memorable expedition of those times took place under Alejandro Malaspina. He sailed from Cadiz in July of 1789, landed in Acapulco in February of 1791 and on May First of the same year (225 years after the first Clipper had sailed from Acapulco to the Philippines), encharged with the discovery of the Straits of Anian or the natural passageway between the Pacific and the Atlantic, this Italian navigator, accompanied by naturalists Antonio Pineda, Tadeus Haenke and Louis Nee, guided his Corvettes “Discovery” and “Daring” (the names of saints were disappearing from the Spanish fleet) ever northward.

However, if the passageway was a figment of history, to what purpose were Malaspina’s efforts, and the collaboration of the scientists he carried on board? They of course failed to find their legendary transcontinental waterway but at least, from those flimsy vessels, they managed to study the orography along the Alaskan coast, they established the height of Mount San Elias, they laid the groundwork for later cartographers in the area, and, before beginning their return journey to Acapulco -a port they had carefully mapped beforehand- they meticulously observed the flora and fauna of the cold inland and the warmer coastline. In October of 1791 they even navigated the Bay of Behring. A worthy achievement.