grinner
06-04-2004, 09:10 AM
An explorer blown off course from fame
John Noble Wilford NYT
Thursday, June 3, 2004
PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island Captain James Cook needs no introduction. Son of the commonest soil of Yorkshire, he rose to command three voyages that opened European minds to the wide world of the Pacific Ocean and epitomized maritime exploration in the 18th-century Enlightenment. Even his cruel death, in 1779, only magnified his heroic reputation.
.
Then there is Alejandro Malaspina, Spain's answer to Cook. He led a five-year scientific expedition, from 1789 to 1794, that charted the western coast of the Americas and traversed the Pacific as far as the Philippines, with a side trip to China. Yet Malaspina might as well have sailed off the edge of the earth, so forgotten have he and his achievements been in the annals of exploration. On his return to Spain, he ran aground on the shoals of domestic politics and was thrown in prison; his journals were suppressed and his name was virtually stricken from Spanish history.
.
Finally, Malaspina is being rescued from oblivion. A comprehensive edition of his journals was published by the Naval Museum in Madrid in 1990, and English translations - "The Malaspina Expedition, 1789-1794" - are being issued by the Hakluyt Society, a London organization that publishes accounts of geographical discovery. The second volume was introduced in April at a symposium here at the John Carter Brown Library. The final English volume is to be published at the end of the year. Article continues (http://www.iht.com/articles/523118.html)
John Noble Wilford NYT
Thursday, June 3, 2004
PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island Captain James Cook needs no introduction. Son of the commonest soil of Yorkshire, he rose to command three voyages that opened European minds to the wide world of the Pacific Ocean and epitomized maritime exploration in the 18th-century Enlightenment. Even his cruel death, in 1779, only magnified his heroic reputation.
.
Then there is Alejandro Malaspina, Spain's answer to Cook. He led a five-year scientific expedition, from 1789 to 1794, that charted the western coast of the Americas and traversed the Pacific as far as the Philippines, with a side trip to China. Yet Malaspina might as well have sailed off the edge of the earth, so forgotten have he and his achievements been in the annals of exploration. On his return to Spain, he ran aground on the shoals of domestic politics and was thrown in prison; his journals were suppressed and his name was virtually stricken from Spanish history.
.
Finally, Malaspina is being rescued from oblivion. A comprehensive edition of his journals was published by the Naval Museum in Madrid in 1990, and English translations - "The Malaspina Expedition, 1789-1794" - are being issued by the Hakluyt Society, a London organization that publishes accounts of geographical discovery. The second volume was introduced in April at a symposium here at the John Carter Brown Library. The final English volume is to be published at the end of the year. Article continues (http://www.iht.com/articles/523118.html)