Fuca, Juan de

Origin and early years

Fokas's grandfather, Emanuel Fokas ( Greek Εμμανουήλ Φωκάς ), after the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman forces in 1453 fled from there, accompanied by his brother Andronicus ( Greek Ανδρόνικος ). The brothers first settled in the Peloponnese, where Andronicus eventually remained, but in 1470 Emmanuel moved to the island of Kefallinia. Jacobos ( Greek Ιάκωβος ), father of Ioannis, settled in the village of Valerianos ( Greek Βαλεριάνος ) on this island and became known as Valeriano Fokas ( Greek ο Φωκάς ο Βαλεριάνος ) to distinguish himself from his brothers.

It was in the village of Valerianos that Fokas was born in 1536. About his life, before he entered the service of the king of Spain around 1555, nothing is known.

Name

The name of the man known in history as Juan de Fuca is the subject of some confusion. While Juan de Fuca is certainly the Spanish pronunciation of the name Ioannis Focas (Greek Ιωάννης Φωκάς), some sources cite the name Apostolos Valerianos (Greek Απόστολος Βαλεριάνος) as its “real” name. It is possible that Fokas was baptized under the name Apostolos, and later adopted the name “Ioannis / Juan”, because the word “Apostle” was not used too often as a name in Spanish. Given that “Fokas / Fuca” is the surname of the sailor’s father and grandfather, the surname “Valerianos” was probably a nickname of descent from his native village, used on the island, which did not make sense in the Spanish Empire.

Early career

Juan Fuc’s first voyages were to the Far East, and he claimed to have arrived in New Spain in 1588 — a year after the English privateer Thomas Cavendish captured his Santa Ana galleon in the Philippines in November 1587 and took captured him. As a result of this, Fooka allegedly lost all his savings and a ship worth 60,000 ducats. He spent a year in English captivity and was released in 1588, after which he headed for New Spain.

Fuca was an experienced sailor who perfected his skills in the Spanish Navy. The king of Spain, he also claimed, acknowledged his experience and made him the pilot of the Spanish fleet in the West Indies (a position he held for forty years), but there are no records in the Spanish archives of his name or position or his visit to the royal court ^[4] . Before making his famous journey north along the northwest coast of North America, Fuca went to China , the Philippines and Mexico.

The Juan de Fuca Strait between the present United States of America and Canada was named in his honor by the British captain Charles Barkley , because it was located at the same latitude that Juan de Fuca designated as the location of the Anyany (Anian) Strait ^[5] .

Journey to the North

According to the story of Fook himself, he made two reconnaissance voyages on the orders of the Viceroy of New Spain, Luis de Velasco, the Marquis de Salinas, whose purpose was to find the legendary Strait of Anyang, which was believed to be the Northwest Passage connecting the Atlantic seas and the Pacific oceans. During the first voyage, the expedition had 200 soldiers and three small ships under the command of one Spanish captain (Fuca served as pilot and assistant captain), the purpose of the voyage was to find the Strait of Anyany and strengthen it for defense against the British. This expedition failed when, supposedly due to the captain’s misconduct, the soldiers rebelled and forced the expedition to return to California (it should be noted that, according to the Spanish doctrine, control over ships and fleets was divided between the military commander who was an army officer , and the commander for navigation and navigation, who was a sailor).

In 1592, during his second voyage, Fuca achieved success. Having sailed north with a caravel and pinas and a small number of armed sailors, he returned to Acapulco and claimed to have found the strait, with a large island at its mouth, at about 47 ° north latitude. The Juan de Fuca Strait is actually located at about 48 °, although Fuc’s story about swimming there is different from reality, describing the region with great differences from what it actually is ^[6] . The strait is located directly in the Puget Sound Bay System (modern state of Washington), starting from about 47 ° 59 'north latitude and continuing south to 47 ° 1' north latitude near the city of Tumwater , Washington. During the voyage, Fuca also allegedly saw a “high peak or spire of rock” - it may have been Fuca rock, a high, almost rectangular rock on the west coast of Cape Flutterry at the northwestern tip of modern Washington near the Juan de Fuca Strait, although Fuca indicated that he saw her on the other side of the strait.

Despite Velasquez’s repeated promises, Fuca never received major awards for his voyage, although he claimed to be worthy. Two years later, at the insistence of the Viceroy, Fuca went to Spain to personally talk about his swimming at court. Frustrated by the fact that he received nothing there, and disgusted when dealing with the Spaniards, the aging Greek went to rest in his house in Kefalonia.

In 1596, on his way to Kefallinia, while in Florence , he met the English citizen John Douglas, whom he told about his journey. Douglas gave him a letter of recommendation and sent it to Michael Lock, the wealthy merchant and consul of England, who had just ended up in Venice . Fuca told him of his journey, and Locke, offering his services as an intermediary, said that he could arrange for England, the arch-enemy of Spain at that time, to provide Fook with two ships to continue his search for a passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean. At the same time, Fuca hoped that the British would give him compensation for the seizure of his property in the Philippines.

Locke tried to make contact with the British government, asking for £ 100 to bring Fook to England, but the answer was delayed, and Fook eventually stayed on Kefallin. In 1602, Locke wrote a letter to Fook, but never received an answer. Lock suggested that Fuka, already an elderly man by the time they met, had died. Thanks to Lok's recordings, the story of Juan de Fuc became known in England. It was first published in 1625 by the English travel writer Samuel Portas in the book Purchas His Pilgrimes Contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells by Englishmen and others .

Since the only written evidence of Fock's journey is Lok's record — researchers could not find records of the expedition in the Spanish colonial archives — there has been much lengthy debate about his discovery and even whether he ever existed as a real person; some scholars considered Juan de Fuc to be completely fictional, and the 18th-century British explorer captain James Cook strongly doubted that the strait that Fuca claimed to have discovered existed at all ^[7] (although Cook actually passed the Juan de Fuc Strait without entrance there and stopped at the sound (lagoon) Nootka on the west coast of Vancouver Island). In subsequent English research and settlement of this area, however, Fukey's claims began to seem much more credible.

Finally, in 1859, an American researcher, with the help of the US Consul in the Ionian Islands, was able to prove that Fuca not only existed, but that his family and history were well known on the islands. While it will probably never be possible to find out if true information underlies Locke's notes, it must be taken into account that it is unlikely that this person himself was a fiction.

When the English captain Charles William Berkeley on the Imperial Eagle in 1787 (rediscovered) discovered the strait described by Fuc, he called it the Strait of Juan de Fuc.

The Juan de Fuca Plate , a tectonic plate that forms the basis of most of the coastline he explored, is also named after Fuca.

Juan de Fuca Provincial Park on the west coast of Vancouver Island is named after the Strait, as is the trail of the same name.