A411 - Nueva Carta Del Canal De Bahama, showing Florida

Unknown

h26" x w38.5"

L

The Spanish agency, the Dirección de Hidrografía, was set up in the late 18th century to disseminate accurate sailing information, much about the same time as the British with their Hydrographic branch of the Royal Navy. The Spanish were of course the first major sponsors of discovery in the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and mainland Florida. As far back as the beginning of the 16th century they had started compiling cartographic information on these regions although the information was held as secret. Much of the British and French information was published privately.

 

This intriguing chart contains a great deal of detailed and generally accurate information, although the section of the East coast north of Espiritu Santo (Tampa) is incomplete. On this point, something of note is that this was also true of most of the British surveys of the mid-late 18th century. The likely cause being that, like the British, from whom the Spanish recovered the territory in 1783 after the collapse of the British effort to retain their North American Colonies, the Spanish were mostly interested in the major harbors and inlets on the coast.

 

There is always something to be found on a chart such as this and in this case the tracks of various notable Spanish explorers and sailors are marked. Amongst them is the voyage of Dionisio Alcalá Galiano (1760-1805). In the course of his voyages he charted coastlines in Europe and the Americas with great accuracy, using new technology such as chronometers.

 

In 1798 Galiano, with a number of ships, slipped through the British blockade of Cadiz in the middle of a storm with the intent of seeking treasure from the America's to bolster Spanish war funds. In the course of his mission he had to evade enemy ships several times, but he did return safely to Cadiz and indeed went on to make a second voyage to 'New Spain' but was finally forced by British ships and bad weather into Havana, where he remained until the end of the Anglo-Spanish war in 1802. He later died at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

Nueva Carta Del Canal De Bahama, showing Florida