Juan de Fuca | Hacker News Reader

Juan de Fuca

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50 pointsbrudgers23 comments

Well I certainly fell down the Wikipedia rabbit hole. That article lead me to the article on the strait named after him, through which I discovered that we (the US) and Canada still have active border disputes. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_areas_disputed_by_Cana...

One of the more interesting disputes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_War_(1859)

My own Wikipedia roaming uncovered the story of Otokichi, a Japanese sailor on a cargo ship to Edo that got (very!) lost in a storm and ended up on the coast of Washington state. And that was only the beginning of his adventures! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otokichi (through the Cape Blanco link in another comment).

Nice! I never thought I'd see mention of something close to home on HN.

I grew up in Port Angeles. Ocean in your front yard, mountains in your backyard, rivers, lakes, hunting. The works.

It was a beautiful place.

Ha,did a bit of digging and found this nearby (Little James Island): https://www.google.com/maps/@47.9117387,-124.6449377,3a,75y,...

Went there last year during a trip to Olympic National Park. Definitely a uniquely beautiful area. Strange to see such massive mountains so close to the ocean

And that eerie looking fog low in the forest in the morning was pretty cool.

Indeed!

I've lived on the strait named after him my entire life and didn't know about him and his controversy. There's also a wonderful hiking trail named after him (mentioned in the article) which is well worth visiting if you're ever on Vancouver Island. It takes most people a couple days, but it's beautiful, not too difficult, and not too busy.

So fascinating to think people explored these waters in hopes that it would connect to the Atlantic. Not even close.

Imagine their disappointment when they got to Olympia and found hordes of crust punks and crystal healers...

Interesting, but is there some context for why this is being posted, or was it just a random Wikipedia article that seemed neat?

The eponymous straight is a major seaway. It's Spanish origin challenged my naive model of US historical geography when I was alongside it a few weeks ago -- I generally associate Spanish with the coast further south. At the time my wikipedia connectivity was limited. Yesterday, I mentioned having been there and was reminded of my curiosity. Partly what made the article intellectually interesting to me is the contemporary interest in discrediting Juan de Fuca's account. Partly it is that Juan de Fuca was Greek rather than Spanish. And partly it is the proximity of the straight to Seattle and Vancouver without a well known "Amerigo Vespucci" story of it's name.

There were a lot of people cruising around the Pacific coast.

In terms of Spanish names, there are also:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Blanco_(Oregon)

* Heceta Head - named for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_de_Heceta

The Russians had forts as far south as California.

And any resident of BC or northern Washington will be familiar with San Juan, Galiano, Valdes, and Gabriola islands; the Fidalgo, Haro, and Rosario straits; and Spanish Banks off English Bay, where Galiano's expedition met George Vancouver's, and agreed to split the naming of features in the area equally between them (as they were allies against France at the time).

I think one of my favorite "how the ...?!" geography names is the Owyhee River area of south east Oregon. It's a high, dry steppe where nothing much grows except sagebrush, and hardly any one lives.

Owyhee, though, is a different spelling of Hawaii, and the river was named for some Hawaiian explorers who set out to explore the area and were never seen again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owyhee_River#Naming

So, while probably being a skilled navigator, he was either a serial bullshitter who may or may not have been before the King of Spain and may not have actually seen features that were later ascribed to the area, or a man wronged probably by the viceroy who may have colluded with others to get him excluded from the archives. Both possibilities are fairly bizarre.

Then there's Englishman Charles William Barkley (1759 – 1832) who ran an unlicensed, regulation-dodging trading tour out of one ship registered abroad, in collusion with some top executives at the monopolist competition! He was the one who named the strait after Juan de Fuca, so clearly the English were much more fascinated with him than the Spanish.

It seems obligatory here to mention Peter Watts' Rifters trilogy, the first book of which is set in and around a geothermal power station on the sea floor near the Juan de Fuca Ridge.

Somewhat related — a recent short video about Puget Sound: https://youtu.be/EJrrRPHa6-c

At 2:41 the video shows what is probably Vancouver's map labeling the straight "supposed Straight of Juan de Fuca." What I find interesting is that Vancouver's exploration was 200 years after Juan de Fuca reported being there...about as much time had passed between Juan de Fuca and Vancouver as has passed between Vancouver and us.

Even more strikingly (at least to me) is that at the time of Vancouver's expedition, clear determination that California was not an island by Juan Bautista de Anza [1] was about as recent as the founding of Google is to us...and a person was still likely to have a map showing that it was. [2]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Bautista_de_Anza

[2]: https://exhibits.stanford.edu/california-as-an-island/featur...

And then, of course, there is the book:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007JKSHZ4

Could somebody correct the title?

Should be "Juan de Fuca", not "Jaun de Fuca"

Done now.

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