Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra

In 1775 under the command of Lieutenant Bruno de Heceta, the Spanish explored the Pacific Northwest. This followed the first Spanish expedition by Juan Pérez in 1774, who had failed to reach and claim the upper northwest coast for Spain. The expedition consisted of two ships: the Santiago (alias Nueva Galicia[2]), commanded by Hezeta himself, and the schooner Sonora (alias Felicidad,[2] also known as Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe), commanded by his second in command, Lieutenant Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra. Bodega y Quadra was given the lesser position of second officer on the Sonora despite the fact that he outranked the others. Bodega y Quadra had all the training and qualifications necessary to be considered for a senior officer position, but as a non-Spaniard he was subject to the class prejudice common to Spain and the colonial Americas during that time. So he was passed over for promotions.

The Spaniards were given orders to explore the coast and to go ashore so that the newly discovered territories would be recognized as Spanish lands. Most important for the expedition was the identification of colonial Russian settlements. The ships left San Blas, New Spain, on 16 March 1775. Illnesses (scurvy), storms, poor sailing capacities of the Sonora, and other incidents slowed their progress.

On 13 July 1775, they reached the vicinity of Point Grenville and Destruction Island in the present day U.S. state of Washington. While searching for a safe place for the ships to anchor, which was one of the duties of the Sonora, Bodega y Quadra sailed over what is now called Sonora Reef. He immediately realized his mistake and signaled the Santiago to not follow. The wind direction and changing tide trapped the Sonora between Sonora Reef and Point Grenville. The Santiago anchored a few miles to the south, in Grenville Bay. The Sonora attracted the attention of a nearby Quinault village. Many Quinault visited the schooner, trading with the crew and giving gifts of food. Early the next day an armed party from the Santiago went ashore and quickly conducted a possession ceremony, which was observed by some Quinaults. Later that morning, Bodega y Quadra decided to send six sailors ashore to collect water and wood. A large number of Quinaults appeared, attacked, and killed the shore party. Bodega y Quadra was unable to help as the party had taken the schooner's only boat. At noon he weighed anchor, hoping to escape the shoals at high tide. Progress was slow as the wind was low and the crew significantly reduced. Nine large canoes carrying about 30 Quinaults carrying bows and shields followed and came alongside the Sonora. They made signs of friendship which Bodega y Quadra rejected. The Quinaults in one of the canoes approached in an attempt to board the Sonora, but once the canoe was in range of the schooner's two swivel guns and three muskets it was fired upon, killing "the greater number of them", according to Bodega's journal.

Bodega wanted to avenge his lost sailors, but, was overruled by Heceta, who pointed out the expedition had orders to use force only in self-defense. Quinault ethnologists have come up with theories about the sudden attack, one being that the land-claiming ceremony was understood for what it was. Of particular note was the placement of a large cross on the beach. The Quinault would have understood that the erecting of a tall pole with a crossbar during an obviously religious ritual was a symbolically powerful act.[3]

Shaken by this disaster, and with most of his crew suffering from scurvy, Hezeta decided to return to New Spain, but Bodega y Quadra refused to follow him without having completed the essential mission, which was to locate the Russians. He continued northward on the Sonora and got as far as what is now close to Sitka, Alaska, reaching 59° north latitude on August 15, 1775.[4] Failing to find any Russians, he returned southward. When returning he made sure that he landed once to claim the coast for Spain. This expedition made it clear to the Spanish that the Russian colonization did not have a large presence in the Pacific Northwest. Bodega y Quadra was able to draw for the first time a reasonably accurate map of the west coast of North America.[5]

On February 11, 1779, the corvettes Princesa and Favorita, under the command of Lieutenant Ignacio de Arteaga and his second in command, Lieutenant Bodega y Quadra, left San Blas again. Their mission was to explore the northwest coast, and not to intervene with the assumed English navigators there. They charted every bay and inlet in search of the Northwest Passage, going north to 58°30′ before turning back from Alaska due to bad weather. They completed the complex process begun earlier of claiming the Pacific Northwest for Spain.

The expedition anchored in Port Etches, near Prince William Sound. The harbor was given the name "Puerto de Santiago" on July 23, 1779. The name commemorated Saint James, the patron saint of Spain, whose feast day falls on July 25.[6] While the Spaniards were anchored in Port Etches they performed a formal possession ceremony. All the officers and chaplains went ashore in procession, raised a large cross while cannons and muskets fired salutes. The Te Deum was sung, followed by a litany and prayers. After a sermon was preached a formal deed of possession was drawn up and signed by the officers and chaplains. The title to Puerto de Santiago was important for years afterward, as it formed the basis of Spain's claim to sovereignty in the North Pacific up to 61°17′N.[7]

In 1780 Bodega y Quadra was promoted to capitán de fragata (Frigate Captain), in recognition of his achievements during the 1779 voyage.[8]

Quadra was called as an expert witness in the aftermath of the Nootka Crisis at Nootka Sound.[12] In 1789, as the Commandant based at San Blas, he sent out several new expeditions of exploration. In 1791 he was appointed Spanish commissioner to negotiate and administer the implementation of the Nootka Conventions at Nootka Sound.

As commandant of the Spanish establishment at Nootka, Bodega made a point of hosting and entertaining every visitor, indigenous and European. He held feasts for the officers of every ship that arrived at Nootka Sound, including the French fur-trading ship La Flavie, the "Portuguese" ship Feliz Aventureira (actually a British ship masquerading as Portuguese), the American ships Columbia, under Robert Gray, and Hope, under Joseph Ingraham, Vancouver's ships HMS Discovery and Chatham, and a number of others. The journals of many people who visited Nootka Sound during the summer of 1792 record amazement at the grandeur of Bodega's dinners, especially at such a remote part of the world, at which over fifty people would be served many courses on Bodega's personal collection of about 300 pieces of silver dinner ware. Bodega also provided ship repair services to any vessel needing them. A number of ships, including the Chatham, were careened and repaired by Spanish workers.[13]

In August 1792, Bodega welcomed English Captain George Vancouver.[14] The two commanders swiftly established friendly relations, including joint explorations and the sharing of supplies and information. Vancouver provided the services of his surgeon, Archibald Menzies, to help Quadra with increasingly serious headaches. During their meetings Bodega y Quadra asked Vancouver to name "some port or Island after us both" (however, Bodega wrote in his journal that it was Vancouver who made the suggestion). Since Vancouver had determined that the land upon which Nootka stood was a great island, he proposed that they name it Quadra's and Vancouver's Island: "would name some port or island after us both in commemoration of our meeting and friendly intercourse that on that occasion had taken place (Vancouver had previously feted Quadra on his ship);....and conceiving no place more eligible than the place of our meeting, I have therefore named this land...The Island of Quadra and Vancouver." It was thus entered upon the explorer's charts, but this name was later shortened to Vancouver Island.

However, the two commanders were unable to reconcile the conflicts in the instructions from their respective governments. At issue was whether the Spanish were to hand over only the small plot of land actually built upon by the adventurer John Meares, or the entire West Coast, or something in between. It is scarcely contested that Meares had exaggerated the extent of his discoveries. However, Bodega y Quadra was handicapped by uncertainties as to how far his superiors' wished to maintain Spanish sovereignty in a part of the world that had limited strategic value. He improvised and by chance pressed for exactly the condition that both the king and viceroy later communicated to him. Vancouver was likewise handicapped by a lack of instructions. He stuck by a strictly literal interpretation of Article I of the Nootka Convention. Having reached an impasse, the two agreed to refer the points at issue back to their respective governments in Madrid and London; Quadra arranged passage for Vancouver's envoy, William Robert Broughton, through Mexico. Viceroy Revillagigedo chastised Bodega for allowing Broughton passage through New Spain. Eventually, Spain and Great Britain signed an agreement on January 11, 1794,[15] in which they agreed to abandon the region (the third Nootka Convention).

• Cook, Warren L. (1979). "Bodega y Quadra, Juan Francisco de la". In Halpenny, Francess G (ed.). Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. IV (1771–1800) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press.
• History of Southern Oregon: Pacific Coast -- by A. G. Walling 1884
• Vancouver Island History
• Canadian Military Heritage
• Spanish Exploration: Hezeta (Heceta) and Bodega y Quadra Expedition of 1775 to Formally Claim the Pacific Northwest for Spain
• BC Bookworld on Bodega y Quadra, with a bibliography.
• Tovell, Freeman M. (2008). At the Far Reaches of Empire: The Life of Juan Francisco De La Bodega Y Quadra. University of British Columbia Press. ISBN 978-0-7748-1367-9.

• Derek Hayes (1999). Historical Atlas of the Pacific Northwest: Maps of Exploration and Discovery: British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Yukon. Sasquatch Books. ISBN 1-57061-215-3
• Michael E. Thurman (1967). The Naval Department of San Blas: New Spain's Bastion for Alta California and Nootka, 1769–1798. The Arthur H. Clark Company.