After sailing from Spain to Acapulco, a Mexican port on the Pacific coast, Captains Malaspina and Bustamante proceeded to the naval base at San Blas where repairs were made after their long journey. They received news of the Nootka Crisis and orders from Madrid that, instead of their intended visit to the Hawaiian Islands, they would proceed to the Pacific Northwest for charting and exploration.
The false memoir of a Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado, which told of his discovery of a Northwest Passage in 1588, had recently come to the attention of the Spanish authorities. The charts and notes of Cook and La Perouse were also available for study, and with the mounting pressure from the Russian fur traders and the British at Nootka Sound, the Spanish wanted to improve their knowledge of the region.
Malaspina and Bustamante embarked on May 1, 1791. They took a direct route northward, arriving in Yukutat Sound, where they were able to take advantage of the long northern daylight hours to explore and make notes. Floating ice and a glacier blocked the inlet, leading them to conclude that this was not the Strait of Anian, the Northwest Passage.
The expedition sailed south, pulling in to Friendly Cove in Nootka Sound on August 12. The commanders of the Spanish outpost and the local First Nations peoples were invited to meet with Malaspina, and his crew set up their scientific equipment on shore to take measurements; the ship’s artist José Cardero and other crewmembers made drawings of people and the landscape. They departed Nootka on August 28 and sailed for Monterey and then Acapulco to prepare to launch the China Sea and southern Pacific part of their expedition.
Galiano, who had sailed aboard the Antrevida as a hydrographer, disembarked in Acapulco. Cayetano Valdés sailed aboard the Descubierta with Malaspina. They were sent out for further survey work in the Pacific Northwest aboard their own vessels under Malaspina’s arrangements.
