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    Sailors, Scientists, Spies
    Sailors, Scientists, Spies
    Sailors, Scientists, Spies
    Ebook141 pages1 hour

    Sailors, Scientists, Spies

    By Ken Smith

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    Sailors, Scientists, Spies describes the lives of two eighteenth century Spanish naval officers. These young men, Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa, first met in 1735 when they were chosen by King Philip V to represent Spanish interests on a French scientific expedition to South America.

    At that time, navigation at sea could best be described as an inaccurate science, largely because of the prevailing uncertainties as to the precise shape and size of the earth. The aim of the French project was to provide answers for these age-old questions by measuring three degrees of latitude on the ground at the equator.

    The experiences of Juan and Ulloa during this nine-year expedition and the subsequent scientific contributions they made to the history of eighteenth-century Spain were remarkable. they form the basis for this intriguing story which begins with their transition, as members of the expedition, from Naval midshipmen to enlightenment scientists.

    After returning from South America they were sent by Spain to carry out daring spy missions in Britain, France and other European countries, to gather for Spain many of the naval and industrial secrets of the nation's old enemies. Both men later went on to have distinguished and sometimes controversial naval careers, but these were eclipsed by their engineering and scientific contributions to the industries of their country and to its Navy during the Enlightenment period.

    Sailors, Scientists, Spies provides a pacy account of the fortunes of two fascinating but little-known Spanish heroes.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKen Smith
    Release dateOct 12, 2012
    ISBN9781301016938
    Sailors, Scientists, Spies
    Author

    Ken Smith

    Ken Smith has had a lifelong love of wilderness and exploration. As a young man, he worked as a farm hand and labourer, untill 1975 when he moved to Yukon, Canada. On his return, Ken took to wandering across the British Isles, settling at Treig to resolve his grief and build a new life. Will Millard is a writer, BBC presenter, public speaker and expedition leader. Born and brought up in the Fens, he presents remote Anthropology and Adventure series for BBC Two, and a series on Rivers, Urban Exploration and History for BBC Wales. In 2019 his series My Year with the Tribe won the Realscreen award for Travel and Exploration. His first book The Old Man and the Sand Eel follows his wild journey across Britain in pursuit of a fishing record. He has also ghosted many projects and written for numerous national and international magazines and newspapers, including BBC News, Daily Telegraph, Vice, Guardian, Geographical and Outer Edge.

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      Book preview

      Sailors, Scientists, Spies - Ken Smith

      Sailors, Scientists, Spies

      The extraordinary lives of Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa

      by Ken Smith

      Copyright 2012 Ken Smith

      Smashwords Edition

      CONTENTS

      MAP OF SOUTH AMERICA

      1. SEALED ORDERS

      2. AN EXPEDITION BEGINS

      3. COMPLETING THE JOURNEY

      4. MEASURING THE MERIDIAN

      5. JENKINS’ INFAMOUS EAR

      6. RETURNING TO EUROPE

      7. ESPIONAGE

      8. JORGE JUAN’S LATER CAREER

      9. ANTONIO DE ULLOA

      10. THE TRIALS OF HUANCAVELICA

      11. AN UNWELCOME GOVERNOR

      12. ADMIRAL OF THE LAST TREASURE FLEET

      13. THE ILL-FATED AZORES PATROL

      14. ULLOA’S FINAL YEARS

      15. TWO REMARKABLE SERVANTS OF SPAIN

      16. SHORT READING LIST

      17. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      1. SEALED ORDERS

      Sometime in 2004, whilst using the internet to look for something I have long since forgotten, I came upon a brief account of a very senior Spanish naval officer who was given the task of patrolling the seas around the Azores Island group in the north Atlantic. Between July and September 1779 he was said to have led a squadron of six ships with the aim of intercepting English warships and merchantmen returning from England’s North American colonies at a time of war between Spain and Britain.

      I was surprised to read that the admiral in question had spent his time studying scientific books and carrying out astronomical sightings, while at the same time completely neglecting his responsibilities and failing to open the sealed orders he had been given. As a result of this man’s inexplicable lack of attention, when the ship eventually returned to its home port, Cádiz, not only had he failed in his mission, but many of the seamen under his command were seriously ill with scurvy.

      The name of the officer was Don Antonio de Ulloa, at that time an admiral in the Spanish navy. I found it impossible to believe that a man of Flag Officer rank could have been so totally absorbed in his own interests that he would be capable of completely ignoring his duties in this way. That was the first time I encountered the name Antonio de Ulloa. Surely, I thought, an Admiral would never have been guilty of such negligent behaviour.

      As a result of my unexpected discovery I felt I had to establish the truth behind the story, and it did not take long to find that the internet account I had read was, of course, almost completely untrue. My curiosity had been aroused, however, and this book is the result of following that interest to learn more about the career of a fascinating man.

      My further reading showed that Don Antonio de Ulloa had been an outstanding naval officer with a long and distinguished naval career. His busy and adventurous life included nine years with a French geodesic expedition to Ecuador, the management for six years of a mercury mine in Peru, service as the first Spanish Governor of Louisiana, and command of the last of many treasure fleets carrying silver and gold from Mexico to Spain. And much more. More than twenty years of his life were spent away from Spain, on numerous missions and voyages, carrying out responsible, difficult and sometimes thankless duties on behalf of his country. This amazing man was also court-martialled several times during his career but always cleared his name.

      What was perhaps still more exceptional in my eyes was to find that, in spite of these credentials, very little is known today of Antonio de Ulloa in his own country. There are few remembrances of the man, and there appears to be only one portrait of him in existence, and that is not displayed prominently in a place of honour but is housed in the Naval Museum in Madrid. Although there is a memorial to his memory in Spain’s Pantheon of Illustrious Sailors in San Fernando, Cádiz, it has been given a relatively minor position.

      In researching Ulloa I found his name closely linked with that of his friend and contemporary Don Jorge Juan, whose career was equally notable and who is similarly little-known today. Perhaps these two figures in Spain's history are mostly disregarded today in their own country because they were not famous in battle. Their achievements, however, were their enormous contributions to a relatively brief period of cultural and economical progress at the time of the Enlightenment.

      Their full names are Don Jorge Juan de Santacilla, originally from Spain’s Alicante region, and Don Antonio de Ulloa y de la Torre-Girault, who was born and brought up in Seville in the early eighteenth century. As naval officers these men dedicated their lives to the service of their country for many years, during the reigns of several kings. They spent long periods of time overseas and endured extended ocean voyages at a time when the seas held many dangers, from sickness as well as the weather.

      Statues and memorials are an accepted means of marking historical figures and their legacies throughout the world. The heroes I recall from my boyhood stand out in my memory because of their statues which command prominent positions in the city of Plymouth, in Devon, where I was born and brought up. Among my greatest heroes when I was a boy was Sir Francis Drake, whose statue is a prominent feature, standing proudly on Plymouth Hoe to commemorate the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. The Hoe, where tradition has it Drake calmly played bowls as the threatening Armada made its way up the English Channel, overlooks Plymouth Sound, a famous anchorage for British sailors over hundreds of years.

      Another of my earliest memories is the Scott memorial, which can be seen less than two miles from Plymouth Hoe. Commemorating the two polar expeditions led by Capt. Robert Falcon Scott in the early twentieth century, it stands very prominently above the park at Mount Wise in nearby Devonport, overlooking the river Tamar which marks the boundary between Devon and Cornwall. Mount Wise was one of the favourite places for my brother and I to play with our friends when we were boys, chasing up and down the steep, grassy slope and hiding in the bushes. Warships passed, and still pass below, along the Hamoaze, the narrow reach of the river Tamar to Devonport dockyard where our father worked at that time.

      Considering the lives and exploits of Jorge Juan and Antonio Ulloa which are told in the following account, there are precious few remembrances in Spain today of the lives they devoted to the service of their country in the eighteenth century.

      Jorge Juan, perhaps, comes off best in terms of current recognition. Some 25 miles inland from the port of Alicante, the capital of Spain’s region of the same name, is Juan’s birthplace near the small industrial town of Novelda. Juan was born in El Fondonet, a substantial but neglected country property which is still in use a short way outside the town, almost totally cut off by new road developments. He was christened in the nearby town of Montesinos, where the outside wall of the church of Monforte del Cid proudly bears a plaque commemorating the event.

      The people of Novelda, however, claim Jorge Juan as their son. In the town’s Plaza de España, facing the ayuntamiento, the town hall, is a five metre high column on which stands a statue of Juan. The dedication at the base of the statue refers to him as el sabio, or man of learning. Around the corner, in the Casa-Museo Modernista museum a room is dedicated to his memory, with maps, books, a sextant and other personal items commemorating the eighteenth century sailor’s skills and achievements.

      In my later search for public references to Juan and Ulloa, I found there is a Calle Jorge Juan in the smart Salamanca district of Madrid, while in another part of the capital the Colegio Mayor 'Jorge Juan' is part of the University Complutense. There is also a statue commemorating the man in the Aherrera Gardens at El Ferrol in Galicia, where the naval dockyard owes much to his influence. At the other extreme of the country, in the sea-side town of Guardamar del Segura, south of Alicante, Calle Jorge Juan is a street of mostly holiday apartments leading down to the resort’s promenade. When I asked some of the passers-by there what they knew of the man, none had any notion who he was.

      Antonio de Ulloa does not fare any better where recognition is concerned. In the Calle Almirante de Ulloa in Seville, a house bears a plaque proudly boasting it was Ulloa’s place of birth, and there is also a street named for him off the Avenida del Guadalquivir in the port area of Cádiz. Other streets named after him can be found in the nearby thriving city of San Fernando, where he spent his declining years, and more in places as far apart as Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid, and Motril, Murcia. There is also a statue in an easily-overlooked alcove outside the current Ministry of Agriculture, Environment and Fisheries, a building which was formerly the Ministry for Advancement of the Sciences and Arts in Madrid.

      Further afield, yet perhaps most significantly, there are quirky busts depicting both Juan and Ulloa in Ecuador, where the outdoor Museo del Mitad del Mundo, the Half the World museum, near Quito commemorates the years the men spent in South America with the French Geodesic expedition of 1736-1745 to establish the precise length of a degree of the Meridian.

      Cádiz is in many ways comparable to Plymouth, being one of Spain's principal historic naval ports. Yet there are no statues to Juan or Ulloa, and the passer-by could not be blamed for missing the simple plaque displayed high up on the side of a building near the cathedral square. In translation its inscription reads:

      THE CITY OF CADIZ HONOURS

      JORGE JUAN AND

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