Daniel Gleeson: ... here tonight for this special event. To begin, I would like to acknowledge Australia's First Nations peoples, the First Australians, as the traditional owners and custodians of this land, and give my respects to their elders past and present and through them to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Now, can I all just make sure that you've checked your phones are on silent or switched off because there's nothing worse, let me tell you, than hearing a phone and then realising it's mine.
Now, this event tonight is being held in partnership with the Embassy of Peru. The Library thanks the Embassy for their generous support in helping this event to come to fruition.

I would particularly like to welcome and acknowledge our special guest, His Excellency, Vitaliano Gallardo, Ambassador of Peru in Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea. We're so excited after meeting with His Excellency, and of course historian and Petherick Reader here at the National Library, Chris Maxworthy. They told us stories, not so well known here in Australia, of pirates and privateers operating in the Pacific and involving the early settlement at Port Jackson. Of course, we jumped at the chance to hear this fantastic story told at the Library.

So welcome to you all, and it is my pleasure to now welcome Ambassador Gallardo to say a few words.

Vitaliano Gallardo: Good evening there. Daniel Gleeson, it's a pleasure to be hosting by the Library in this occasion. I want to also like to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, the Ngunnawal people where we are meeting this evening, and pay my respects to the elders, past, present and emerging. I want also to acknowledge the presence of my colleagues of the Diplomatic Corp. And thank you also Montserrat, the Chargé d'Affaires of the Embassy of Spain, members of the defence and military, Attaché Corp here. And thank you also distinguished attendees of this event.

In this my remarks I want to share with you how has been my journey to be introduced and visiting some months ago the Library to propose these lectures. I've been little by little considering that the importance of geography needs to be put again on surface. The Pacific Ocean, little by little I've been understanding is not a geographic accident that split, but it's instead a bridge between two continents.

Chris Maxworthy showed me the importance to know this element, and he has been able to work on the same vision and finding evidence that the establishment of the British in Sydney, in this part of the coast of Australia, in the eastern part of Australia, has been a game-changer in the influence of the British Empire, and a turning point diminishing the presence of the Spanish Empire in the South Pacific.

A few people know that after two centuries and a half, the Spanish presence in the Pacific Ocean has been leading that one very important geographer of the university, the Australian National University, Oskar Spate, wrote a book with the name 'Spanish Lake'. That was the Pacific Ocean and a Spanish lake. But when James Cook arrived, likewise other French and German explorer, that was a sign that the Empire was entering in their last decades.

The Pacific region, until the 19th century, has been looking them Spanish still, British, French, German, and later on the United States. How different it was during the 18th century when James Cook arrived here. And Chris Maxworthy is going to explain us with more detail the importance of the first Spanish visit to James Cook established British presence here, and how it has been also the importance of the Malaspina Expedition, Alejandro Malaspina and José de Bustamante y Guerra visit here.

Why it was the first? Because since the beginning, the Spanish scientifics has been realised that establishment of the British, it's going to challenge the dominance of one of the great powers establishing here for centuries. But Spanish has the merit to have organised the Malaspina Expedition. It was a way to recognise that the Enlightenment, La Illustración, has been coming also to enter in politics. The scientific method need to be include also as a way to recognise the reality and adopted the update changes for continue to be an empire.

Why the Spanish has been feeling the pressure to do that? Because they have been following the success of the James Cook expedition, La Pérouse Expedition, Bougainville Expedition, that it's not only science, it's also power. Behind those expeditions, even scientific, each one of them, French, British and Spanish, displayed during the travel the management of the ships new mathematic application for navigation, better instruments and better capacity for logistics.

In listing those items I am having in my mind some of those comparisons between those expeditions in the 18th century and the first ones done by Magellan, Álvaro de Mendaña, Pedro Fernándes de Quirós. For instance, the management of the ships where you need to put the people to stay for months, mathematics, how you calculate the position of your ship in the earth, the capacity of logistics, where you are going to replace the fresh water. Many of those original expeditions during the 16th century, count many people dying during those travels. Then in the 18th century, some of those challenges has been started to be controlling and overcome.

The Spanish Lake has been announcing its ending, I've been telling you, after how long only to give you a point of comparison, San Marcos University in Lima was founded in 1551, Sydney University was opened in 1851. Those is the period where Spanish has been controlling all the Pacific. The Malaspina Expedition has been going on, leading by Alejandro Malaspina and José de Bustamante y Guerra between 1789 and 1794. It was a decision by the King Charles III, the Spanish Charles III, for gaining scientific observation of the reality and the extension of the Spanish Empire. Only if you see the recount of the Expedition could be looking all the front of the Americans. Since Tierra del Fuego, until Alaska, all were the Pacific controlling by the Spanish in the American side, but also many of the islands in the Pacific.

But what surprised me on the expedition of Malaspina was the ending of Alejandro Malaspina. The new King Charles IV has been managing the Empire, and when arrive Malaspina want to share his view, how to organise the Empire. It was considered an erratic approach to the Empire and put in jail and then exile. And the report has been hidden for one century.

A comment from my side, as I mentioned you now from this point of view, the time we are living, how you can hidden a report to help you to govern better your own country seems that it's an self-inflicted damage by the Spanish Crown itself, and also probably one of the missed opportunities for continuing to control in the Americas.

The Spanish did not realise at that time, the Spanish Crown, that losing the America they are going to lose the Pacific too. In Europe, the defeat in Trafalgar, the Napoleon invasion, the shifting of alliances between Spanish and France, then to England, then to France, marked the framework of the subsequent independence of the Republic of South Central and North America. As I mentioned you, the process of independence are going to change not only the history of Spain, but the history here in the Pacific.

During the time of the Pacific as a Spanish lake, the kingdom of Peru was the point of projection for the influence in the South Pacific. That is the reason the Embassy wants to mention this part, because in the 19th century, the controlling area in charge of the viceroy of Peru based in Lima and Callao, included the port of Guayaquil and the island of Chiloé. The last post of Spanish controlling after all the independents were south of current Chile. And also the controlling of Easter Island and Galapagos, which are part of Ecuador and Chile respectively.

Those discoveries also were still controlling by the Spanish, those discoveries coming from the time of the 16th century, like those from Álvaro de Mendaña, the most important is Solomon Island. That is the reason they have still a Spanish name, Isabel Guadalcanal, Santa Cruz. And also those from Pedro Fernándes de Quirós, one of them Vanuatu, the New Hebrides. And many other Pacific islands like Guam, Marianas, Carolinas, Marquesas, that has been discovered since the arrival of Ferdinand Magellan and Elcano travelling through the Pacific. The projection of the geography seems to be confirmed, especially speaking about geography and the importance of the coast in South America, by the recounts hearing by the chronic, written by the Spanish arriving into Peru.

Just two years before Álvaro de Mendaña, Alvaro de Mendana initiate its first trip, the chronicles recount the travel of the Inca Topa Yupanqui to the Polynesian Islands. José Antonio del Busto and Jose Antonio Salas has produced books on those trips, likewise, historians from Ecuador, like Federico González Suárez and Carlos Manuel Larrea. It seems that the present of the contacts of the Polynesian and the Andean inhabitants was earlier, like the archaeological contacts has been discovered in current Colombia Pacific Coast, and is still present in the contacts between the current Ecuador and the Galápagos Island, and the Chilean contacts with the Easter Island.

Sweet potato, chicken and many other archaeological remains proof this contact. That is the reason is not only the presence of the Spanish, it's long behind the contacts. 5% of the DNA of the Polynesian inhabitants are from South America. The natural conclusion for this first intention of inviting you to reflect this evening on the lectures is geography between Western Coast of South America and Eastern Coast of Australia are natural projections over the Pacific, especially the South Pacific.

As we are going to see, this natural linkage has been strengthened through the centuries with science and technology applicable to the vessels, logistic and navigation instruments. The second reason is because geography did not explain many of the facts, its history. The Crown of Castile and Aragon was the driving force for connecting both sides of the Pacific during the 16th century. It was really a surprise to me understanding the logic for crossing all the way from the Americas, the Pacific Ocean. At that time, in the 16th century, even the Pacific did not use that name. We call even in the cartography, Mar del Sur, South Sea.
It was called Pacific because of the Magellan travel around the Pacific. The capacity at that time for the Spanish to navigate in the ocean, the largest ocean on earth, has been sufficient, but with many challenges, many people died during those travels. But what is the reason? They still, in the 16th century, have some motives inside themself. Faith, that is the reason we, on those islands in the Pacific continue to see Christianity, but also is the richest point and the focal intention was the Maluku Islands. The reason they want to overcome the Americas is because the most important point to reach out was the Maluku Islands, one of those spice islands of Indonesia.

And also the exploration in the 16th century needs to be able to calculate if the Tordesillas Treaty in the anti-meridian left the Maluku Islands in the Portugal side of the world, of the Spanish side of the world. What a great learning, what is still present at Tordesillas Treaty in the border between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, that is the origin of the international border until our days. And also many did not know, that also explain also the border between Queensland and the Northern Territory. Why? Because Portugal and Spain sign a treaty, and later on Portugal sent the territories to the Dutch.

The Kingdom of New Spain, the current Mexico, which included the Central and North America Pacific Coast was in charge of consolidating the linkages between the Micronesian islands and the Philippines. Many people did not know that the Philippines was part of the Mexican, the New Spain viceroy. While in the South Pacific it was the Kingdom of Peru that oversaw the controlling of the Spanish. Then that is the reason why I mention, in the 18th century, the expedition of La Pérouse, Bougainville and Cook has been looking as a challenge of the controlling of the Spanish.

Then geography, history, and now I'm going to mention a key point. The other key point is what happened with the Spanish Empire disappearing in the Pacific, because the Kingdom of Peru has became the country, Peru. But not only Peru, Guayaquil has been part of Ecuador, Colombia itself, Peru, Chile, and Panama too. The arriving of the 19th century with a world dominated by the United Kingdom, because our independence, the Peruvian and the South American independence, has to recognise the influence of the British. Then the British not only dominate Australia, they start to dominate also the politics in South America.

A new area was coming then after our independence, and then the contests with the empires with France and Germany, also at that time include not only the Pacific, but in some way also South America. My hypothesis was that the British establishment in Australia has reinforced some of the effects that we can perceive. First, during the presentation of Greece, you are going to see that the Australian settlement has been gaining a lot of assurances because the Empire was controlling both sides of the Pacific.

And then the projection of the British has been consolidated, and that explains why, until today you can see the gathering of the Commonwealth in one of the Pacific states. Only to mention you what was the effect of the independence in Latin America on what happened in the Pacific, is that due to the internal wars in the Nueva España, New Spain, vice kingdom, the famous Manila galleon, Galeón de Manila, that crossed the Pacific for centuries, stopped to do that in 1815.

The other point that I want to mention too, a strength, the interlinked connections is that we need to realise, and that is an invitation of this lecture, that the history of Australia did not begin in 1901, like the history of Peru did not begin in 1820. We need to be very long back, and that is what we invite to hear this evening, with careful attention. Propagate the findings of Chris Maxworthy and Jorge Ortiz, it's really a pleasure to enhance our knowledge of early Australia.

But maybe for the last point I have to invite you to recognise that the word we are looking here is that world has been established after the Second World War, and we have to make the jump to this period when the USA was leading the recovery of the allies of the Pacific Island, and also China doing their own work in the mainland, with the support of the British Empire, Australia, New Zealand, and also the metals and the food coming from Latin America. Many people did not realise that we have been the suppliers of the metals and the food using during the Second World War.

And as Napoleon has said, "The army walk on their stomachs", meaning if not logistic, there is not victory. And then we thank you, the Empire of Japan, and we have been shaping the days we are looking now, only to remember you for ending what are the countries has been participating in the Conference of San Francisco in 1945. They call at that time, Republic of China, succeeded by the People Republic of China, the USSR succeeded by the Russian Federation, the United States, Chile, El Salvador, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Philippines. Philippines at a time called Philippines Commonwealth succeeded by Philippines, Australia, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, and Peru, and with territories in the area, France and the United Kingdom. That means that in San Francisco conference, nine out of 18 participants with presence in the Pacific were Latin American countries. Then we can say without mistake, we, the Latin Americans also has been defining this age in the Pacific.

It has been natural, the establishment of diplomatic relations among the Latin American countries and Australia, a couple of year we have been celebrating the 60 anniversary, now is the 62, because geography and history connect each side of the Pacific.

And since the World War II, Australia and Peru has been serves as many other countries of a stability, peace, and development in the Pacific realm. Prime Minister Menzies opened the diplomatic relations. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam travelled to Peru in 1975 because of the South American initiative in the Law of the Sea Convention, where has been also visibly the participation, a very important delegate of Australia, Sam Bateman.

Currently, we have some membership in common between Latin American countries and Australia, like APEC, an Australian initiative, and Peru hosting the summit last year, the CPTPP for strengthen our connections as free market oriented economies, and the support of Australia, for in the case of Peru, our candidacy to the OECD. I look forward to an interesting lectures of Jorge by video and Chris in presence. There will be an opportunity for question and answer, and please stay with us after the lectures. We have Peruvian hospitality on completion.

I want to thank also the contribution in my remarks and my journey for the history of the Pacific to the Casa de América de Madrid, who has celebrated the 5th anniversary of the discovery of the Mar del Sur and also the Magellan journey, the National Library of Australia, some of the pictures you're going to see are coming from here, and also the Centro Cultural Garcilaso de la Vega, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Peru has hosted an event about Topa Yupanqui travel for the Polynesian. Thank you so much.

Jorge Ortiz: Greetings from Lima, Peru. I was asked to provide an overview on the naval and maritime situation at the other side of the Pacific in the years covered by Chris Maxworthy conference. Since 1790, when Spain and Carpathians signed an agreement putting an end to this Nootka Sound incident, ships could chase whales and seals off the coast of Spanish America, and even enter some ports in case of distress. As this situation could also encourage contraband, the Peruvian viceroy took some measures to reinforce Callao Naval Station and to patrol the coast with the few warships at his disposal.

Since 1799, this Naval Station became a maritime department with a flag officer in command, but the warships inside were insufficient to protect the large area under his responsibility from Nicaragua to Cape Horn. Having visited the British settlements on Botany Bay and Port Jackson in March 1793, the Malaspina-Bustamante expedition reached Callao in June. And during the following three months, his officers and naturalists provide local authorities with valuable information on what was going on at the other side of the Pacific.

It is possible that some British whalers called in at Port Jackson before reaching South American water. But since 1796, when war between Spain and Britain was declared, some of them also acted as privateers, and a proposal was presented to Spanish authorities to attack and suppress the British settlement. At the very beginning of the war, some British ships were captured by Spanish warships and privateers, and their crews eventually ended up as prisoners at Lima. Numbering approximately 200, many of them managed to get deployed to improve their situation. Relations were built with the locals to such an extent that some of them remained in Peru after the Treaty of [unclear] was sided in 1802.

Before the war started again in December 1804, at least two British ships departed from Port Jackson to South America, the Harrington and the Albion. They later been detained at Concepción, Chile for smuggling. Although the growing weakness of the Spanish named it after Trafalgar, at least a couple of frigates and some smaller warships were destined to mount a defence of the Peruvian Viceroyalty. As part of that, Spanish frigate Astrea engaged the British frigate, Lucy, in July and in October 1805. The latter reaching Port Jackson after that.

However, none of these was able to act against HMS Cornwallis, which departed Port Jackson in April of 1807 and took several prizes around South and Central American waters before heading for Madras. As in 1808, Napoleon forcibly came with Spain to advocate in his favour. The Spaniards reacted against this and began to fight their former ally. And to join Britain, their former enemy in this effort. As a consequence, British ships reappeared in South American waters either for whaling or for trading purpose. This situation was complex since the Spanish law banning any foreign trade with his colony was still enforced.

Some incidents occurred. That was the case of the [unclear], which departed Sydney and reached Callao in July of 1810, seeking help having lost her anchor in the storm. She was detained for breaking the Spanish law, while finally released in April of 1811. By then, Chile declared independence and Valparaíso was opened for a trade, mainly British, whereas the Peruvian Viceroyalty concentrated its effort to control independence movements in Alto Peru and Quito with quite a small naval force, aiming to receive reinforcements from Spain, which never arrived. That was the general situation in South American waters.

Chris Maxworthy: Jorge Ortiz is a professor of history at the University of San Marcos, and for the last 20 years we've been very good friends, and we've collaborated a great deal on his side of the Pacific and my side, and where they came together. And yeah, thank you Jorge.

Right. Moving along here, so my topic, in terms of timing, there probably won't be time for questions here on completion of my presentation, but we have some wonderful hospitality from the Peruvian Embassy upstairs, and I'm certainly looking forward to that, particularly one or two pisco sours after I've completed. The national drink of, well, do we have any Chileans here? I think we might. There's a bit of a tension between, is it Chile or is it Peru that invented the pisco sour?

Anyway, moving along. All right, the Sea of the South. So Balboa, in 1513 discovered, sorry, we're talking about a European context here, a European discovery of the, well then became known as the Sea at the South, and he voyaged across the Isthmus of Panama and encountered an ocean to the south. So it became the South Seas or the Sea of the South. And then a period of time later, about eight years later, we have Fernándo Magellan, who was Portuguese, but he was hired by the Spanish to find a way to the Spice Islands. The Ambassador mentioned that in that region there were spices that were more valuable than gold, and that's around the islands of Turnat. So it's the Eastern Indonesian region, not far from West Papua.

All right, what we have here is we have a view of the Apostadero of Callao. So Callao is the port for Lima, and what you see there in the pentagon is the Fortaleza de San Felipe. I've been there, it's a huge fort. It's hard to see there, but to the right is the number 29, and that's the remains of the previous Fortaleza that had been destroyed by a tsunami some 50 years prior. So this image is from 1801, and that was probably the peak period of the combating between British privateers with letters of marque and the Spanish trying to hold the fort with a modest fleet of two warships. And we'll get onto that in a moment in talking about the loss of the Limeno.

So the Spanish Pacific, before the settlement at Sydney, before the British arrived, set up a convict colony at Port Jackson. It's interesting to note that for most European powers, the region, even though it was Sydney and it was Port Jackson, Sydney Cove, most of them all referred to it as Botany Bay, because Botany Bay had been the announcement from the British in 1786, and that tag continued well into the future. And similarly, the tag of New South Wales.

So the Ambassador mentioned at a moment ago, 2022 was the 50th anniversary, five centuries since Magellan circumnavigated the world. We in Australia tend to miss out because of our Anglo-centric perspective, and because the Pacific was unpopulated until James Cook arrived. That's the way I remember it in 1970 when I was a ten-year-old being taught at school.

So we do have a very, it's a hard thing to recognise, but most of our history tends to view the Spanish side as being undeserving, undeserving of what they did or the black legend in terms of other or bloodthirsty conquistadors chasing gold and silver. And that's not the case. So hopefully when we come away from this today, you may have a different perspective and may be prepared to look afresh at where our history bears on things that have gone on before. And I'm conscious of the time, so I'll keep moving. So the Spanish Armada presence was at Callao and effectively most of the time it was two warships.

And you've also got to recognise the nature of things, the law of nations. So the law of nations said if you discover, this is the European law of nations, if you discover something, if you colonise it, you can defend, it's yours. And that was the nature which is similar in principle to what we have here in Australia with the old line prior to terra nullius. The thing that drove the expansion of the Pacific was British and North American commerce moving into the Pacific in the pursuit of whales.

And you look at it and go, well, why are whales so important? Well, think of this, prior to the 1850s, the source of illumination, the most effective source of illumination was a whale oil candle or whale oil in a lantern. That was slightly overtaken in the 1820s and '30s when you had reticulated gas. So you had town gas in places, but certainly until the advent of kerosene in the 1850s and then later on other illuminants whale oil candles were the thing to do, and people would have dinner parties and you would bring your own whale oil candles with you in order to participate.

Does anybody recall the 1975 movie, Barry Lyndon, it was a Stanley Kubrick movie. It's worthwhile looking at again, it was a very good movie, but the interesting thing is all those candles, all that illumination was natural light from whale oil candles that Kubrick used in order to get the vibe of the place.

All right, this is a view, interesting, each kingdom had its own perspective. This is a chart, and this chart, which was used earlier, is effectively a British chart. So it shows the roots of Cook and Shevlock and Davis throughout the Pacific. And you can tell it's British because they don't ever call in South America. At the time, if you see the roots there, there's lots of gaps, but there's lots of mapping of the Pacific Islands. And that was because Spain, even in times of peace, was viewed as a hostile and precocious power. And part of that was also to do with Spain at this time claimed the whole of the Pacific for themselves by virtue of discovery. And so therefore anybody found in the Spanish Pacific could be captured and dealt with.

All right, Spanish Prizes brought into Sydney. So here's three examples. This is all in 1799. And I say this from my colleagues from other missions so that you can see that each of your countries or modern-day countries had a part in this in terms of providing the British with prizes. So Nuestra Señora de Belén, which is the Bethlehem. In 1799, it was captured off down from Guayaquil, Puna Island in what is now modern-day Ecuador. La Paloma, which is Spanish for the Dove, 1799, near Islas Tres Marias, which is on the western coast of Mexico, not too far from, about 80 Kilometres from San Blas, which at the time was the Naval department looking after the northern region of the Pacific. And the Santa Eufemia. Again 1799, Northern Peru. And when it was taken as a prize and brought into Sydney, it was renamed.

Sorry, just trying to work out what I've done with my phone because I'm supposed to be running a timer on this, and I am. Okay, good. All right.

All three of those prizes were successfully condemned as good and lawful prizes by the Vice Admiralty Court of New South Wales. And the colony at Sydney or New South Wales could now view itself as being part of the imperial pursuit in terms of prize taking and doing its bit for the war effort. So the Bethlehem was the very first occasion where the prize court was convened in order to condemn that prize.

Privateers and whalers. Okay, a quick view of the Pacific. I've put there, and I hope there are no Navy navigators here because I think the placement of some of those islands is not entirely correct, but certainly the locations that British whalers tended to operate from were those where there wasn't a strong Spanish presence. So Coquimbo, to the right there, in northern Chile, it's sort of a desolate area, and often if you're trading contraband and so on, it was a good place to arrive, and there was a bit of a pattern to it.

You'd turn up, you'd fire your cannon, some people would row out. You wouldn't let too many Spaniards or Chileans on at a time, you would display, if you were trading contraband, you'd display your goods, and then they would have to form a syndicate in order to buy those goods. So you'd arrange to come back five, six weeks later in order to trade. And it was a very common practise, really common a lot.

Tahiti and the Marquesas were places for refreshment. Similarly, most of these whalers, very small crews, only 28 people, so that includes the officers. So that's effectively four officers, 24 men, and you're doing a voyage that would go for two to three years into the Pacific and then returned with whale oil and whatever else you could pick up in terms of prizes.

All right, a quick one here. This was the image used for drawing people's attention in the promotion. So this image is actually, it hangs in the Chief of Navy's office in Madrid, the AJEMA. Don't ask me what it stands for, [unclear] or something. Tito. Yeah, just like I said. Okay, thank you. Okay. All right. So what you have here is in the middle you have El Castor. So El Castor had been four years prior, a British whaler, but it had been captured in 1797. I know because I've been tracking the captain of that ship. The Henry was a British letter of marque that had arrived in the region, and this is all occurring in northern Ecuador, sort of between the Galápagos Islands and Guayaquil.

And then over to the left there is the San Ramon that was being saved from British capture by the El Castor. And the net result in 1800 is, and this is why for the Spanish it's a good thing to show. It's here we are in the Pacific and we're getting the Como se dice, los peritos, inglés, those English dogs. Okay, 'we're winning against those English dogs'. And the actual painting belongs to the Museo Naval in Madrid. And if you ever get to Madrid, I thoroughly recommend you go there. You could spend days in the museum. It's fantastic.

All right, a quick one. The ambassador mentioned before about the Treaty of Tordesillas. So what that was is after Christopher Columbus, effectively it was first a papal bull, and it said, "Okay, we've got two empires here, two Catholic empires, we've got the Portuguese and the Spanish, and we need to find a way that they can survive together and prosper."

And so what happened was they took a line. So if you can visualise there's Spain in the brown, if you take a line out from the Canary Islands, I think it was 700 leagues, so that's about 2,100 nautical miles. That becomes the meridian by which the world is divided. And as the ambassador mentioned, if you look to the right there in the blue area, the blue, then going into the beige, you can see part of Australia. So see that line going down, that is the 135th Meridian, and that is the anti-meridian. And that's the line that divided the two worlds. And that line then forms part of when Arthur Phillip was given his instructions as Captain General in 1787, he was given jurisdiction from that line to the east.

And so even though we don't recognise a lot of Spanish history, there's still the Spanish influence or the Portuguese Spanish influence in how our nation has drawn up its boundaries. And the other thing to be aware of is that we now have great precision in lines, but back 200 years ago, 300 years ago, those lines and the size of the earth was, like James Cook, the transit of Venus. That was partly about determining how big was the earth, because it was about measuring the time it takes Venus to transit across the sun and trigonometry and so on. It wasn't particularly useful, but they tried. So always keep that in mind.

And the Ambassador also mentioned the division of Papua New Guinea. That line cuts down through Papua New Guinea, and also the division of Western Australia. So when the British claimed Western Australia in 1829, the Swan River Colony, there'd always been this element of trying to pick your fights. You wanted to claim something that there wouldn't be an objection from or going to war with another nation. And so that was one of the reasons why Arthur Phillip got the line originally at 135, and then things got transited as other European powers sort of gave up on territorial ambitions in this part of the world.

Spanish America is in 1790. The reason I choose 1790 is because that's the time where. I've got eight minutes left. Okay. 1790 is where it's the Treaty of Nootka Convention. So Nootka Convention is where the Spanish concede that other powers, well, the British may venture into the Pacific and be unmolested, and that the British may also in times of duress or stress have their ships visit Spanish ports, because the British being opportunists, that little opening became open more and more. Every ship pulled in, "Oh, my cruise got scurvy, we've broken the mast, we need help, blah, blah."

And the contraband trading flowed from that. So I'm just naming there the viceroyalties and the Captaincy general. So Captaincy general, a little bit lower down the scale. So Chile was more of a frontier sort of place back in this era. The same for Panama.

Now the ports, so Nootka Sound to the north, I've labelled them. San Blas, Panama. Ambassador, there is Lima in there, but it's already in the little red, the Virreinato del Perú, Viceroyalty of Peru, and then Coquimbo, Valparaiso, Buenos Aires.

Okay, so now the thing we've come for, the story of the Chance and the Limeno. So the Chance was a ship out of Cape Town. It was a British ship. Michael Hogan was the owner, and the captain was William White. Left Cape Town for Sydney, had an initial crew of 50. The intention always was to pick up more crew in Sydney, time expired convicts or whatever fitted the case at the time. Because you've got to remember in this era, there weren't that many ships calling it Sydney.

They were convict transports that would then go on to the East India company, the British East India company, which was very precious of its territory. And I'm just conscious of the time, so I'll move through this quickly. So in a nutshell, the chance encountered the Limeno at sea coming out of Guayaquil, and they captured the Limeno near Guayaquil, and then they escorted it across the Atlantic to Cape Town, to the Vice Admiralty Court of Cape Town. An important point here is the British, whenever they set up colonies, they always set up courts, some judicial system. And a big part of that was in ports to have a vice Admiralty Court, because that way you could have British mariners motivated to capture ships, the enemy, in times of war.

And this is the important thing. It had to be a war, and you had to have letters marque, if you were capturing foreign ships and there was no war, you were a pirate. The Spanish viewed most British as pirates, irregardless of whether there was a war or not. That's fair enough.

So here are details. So this is the thing of letter of marque. So a privateer was a commercial ship, not owned by the Navy, individuals that were putting up sureties. 1,500 pounds was typically the amount of money you would have to put forward to guarantee that you'd be compliant with the laws. You're expected to behave like the captain of a Royal Navy ship or a sloop or a vessel, whatever. And so here you have the captain, the commercial captain of the Chance writing to the Admiral in Cape Town saying, "Here's what I've done." And so he tells the story of the battle. I found this in the National Archives, it was published in the London Gazette.

So in a nutshell, the Limeno had a large crew, but probably not that well practised, whereas the Chance had been grabbing things where it could and being very aggressive and effectively the last paragraph here, she had, the Limeno, had 14 men killed, seven wounded, the captain mortally wounded, he died two days after the action, and the Chance had two men killed and one wounded. And that was 50 men at the start of the battle.

Now to the credit of both sides, having taken the Spanish as prisoners, they sailed into Tumbes, which was then northern Peru, now is Ecuador. And they held a proper service for the burial of Captain Martinez who'd been mortally wounded in the fight.

All right, I won't go into this. This is declarations of some of the crew that deserted from the Chance before this battle. And the reason they deserted, so this is written in Spanish, obviously with the use of a translator. The Spanish wrote that the captain of the Chance was very brutal and harsh to his men. So that's why that's the statement of the men.

All right, now, Malaspina and Bustamante, let's quickly go through this. So this is an initiative of the great enlightened King, King Carlos III. There's images, that painting, which is from Chile, the two vessels, Descubierta and Atrevida to the right there. All right, this is the route. Here are the individuals. It was the first foreign delegation to visit Sydney. The first ever. People think the French were, no, the French went to Botany Bay, and La Pérouse never walked over land to Sydney Cove. And Arthur Phillip had actually sailed his fleet, the first fleet was sailed out of Botany Bay as the French were arriving. So the Spanish can rightly lay claim to being the first official delegation to visit Sydney. And I think that's very fitting. Hey, Tito. Okay.

All right. So 11th of March 1793, they arrive. Only one crew member, a good Irish name, Murphy, could speak English. So he assisted the process. They were hoping to meet Arthur Phillip, but Arthur Phillip had left the colony three months before in December, due to ill health. The Spanish remained there for a month, they anchored where now the Sydney Opera House is. And I think for the Spanish-American community, it would be really good if there were more recognition of the visitations by the Spanish and some of the other things we'll talk about here. The key takeaway was the Spanish were amazed at the material progress of the colony at Sydney Cove. They said, "Well, it's only been going for five years. What are they going to be like in another 20, 40 or a hundred years?" And they were right.

Here's an image not many people will have seen. This is actually from the Museo De America and Madrid. And this is actually a pen and wash done by Juan Ravenet. So he was one of the artists on the Malaspina Expedition. And it records the official reception. If you look, you can tell the difference because some have tricorne hats that or the, okay, there's a difference. You can see the women or some of the women standing up sort of in the shadows there. And this was, don't forget, they couldn't really speak, so all they could really do was sort of hang around, nod, smile, and so on. The artists did a lot of miniature portraits for the locals, and it was very amicable, it was a very friendly visit.

So some of our earliest images, so here's Sydney Cove looking east from the rocks. And so you can see here on the rise there, that's the governor's residence at the end of that long street, that would be Hunter Street. George Street would be in the front here behind the buildings, and you'll see that shortly. And the two ships are more out there, left most out there.

Sydney Cove viewed from the rocks. So that's looking southwards, and you've got effectively George Street down there.

Parramatta, this is a drawing that is held in the Museo Naval. So this is the artist's rendition of the reality of what they found. In other words, they were surprised that there weren't many horses. They were using a lot of convict labour.

And I'm conscious of the time, I've only got 20 seconds left. I know, I was going to do some special pleading. Can I go in for another five, 10 minutes? Yeah. Okay, great. Okay, thanks. All right, keep moving.

This is the rendition of a gift to the colony. So much more agrarian ideal. So if we just go back, there you've got the portray of the convicts. That wasn't supposed to happen. All right, so here you have the convicts. And you've got human propulsion for getting things done, whereas, that's of your Parramatta. So this was taken, well, this was drawn from Rosehill. All right, the Spanish perceptions. Earliest images we have of convicts and the garrison via the artists.

What struck the Spanish expeditioners? The different moral standards at Sydney. Ah, okay. Malaspina and Bustamante noted it was not possible to move between their ships and the town without being accosted by prostitutes and easy women at all hours. Nothing's changed. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I'll qualify that. The Navy's base at Kuttabul is at the bottom of Potts Point. So if you're using public transport, you would walk up the hill, up Macleay Street or whatever, to get to the railway station. And not so much now, but I remember in the '80s. Okay, I'll stop now. All right. Okay, I like this one.

We'll just read the stuff in bold. The constant, this is by a young lieutenant who was the second officer on the Atrevida. "The constant seductions of the depraved women who served their sentences, had achieved their successes over our men, dragging them into the wildness of alcohol and lust in order to satisfy their vices more than their need." Okay. Terrible. And then at the bottom there, "there was even a sailor who went missing for four days", he wasn't seen for four days. Okay, I take it back, things have changed. All right.

A quick one here. This is a Spanish chart, this chart, actually for Tito, for the defence attaché for Spain, there's not a copy of this in any Australian archive, because this a rendition by the expedition of Port Jackson. And I think it's interesting because, let me just move to the next one. North Head, South Head, Port Jackson, Garden Island, Sydney. You can see down the bottom there, that's Sydney. Now if we enlarge just below South Head there, so this is a slight enlargement, look safe anchorages or for a Spanish invasion. So if you see, so those little dots are soundings made by a boat that goes along. So it's interesting that in the region of Rose Bay and Vaucluse, there's a lot of soundings. And if we just go back, if you look at where that's located relative to Sydney, it's not really visible to Sydney Cove. So there's an element of, like with all goodwill visits, there's an element of, okay, well what else do we learn from this visit? And in this case, this could have been preparation for an invasion, or if they needed to, if they wanted to.

All right, moving along. Susannah from the, I'll call it the map collection here at the NLA. She does a great job, and Susanna very kindly provided me with this image, which is the, it was printed in 1798. It's the Malaspina mapping of South America. Okay, thank you. When they returned, they got back to Spain in 1794. They'd been voyaging for five years. The plan was that the natural history collection and their logs and diaries would be turned into publication in order, because it wasn't an enlightenment voyage.
Then I'd also put in a plug for Robert J. King here. Robert wrote a very good book where he translated the secret report, and that was maybe 20 years ago, and it would be good to see it republished, Robert. I thoroughly recommend it to you, particularly the essay that Robert wrote before the translation, which gives context. And Robert's been an inspiration to me in terms of all this.

The interesting thing is that because Malaspina travelled so badly with the king and was imprisoned, charged with treason, eventually died, died sadly back in Italy and Genoa. The work remained unpublished for a hundred years. So he was the opportunity for Spain to present, "Look at us, we're contributing to enlightenment." Missed opportunity. So out of this, Bustamante, the other captain, basically, and who was a friend, a very good friend of Malaspina's, he hatches in 1796, a bit of a defence plan. So he writes a memorial.

This is the thing that I discovered in the archives 10 years ago, and there are four points to it. And the last point was that they should destroy Sydney, because if Sydney were allowed to prosper, and at that time Sydney was only 5,000 persons, if Sydney were permitted to prosper, it would be the end of the Spanish Empire in the Pacific. So that was quite prophetic, and the plan was, it was interesting, the plan was to also repatriate to South America, British science and technology, by taking these inhabitants back and encouraging them to settle in South America.

I don't really have time to go into this guy and his deserters. What this basically is is there were many deserters that popped up on the South American coast, and a deal had been hatched between Britain and Spain that whenever an English mariner was under the control of Spain, they would receive two reals per day. If you think of a peso, a peso is composed of eight reals, pieces of eight. Eight. So therefore you had, every four days a British mariner was earning a peso towards his subsistence whilst he awaited repatriation or whatever. And this is an account from Chile saying, "Hey, we carry these people of this name between these dates that came out of the Fortuna, the frigate fortune that had been in Sydney." And most of them were stowaways. So they're escapees.

And it's interesting, I did a history conference, showed this, and all these people came up saying, "That's my ancestor. I always wondered how he got back to England." Okay, no, it's true. So there is this other angle that we haven't really explored, that the Spanish Americas was the root home, particularly given that you couldn't really go via the East Indies by dint of laws. And South America was in a way wide open.
That's a highlight of the names that I identified. 

The same here again. 1806, this is a case of a piratically seized vessel was going to Tasmania. The mate, in other words, the number two on it was a guy called Kelly, who was an American, and whilst the captain was ashore in Port Dalrymple, I think, he seized the vessel and it was believed, the myth was that they'd gone to New Zealand, got eaten by the Maori's, because the Maori's were cannibals. What actually happened is they sailed all the way across the Pacific. They didn't have a sextant, navigational skills were pretty lax. But they made it to Chile, and then came up with a cock-and-bull story about how they were Americans and how they'd been hard done by in storms and could they get some help, please? All right, that's it. Thank you.

Daniel Gleeson: Wow. Thank you, Chris. Wow, that was like being on the end of a fire hose. We just congratulate you, Chris, for the energy that you have brought to this project, from the day you sought to engage with the Library and all your research. I feel like you need to be looking at TikTok with that presentation, that was just amazing.

If you enjoyed tonight's talk, you can find it again online, because we'll be hosting all of this on our YouTube channel, so you can have a look at it again or share it with your friends. And please always check in with the National Library what's on our website for more information about our future events.

We've now got some refreshments up in the foyer, some Peruvian themed light refreshments. And I'm sure if you want to hail Chris up about anything he's spoken about tonight, he'll be happy to answer your questions. So once again, please join with me in thanking the Embassy of Peru and Chris Maxworthy.