Esteban José Martínez
Esteban José Pedro de Santa Leocadia Martínez Fernández y Martínez de la Sierra (born December 9 or 10 , 1742 in Seville , Spain ; † October 28, 1798 in Loreto (Baja California Sur) , Mexico ) was a Spanish navigator and explorer.
Life
Martínez was born in Seville to Martín Martínez and Antonia María Fernández Vigueras. His father was from Asturias and his mother was from Seville. When Esteban was six years old, his father became seriously ill and died the following year. At the age of eight, Esteban Martínez entered the Real Colegio Seminario de San Telmo , a naval academy specially set up for orphaned boys.
He undertook his first major sea voyage as a cabin boy on board the Príncipe Lorenzo from 1759 to 1760 in the Pacific . On his return to Spain he wanted to undertake another voyage on board the naval ship El Fénix from the beginning of 1762 and therefore drove to Cádiz . Since they did not want to give him the hoped-for post of pilotin , but wanted to take him on board as a simple seaman, Martínez left for Madrid without permission. This led to his expulsion from the Naval Academy.
Nothing is known about his whereabouts in the following years. In 1770 he married Gertrudis González from Seville in Madrid. Then he went to the New World. In 1773 he acted as a second officer in the base of San Blas (Nayarit) , the Pacific port that José de Gálvez y Gallardo had built in 1768 as the starting point for exploring and settling the Pacific coast northwards.
In 1774 Martínez drove as the second officer on board the frigate Santiago under the command of Juan José Pérez Hernández the Pacific coast along the coasts of what is now Oregon and Washington (state) to Alaska , where they reached the Bay of Nootka . Another expedition to the north followed in 1775, this time under the command of Bruno de Heceta .
In the following years he received his first command over mail ships, with which he brought food, supplies and soldiers to the Spanish bases in California and Sonora (state) . From 1775 he was also appointed as the commander of the naval base in San Blas.
In 1777 he was promoted to first helmsman and in 1781 to lieutenant ( alférez ). In 1782 he commanded two frigates and explored the Santa Barbara Channel , the coast of which he mapped. He supported the founding of the Spanish fortifications in Santa Barbara, California, and the mission of San Buenaventura , for which he undertook further supply trips in the following years , with further trips and material deliveries .
On one of the journeys in 1786 in Monterey (California) he met the French researcher Jean-François de La Pérouse , who was exploring Alaska and California, albeit without territorial claims for his homeland. The French told him that Russian settlers had established a post in Nootka Bay, information that later turned out to be false. He passed it on directly to the Viceroy, who reported it to Madrid.
At the same time, the Spanish ambassador to the court of the Russian tsar in St. Petersburg pointed out that the Russians were making efforts to expand their territory southward from Alaska. Alarmed, the Spanish court ordered that the New Spanish viceroy Manuel Antonio Flores should send an expedition to emphasize the Spanish territorial claims.
At the end of 1787, Flores commissioned Esteban Martínez, a seasoned expert on the coast, with this mission. He should sail at least up to the 61st parallel and explore Russian activity on site. Martínez left the port of San Blas with the frigate Princesa and escort ships on March 9, 1788. They drove to Kodiak Island , where they visited the Russian trading post, and to the Aleutian island of Unalaska .
They learned that a Russian expedition fleet was expected from Siberia in 1789 to establish a Russian settlement in Nootka Bay. Martínez quickly returned to San Blas, where he arrived on December 5, 1788. He recommended to the viceroy that the Spaniards should build a settlement and fortifications by the following May at the latest to ward off Russian territorial claims.
Since time was pressing and no timely orders could be expected from Madrid, Flores ordered the expedition to Nootka Bay again to build a settlement there to prove the Spanish conquest. Martínez and his men landed in the bay on May 5, 1789 and built a fort.
During the summer several ships with American and British crews arrived there, one of them, the Efigenia Nubiana, sailed under the Portuguese flag and was detained for a time.
When a schooner returned from a scouting trip on Juan de Fuca Strait in early July 1789, Martínez was convinced that he had found a river route that reached as far as the Mississippi (river) . At about the same time, the British merchant ship Argonaut under Captain James Colnett arrived from Macau in Nootka Bay. There was a dispute between the commanders on the British and Spanish sides, Martínez had the crew arrested. Together with another British ship, the Princess Royal , the ships and their sailors were brought to San Blas.
The British trader John Meares reported on these events in London in 1790. He himself had been in Nootka in 1788 and claimed to have acquired the island from the local Indians; the Spanish conquest is illegal. He also accused Martínez of killing an Indian chief and of forcing Chinese artisans who were on board the Argonaut to work in mines. While these allegations were largely unfounded, they were enough to spark a diplomatic crisis (known as the Nootka crisis ) between Spain and England .
On site, Martínez waited until the end of October 1789 for orders to winterize the settlement and to organize a year-round occupation. When this did not arrive, he returned to San Blas. Viceroy Flores had meanwhile been replaced by Juan Vicente de Güemes - who criticized Martínez 'actions as unwise and inappropriate. Despite this assessment, he ordered Nootka to be manned again as soon as possible. Therefore, he sent Francisco de Eliza to Alaska in 1790 , Martínez accompanied him as second in command.
In Nootka he received the order to return to Spain. His wife, whom he had left behind in Europe, was the originator. He returned to San Blas and traveled back to Europe in September 1791. He served for some time in the Spanish Navy in Cádiz until he applied for a transfer to San Blas. On condition that his wife had to agree, he was transferred to Mexico as requested and from February 1795 worked again at the San Blas naval base, this time with the rank of frigate lieutenant.
He continued to write plans for the development of the northwestern Pacific coast, which he presented in Mexico City in 1796. Presumably he was used for supply trips between the base in San Blas and the Spanish settlements in California; in any case, he died in Loreto on such a journey.
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| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Martínez, José Esteban |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Martínez Fernández y Martínez de la Sierra, Esteban José Pedro de Santa Leocadia |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Spanish navigator |
| DATE OF BIRTH | uncertain: December 9, 1742 or December 10, 1742 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Seville , Spain |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 28, 1798 |
| Place of death | Loreto (Baja California Sur) , Mexico |