Juan Fernández (Navigator)
Juan Fernández (* 1536 ; † 1604 ) was a Spanish navigator and explorer .
In 1563 he sailed from Callao in Peru to Valparaíso in Chile in just 30 days . His seafaring skills quickly made him famous in Spain .
On November 22, 1574, he discovered the Juan Fernández Islands , later named after him , an archipelago 700 km west of the Chilean coast. Fernández left some goats on these islands to serve as food reserves. When Alexander Selkirk , who provided the model for the novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe , stranded there in 1704, he found these goats on his island. In the meantime they had developed their own breed, which was smaller than the goats that were abandoned, and had turned a brown color. They were the so-called Juan Fernández goats . The island on which Selkirk was stranded was called Isla Más a Tierra until 1966 , when it was renamed Isla Robinson Crusoe .
Around 1574 Fernández discovered the islands of San Ambrosio and San Félix, which also belong to Chile today .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Fernández, Juan |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Spanish navigator and explorer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1536 |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1604 |