Australia & the Pacific
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Australia & the Pacific Maggs Bros. Ltd. 48 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DR Telephone: +44 (0)20 7493 7160 Email: [email protected] © Maggs Bros Ltd 2020 A HANDSOME PORTRAIT OF THE PIRATE-EXPLORER 1 BOISSARD (Robert). Sir Francis Drake. Engraving, with etching, measuring 186 by 126mm. Trimmed to plate mark, and on the right margin just inside, a small hole repaired just touching the ‘c’ of Frauncis in the legend. Inlaid into a paper mount. Nd. but after 1590. £2,250 Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596) was the first English circumnavigator, and only the second after Magellan. His voyage extended British maritime power into the Pacific for the first time, threatened the Spanish empire in America to its heart, opened a new age in British seamanship, and made Drake a rich man. Sailing from Plymouth in December 1577, the expedition reached Patagonia in June 1578, weathered a near mutiny, and saw the second ship, the Elizabeth, turn back during the stormy passage through the Straits of Magellan. Drake sailed on alone in the Golden Hind, raiding Spanish commerce along the Pacific coast of the Americas, and culminated his piracy with the seizure of a major treasure galleon. This exploit allowed him to pay a 4600% dividend to his backers on returning to England. In 1579 he explored northward up the California coast, discovered San Francisco Bay, and went as far north as Vancouver. He then crossed the Pacific, took on a cargo of spices in the East Indies, and went home by the Cape of Good Hope, arriving back at Plymouth in September 1580. It was considered the most heroic feat of seamanship of the age. Here Drake is looking to the right, his armour and doublet elaborately realised and above a putto holds a laurel wreath aloft. This rare print is the second state of two, the first with the suspended engraved text (on a separate plate). Hind is unsure of the date of this print which was one of six executed by Boissard of British naval heroes. He suggests that the first state cannot have been before 1590. According to Hind, the famous Vaughan portrait is a reversed copy of this one. Hind, Arthur, M., Engraving in England in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 1 (1952), p.190; Boissard, 3. 1 ARGUING FOR A SECOND GALLEON “whose blood the harvests were nourished.” The author then 2 [MARIANAS ISLANDS.] [Draft letter from an reiterates the strategic importance of the mission and states that anonymous Jesuit missionary petitioning for a regular galleon run the islands “must be preserved at all costs as a valuable base between the Marianas and Manila.] leading to the surrounding islands, even Japan.” He argues that a galleon route between the Marianas and Manila, which would be a Manuscript in ink. 4pp. Small folio. Old folds, some very pale separate entity from the already established Manila galleon, would dampstaining to top left corner not affecting legibility. [?Hagåtña, benefit the mission and specifies that a vessel of one hundred tons c. 1680.] £4,750 would be sufficient and could also sail to Canton. He also suggests the mission be fortified and guarded by forty soldiers. In the first The Spanish mission on the Marianas Islands (Guam) was instance the bronze cannon from the wreck of the Concepción established by Diego Luis de San Vitores in February 1669, seven could be used for it. months after he landed on the island. He saw the immediate potential of the Marianas as a staging post for the wider spread The petition must have of Catholicism across the unknown austral lands. At that time, carried some weight, as by and for the next one hundred years, there was much discussion 1681, a fort had been built of an unknown Southern Continent, and the establishment of and a garrison installed for San Vitores’ mission must be seen in the context of the early the missionaries’ protection. exploration of the Pacific. Indeed, the“ arrival in 1668 of the This was disastrous for the Jesuit missionary team on Guam was of singular importance for Chamorros population the Pacific, for it represented the earliest sustained European as what commenced as a advance into any of the Pacific Islands” (Rosa). peaceful missionary project quickly resembled a military The first years of the mission were fraught with tension as the conquest. differences and demands of the two cultures became apparent. Just two months after their arrival, Fr Morales (in the northern Marianas) Any seventeenth-century and Fr Louis de Medina (in Guam) were attacked. San Vitores manuscript material had been adamant that the mission be peaceful and, importantly, regarding the Catholic unarmed. However, these attacks “persuaded him that sterner mission on the Marianas is measures were needed if the mission was to survive [...] Sanvitores rare. This speaks directly to went about Guam preaching what amounted to a crusade. Rallying the immediate concerns of life on the ground and looks ahead to a some of his first Guamanian converts and calling a handful of more secure future for the mission and its staff. Filipino troops to assist him, he returned to Tinian with his small army and succeeded, by threat of arms, in achieving a brittle peace” Hezel, F.X., “From Conversion to Conquest: The Early Spanish (Hezel). San Vitores was killed in April 1672 and, despite the evident Mission in the Marianas” in The Journal of Pacific History, Vol. 17, success of the mission, ongoing relations proved difficult. No. 3 (July, 1982), p.122; Howgego I, S42; Rosa, A. Coello de la., Jesuits at the Margins: Missions and Missionaries in the Marianas This draft letter - filled with corrections, insertions and deletions (1668-1769) London, 2015, p.xv. - commences with a tribute to the martyred San Vitores with 2 COMMISERATING THE DEATH OF A MARTYR superior, but he also produced the first account,History of the 3 [MARIANAS ISLANDS.] FILPE (Father Johann). ALS to the Mission in the Mariana Islands, 1667-1673, for fear that letters Duchess de Aveiro. written from the mission would be lost. It’s no surprise that Tilpe Manuscript in ink on rice paper. Text in Latin. 2pp plus blanks on makes repeated reference to Coomans’ eloquence. a bifolium. Small folio. Hagåtña, 5 May, 1686. £4,250 Tilpe was a Bohemian Jesuit Father, who departed for Mexico in Very rare: a seventeenth-century letter written from Guam 1680, and from there he proceeded to the Marianas. He was one lamenting the death of Jesuit Father Peter Coomans. of five missionaries who arrived on the Marianas islands in 1681. His immediate task was to oversee the seminary for boys and also This letter was written seventeen years after the establishment attend to the spiritual welfare of the soldiers. of the Catholic mission by Diego Luis de San Vitores. It was his murder in 1672 that transformed a largely missionary enterprise Dampier, W., A Collection of Voyages in Four Volumes ... (London, into a colonial one. Tensions between the Spanish missionaries 1729) p.300; Rosa, A. Coello de la., Jesuits at the Margins: Missions and the local Chamorros were frequently violent and, by 1681, and Missionaries in the Marianas ... (London, 2015), p.7. the Spanish consolidated their military presence by fortifying the mission. A contemporary report on the Spanish presence is supplied by no less than William Dampier, who visited Guam within weeks (21- 30 May, 1686) of this letter: “The Spaniards have a small Fort on the West-side, near the South-end, with six Guns in it. There is a Governour, and 20 or 30 Spanish Soldiers. There are no more Spaniards on this Island, beside two or three Priests. Not long before we arrived here, the Natives rose on the Spaniards to destroy them, and did kill many: But the Governour with his Soldiers at length prevailed, and drove them out of the Fort.” He is referring to the second Spanish-Chamorro War of 1684-6, after which the “Jesuits clearly had the political and religious leadership of the islands in their hands, becoming founders of a ‘missionary state’ in which martyrs were permanent moral referents for years to come” (Rosa). Here we have a first-hand look at the sanctification of one such martyr. Father Johann Tilpe (1644-1710) writes to the Duchess de Aveiro regarding the death of the Belgian missionary Peter Coomans (1638-1685): “vivit post funera virtus.” Coomans was an important figure in the mission. Not only was he active as a 3 MARKING THE BEGINNING OF THE GRANDS VOYAGES ERA 4 [ANON.] Manuscript map of the South Pacific showing the tracks of Byron, Wallis, and Cartaret. Executed in sepia ink with the Byron track and some other annotations in red. On two joined thin sheets measuring 380 by 710mm. Wormed along the bottom edge, with some, now restored, loss but not affecting the principal subject matter. England, c. 1770. £4,750 The author of this chart remains obscure, but there is some evidence that it might have been a working precursor to the Pacific map in Hawkesworth, certainly the daily positional observations have been made with care. The Torres Strait is not noticed, ie Papua New Guinea and the Cape York Peninsula are connected, however, it also differs from the chart in Bougainville’s voyage (1771). The map incorporates the southern portion of South America, including the Falkland Islands and the Straits of Magellan, and then stretches across the Pacific to include the east coast of Papua New Guinea. In between, it notes the Juan Fernandez islands off the coast of Chile, and several dangerous reefs. To the west, Nova Britannia is the foremost landmark.