Señor. El Capitan Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, a V.M. pido licencia para quexarme si quiera vn poco de lo mucho ...
1614
SAFE 1/5r
Block print on laid paper
In this memorial Pedro Fernandes de Queirós (1563–1615) uses highly emotive language, conveying the passion he has for his quest to return to Austrialia del Espiritu Santo.
He begs Spain’s King Philip III to respond to his repeated requests to support a missionary expedition and relates his difficulties in persuading the Spanish authorities to send another expedition:
‘… Here I am in need of having to argue and to write as a great theologian, canonist and philosopher, being only a mere sailor and soldier. And I also ask, who are those who shall bear God's justice, so many souls, and so many assets that are lost each day in all those provinces, in whose name, and of its peoples ...’
With a government severely starved of funds, the King had no real intention of funding another expedition but finally dispatched Queirós to Peru in 1614 with hollow promises. Unfortunately Queirós died on the voyage and no further attempts were made by the Spanish to explore the South Pacific.
Novae Guineae – Forma & Situs, 1593
By Gerard de Jode
This late 16th century
Belgian map shows East New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and an imaginary coast
of Terra Australis (the great southern continent) complete with mythical
beasts.
Not for foreign eyes
By Quoted in Justo Zaragoza, Historia del descubrimiento de las regions austriales: Hecho por el general Pedro Fernadex de Quiros, el Pacific hispano y la busqueda de la “Terra Australis”, Madrid, 1876–82, reprint 2000, p 389
Under Philip III the Council of the Indies continued to be aware that news concerning the political situation of the New World was sensitive. Such was the case with one of the printed accounts Pedro Fernandes de Queirós circulated in Madrid around 1610. The Council asked the king to order that the documents be collected, concerned that Queirós had included some discussions about the governance of the Indies that it would be best to keep out of foreign hands:
' ... [Quierós] has printed in this court several accounts and lately a very long one in which he discusses his voyage and treats indiscriminately many other matters concerning the government of the Indies and other sensitive matters. [He] has given and distributed these accounts to different persons from this nation and foreign, something that is considered very inconvenient, both for the information that foreigners can get from it, coming in the wake of his news concerning those lands and navigations, and because most of the things he discusses have no foundation ...'
To complain at least a little bit …
By Excerpt from translation of Memorial No. 14
‘I,
Captain Pedro Fernández de Quirós, ask permission of Your Majesty to complain
at least a bit about all the years that I have suffered, attempting to
establish that in the unknown Austral part there could be lands inhabited by
people, and of how hard it is for me now to convince others that I have seen
them, and that they exist, and how much they mean to me, having gone there and
seen them on my own, and how worthy they are of being populated, and how
convenient it is for the good of both not to be uncaring with them, nor to
waste my life in vain, a life I also wish to invest in such a venture ...’
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