This is a re-donatinon of a print won in a previous auction. The donor has simply run out of wall space and wants to share the print with the community that will most appreciate it. It is now framed and remains in excellent condition.

MEXICANA AND SUTIL IN GUEMES CHANNEL, JUNE 11, 1792

Giclée print on archival inks on acid and lignin-free paper

Original painting in acrylic on canvas, 18” X 28”, 1995  

Collection of Doctor James Richardson

Near midday of June 11, 1792, two small Spanish ships, Sutil and Mexicana, under the commands of  the young Frigate Captains Don Dionisio Alacalá-Galiano and Don Cayetano Valdés y Flores, sailed into Guemes Channel near the present city of Anacortes, Washington.  Their mission was to explore and chart the waterways inside Juan de Fuca Strait and to attempt to locate the fabled “Northwest Passage” to the Atlantic.  The two little ships (about 45 feet on the waterline) had sailed here from Acapulco in southern Mexico via Nootka Sound, where they had been refitted and provisioned.  The evening before, they had anchored off the southeast point of Lopez Island and a party had gone ashore to observe the emergence of the first moon of Jupiter in order to correct their longitude.  This observation was probably made on what is today part of my property on Watmough Head, Lopez Island.

The light following breeze was not strong enough to allow the two ships to buck the tidal current in the center of Guemes Channel, so they closed the south shore to take advantage of the side eddies along Fidalgo lsland.  Four young Indians and an older man from the village on Guemes Island paddled expertly out to the ships and traded blackberries, dried clams, and a dog-wool robe lined with feathers, for buttons and beads.  The young artist on Mexicana, José Cadero, captured the incident in a spectacular painting now in the Museo Naval in Madrid.  His view of the two ships in Guemes channel, with Mount Baker looming on the horizon, was the inspiration for this painting of a setting very familiar to me.

I am much indebted to Mark Myers, RSMA, F/ASMA, for detailed information on the two ships, and especially for his interpretation of José Cardero’s drawings of the unusual rigging of Mexicana’s main mast.