Juan de Fuca’s Strait: Voyages in the Waterway of Forgotten Dreams

In 16th-century Venice, explorer Juan de Fuca encountered English merchant Michael Lok and relayed a fantastic story of a seaway connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. De Fuca’s imagined "Strait of Anián"–the Northwest Passage–became a tantalizing quest that would exacerbate English and Spanish rivalry for centuries. The idea of a naval and trade route connecting Europe to Asia inspired countless explorers and fortune hunters. Gough draws on diplomatic records, commercial and personal documents, legal affidavits, and court records to illuminate the journeys of Martin Frobisher, James Cook, Francis Drake, Manuel Quimper, José María Narváez, George Vancouver, and Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, among others.