The legacy of the guardian of the oceans is a progeny of overseas stepchildren where the Union Jack beats the gale of an Atlantic that backbones the glory of who, from Gibraltar to Antarctica, still governs a bastard of anachronistic and minuscule colonial possessions. The United Kingdom does not end at Land’s end, as it straddles the rocks of Ascension, Saint Helena, Tristan da Cunha, Falklands and South Georgia, but halfway there, they always lacked a Canary bay.
Until well into the 16th century, the British had serious technical limitations in navigating beyond the coastal reference. The Iberian sailors were the ones who dominated high-altitude navigation. The Spanish pilots were examined in Seville and their roteiros and regiments hid the secret of navigation, with the heritage of the Arab world that had enriched their astronomical knowledge. The advantage over the English was remarkable. A very different thing is that they have known how to sell the story better.
In the decades after the great transatlantic discovery, the nautical advantage over British sailors did not materialize and they began to sail and invest in expeditions, at the same time buying Spanish wills, in the case of the Ponte de Adeje, to serve as a pilot who would open up the secrets of high-altitude navigation, as John Hawkins did in Tenerife in the middle of the 16th century. While Castile languished in catechisms, the Anglos invested in shipyards, to rewrite a story, which exalts them as the best sailors. Lie. Malaespina has nothing to envy Cook, but we have not known how to honor or respect him, let alone sell.
The Gesta of July 25 has something of a patriotic fattening. Normal, because don’t the English make up their defeats? I am a firm believer that the attempt by the Royal Navy to take the plaza chicharrera was due more to a chance attempt than to a determined action, because if it had been, today we would drive on the left and have the canary tea at five. But an accurate shot kept us in the strict corset [fiscal] Spanish, and freed us from having been something similar to Gibraltar with a happy and productive offshore economy.
I believe that the romantic cantatas of cannons and bronze fires against pirates with a patch, wooden leg and the Jolly Roger are part of a popular bestiary far removed from reality and maritime historiography. Narrations closer to nautical literature, of which I recommend any work by Patrick O’Brian, than to reality.
With the bad taste of citing myself, I wrote my doctoral thesis under the title Policy of England between 1500 and 1700. Half a thousand pages to fit a table, which tries to clarify, in Spanish, the rise of England as the first naval power of the time. Translating letters and instructions from the Elizabethan court to John Hawkins or Francis Drake from Old English, you realize that the great thorn in English navigation begins with its frustrations in the Islands Canary Islands.
Any student of the naval projection of the Napoleonic era, where England dragged conflicts to the sea, a table where it was known to be superior, due to the conception of a maritime vs. continental state, would be fully aware that a squadron formed expressly to take Santa Cruz, and not the demoralized remnants commanded by Nelson, would have had serious possibilities of materializing a beachhead in Tenerife. The British squadron was made up of 7 ships, of which only two were what is known as man of war with 37 artillery pieces per band: HMS Culloden and Zealous. The rest were smaller ships in an artillery belt, or out of class in the slang. The capital’s defense rested on various artillery pieces, a handful of regulars, and the recruitment of civilians as a militia. An army in rags against the Royal Navy, the world’s first naval force, doesn’t seem like much of a match for a serious landing attempt.
Nelson’s attack is the aftermath of the inconsistent 1797 English victory at San Vicente, and their subsequent failure in the blockade of Cádiz. Maritime historiography tends to argue that, to alleviate the discontent of the crews, due to an excess of time at sea without clear plans, and to avoid any threat of mutiny, Nelson and his officers chose to try to land in Tenerife as a second course after the few previous solid experiences. The attack was devoid of planning and any real chances of success. There is an imbalance between the (overvalued) celebration of the so-called Gesta of July 25 and what the English really presented on the horizon. The rest is fattening, folklore and tradition, which on the other hand the English have been doing for centuries.
British overseas interests have always longed for a possession of the Canary Islands as an Atlantic piece of great strategic value for their expeditions and naval expansion towards the Indies, what they call the middle passage, or crossing the Atlantic. The British attempts to take a place in the Canary Islands are old and pre-Nelson. Drake prowled La Palma in 1585. In 1595 he tried to land in Las Palmas, which led to a confrontation with the shipowners and representatives of the Crown, accusing him of jeopardizing the objective of the fleet, which was none other than to prey on Spanish traffic in the Caribbean, and trying to take Cartagena de Indias.
If we had achieved this, and applying the usual British overseas cultural procedure to the strategic value of Tenerife, perhaps we would be another Gibraltar, with the Canary Islands Pound, and a refinery that would sell fuel in West Africa. All the British attempts in the Canaries were toasts to the sun and not planned attacks as such, because if they had been, we would now have Nelson Square & Admiral John Jervis Street instead of Spain Square and Castle Street. In any case, English historiography is as learned in hiding its failures –from Spanish hands– as ours is self-conscious and clumsy when extolling its achievements; It will be for this reason that whoever wins the war writes the books. Case of the unbearable English fallacy when explaining The Great Armada of 1588, but that is another story.
*rafael munoz He is a doctor in evolution and history of navigation
