The Strait of Juan de Fuca

According to the legend, a Greek navigator sailing for Spain claimed to have reached a strait at near 48 degrees north latitude which entered into a broad expanse of water trending some what south southeast. The navigator's name was Apostolos Valerianos, but the Spanish could not pronounce his name so they called him Juan de Fuca. According to his story, in 1592 the Viceroy of Mexico sent Juan on a voyage in search of the mythical Strait of Anián, the Northwest Passage. He concluded to having found this passage in the vicinity of the strait that now bears his name. But did he really discover this body of water? Or was it simply a figment of a very imaginative Greek Sailor? Juan de Fuca's seas, perceived through his mind's eye, could very well be a perceptual emulation of a water body he no doubt really had experienced with, the Adriatic. The navigable pathway through both these seas are uncanningly similar. Islands and mountains surround both passageways.

Today we read and hear weather broadcasts for the sea conditions for the Strait of Juan de Fuca. If we have a maritime sense, we roll the name off of our tongues as if it had always been there. The Strait of Juan de Fuca, a toponym we accept so legitimately as a part of the antiquity of the Northwest that we might assume that even the Salmon running around La Push have its name encoded somewhere in their genetic maps. But as Archie Binns rightly suggests, the next time you take the name of that strait for granted, think again. Are you speaking of something real, or something imagined? For this is a body of water branded with a title that fits more in the realm of dreams than in the scientific vocabulary of an oceanographic chart published by governmental ministry's. The Strait of Anian, the Northwest Passage, The Strait of one, Apostolos Valerianos....Juan de Fuca.....all have their geographies, rooted in the visions and dreams of men. A place where men have encountered sea monsters, mermaids nursing their young on rocky shoals, and the very turbulent ends of the earth itself. M, Mustoe Ph.D. 5 June 2007