The Galapagos Islands were probably first discovered by Chimu people from the mainland of South America in the 15th century. The Incas may have had some knowledge of them too, but the first recorded arrival of humans in the islands was on 10 March 1535. On that day a ship carrying a Spanish Bishop, Tomas de Berlanga, on a voyage from Panama to Peru, landed in the Galapagos after being swept far from the coast by the strong equatorial currents.

Bishop Tomas reported his discovery in a dispatch to King Charles V which is the first description we have of the giant tortoises, iguanas and birds of the Galapagos, all totally fearless, and of the extreme scarcity of water which had kept most of the islands uninhabited to that day.

The Bishop placed the four islands he saw at about one degree south of the equator in latitude - a reasonably accurate calculation. On that basis they were shown in Ortelius’ great Orbis Terrarum published in 1574 and named as Isolas de Galapagos. However, the discovery made no other impact on the Spanish conquistadors (once it was clear that no great mineral riches were to be found), or on the English and Dutch navigators who visited them hoping to find water or other supplies to sustain them on their piratical voyages.

The Galapagos Islands were often known to sailors as Las Encantadas because the strong currents around them made the islands themselves seemed to change position as if by enchantment. The earliest chart which has survived was produced in about 1685 by an Englishman, Ambrose Cowley, who also named most of the islands for the first time. His account and those of mariners such as William Dampier and Woodes Rogers, made the archipelago better known to other European seamen who ventured into the Pacific in the 17th and 18th centuries, while Spain still considered it her private ocean.

As demand for European goods grew, normal trade progressively replaced piracy and those few islands which had supplies of water came to be heavily used by new breeds of seamen, the whalers and seal-hunters. Whaling was a highly profitable business in the first half of the 19th century but it caused decimation not only of the whales but also of the giant tortoises of the Galapagos. In 1846 it was reported that none at all were left on Floreana, Santa Fe or Rabida. Visits to the islands were much more frequent by now and increasingly their purpose was scientific and strategic as well as commercial. A new period began when Ecuador proclaimed its sovereignty over the Galapagos in 1832.

There seem to have been only a handful of permanent settlers at that time but their number had increased to 300 by 1835 when the HMS Beagle arrived with Charles Darwin on board.

Tag: Galapagos