Abstract

GANDINI, María Juliana. The sirens of La Plata river: new courses of Sebastian Cabot and Diego García de Moguer's expeditions to the Southern Ocean, 1526-1530). Rev. Esc. Hist. [online]. 2016, vol.15, n.1, pp.00-00. ISSN 1669-9041.

This paper proposes to analyze the breach between the objectives and final destinations of two expeditions which, on the second half of the 1520 decade, explored the Southern Ocean. The piloto mayor Sebastian Cabot (c. 1484-1557), whose exploration voyage of 1526 was directly commissioned by the Spanish king, received precise orders. Diego García de Moguer (c. 1480-1554), pilot of the Casa de Contratación of La Coruña, had instead more open and ambiguous directions. Both fleets collected, during their mandatory stops at the land of the brazil, insistent rumors that promised the access to unimaginable wealth navigating the (by then dreadful) Solís River. Cabot decided to disobey the orders given to him in Spain, forsaking the voyage to the East; García de Moguer opted to investigate an attractive commercial prospect in an area not assigned yet to any other explorer. As a direct consequence of these actions, the cycle of exploration and conquest of the promising Río de la Plata was opened. But this also shed light over the emerging tensions between the orders given by a far away political center and the attractive local opportunities in the process of conquering a new world

Keywords : Cabot, Sebastian; García de Moguer, Diego de; River Plate; Travel narratives.

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