THE LOG OF THE PRINCESA BY ESTEVAN MARTINEZ.
What does it contribute to our Knowledge of the Nootka Sound Controversy?
By HERBERT INGRAM PRIESTLEY
Hubert Howe Bancroft's History of the Northwest Coast was published 36 years ago in 1884. In volume I of that work he gives an account of the Nootka Sound Controversy. In 1904 Professor William Ray Manning published his ex- tensive inquiry into that affair, availing himself of manu- script materials in Spain and elsewhere which were inaccessi- ble to Bancroft. In one very important particular Manning was unable to add to the account by Bancroft. The latter says, (p. 212.) "I have not been able to obtain the original diaries of the Spanish expedition of 1789; nor has any previous writer in English seen them;" Manning quotes this, and says (p. 342 note) that Revilla-Gigedo, writing to Valdez, Mexico, Dec. 27, 1789, "states that a copy of Martinez' diary is in- closed, but a note on a small slip of paper inserted says that the diary is not being sent on account of Martinez not having sent a duplicate of it. The diary does not appear in the bundle, and probably never was sent."
This diary, or more properly log, of which a copy is now in the Bancroft Library of the Academy of Pacific Coast History, bears the caption, Diaro de la navegacion que yo el alferez de navi'o de Real Armada Don Estevan Josef Martinez, boy a executor al puerto de San Lorenzo de Nuca, mandando la fragata Princesa, y paquebot San Carlos, de orden de el Exmo Senor Don Manuel Antonio Florez, Virey, Governador, y Capitan-General de Nueva Espana, en el presente an de i?8p. The original log is a notebook of 144 pages, with 2 of in- troduction. The copy of it, which serves as the basis of this
