Travel Galapagos Islands & Ecuador

History

Posted September 21st, 2008 by Bob the Sea Lion

The Galápagos Archipelago was discovered

by accident in 1535, when Tomás de Berlanga,

the first Bishop of Panama, drifted off

course while sailing from Panama to Peru.

The bishop reported his discovery to King

Charles V of Spain and included in his report

a description of the giant Galápagos tortoises

from which the islands received their name,

and an amusing note about the islands’ birds

that any visitor today can appreciate, ‘…so

silly that they didn’t know how to flee and

many were caught by hand.’

It is possible that the indigenous inhabitants

of South America were aware of the

islands’ existence before 1535, but there

are no definite records of this and the islands

don’t appear on a world map until

1570 when they are identified as the ‘island

of the tortoises.’ In 1953, Norwegian

explorer Thor Heyerdahl discovered what

he thought to be pre-Columbian pottery

shards on the islands, but the evidence

seems inconclusive.

For more than three centuries after their

discovery, the Galápagos were used as a base

by a succession of buccaneers, sealers and

whalers. The islands provided sheltered anchorage,

firewood, water and an abundance

of fresh food in the form of the giant Galápagos

tortoises, which were caught by the

thousands and stacked, alive, in the ships’

holds. More than 100,000 are estimated to

have been taken between 1811 and 1844. The

tortoises could survive for a year or more

and thus provided fresh meat for the sailors

long after they had left the islands.

The first rough charts of the archipelago

were made by buccaneers in the late 17th

century, and scientific exploration began in

the late 18th century. The Galápagos’ most

famous visitor was Charles Darwin, who

arrived in 1835 aboard the British naval

vessel the Beagle. Darwin stayed for five

weeks, 19 days of which were spent on four

of the larger islands, making notes and collecting

specimens that provided important

evidence for his theory of evolution, which

he would later formulate and publish, but

not for decades after. He spent the most

time on Isla San Salvador observing and,

for that matter, eating tortoises. The truth is

that Darwin devoted as much of his attention

to geology and botany as he did to the

animals and marine life of the Galápagos.

The first resident of the islands was

Patrick Watkins, an Irishman who was

marooned on Isla Santa Maria in 1807

and spent two years living there, growing

vege tables and trading his produce for rum

from passing boats. The story goes that he

managed to remain drunk for most of his

stay, then stole a ship’s boat and set out for

Guayaquil accompanied by five slaves. No

one knows what happened to the slaves –

only Watkins reached the mainland.

Ecuador officially claimed the Galápagos

Archipelago in 1832. For roughly one century

thereafter, the islands were inhabited by only

a few settlers and were used as penal colonies,

the last of which was closed in 1959.

Some islands were declared wildlife sanctuaries

in 1934, and 97% of the archipelago

officially became a national park in 1959.

Organized tourism began in the late 1960s

and now, an estimated 80,000 foreign visitors

visit the islands each year. Another 20,000 or

so are businesspeople or Ecua dorians visiting

family and friends and don’t enter the

protected reserve.

Tags: Galapagos