By Sea to California

The seaborne half of the Gálvez–Portolá occupation. The San Antonio reached San Diego on 11 April 1769; the San Carlos arrived 29 April with its crew wrecked by scurvy. The third supply ship, the San José, sailed again from Cabo San Lucas in May 1770 and was lost with all hands, the expedition's great maritime failure (it never reached San Diego).

The first Spanish exploration north of Monterey. Touched San Diego then Monterey (spring 1774), then ran up to ~54°40′–55°N off Haida Gwaii and made the first European contact at Nootka, four years before Cook. He made no landing or act of possession, the very failure that prompted the 1775 follow-up. Pilot Esteban José Martínez would later force the Nootka crisis.

A possession-taking survey against feared Russian encroachment. Anchored Trinidad Bay 9–19 June (first contact with the Yurok at Tsurai; a possession ceremony on Trinidad Head). Bodega's Sonora discovered and charted Bodega Bay; both ships reunited at Monterey on 7 October 1775.

The first vessel ever to enter San Francisco Bay. While Ayala lay at Angel Island (named on this voyage), pilot José de Cañizares carried out the first boat survey of the bay across a six-week stay. Entry date: 5 Aug 1775 per the primary Santa María diary (and Calif. Landmark 236); Bancroft's night-of-1-Aug was a pre-diary reconstruction, now superseded.

The third Bucareli-era reconnaissance of the far north, Spain's highest latitude ever, 61°17′N in Prince William Sound (23 July 1779), with possession ceremonies. On the return the scurvy-ridden crews recuperated six weeks at San Francisco (the Favorita entered 14 Sept, the Princesa the next day), cut short by news of Bucareli's death and war with England.

The first foreign expedition to touch Spanish California. Ten days at Monterey yielded the era's sharpest outside ethnography of the mission-Indian system, along with notes on agriculture and the nascent sea-otter trade, a scientific circumnavigation that would vanish in the Pacific two years later.

A reconnaissance of the Russian advance on the Alaska coast (Unalaska; met Zaikov), the prelude to Martínez's seizure of British vessels at Nootka in 1789 that ignited the Nootka Crisis. The Princesa paused at Monterey 17 Sept–14 Oct 1788; the San Carlos ran straight to San Blas. Distinct from Martínez's 1779 and 1789 voyages, don't conflate.

A dispatch-and-supply call at Monterey on the return from the 1790 northern reconnaissance out of Nootka, Fidalgo to Prince William Sound / Cook Inlet, Quimper charting the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Quimper's ship was the Princesa Real (the captured British Princess Royal), not the frigate Princesa.

Spain's answer to Cook and La Pérouse, the most ambitious scientific voyage the empire ever sent to the Pacific. Twelve days at Monterey of botanical, astronomical, and ethnographic work with Fr. Lasuén's help, then a survey run down the coast past San Francisco and Cape Mendocino to Cabo San Lucas. Bancroft's roster stars Née and Guío as having "remained behind in Mexico", so the naturalist and artist actually at Monterey were Haenke and Suría.

The last Spanish exploration of the Northwest Coast: detached from the Malaspina enterprise, the two schooners charted the Strait of Juan de Fuca and circumnavigated Vancouver Island alongside Vancouver, then spent five weeks at Monterey writing up the northern charts. Published as the famous Relación del viage… Sutil y Mexicana (Madrid, 1802). The C-A 14 record dated Dec 1793 is a garbled duplicate of this 1792 touch.

After the inconclusive Nootka sovereignty talks, the Spanish commissioner wintered at Monterey. The celebrated cordiality between Bodega and Vancouver, dinners, gifts, exchanged charts, played out partly here, even as the two empires contested the coast. Ship resolved: his flagship was the Activa; the Saturnina is a separate survey schooner (the guns Bodega offered San Francisco were to come on it).

The first foreign warship into San Francisco Bay (14 Nov 1792) and the wintering at Monterey opened three years of British presence, Nootka diplomacy fused with the great Pacific survey. The visits alarmed Madrid and triggered the 1793 assessment to fortify San Francisco, Monterey, and San Diego and to occupy Bodega. The second visit (1793) met a markedly cooler reception.

The 1793 Eliza reconnaissance charted the coast from Juan de Fuca to San Francisco to scout a settlement site against British and Russian encroachment. Martínez y Zayas commanded the consort Mexicana (the same hull from the 1792 Galiano voyage) and did the inshore charting of Trinidad Bay; his chart survives in Wagner. Vessel resolved: the Mexicana, previously logged as "unnamed."

Broughton, formerly of Vancouver's Chatham, returned on his own Pacific survey, entering with an 11-gun salute and resupplying (a ~$308 bill survives). Corrected date: the Providence was here in June 1796 (departed 18 June–8 July), not October, the October date belongs to the Otter, with which it had been conflated.

The first vessel from the United States to anchor in a Californian port, and by night it forced ashore a dozen Port Jackson (Botany Bay) convict-stowaways, set to work as carpenters and smiths at 19¢/day. A sea-otter voyage that opened the American maritime fur presence on the coast, the commercial future the Spanish system could not keep out.

The commercial engine that made the coast worth claiming. New England ships carried Russian-American Company Aleut hunters (their kayaks lashed on deck) into the California lagoons and split the take: Joseph O'Cain's 1803 voyage set the pattern, and the Winship brothers ran it for a decade. It stripped the otter grounds the empires were all circling, and it drew the Spanish seizures (the Mercury among them) that fill the customs record. Corney, later of Bouchard's Santa Rosa, found the O'Cain, Isabella, and Albatross "formerly employed under the Russian flag, in the sea-otter fishery on California." A hunting system rather than one voyage, so individual port-calls are many and scattered; the ships are logged separately in the registry.

A relief voyage to save the starving Russian-American Company colony at Sitka. Rezanov ran the Juno past the presidio guns and spent six weeks trading its cargo for grain with comandante Argüello and Gov. Arrillaga, a deal greased by his betrothal to the young Concepción Argüello. He sailed with a full hold, then died crossing Siberia in 1807; the romance became legend. Dates calendar-dependent (Old Style vs New): arrival ~5 Apr (Spanish) / 8 Apr NS.

Kuskov wintered the RAC hunting brig at Bodega, the reconnaissance that chose the ground for the Russian colony. The Spanish knew only of "a Russian frigate anchored at Bodega" (from deserters). Three years later this became Fort Ross, the Russian foothold that reshaped the north coast. Identified only by joining the Spanish and Russian archives.

A Russian scientific circumnavigation. Its naturalists made the first systematic survey of San Francisco Bay's flora and fauna, Chamisso would name the California poppy for Eschscholtz, while Choris drew the earliest images of the presidio, missions, and Ohlone people. The party also exchanged word with the RAC at Fort Ross.

The only foreign armed attack on Spanish California. Bouchard's ~600-man insurgent force overwhelmed Monterey's ~40 defenders on 22 Nov, occupied the capital for five days, and burned the presidio and fort; he then raided down the coast before leaving. Militarily marginal, Gov. Solá rebuilt Monterey by spring, but the province's baptism of fire, under the flag of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. A privateer with letters of marque, not a pirate; several departure dates are genuinely in conflict.

A Russian naval inspection voyage. Golovnin met RAC director Hagemeister at Monterey (Aleut hunters took otter "under the very noses of the Spaniards") and visited Bodega and Fort Ross. His narrative later advanced the Russian claim that there was no Spanish population north of San Francisco, a territorial argument, not a census. Date corrected: at Monterey in September; the 5 Oct 1818 in the registry was Solá's report date, not the port-call.

An Arctic-support voyage (to rendezvous with Franklin and Parry) that wintered twice in California. Beechey ran a careful hydrographic survey of San Francisco Bay and produced the most evenly accurate published observations of Mexican California to that date, and is nearly the sole source for Echeandía's partial-emancipation experiment.

A hide-and-tallow trading voyage that became the most geographically complete foreign eyewitness account of Mexican California, "no other navigator had visited so many of the Californian establishments" (Bancroft). The trade largely failed, but the resulting narrative, with Botta's ethnography and four lithographed views (incl. the Russian post at Bodega), is a first-rank source on pastoral society.

A politically pointed reconnaissance on the eve of American conquest. Wilkes's men charted San Francisco Bay, ran the boats up the Sacramento to ~39°N, and brought a party overland from Oregon. Wilkes openly discussed U.S. acquisition of the bay and keeping Britain out; his published assessment of California's weakness and value became an influential American document of 1841–46.