During the 16th and 17th centuries the Galapagos Islands were a refuge for British buccaneers pillaging the Spanish colonies on the western coast of South America and attacking Spanish galleons laden with Inca gold on their way back to Spain. One such ship, the Bachelor’s Delight, made several visits to the islands in the 1680s. A member of the crew, William Ambrose Cowley, drew maps and named each island after leading personages of the day.

Thus these remote, uninhabited islands of the eastern Pacific acquired bizarre names like King James Island, the Duke of Albemarle’s Island, the Earl of Abingdon’s Island, the Duke of York’s Island, Lord Cullpeper’s Island, the Duke of Norfolk’s Island, and Sir John Narborough’s Island. Subsequently the islands were re-named by the British, United States and the Spanish, as well as the government of Ecuador when it claimed sovereignty of the islands in 1832. The result has been a quaint confusion about names, so even modern maps show as many as three names for one island.

The Duke of Norfolk’s Island, for instance, has been known variously as Indefatigable, Porter Island, Valdez, Chavez, San Clemente and finally Santa Cruz, by which it is now known. It is shown on maps as Santa Cruz, with Indefatigable and sometimes Chavez. Isla Santa Maria is usually known by its former name of Floreana and its even older name, Charles, is still shown on contemporary maps. One island is simply called Sin Nombre, or Nameless.

To add to the confusion, the islands themselves were officially named Archipelago de Colon by the National Assembly of Ecuador in 1892 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s first voyage, Colon being the Spanish spelling of his name. But they are still called the Galapagos Islands in everyday usage.

|Article contributed by Dominic Hamilton|||

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