Manuel Quimper

Manuel Quimper Benítez del Pino (c. 1757[1] – April 2, 1844) was a Spanish Peruvian explorer, cartographer, naval officer, and colonial official.

He retired to Spain, but was able to return to Peru where he served as a naval officer in the new republic and pursued a literary career, publishing over 20 books about his experiences before his death there in Lima.

At the age of thirteen he became a cadet with a company of the Spanish navy stationed at Callao, Peru,[1] and participated in the exploration of Chiloé Island.

Following his university studies, Quimper was assigned to the frigate Áquila on a mission to re-affirm Spanish sovereignty over the island of Tahiti in the South Pacific and in the latter part of 1777 to deliver lumber from Guayaquil for naval construction at Callao.

Two years later he was sent to chart the Juan Fernández Islands in the South Pacific and upon his return to port at Valparaiso received recognition for his cartographic skills.

These included Quimper and his fellow Peruvian Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, who was named commander of the Naval Department of San Blas.

In July 1789 they received news from the Pacific Northwest with the arrival of the Princesa Real, a fur-trading vessel captured from the British at Nootka Sound by Spanish commander Esteban José Martinez.

After several weeks at sea, the Princesa Real and Quimper arrived with difficulty at Nootka Sound where repairs on the vessel were undertaken before returning the ship to the British.

During June and July he charted and named many geographic features along the south shore of Vancouver Island and the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula.

On the Olympic Peninsula he traded with and observed the customs of indigenous people near Dungeness (which he named Bahia de Quimper) and near the Elwha River, which were most likely members of the S'Klallam tribe in both instances and he was possibly the first European they had seen.

Those which retained at least a semblance of his Spanish names include Port Angeles, Rosario Strait, Quimper Peninsula, and Fidalgo Island.

Quimper returned to Nootka Sound in early August but was unable to enter the port for several days due to heavy fog.

He dispatched a message to the Court in Madrid recommending the return of the vessel to the British at Macau and sent a report of Quimper's explorations in the Pacific Northwest with nine of his charts.

Quimper apparently never took command of the Atrevida because while it was at the port of Cádiz, he requested and was granted a transfer to Madrid to attend to personal matters.

[citation needed] In early 1813, Quimper was at the center of the political storm that began brewing in southern Peru with the elections promulgated by the Constitution of Cadiz (1812).

Elected officials in various towns (notably Puno and Azangaro) almost immediately began asserting local control and directly challenged the royalist command.

Quimper then writes to the Vicerroy that descended upon Puno "is a spirit of anarchy found among many individuals in this capital who shroud themselves with the wise Constitution.".

While Ramirez confronts the main patriot army on the return to Cusco, he sends Quimper back to Puno to maintain order.

Ramirez sacks Quimper, and replaces him with Col. Francisco de Paula Gonzalez, who will lead a "pacification" campaign well into 1816 to forcibly suppress and end the rebellion across the Intendancy of Puno.

The young Manuel Quimper suffered a major defeat while defending the city of Nazca and was forced to flee to the coast in October 1820.

Still showing regret over the loss of the documents which had been destroyed at Puno, at the end of 1821 he solicited the endorsement of José de Bustamante, the director-general of the National Armada, for the publication of a recounting of his experiences aboard the Atrevida in Manila Bay thirty years earlier.