Ciriaco Cevallos y Bustillo

Ciriaco Cevallos y Bustillo (ca.1767 – ca.1816), a native of Quijano, was admitted in 1779 to the Escuela de Guardias Marinas in Cartagena. Ten years later he took part in an expedition tracing  the route of Magellan aboard the frigate Saint María de la Cabeza, commanded by Antonio de  Córdoba. In 1791, together with José Espinosa, he travelled to Mexico and joined the Malaspina Expedition at Acapulco, where he was assigned to cartographic work. After returning to Spain, he continued, until the arrest of Malaspina, to work on the compilation of the results of the voyage. In 1798 he wrote a refutation of Lorenzo Ferrer Maldonado's claim to have sailed through the Strait of  Anian. He was later assigned to the cartography of the Gulf of Mexico, and worked on these surveys for a few years with subordinates including, among others, Fabio Ala Ponzone and Jacobo Murphy, also veterans of the Malaspina Expedition. For reasons which have never been made clear, Cevallos left the Royal Navy and, about 1808, moved to New Orleans (which already belonged to the United States of America); he died there, probably in 1816, his thoughts having been turned always towards Spain.

For more information, see:

J.A. DEL RÍ0 - A. DEL RÍO, Marinos ilustres de Santander, Santander, 1881, pp. 247-265.

E. BELLOTTIMarch 8, 2020os (Lettere inedite 1803-1814), Mulazzo, Centro di Studi Malaspiniani, 1993, 14 pp.

M. PALAU BAQUERO, "Ciriaco Cevallos y Antonio de Tova, dos montañeses en el Pacífico," A. OROZCO M. PALAU - J.M. CASTANEDO (eds.), Malaspina y Bustamante '94. II Jornadas Internacionales Conmemorativas del regreso de la Expedición a Cádiz. 1794-1994, Cádiz - Santander, Real Academia Hispano Americana - Astilleros de Guarnizo, 1996, pp. 134-143.

Image courtesy of the Centro di Studi Malaspiniani, Mulazzo, Italy.  Biographical and bibliographical notes by Dario Manfredi (Italian version), translated by John Black.