Sebastián de Ocampo was a Spanish
navigator
A navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation.Grierson, MikeAviation History—Demise of the Flight Navigator FrancoFlyers.org website, October 14, 2008. Retrieved August 31, 2014. The navigator's primar ...
and
explorer
Exploration refers to the historical practice of discovering remote lands. It is studied by geographers and historians.
Two major eras of exploration occurred in human history: one of convergence, and one of divergence. The first, covering most ...
. He is believed to have been the first navigator to have circumnavigated the island of
Cuba
Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
in 1508.
Under the authority of the Governor of
Hispaniola, Ocampo sailed along the northern coast of the island through the
Old Bahama Channel
The Old Bahama Channel ( es, Canal Viejo de Bahama) is a strait of the Caribbean region, between Cuba and the Bahamas.
Geography
The strait/channel is located off the Atlantic coast of north-central and northeastern mainland and the Sabana-Camag ...
and around the western point,
Cape San Antonio. The voyage took eight months, and was against the
Gulf Stream. Europeans had already frequented Cuba by the time Ocampo embarked on his journey, but his circumnavigation confirmed that the area was indeed surrounded by water, and not a peninsula as was speculated. Ocampo returned to Hispaniola with news of the body of water that lay beyond. Before that, and after the Spanish discovery of the Antilles, several maps portrayed what latter-day interpreters have assumed to be the Gulf of Mexico, thereby disputing the actual discovery date. He died at an old age in a year no one is sure of.
See also
References
*
List of explorers
*
Explorations (disambiguation)
*
History of Cuba
The history of Cuba is characterized by dependence on outside powers—Spanish Empire, Spain, the United States, US, and the Soviet Union, USSR. The island of Cuba was inhabited by various Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Amerindian cultures ...
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Spanish explorers
Spanish navigators
Spanish colonial period of Cuba
16th-century Spanish people
16th-century explorers