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Explorers of the Pacific: European and American Discoveries in Polynesia

Cayetano De Langara

Cayetano De Langara

1775 to 1776

The Aguila was sent out on a third voyage, under the command of Don Cayetano de Langara, to carry supplies to the priests at Tahiti. She sailed from Callao on September 27, 1775, and followed the previous course through the Tuamotus. She sighted San Narciso, San Simon y Judas, Los Martires, Todos Santos, and San Cristobal before arriving at Amat (Tahiti) on October 30, 1775. She anchored at the harbor of Santa Cruz de Ohatutira and found that two priests, Father Geronimo Clota and Father Narciso Gonzalez, who had been landed on the previous voyage, had gone in fear of. their lives because a sufficient guard had not been left to protect them. In their note to Langara, asking to be returned to Lima, they stated, "Our Lord God in His most holy Law commands us not only not to take our own lives but also not to expose ourselves to imminent risk of losing them." Langara took the priests on board and sailed on November 12. He went south as far as latitude 40° S. on his return, but encountered no new islands. The ship anchored at Callao on February 16, 1776. Thus, the settlement of Tahiti by the emissaries of Spain was abandoned, but the diaries of the priests and the journals of the commanders of the expeditions contain useful ethnological material.