Hispanic America USA
Living History Organizations
Copyright (c) 1996-97 All Rights Reserved

by Timothy Burke
     The Calderon Company Living History Organization

  The Astrolabe     pictures

The Astrolabe on the De Soto Expedition:

From the Garcilasco's chronicle of the De Soto expedition;

Alonso de Carmona says the following, which is copied literally:

Thus we navigated, following the coast
more or less closely, for the Indians had burned our instruments of navigation, or we ourselves had done so, when we set fire to Maubila.

Captain Juan de Añaco was a very careful
man and he had recovered the astrolabe and kept it. As it was of metal it had not been much damaged.

He made a sailing chart on a piece of deerskin and fashioned a forestaff
from a ruler, and we set course by it. The mariners and others with them
who new that was not a seaman and had never been at sea in his life until
embarked for this journey ridiculed him, and when he learned how they
were jeering at him he threw all the instruments except the astolabe into
the sea. Anothe brigantine that was coming behind picked them up because
the chart and the forestaff were fastened together. Thus we traveled, or rather
navigated, seven or eight days, when we took shelter from a storm in a cove.1