What do you get when you combine the death of a Spanish Royal Governor, his young and beautiful widow, and a fleet of Spanish galleons sailing across the Pacific Ocean to establish yet another New World possession for Phillip II? Western Europe's first female Admiral...Isabel Barreto...
She was the wife of Álvaro de Mendaña...nephew to the Viceroy of Peru and an accomplished explorer and navigator in his own right. It was Mendaña who led the earliest Spanish explorations into the Pacific region in 1567-1569. This expedition discovered the Solomon Islands, the Cook Islands and Wake Island. They were really looking for a mythical great continent, which they did not discover, but they paved the way for this future discovery, what we know today as Australia.Doña Isabel was born in Pontevedra in the province of Galicia, Spain in 1567. Reputably, she was the granddaughter of Francisco Barreto, governor of Portugal's possessions in India. She was well-bred and had standing as a woman of substance. Her pedigree, youth, and beauty caught the eye of Álvaro de Mendaña and they were wed, Doña Isabel making her home with Don Álvaro in the Spanish New World.
The 1595 Expedition
Isabel Barreto de Mendaña accompanied her husband on an expedition to colonize what we know today as the Solomon Islands. Don Álvaro had previously located the archipelago and was fully intent on setting up a Spanish colony and governing the islands...along with his wife. Should they happen to locate something bigger, namely the "undiscovered" Terra Australis, then all the better. The undertaking was large, with four ships, 378 souls, and all the necessary trappings in which to establish Spain on Islas Salomon departing Lima, Peru in April, this at a time when the Anglo-Spanish War was at its height, and English privateers were prowling for Spanish ships throughout the seas surrounding Spain's colonies.
The navigator, or pilot for the expedition was Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, and the Camp Master was Pedro Merino Manrique. Manrique was an old soldier who constantly caused trouble throughout the expedition, believing that the young Queirós had been chosen for a position of authority over him unfairly. This would never be resolved, but was finalized after Manrique was killed by restless natives on the orders of Don Álvaro.
Mendaña himself succumbed to illness that wracked the expedition and died in October, leaving his wife Doña Isabel in command of the expedition, and the sole heir to the governorship of Islas Salomon, along with any and all profits to be made from this venture. There really was nothing to be had. This expedition was a disaster. Each encounter with indigenous natives turned sour and the Spanish were forced to flee. They did set up a colony on the island of Nendö, but bickering, division, and hostile natives drove the Spanish back to their ships and back out to sea. Colonists were dying of illness, one of the expeditions ships disappeared without a trace, and expedition leaders, such as Manrique had either been executed, or passed away of disease, à la Mendaña.
Nevertheless, Isabel Barreto de Mendaña was the official Admiral of what remained of the expedition's fleet. Her and Queirós were able to navigate to Spain's colony in the Philippines, sailing into Manila harbor in February of 1596 with what was left...2 ships and roughly 100 survivors. Even the ship on which her dead husband's body was lost, presumably sunk. At least 50 had perished in the voyage from Nendö to the Philippines alone. Apparently, some of the deaths could have been prevented. Some of the colonists died of starvation...and according to Spanish reports, Doña Isabel refused to share her personal provision, much to investigator's surprise. A greedy, selfish young lady indeed...but she was not unusual. The 16th-century mindset was very different from today's. The caste system was in full force within the Hispanic sphere of influence, and Isabel Barreto, a woman in the upper echelon of society, an Admiral in command of a Spanish fleet and the presumed Royal Governor of Islas Salomon, would not be expected to share with lowly commoners.
Pedro Fernandes de Queirós the expeditions chief pilot or navigator, who ended up writing and publishing the expeditions "diary" was very favarable to Doña Isabel. He need not have been. In fact, he ended up aquiring the colonization rights to the Solomon's, despite Isabel's attempts to legitimize her claim. Doña Isabel remarried, a military man, one General Francisco de Castro, and she crossed the Atlantic once again, back to Spain to fight for her rights in regards to what money and power could be wretched from her dead husband's previous discoveries. It was to no avail. She ended up settling in Buenos Aires, a fairly new settlement at the time, having been re-founded and re-built in 1580. Doña Isabel Barreto de Mendaña/Castro died in 1612 at the age of 45.
Spanish Governor of Islas Salomon and a Spanish Admiral, all before the age of 45...not too shabby for a Renaissance woman...