{
  "id": "garcia-de-palacio-instruccion-nautica-1587",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Diego García de Palacio's Instrucción náutica (Mexico, 1587)",
  "summary": "A treatise on the use, building and government of ships, printed at Mexico City by Pedro Ocharte in 1587 and written by a judge of the Audiencia who had already tested American timbers, cotton canvas and henequen rigging and directed the building of two galleons of a thousand tons. Its last twenty-eight folios are a nautical vocabulary, and the Real Academia later used the book to authenticate the words of its first dictionary.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "navigation",
    "books",
    "printing",
    "new-spain",
    "science",
    "americas",
    "sixteenth-century",
    "spanish-empire",
    "navy",
    "biography"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "first-printing-press-americas"
    },
    {
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      "target": "spanish-navigation-manuals-in-england"
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      "target": "manila-galleon"
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      "target": "cortes-de-madera-de-la-isla-de-cuba"
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    {
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      "target": "almanaque-nautico-del-observatorio-de-san-fernando"
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    {
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      "target": "academia-de-nautica-del-consulado-de-buenos-aires"
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      "target": "juan-examen-maritimo-1771"
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    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "garcia-de-palacio-relacion-de-1576"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "real-astillero-de-guayaquil"
    },
    {
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      "target": "diccionario-de-autoridades-1726"
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      "target": "flotas-y-galeones-de-la-carrera-de-indias"
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    {
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    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "cosmografo-y-catedratico-de-matematicas-del-consejo-de-indias"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What is the Instrucción náutica of 1587?",
    "Who was Diego García de Palacio?",
    "Was a book on shipbuilding printed in the Americas in the sixteenth century?",
    "What did the Real Academia use the Instrucción náutica for?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The book is entry 97 of 1587 in García Icazbalceta's catalogue of Mexican printing, which transcribes its title page: \"INSTRVCCION || NAVTHICA PARA EL BVEN || Vso y regimiento de las Naos, su traça y gouierno conforme a la altura de Mexico. || Cõpuesta por el Doctor Diego garcia de || Palacio del Cõsejo de su Mageftad || y su Oydor en la Real audiẽ-||cia de la dicha Ciudad\", dedicated to the viceroy Don Álvaro Manrique de Zúñiga, Marqués de Villamanrique, and printed \"Con licencia, en Mexico, en cafa de Pedro || Ocharte. Año de 1587.\"",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-icazbalceta-catalogo-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The collation given is a quarto in roman letter, four preliminary leaves, folios 1 to 156, with woodcuts; the interlocutors are a Montañés and a Vizcaíno, as in the same author's Diálogos militares; and a nautical vocabulary occupies the book from folio 129 to the end.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-icazbalceta-catalogo-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The title localises the art it teaches: the ships are to be built and governed \"conforme a la altura de Mexico\", to the latitude of Mexico. The catalogue transcribes the phrase without glossing it, and it is reported here on the same terms.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-icazbalceta-catalogo-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.7
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The author was born at Santander into a family of mariners and educated to follow that career, instructing himself especially in the things of China and the Philippines, before turning to letters and passing to the Indies.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-icazbalceta-catalogo-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The book rests on work done with American materials before it was written. Icazbalceta records that García de Palacio, passing from the theory to the practice of his first studies, tested the qualities of indigenous timbers for naval construction, had canvas woven of cotton, experimented with rigging he took to making from henequen — \"objeto hoy de tan activo comercio en Yucatán\" — and directed the building of two galleons of a thousand tons made of excellent cedar, besides writing relations, reports and projects for building other ships and for improving trade and navigation.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-icazbalceta-catalogo-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "He was oidor of the Audiencia of Guatemala by 1576 and was named to visit provinces of that district under royal orders. His report of that commission, dated 8 March 1576 and signed by him, was in Icazbalceta's own possession; Herrera used it for book VIII of his fourth Década; Ternaux-Compans gave a French translation in 1840; and Squier printed the Spanish text with an English translation, notes and a map at New York in 1860, calling the edition by Icazbalceta's judgement \"más hermosa que correcta\". Squier, who had travelled the places the oidor visited, testifies to the exactness of his descriptions and holds that his account of the ruins of Copán is the best known.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-icazbalceta-catalogo-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "He must have passed to Mexico about 1580, since on 24 January 1581 he graduated Doctor in the university of that city, of which he was afterwards rector; he was also Oidor of the Real Audiencia and Consultor of the Holy Office, and it was there that he printed both of the works the catalogue registers.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-icazbalceta-catalogo-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "The motive is not left implicit by the catalogue. The Instrucción náutica and the Diálogos militares \"dan testimonio de las inclinaciones bélicas del autor\", and in December 1576 the same man had contracted in Honduras with Diego López de Trujillo for the conquest and settlement of the province of Teguzigalpa; in a letter to the king of 8 March 1578 on the conquest and pacification of the Philippines he aspired to govern those islands and offered to reduce them at his own cost, a petition that \"no encontró buena acogida\".",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-icazbalceta-catalogo-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "The rules were put to the test and failed. In September 1587 the viceroy gave him command of an expedition to sail from Acapulco after Francis Drake; the force was gathered, news came that Drake had left those seas, and the embarkation was suspended — whereupon the English waiting off the Californias took the Manila nao Santa Ana, richly laden, put the passengers ashore, transferred the cargo and set the ship on fire. Sent out too late in pursuit, he could not find them, \"quedando así en duda si el oidor era tan propio para ejecutar como para establecer reglas de guerra. La historia no vuelve á hacer mención de él.\"",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-icazbalceta-catalogo-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "The book printed in Mexico became an authority for the Spanish language itself: Icazbalceta records that the Instrucción náutica is one of the books the Real Academia chose to verify the words of its great Diccionario de Autoridades.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-icazbalceta-catalogo-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "The evidence is thin and the catalogue says so. In a footnote Icazbalceta records that he saw the book in 1867 and took from it no more than the title; when he later wished to enlarge his notes that copy \"había desaparecido de entre nosotros para siempre\" and he had not managed to find another. He supports the entry with Fernández Duro's Disquisiciones náuticas, which praises the work and copies nineteen of its chapters, and with a copy noted in the Salvá catalogue. Every statement here about the book's contents is therefore at one remove from the 1587 sheets, which is why this object is tiered secondary.",
      "sources": [
        "garcia-icazbalceta-catalogo-1886"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.9
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "secondary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "English-language accounts of early modern shipbuilding literature begin in Venice, England and the Basque coast, and the fact that a treatise on the building and handling of ships was composed and printed in Mexico City in 1587 — by a sitting judge who had first tried American cedar, cotton sailcloth and henequen cordage on two thousand-ton galleons — is either absent or a line in a list. This object gives the transcribed title page, the collation down to the nautical vocabulary at folio 129, the experiments that preceded the book, the failed command against Drake that followed it, the conquest contract and the Philippine petition that show what the author wanted, and the bibliographer's own admission that he saw the book once in 1867 and never found it again. Achievement, motive and evidentiary weakness from one catalogue, none of it inferred.",
  "confidence": 0.8,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-11",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/garcia-de-palacio-instruccion-nautica-1587",
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  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Diego García de Palacio's Instrucción náutica (Mexico, 1587)",
    "description": "A treatise on the use, building and government of ships, printed at Mexico City by Pedro Ocharte in 1587 and written by a judge of the Audiencia who had already tested American timbers, cotton canvas and henequen rigging and directed the building of two galleons of a thousand tons. Its last twenty-eight folios are a nautical vocabulary, and the Real Academia later used the book to authenticate the words of its first dictionary.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/garcia-de-palacio-instruccion-nautica-1587",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-11",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Bibliografía mexicana del siglo XVI. Primera parte. Catálogo razonado de libros impresos en México de 1539 á 1600, con biografías de autores y otras ilustraciones, precedido de una noticia acerca de la introducción de la imprenta en México",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=cr0TAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA325"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Diego García de Palacio's Instrucción náutica (Mexico, 1587)"
  }
}