Strait of Juan de Fuca

The Strait of Juan de Fuca (officially named Juan de Fuca Strait in Canada) is a body of water about 96 miles (83 nmi, 154 km) long that is the Salish Sea's main outlet to the Pacific Ocean. The international boundary between Canada and the United States runs down the centre of the Strait. It was named in 1787 by the maritime fur trader Charles William Barkley, captain of Imperial Eagle, for Juan de Fuca, the Greek navigator who sailed in a Spanish expedition in 1592 to seek the fabled Strait of Anián. Barkley was the first recorded person to find the strait, unless Juan de Fuca's story was true. Samuel Bawlf posited in 2003 that "Fuca's story was nothing more than a fabrication designed to extract money from the English government". The story would have been based on Francis Drake's 1579 exploration of the Northwest Passage at its western end. Drake would therefore have been more than likely the first European to ever sight the entry of the strait but would also have been the first to sail through when heading west after rounding Vancouver Island, sailing through the Strait of Georgia and sighting the entry to Puget Sound. Much of Bawlf's provocative thesis was based on the geographical information that started to leak following Drake's return to England and to show up in subsequent maps such as Ortelius's. Fuca's story would have originated from a pilot named Morera, part of

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