The commander
of the Descubierta

Alejandro Malaspina understood that true power lay not in war, but in knowledge. In command of the corvette Descubierta, he led a crew of scientists, cartographers and draughtsmen across the Mar del Sur — the South Sea, the great ocean we now call the Pacific — through five years of science and open water. The Mar del Sur carries the deep blue of those waters and a turquoise ring recalling the lagoons they came upon at dawn