The Sea of the West, or Mer de l'Ouest, was a geographic misconception of an inland sea in the Pacific Northwest that appeared on many maps of the 18th century. The depiction was particularly common on French maps. The sea was supposed to be connected to the Pacific Ocean by at least one strait. Many different conjectures about the sea's shape, size, and position appeared on maps of the period. Belief in the sea's existence derived from writings describing two voyages of discovery, one by an Admiral Bartholomew de Fonte, and one by Juan de Fuca. De Fuca's voyage might have happened, but his account is now known to have contained many distortions and confabulations. Admiral de Fonte, on the other hand, is not known to be a historical figure, and the account of his voyage is fiction. Several maps in the early 1700s depicted the sea, but interest and belief in its existence waned until the mid 1700s, when, fairly suddenly, Mer de l'Ouest reappeared on maps and quickly became common for several decades. European knowledge of the region gradually improved such that belief in the inland sea became untenable before 1800.
Origins Juan de Fuca was born Ioannis Phokás (Greek: Ἰωάννης Φωκᾶς) in the Ionian Islands of Greece in 1536. Through an account by Michael Lok, de Fuca claimed to have been in the service of the Spanish Crown for decades, during which he had traveled in the Far East. By 1587, he was purportedly stranded in New Spain when his galleon was captured by Thomas Cavendish. Under sponsorship of the Viceroy of New Spain, de Fuca claimed to have piloted a voyage up the western coast of North America in 1592, reaching a strait into an inland sea at latitude 47°. The feature now known as the Strait of Juan de Fuca is at 48°N, so de Fuca's claim to have been there is plausible. However, de Fuca's description of the region, as conveyed by Lok in 1625, is not recognizable and is considered to be largely an invention, either by Lok or by de Fuca himself. Michael Lok's involvement is significant because Lok was the principal patron of the Frobisher Expedition in search of a Northwest Passage. The riches of the Pacific were very distant from Europe, such that much treasure and lives had been expended and lost in lengthy and dangerous passage between the two regions. For hundreds of years, finding a passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific by some means more direct and less treacherous than the Straits of Magellan was high priority for European powers. The prospect of royal patronage, riches, and fame inspired dreamers, schemers, and explorers to search for such a route. This encouraged an environment of intrigue and rumor. Imaginary voyages, whether into a Northwest Passage or to treasure islands, found easy audience. Whether based on the de Fuca account or otherwise, a few manuscript maps in the 1600s showed speculative geography that included branches of the Pacific Ocean protruding deeply into the North American continent. One such map from the late 1630s held by the Yale Center for British Art shows such a branch reaching as close as a few hundred miles from the east coast. Apparently inspired by these inventions, Guillaume Delisle drew several maps by hand between 1695 and about 1700 that portray such eastern intrusions of the Pacific Ocean. Joseph-Nicolas Delisle, Guillaume's half-brother, printed copies of one of these maps. Guillaume continued drafting and revising his conception of this western sea over decades, but he never published any maps depicting the Sea of the West despite his prolific output of printed maps. A few maps based on Delisle's were produced over the next several decades. As cartographer to the king and teacher of his children, Guillaume Delisle's ideas had influence. On his earliest manuscript, Delisle wrote concerning the sea, ...pas encore découverte mais autorisée' par le rapport de plusieurs savages qui assurent avoir ete' (not yet discovered but authorized by the report of several savages who claim to have been there). In 1716, the governor of New France had produced a memoir sketching out a water route from Lake Winnipeg to the Sea of the West. The French Ministry of Marine pressured for exploration, but would not fund expeditions. The French Canadians, on the other hand, were interested in the fur trade. In 1731, Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye was hired with the dual commissions of exploration and developing fur trade routes. Over the course of the next twelve years, La Vérendrye's expeditions pushed as far west as Saskatchewan and Wyoming in their search for furs, the "River of the West" (possibly the Columbia River), and the Sea of the West. By 1743, the French Ministry of Marine had tired of La Vérendrye, suspecting him of trading furs when he should have been exploring, and pressured him into resigning. In 1708, a new account of a fantastic voyage had emerged that would eventually become highly influential. In April of that year, a short-lived English periodical named Monthly Miscellany, or Memoirs for the Curious published an alleged letter by one Admiral Bartholomew de Fonte. The letter was supposedly translated from Spanish. It gave a detailed narrative of a voyage undertaken in 1640 to the northwestern coast of North America, dealings with the natives, passage into a great inland sea, long, elaborate waterways into the interior of the continent, and probable connection to the eastern coasts of North America. Presumably due to the magazine's obscurity, the account did not inspire any maps for decades. That would change.
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