Controversy
Because the only written evidence for Fokás's voyages lay in Lok's account — researchers being unable to find records of the expedition in Spanish colonial archives — there was long much controversy over his discovery and, indeed, whether he had ever even existed as a real person; several scholars have dismissed Juan de Fuca as entirely fictitious, and the 18th-century British explorer Captain Cook strongly doubted that the strait Fokás claimed to have discovered even existed (although Cook actually sailed past the Strait of Juan de Fuca without entering it and did stop at Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island). With later English exploration and settlement of the area, however, Fokás's claims seemed much more credible.
Finally, in 1859, an American researcher, with the help of the U.S. Consul in the Ionian Islands, was able to demonstrate not only that Fokás had lived but also that his family and history were well known on the islands. While we may never know the exact truths that lay behind the account published by Lok, it must be considered unlikely that the man himself was a fiction.
Read more about this topic: Juan De Fuca
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