People are completely different, even outstanding. An outstanding person can commit different deeds, great and remain in history, he can never make mistakes, he can become outstanding only because of the mistakes he made during important historical events. But there are a number of outstanding people who, devoid of ambition and craving for glory, simply do their job, do it efficiently and persistently, developing science, educating a new generation of specialists, fighting bravely in battles, albeit without winning big battles. Don Juan de Langara, captain-general, naval commander, cartographer and even a politician can be called such a person in the Armada of the 2nd half of the 18th century.
Protege Jorge Juan
Juan Caetano de Langara y Huarte was born in 1736 into a noble Basque family who lived in A Coruña, but came from Andalusia. His father, Juan de Langara and Aritsmendi, was also a sailor, a representative of the first "Bourbon" generations of officers of the Armada, fought at Passaro under the command of Admiral Gastaneta and rose to the rank of captain-general of the fleet. The son decided to follow in his father's footsteps, and at the age of 14 he received the rank of midshipman, while studying in Cadiz. There he was immediately noticed by Jorge Juan, who had recently returned from England, who was surprised by the talents shown by Langara in the field of mathematics and the exact sciences. As a result, Juan Cayetano was given the opportunity to continue his studies in Paris, which he also completed with success. During this time, he had already managed to build a certain reputation about himself as a learned husband, modest, but rather active and brave. After completing his studies in Paris, the time of active maritime practice and gaining real sailing experience began.
At first, Langara sailed along the coast of Spain and Africa, improving his skills as a junior officer, but by the age of 30 he was considered an experienced and reliable veteran, especially skilled in navigation. In 1766-1771, he made a number of voyages to the Philippines, where he confirmed his reputation, and also began to gradually improve his skills in cartography. In 1773, Langara made his fourth voyage to Manila, this time with another future celebrity of the Armada, Jose de Mazarreda. Together they dealt with issues of astronavigation and determination of distances by stars. This was followed by a new voyage, already in 1774, with a new special task - to map the exact outlines of the shores of the Atlantic coast of Spain and America. This time, in addition to Masarreda, other prominent sailors of the Armada - Juan Jose Ruiz de Apodaca (future father-in-law of Cosme Damian Churruca), Jose Varela Ulloa, Diego de Alvear and Ponce de Leon sailed aboard the frigate Rosalia with Langara.
Like many other prominent figures of the navy of that time, Langara began his career with scientific work, where he achieved significant success and fairly wide recognition, although not the same as, for example, Jorge Juan. But, like many other scientists associated with the Armada, he also had to carry out military missions. For the first time in full growth he entered combat service in 1776, being the commander of the battleship Poderoso under the command of Admiral Marquis de Casatilla (Casa-Tilly). There he took an active part in the capture of the colony of Sacramento, the capture of the fortress Assensen on the island of Santa Catalina (where he met Federico Gravina), and in the defense of the island of Martin Garcia. Acting on land and at sea, Langara was noted in dozens of small skirmishes, and is now known not only as a scientist, but also as a brave soldier who does not lose his composure in any situation, even in the unusual position of a Marine. This quickly promoted him from among the other officers, and in 1779, when the war with Great Britain began, he received under his command an entire division in the West Indies, consisting of two battleships (Poderoso and Leandro) and two frigates. At the same time, fate decided to test Langara, because because of the stormy weather, Poderoso soon sat on the stones, and only thanks to the organizational skills of its commander, great casualties and losses were avoided - the crew was rescued and transferred to Leandro. The rest of the ships, meanwhile, operated quite effectively, driving off the British privateers, and soon followed by a major success - the capture of the British frigate "Vinsheon" off the island of Santa Maria. For these successes, Langara was promoted to the rank of brigadier and transferred to the metropolis, having received an entire squadron under his command.
Military affairs
The most important event of the war of 1779-1783 for the metropolis was the Great Siege of Gibraltar, which turned into an impressive action with the involvement of large forces, stretching for all four years and becoming a clear illustration of all the strengths and weaknesses of Spain at that time. Langara received under his command a squadron of 9 battleships and 2 frigates, which was supposed to provide a long-range blockade of the British stronghold. Appointed on December 11, 1779, a month later, on January 14, 1780, he had to fight the British in a very disadvantageous situation. Just then, a large supply convoy led by Admiral George Rodney was sailing into Gibraltar. There were 18 battleships and 6 frigates on guard, but the numerical advantage was not their main trump card. Langara, seeing the superior forces of the enemy, immediately turned his ships towards the base, but the British began to gradually catch up with them. The reason for this was that most of Rodney's ships had an innovation in the technology of the time - copper sheathing of the bottom, due to which fouling was minimized, while Spanish ships did not have such a skin, the bottom was not cleaned for a long time, as a result of which lost in speed.
On a clear moonlit night, a battle broke out, in which the twice superior forces of the British pounced on the Spanish squadron. This was almost the only night battle in the entire 18th century, which ended with the complete defeat of Langara's squadron. Both frigates and two ships of the line escaped; one ship, the Santo Domingo, exploded. The remaining six ships of the line were captured by the British, but two (San Eugenio and San Julian) of them somehow "disappeared" from history - the Spaniards insist that after the battle, when the British were already towing trophies to themselves, heavily beaten and lagging behind the general order, the ships were blown away by the wind and the current to the coastal cliffs, and the British on board were forced to free the Spanish crews in order to save their lives, as a result of which the sides quickly changed places, and the ships returned under the rule of the Spanish crown. Among the four trophies that Admiral Rodney still brought to his base was the badly battered flagship Real Phoenix (launched in 1749, commissioned by Royal Navy as Gibraltar, served until 1836). Brigadier Langar fought bravely, but received three serious wounds, his ship suffered heavy losses, lost all masts and was forced to surrender. The British treated the captured brigadier very respectfully and soon even released him back to Spain. This defeat did not affect Langara's career in any way - the conditions of the battle were too unequal, and the fact that the British sheathed the bottom of their ships with copper was known from the time of the spy story of Jorge Juan, but there was no reaction from the higher ranks of the Armada to this. Moreover, he was treated kindly at court, having been promoted to the rank of vice admiral.
Already in 1783, Langara was appointed to command a detachment that, as part of an allied Franco-Spanish squadron, was supposed to invade Jamaica, but the end of the war led to the cancellation of the expedition. He spent the next ten years in a rut, dealing with naval organization, cartography, and more. In 1793, when the war with Revolutionary France began, he turned out to be one of those who were popular both at court and in the navy, as a result of which it was Juan de Langara who became the commander of the Spanish squadron of 18 pennants, which began to operate together with the allied British in the Mediterranean. Here Langara, who raised the flag on the 112-gun Reina Louise, had to act not only as a naval commander, but also as a diplomat, and even as a politician. Together with his junior flagship, Federico Gravina, he took part in the defense of the royalist Toulon from the Republican army. When it became clear that the business was rubbish and the city would soon fall, the British of Admiral Hood rushed to plunder the city (according to the Spaniards) and burn the French ships stationed in the port in order to eliminate the danger from the republic at sea in the future. Langara defended the French fleet, because he understood that the war with France was a temporary phenomenon, and the preservation of the French fleet was in the interests of Spain. Therefore, acting with diplomacy and threats, he reduced the damage to a minimum - only 9 ships were burned by the British, and 12 left Toulon along with the allies, and actually came under their command. Another 25 ships remained in Toulon, and were captured by the Republicans as a result.
After that, the allied relations of the Spaniards with the British deteriorated noticeably, and Langara took his ships to Catalonia, where he provided widespread support to the active army, which was fighting the French at that time on land. In particular, his ships helped to defend the coastal city of Roses, and also interfered with providing support to French ships, capturing the frigate Iphigenia during a fleeting battle. However, the war was already coming to naught, and soon a peace was signed in San Ildefonso. Langara was first promoted to captain-general of the department of Cadiz, then was appointed minister of the Armada, and from 1797 - captain-general of the Armada and its director (how often the Spanish naval ministry was reformed at this time is worthy of separate sarcastic applause), having received a post in the State advice. This was a completely logical result of all his activities, everyone saw in him a worthy head of the naval ministry, but he did not stay for a long time, having retired in 1799. The reasons for this are not entirely clear - on the one hand, Langara was already at a fairly respectable age (63 years old), had health problems, which could just cause a completely deliberate resignation. At the same time, as a naval sailor and patriot, he could not observe how the government of Godoy acted with the Armada, and the resignation could be a sign of protest - and, if so, it was not a unique case at all. Be that as it may, Juan de Langara, knight of the Orders of Santiago and Carlos III, then retired, did not interfere in politics, lived a private life for his own pleasure, and died in 1806. I could not find information about his children, but he definitely had a wife, and not just a simple one - but the Marquis Maria Lutgarda de Ulloa herself, the daughter of the famous Don Antonio de Ulloa.
Unfamiliar celebrity
Separately, it is worth talking about how this person was perceived by his contemporaries, how famous he is in our time, and what trace he left in history. All this is both difficult and simple at the same time. So, in modern Spain the name of Langara is well known, but not so widely - ships, streets, schools are not named in his honor, no monuments are erected to him. Outside the borders of Spain, the situation is even more modest - even many flotophiles and history buffs from the 18th century may simply not know about the existence of such a person as Juan Caetano de Langara and Huarte. Meanwhile, during his lifetime he was a fairly popular person abroad, earning a respectful reputation among enemies, and in Spain itself he was one of the figures of the Armada of the first plan. First of all, he was one of the heirs of Jorge Juan's ideas, his protege and assistant. During his voyages to the Philippines and America, Langara repeatedly tested his ideas in practice, in fact, after the death of Juan, he headed the movement of Spanish cartographers, making his own invaluable contribution to the development of this business. Langara himself more than once contacted other prominent sailors of Spain of his time, was friends with Mazarreda and was a relative of Don Antonio de Ulloa.
Under his wing, many officers of the new generation of Armada were brought up - the last generation of Spain during its greatness before it collapsed into a deep crisis and lost its status as one of the leading powers in the world. Among his students, for example, is Federico Gravina, who acted under him during the war with Revolutionary France, who became a kind of heir to his teacher's fighting style - courageously and with maximum dedication, even in case of defeat, in order to earn at least respect from the victors … Lacking any outstanding achievements on a global scale, Juan de Langara became the "workhorse" of the Armada both as an officer and as a naval commander, achieving the task in almost all cases - the failure with the Battle of the Moonlight was almost the only one of its kind in his career. Finally, when in 1804 it was time to fight the British again, he was one of two "old men" (besides Masarreda) whom Armada prophesied as its commanders in chief, with whom one could go to hell. But Langara was already old, and politically more profitable was the "Francophile" Gravin, as a result of which he was no longer destined to lead the fleet and lead it into battle in the almost hopeless conditions of the decline of the country, the fleet and the domination of the French. Well, what not so many people remember about him today is the case of the living, and not of Juan de Langara, who to the last fulfilled his duty to the king and Spain, although he did not fan himself with the eternal glory of great victories or the great bitterness of crushing defeats.
