Domingo Gual

Domingo Gual was a fourteenth-century Mallorcan shipmaster known from a single enterprise, albeit an exceptionally well documented one: the licence that the royal lieutenant of Mallorca granted him on 26 April 1342 to sail to the newly discovered islands of the western ocean, popularly called the Isles of Fortune. Gual appears in the document as master of a Bayonne cog — a vessel tied to the port of Bayonne — named Sant Joan, and the licence itself names six of his crew: Guillem Bossa, Guillem Descos, Pere Dalmau, Guillem Maimó, Benet Ramón and Johan Paga. Both the grant and the letter of credence addressed to maritime authorities have survived, allowing the preparation of the voyage to be reconstructed in unusual detail.

Gual's licence was the fourth in a group issued in April 1342, after that granted to the master Guillem Pere on the 15th and the two of the 16th in favour of Francesc Desvalers and of Bernardo Valls and Guillermo Safont. All responded to the interest aroused by the news circulating in Mallorca since the Portuguese and Genoese expedition of 1341. The documents show that this was not a merely commercial voyage: the masters swore to discover and, if possible, conquer islands, settlements or fortresses in the name of their king, James III of Mallorca, acknowledging him as lord of whatever might be acquired, in exchange for keeping the remainder of what was gained. The clause was accompanied by the customary oath and homage, "by word and by hands".

What became of the cog Sant Joan and her crew is not recorded: no surviving document confirms that Gual reached the islands or returned from them. A notarial act in which the sailor Guillem Jaffe de Sineu claims in 1342 against the heirs of one of Desvalers' co-masters suggests that at least part of the April expeditions did reach the Canaries, traditionally Gran Canaria, but this is indirect evidence that cannot establish that Gual's vessel landed there. The documented project and the actual completion of the voyage, which remains within the realm of the probable, must therefore be clearly distinguished.

Gual's historical importance lies precisely in this documentary richness: few fourteenth-century maritime enterprises toward the African Atlantic allow the vessel's name, its origin and a partial crew list to be known. His licence belongs to the first Mallorcan cycle of contact with the Canaries, a direct antecedent of the missionary expeditions of 1351-1352 and of the creation of the bishopric of the Fortunate Isles. Nothing else is known of his life beyond this file: neither his birth nor his death is recorded, and no other activity of his as a seafarer is attested.