The conquest of the Pacific

Conquering the Pacific

I have just finished reading a book, magnificent, by the way, about the return voyage of the Pacific in the mid-16th century, specifically in the years 1654 and 1565. The book in question is titled “Conquering the Pacific” and is by a Mexican historian named Andrés Reséndez. It is in English because Reséndez, a professor at the University of California, wrote it in English and they have not yet had the detail of translating it into Spanish. The book came out at the end of last summer. The topic interested me so I decided to wait for it to be translated because I prefer to read books in my own language, but nothing, three months later it had not been translated nor did it seem that any publisher was going to do so, so I downloaded it to the Kindle and I read it in one sitting. It is not very long, in its paper version it has only 300 pages, something that can be managed in a few afternoons.

The book tells of one of the most fascinating voyages in the history of navigation, the one that allowed the Spaniards of that time to travel from the Philippines to New Spain, that is, to make a return trip or return trip from Asia to America. The outward journey was already known. Magellan and Elcano had crossed the Pacific heading west in 1521 through the southern hemisphere. Still, both the Philippines and New Spain were in the northern hemisphere and when the navigators reached the Philippines and wanted to return they found themselves with headwinds. It was possible to continue traveling west across the Indian Ocean as Elcano had done in 1522, but it was very risky because that part of the world belonged to Portugal.

This was so because in 1494 Pope Alexander VI had divided the world on the second by drawing a line across the Atlantic. Everything that was west of that line would be for Spain, everything that was east for Portugal except the Canary Islands that the Castilians were conquering at that time. That line, the demarcation line of Tordesillas (so called because it was in Tordesillas where the Portuguese and Spanish agreed to divide the world), was still fully in force in 1564. The line of Zaragoza had been added to that of Tordesillas, which Charles I agreed upon. Spain and John II of Portugal in 1529 in Zaragoza and which delimited the Spanish and Portuguese areas in the Far East. The demarcation line of Zaragoza was at the 142nd meridian west and left the Indian Ocean completely closed to Spanish ships. In short, the Philippines were Spanish, the Spanish knew how to get there from America, but not how to return without entering Portuguese waters.

Being in the Philippines was interesting because from there you could directly access the Chinese market, where all kinds of items that were highly in demand in both America and Europe were manufactured. But there was no point in possessing the Philippines if it was impossible to return from there, at least without getting into trouble with the Portuguese.

Well, this is what “Conquering the Pacific” is about. It tells us the story of a truly attractive nautical exploit but very unknown to Hispanics. Few Spaniards know about it, but neither do Mexicans know about it despite the importance that this trip had in subsequent trade. The Manila galleon would circulate for centuries on the route that was opened at that time, which for 250 years (from 1565 to 1815) carried oriental merchandise from the Philippines to America, thus becoming one of the main arteries of world trade.

The expedition

Reséndez begins by explaining how the problem originated and the attempts that the viceroys of New Spain made to solve it by sending two expeditions to the Philippines that arrived safely in the Philippines, but failed to return to America. The Spanish could not return because the oceans have predominant currents that move in a circular manner. In the northern hemisphere they rotate clockwise and in the southern hemisphere counterclockwise. These currents were what allowed Christopher Columbus in the Atlantic to reach America in 1492 and return the following year, sliding his Nina (the caravel, the Santa María had run aground in Hispaniola on Christmas Day 1492) towards the north so that the current would take him back to Europe.

What the Spanish needed to discover in the Philippines was that current, but it was very elusive. They had to sail north, but they couldn't find the turn that would take them east. This was a problem that they had to solve because, otherwise, Spain would not be able to benefit from trade with the East. So Philip II urged the viceroy of New Spain, who at that time was Luis de Velasco, to organize an expedition as soon as possible. Velasco entrusted it to someone he trusted, Miguel López de Legazpi, a Basque from Zumárraga, who had been in Mexico City for many years. There he had prospered, he had been mayor of Mexico City and had a notable fortune. He would be joined by an Augustinian friar who, in addition to that, was a cosmographer and navigator. His name was Andrés de Urdaneta and, like Legazpi, he was also from Guipuzcoan, from Villafranca de Ordicia specifically. Legazpi didn't know about navigation, but Urdaneta did. Before embarking on this expedition (and becoming a friar) he had been on García Jofre de Loaísa's expedition to the spice shop in 1525.

Urdaneta had made calculations and was convinced of the exact place to return. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The Legazpi and Urdaneta expedition left Mexico through Barra de Navidad (in the current State of Jalisco) on November 21, 1564. A total of five ships set sail: La Capitana, the San Pablo, the San Pedro, the Saint John and the Saint Luke. Things began to go wrong almost from the beginning when Legazpi and Urdaneta argued. Shortly afterward one of the ships, the San Lucas, became separated from the fleet and was lost. Its captain, Alonso de Arellano, was not exactly an expert sailor, but thank God he had a very competent pilot, a Portuguese named Lope Martín.

The San Lucas tried to rejoin the rest of the fleet, but could not find it in the immensity of the Pacific. She hopped from island to island replenishing supplies; she completed the outward journey alone. Two months later, in January 1565, she was already in the Philippines, on the coast of Mindanao. There they made contact with the indigenous people, but soon, as had happened to Magellan in 1521, problems arose (perhaps because of the women, perhaps because of the food, perhaps because of both, we don't know), and they had to flee. Alonso de Arellano and Lope Martín then decided to return to New Spain on their own. The ship, a simple small boat, was short of provisions, but they had no other option. Either they died in slow motion in the Philippines or they died suddenly in the ocean. They decided that the second alternative was better. Those people were made of a different material than ours. They got to it and after three months and twenty days they reached the coasts of Mexico. They had completed the return trip.

Arellano against Legazpi

Arellano and Martín expected to be recognized for the feat, but no, no one remembered them. Urdaneta returned two months later after having discovered the return journey route on his behalf. Legazpi had meanwhile stayed in the Philippines where he had the royal charge of organizing a general captaincy that would become dependent on the viceroyalty of New Spain. That general captaincy would remain until 1898. But let's not go that far. Let's go back to 1565. When Urdaneta returned to Mexico City to immediately inform Madrid that he had managed to successfully carry out the return voyage, he learned that Arellano and Martín were already there.

The friar became angry and accused them of deserting the fleet. He denounced them before the Council of the Indies. They were tried by the Royal Court of Mexico where Arellano and Martín accused each other of having disobeyed Legazpi's orders. Arellano was sentenced to return to the Philippines loaded with chains so that Legazpi could do with him whatever he saw fit. But Arellano managed to delay the issue and when he was sent to the Philippines Legazpi had already died, so he was able to save his skin. Martín was also ordered to return to the Philippines. The captain of the ship carried a message in which was the order to execute Martín as soon as he disembarked. But, once on board, Martín found out, encouraged a mutiny, threw the captain overboard and took over the ship with which he was lost in the Pacific. He was never heard from again, although Reséndez in the book assures that there are indications that Martín's men could have survived and started a new life on some island in the Pacific, so we would have a precedent two centuries before the Bounty mutiny.

A movie story, but no movie has ever been made about the return voyage, not even a documentary and there is not much bibliography about it. Luckily Reséndez has come to fill this gap with “Conquering the Pacific” which I hope will soon be translated into Spanish. I warn you that the author openly sympathizes with Arellano and Martín, but I do not give you any more clues. If you read in English and are interested in the topic, I leave you the link here. I'm sure you'll enjoy it because, although it's not a novel, it reads almost like a novel. My warmest congratulations to Andrés Reséndez. Now all that remains is to turn this into a script, although I am afraid my eyes will not see that.