Conquering the Pacific
Page 6
Juan Pablo de Carrión, circa 1582.
This was merely one late incident in a lifetime of adventure. Four decades earlier, Carrión had enlisted in the disastrous Villalobos expedition across the Pacific and had been one of the few to make it back alive to Spain in 1548. In spite of returning penniless and physically diminished, he promptly entered the service of the archbishop of Toledo as treasurer. At that time he also met a young woman named Isabel Medina and “knew her carnally,” as the Holy Office of the Inquisition would later put it. When Captain Carrión moved to the port of Seville in 1549 to participate in the shipping business there, he took Isabel with him. Those were heady years for them. Yet a few bad deals led to Carrión’s imprisonment for debts amounting to a fortune of more than 100,000 ducats. Isabel remained in Seville and faithfully visited the captain in jail. So life went until 1553, when, in a turn of events reminiscent of The Count of Monte Cristo, Carrión bribed his prison guards, escaped, and went to hide in Isabel’s house while he waited to board a ship bound for the Americas. All along, Carrión and Isabel had lived together but without being married. This was very troubling to Isabel, who apparently changed her name to Doña María de Sotomayor at that time to protect her true identity. Now that the captain was a fugitive from the law and at her mercy, however, Doña María saw her opportunity. As Carrión would declare to the inquisitors, “She tried to persuade me to marry her before taking passage, and after much pleading and many arguments threatened to denounce me to the authorities if I refused.” If we are to believe the captain’s version, he had no choice. One early morning, Doña María took a cloaked Carrión to the chapel of San Lázaro just outside the city walls, where a witness was already waiting. The bride had arranged for a discreet ceremony. As Captain Carrión continued to insist that their marriage was not valid, relations ended badly when he finally left for the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda to take ship for the Americas.11
Carrión’s destination was Mexico, where, always resourceful, he found his way to Don Luis’s sumptuous table. His arrival in Mexico City was like a godsend. Here was a man with a commanding presence and real experience crossing the Pacific, capable of overcoming the most trying circumstances, and comfortable in ports and fleets around the world. The viceroy and the captain got along famously from the start. Both were nearly the same age—forty-seven and forty-five, respectively. They may have known each other since childhood, as they both hailed from the town of Carrión de los Condes (thus the name Juan Pablo de Carrión) or at least from the same general region in north-central Spain. It is unclear how much Don Luis knew about the captain’s legal troubles in Seville. Regardless, Carrión became Don Luis’s right-hand man.12
Before construction of the vessels could commence at Navidad, Don Luis, Carrión, and other nautical experts had to decide on the optimal number of ships. Prior transpacific fleets had ranged between two and ten. A single vessel was the most economical, but it would have been intolerably risky, as any leaks, collisions, or groundings would have been fatal. Two or more ships would lessen the risk, allowing those aboard a sinking vessel to transfer to another. Yet too many vessels made coordination difficult and added considerably to the cost. The expedition planners initially settled on a minimal fleet of two ships, probably with the intention of maximizing the size of each. When it came to crossing the Pacific, the larger the vessel the better, as it would cut through the waves and weather storms more easily, like a floating fortress designed to last for months without sight of land and withstand attacks from other ships or from land.13
After agreement was reached on the optimal configuration, construction began in the distant port of Navidad. In the meantime, the viceroy dispatched Carrión to Spain to report in person to the king and to request artillery and merchandise for trade in Asia. The captain’s first port of call was none other than Seville, where he may have gambled on an amicable resolution to his status as a fugitive of the law. After all, he was returning as the leader of the most important venture of exploration in the whole empire. It is more likely, however, that Carrión and Don Luis had arranged things in advance and perhaps even secured a pardon. All we know is that the captain had no trouble carrying out his mission in Spain. At the time of the captain’s arrival, Philip II was abroad waging war on France, so Carrión transacted his business in Seville with the Council of the Indies, the powerful committee in charge of all New World affairs. The monarch’s absence could well have resulted in delays, but the never-sleeping Philip sent immediate instructions to his councilors, “and within thirty days, they sent me back to Mexico with all the munitions and artillery pieces that we had requested,” the captain recalled. Carrión also used his stay in Seville to rekindle his relationship with Doña María. The couple took up residence in a house where, according to one witness, “the two ate at the same table, slept in the same bed, and had the type of conversations that a husband and a wife would have.” They even discussed traveling together to the Americas, but, according to the captain, Doña María could not overcome her fear of crossing the Atlantic.14
On his return to Mexico, Carrión learned that the construction effort at Navidad had stalled. This was especially troubling because the viceroy, Don Luis, decided at the same time to expand the fleet to three ships and eventually to four. Such a gargantuan building project would go nowhere without a high-ranking official residing permanently at Navidad, with sufficient authority to hire and fire workers and mobilize large sums of money. Don Luis thus commissioned the ever adaptable captain “to put pressure and haste and diligence into the construction effort” and commanded “all officials, caulkers, carpenters, and everyone else at that port of Navidad to obey and execute all the orders given by Juan Pablo de Carrión.” This important commission, however, condemned the captain to the epidemic-prone and mosquito-infested port of Navidad for nearly five years. It could have been an especially trying period in the captain’s life. Yet he found ways to make it bearable. During his travels to and from Navidad, he met Leonor Suárez, a wealthy widow who owned a cacao hacienda in Zapotlán, strategically located midway between Navidad and Guadalajara. Carrión would later swear to the inquisitors that he had been “uncertain and confused” about the validity of his marriage in Spain. He also declared that several persons from Spain had told him that Doña María de Sotomayor had died. Caught in this maelstrom of misinformation and contradictory emotions, Captain Carrión wedded Leonor and had children with her. Yet word about the captain’s earlier marriage began to circulate. Some of the mariners at Navidad had known Carrión in Spain and had met Doña María. One of them had actually stayed in their house in Seville and observed them living as a couple. Carrión’s own brother, Andrés Cauchela, boasted to a group of mariners spending the night in a road hostel—and perhaps after a few drinks—that the captain “had been married in Spain and had a woman in Seville.” Bigamy was common among conquistadors and explorers. But in this particularly high-profile case, the murmurs spread through Mexico and across the Atlantic, where Doña María, still living in Seville, eventually found out about her husband’s second marriage to a wealthy widow in Mexico.15
All along, Captain Carrión believed that he was, as he put it, “la lumbre del negocio,” literally “the fire of the venture.” His experience and knowledge seemed unmatched. He had crossed the Pacific, beheld with his own eyes the Islands of the West, and—as a result of his commissions in Spain and Navidad—knew the most about the logistics and politics surrounding the fleet. It is hard to fault the captain for assuming that during the passage he would serve in a leading capacity. Yet Carrión’s prolonged absence from the decision-making center of Mexico City resulted in a confrontation with a second nautical expert named Andrés de Urdaneta.16
Urdaneta had been sailing the Pacific even longer than Carrión and possessed a storied pedigree. As a teenager, nearly forty years earlier, Urdaneta had befriended some of the survivors of Magellan’s expedition, especially Juan Sebastián Elcano, the Spanish captain who had
taken over from Magellan and completed the historic first voyage of circumnavigation. Urdaneta and Elcano hailed from nearby towns in the Basque Country in northern Spain. The young Urdaneta had entered Elcano’s service and become his protégé and apprentice. Thus began Urdaneta’s life as an explorer. In 1525, the Spanish crown recruited Elcano for a follow-up expedition to Asia, and the old seaman decided to take along his pupil. They departed from the port of La Coruña, passed through the Strait of Magellan, crossed the Pacific Ocean, and circumnavigated the world for the second time in history. Elcano had died along the way, and Urdaneta had spent eight years marooned in Southeast Asia, becoming proficient in Malay, the lingua franca of navigation, and learning much about the winds and currents in that part of the world. He had even started a family there and had brought back to Iberia a daughter named Gracia de Urdaneta.17
* * *
After that adventure of a lifetime, Urdaneta decided to take up residence in Mexico and for a few years continued to probe the Pacific Ocean, combining occasional maritime forays with land-based service to support himself. Yet his life ultimately evolved. In 1552, at the age of forty-four, he traded his cape for a robe and his boots for hemp sandals and entered an Augustinian monastery in Mexico City. Urdaneta spent a year as a novice. The veteran explorer must have cut a peculiar figure, as his cohort in the monastery consisted of adolescents between thirteen and fifteen. Nonetheless, Urdaneta had gained permanent admission and set a new course: “I promise to live in renunciation of all personal possessions, in chastity, and in accordance with the Rule of our glorious Father Saint Augustine, until death,” his oath reads. He went on to study for the priesthood and became ordained around 1558. As a priest-friar, Urdaneta joined the monastery’s hierarchy. “It is as if he had devoted all his life to religious affairs,” a fellow Augustinian marveled, “and as if he had forgotten all the things he had seen in the world and had never lived in it.” His good standing is evident in his appointment as master of the novices, instructing aspiring Augustinians during the start of their spiritual lives.18
Urdaneta’s second career was evidently in full bloom when the viceroy of Mexico attempted to recruit the friar-mariner, presumably for a position in the fleet that Don Luis was assembling at Navidad. Yet nothing came of these conversations. Urdaneta’s reluctance is understandable. At the Augustinian monastery, he lived a basic but predictable life with guaranteed meals and membership in a close-knit community, something particularly comforting to an aging man without a wife. “I am over fifty-two years old,” Friar Urdaneta stated later, “and the illnesses and hardships that I have suffered since my youth make me want to live out the rest of my life in quiet and peace.” Urdaneta’s dogged refusal eventually forced the viceroy into a circuitous way of obtaining the friar’s services. Both men lived in Mexico City within a short distance of each other. Yet Don Luis had to send a missive across the Atlantic asking the king of Spain to write back to Urdaneta (and to his superior in the monastery) to prevail over Urdaneta’s objections. Philip obliged. “I have heard that before your religious state, you went aboard the [1525] fleet of Loaysa and crossed the Magellan Strait,” the letter began, “and because of your great knowledge of those lands, your understanding of the art of navigation, and because you are a good cosmographer, it would be of great effect if you went aboard the ships.” Urdaneta could scarcely refuse a direct order from his monarch.19
To his credit, after acquiescing, the friar-mariner immersed himself in the project. “Even though it is a very wide sea,” Urdaneta had said of the Pacific, “there is no reason to think that a path exists only from here to the Spice Islands but there is no way to return.” He seemed to have strong opinions about everything. With respect to the port of Navidad, for instance, he believed that it had been foolish to set up the shipyard in a remote port that offered no easy access to building materials and that was prone to illness. “The carpenters and other artisans who are supposed to work on the ships refuse to go there even when offered good salaries,” Urdaneta noted, “because they become sick there and the foods that they require for their sustenance, like wine, oil, and other things that come from Spain, are extremely expensive.” He wrote to the Spanish king and asked that the shipyard be moved from Navidad to Acapulco (a solution that at least in the short term would have been even more disruptive and expensive). Urdaneta also advocated developing an independent naval infrastructure on the west coast of Mexico. If the expedition across the Pacific succeeded in planting a Spanish colony in Asia, more ships would be needed in the future to resupply such a colony. Therefore, instead of importing finished products like artillery all the way from Spain and at great expense, it would be much better to import skilled ironworkers to jump-start such an industry in Mexico. “In this land there is good copper in quantity,” the friar pointed out, “and although the artillery made from these materials usually cracks very quickly, it is believed that with better purification methods one can make excellent weapons.” Urdaneta’s plan of development was extensive. It called for importing hemp seeds (Cannabis sativa) from Spain in order to use the plants to make cordage and cables in Mexico, and contemplated setting aside plots of land to grow hardwood trees for the ships’ hulls and masts. Knowledge transfer was at the core of his plan. Coopers, carpenters, sawyers, ironsmiths, cordage makers, and other artisans would come from Spain to teach local workers, particularly mestizos and mulattos, “who would be compelled to learn, although paying them just salaries.”20
At every turn, the friar-mariner and the captain seemed to be on opposite sides. Whereas Urdaneta could not understand the choice of Navidad, Carrión had initially supported it. Whereas Urdaneta emphasized an independent New World naval industry, Carrión had traveled to Spain to bring back navigational equipment and artillery. They could still compromise in matters of construction and provisioning. But no middle ground was possible with regard to the fleet’s route and destination, and Carrión’s prolonged absence from Mexico City left him out of the decision-making process. Urdaneta’s influence over Don Luis became decisive. The friar was well spoken and persuasive, and his vast knowledge not only of the technical aspects of the art of navigation but also of Southeast Asia made him a formidable adviser. “Andrés de Urdaneta has the greatest familiarity with those islands and is the best cosmographer in all of New Spain,” wrote the viceroy, explaining his reasoning to Philip in 1560, “and he and I alone drew up the plans of the expedition.”21
For all his knowledge and experience, Urdaneta’s proposed route bordered on insanity. He intended to go to New Guinea. To get there, the friar planned to descend from Navidad until reaching the Southern Hemisphere all the way to twenty-five or even thirty degrees of southern latitude—much too far south—where the fleet would start looking for New Guinea. Urdaneta admitted that negotiating the equatorial region might be challenging because of “the great calms that must be avoided,” but he was confident that the pilots would find enough wind if they started from Mexico between November and January.22
Understandably, Carrión opposed Urdaneta’s proposal from the start. Why attempt an unknown passage instead of the proven, straight, and elegant trajectories of the two previous transpacific voyages in 1527–1534 and 1542–1548? Captain Carrión was especially adamant about establishing a Spanish base in the Philippines and nowhere else. “Those are the islands where we have friends,” he said, “and where eight Spaniards from our own fleet have remained.” Indeed, Spanish fleets had been visiting the archipelago since Magellan, “and some of our people know the language, the main ports, and even the names of the principal lords of those islands.” The Philippines were also densely populated in some places and possessed abundant foodstuffs to sustain a Spanish colony; they even had cinnamon, one of the spices so valued by Europeans. Yet the archipelago’s greatest attraction was strategic. It was an impossible-to-miss bull’s-eye of “eight large islands and many small ones interspersed among them, all within sight of one another,” and in the same latitude as
Mexico. The Philippines were quite simply the most convenient gateway to Asia and, once there, the possibilities were endless. “To the north is China at about two hundred leagues [seven hundred miles] of distance,” enthused Carrión, “and to the south are the Moluccas [the Spice Islands], and the way toward them [from the Philippines] is well understood.” Last and most important for the mission at hand, the Philippines afforded Spanish navigators the most propitious base from which to attempt the elusive return to the New World.23
Two vastly different life experiences had given rise to the two competing routes. Captain Carrión had seen with his own eyes the highway of winds and currents connecting Navidad (at nineteen degrees of northern latitude) with the Philippines (between five and nineteen degrees). “When we went in the [Villalobos] fleet of 1542,” Carrión recalled, “we found excellent winds and good seas, departing from the port of Navidad and navigating west and southwest, where we know some of the islands and ports to get fresh water, and the route is known and proven.” In contrast, Father Urdaneta’s knowledge harked back to an earlier era when the fleets still departed from Spain, crossed the Magellan Strait, and ascended through the southern Pacific Ocean, venturing into the fickle equatorial regions until reaching the Spice Islands. Urdaneta had never gone directly from Mexico to the Philippines and thus had no experience with the winds and currents that had impressed Carrión so much.24