Conquering the Pacific

by Andrés Reséndez

  A fixture of all early voyages of exploration was the high proportion of non-Spaniards. They could account for as many as a third (according to some regulations) and up to half (as in the case of Magellan’s expedition) of all crew members. The Navidad fleet was no different. The documentation mentions a Belgian barrel maker, a German artilleryman, an English carpenter, Venetian crew members, a French pilot, two Filipino translators, and so forth. Portuguese mariners made up the largest and most conspicuous foreign group: at least sixteen could be counted at Navidad. Spaniards regarded them as rivals but also valued their nautical skills. The Afro-Portuguese pilot Lope Martín, our protagonist, was among them.7

  Lope Martín was from Lagos, an old port near Portugal’s southwestern tip that had historically served as a stepping-stone from Europe to Africa. In the summer of 1415, a powerful fleet had gathered there before crossing the Mediterranean to capture Ceuta. In later years, Lagos had turned into Prince Henry the Navigator’s base of operations. Famous local pilots included Alvaro Esteves (who charted the “gold coast” of Africa) and Vicente Rodrigues (one of the foremost pilots to India). As Portuguese fleets had traced the contours of western Africa, Black slaves had flowed back into Lagos, giving rise to a sizable slave and free population of African ancestry. This contingent did much of the work around the city, in the harbor, and aboard the ships of exploration. Many of the apprentices and sailors in Lagos were Black slaves whose salaries were pocketed by their masters or free Blacks engaged in the harsh life of the sea.8

  Lope Martín was, as we have seen, a free mulatto, that is, a person of mixed Afro-Portuguese descent. Although little is known about his early years, he must have cut his teeth aboard Portuguese and Spanish ships of exploration, carrying sacks of flour and climbing ratlines to the top of the mast. The fleets outfitted all along the southwestern coast of Iberia, on both the Portuguese and Spanish sides, constantly required fresh recruits like him. Towns like Huelva, Moguer, and Palos de la Frontera had supplied Columbus with a crew willing to risk their lives across the great ocean in 1492. Less than one hundred miles in length, this stretch of Portuguese-Spanish coast was at the time the preeminent maritime region in the world. Somewhere in this exploited and often brutal milieu, where knife fights could erupt over insignificant incidents, Lope Martín went from page (children of eight to ten) to apprentice (older and more experienced) to mariner (twenty and older and in possession of a certificate), all the while voyaging to Africa, the Americas, and perhaps as far as Asia. Lope Martín’s passages likely ended in different Portuguese and Spanish ports. These comings and goings must have taken him away from his native Lagos, well inside Portugal, toward the Spanish border, and finally to Seville, the only Spanish port open to trade with the New World.9

  Through the years, this remarkable Afro-Portuguese man was able to climb to the pinnacle of his career by becoming a licensed pilot. This was rare in an era when the vast majority of naval officers, shipmasters, and pilots were white Europeans. Lope Martín was not the only mulatto pilot working in the Spanish fleets; there were a handful, but still rare enough to stand out. His trajectory was also unlikely because, to ascend from ordinary sailor to pilot, he had to acquire a great deal of knowledge and pick up many new skills. Sailors were “mostly ignorant and unlettered people,” as one sixteenth-century naval writer put it, while the pilot’s craft had become notoriously technical by the middle of the sixteenth century. Among other things, it required measuring the altitude of the Sun at noon with an astrolabe, using declination tables, and performing a series of mathematical calculations. Lope Martín must have mastered the material, taken the required courses, and passed the examinations at the House of Trade in Seville, a powerful agency that not only regulated all Spanish commerce with the Americas but also trained and licensed pilots. A piloto mayor, or chief pilot, oversaw these activities, a post that had been occupied by the likes of Amerigo Vespucci (of “America” fame) and Sebastian Cabot (explorer of the North American coast along with his father, John Cabot).10

  Any person wishing to become a pilot had to be at least twenty-four years of age, “of sound upbringing,” and possess a minimum of six years of sailing experience. In the examiners’ eyes, Lope Martín’s African ancestry was undoubtedly a shortcoming, but perhaps his extensive seagoing experience compensated for this. Additionally, according to the regulations, aspiring pilots needed to own their nautical charts and demonstrate proficiency in mathematics, astronomy, and cartography. Lope Martín must have passed all the tests. Yet there was one final contretemps. The House of Trade had to certify the nationality of all candidates. Being a Spaniard was preferable and often indispensable. When the chief pilot requested proof of Lope Martín’s nationality, the pilot must have done what many of his Portuguese predecessors had: produced forged or irregular documents showing that he was from Ayamonte, a town on the Spanish-Portuguese border but on the Spanish side. This would explain why most of his contemporaries believed that Lope Martín was from Ayamonte while a few knew that Lagos was in fact his real place of origin. To make sure that his application went through, Lope Martín may have added a bribe, another standard practice. House of Trade officials were not inclined to look into such irregularities too closely. Spain was in dire need of competent pilots, and Lope Martín was extraordinary.11

  The scarcity of pilots delivered benefits, too, to taking Lope Martín to the New World. While the Afro-Portuguese man was in the process of obtaining his license in Spain, on the other side of the Atlantic, the viceroy of Mexico had begun recruiting navigators for his secret project at Navidad. By 1561, four years into the project, Don Luis had been able to hire only three pilots, so he asked Philip II to dispatch two more, “trained in the navigation of the ocean sea.” This was of the utmost importance. A poor choice could doom the fleet even before departure. Friar Urdaneta was expected to make all the important decisions about the overall route across the Pacific. Each of the four vessels, however, would still need a pilot for its daily operations. (Interestingly, Urdaneta had no formal appointment as a pilot but would be traveling as a passenger and nautical expert.) Indeed, the expedition planners contemplated not one but two pilots aboard each ship, “given that on such a long passage, one may be lacking”—a very terse way to refer to the expected high mortality. In spite of such ambitious plans, by the fall of 1564, when the vessels were ready to set sail, of the eight pilots needed, only six were on hand. All of them were extremely accomplished, the very best that a viceroy and a king working together could procure. Three were indisputably Spanish, one was a Frenchman, another one was possibly a Venetian, and completing the list was Lope Martín. Our protagonist was not selected as lead pilot. That honor went to Esteban Rodríguez, a Spaniard from Huelva who was offered the princely sum of one thousand ducats for the duration of the voyage. At seven hundred ducats, though, Lope Martín was not too far behind. Less than a month before departure, he made his way to Navidad to inspect the ships and meet the crew.12

  The shipyard was at the core of the activities of the diverse workforce at Navidad. Today no one knows where the original construction site may have been located. In 1587, three decades after the secret construction we are tracking in this story, Thomas Cavendish and his men took Navidad by surprise and “set fire on the houses,” the English pirate wrote, “and burnt two new ships of 200 tons the piece which were in building there on the stocks, and came aboard our ships again.” It is likely that the shipyard would not have been on the ocean side of Navidad, exposed to the waves and occasional storms sweeping through. Hurricanes are always a threat on that coast. In 1971, Hurricane Lily (Category 1) knocked out the electricity for days. A Christ with his arms nearly ripped off still on display at the local church is a reminder of the power of the elements. More recently, Hurricanes Jova (Category 2 in 2011), Patricia (Category 5 in 2015), and Willa (Category 5 in 2018) have made close passes. Given the risks, it is probable that the shipyard was somewhere inside the lagoon in a more sheltered environment wi
th calmer waters.13

  Somewhere around Navidad, four ships lay at anchor in a state of near completion: two huge galleons and two much smaller vessels. Safety and living conditions onboard would vary dramatically depending on the ship. The most privileged would travel aboard the flagship, called the San Pedro, a hulking structure of about 550 tons burden. Accustomed as we are to the sight of cruise ships carrying six thousand passengers and oil tankers approaching four football fields in length, the San Pedro would appear small to us, especially for a transpacific adventure. It must have been about sixty feet in length and nineteen feet across, about the size of a large private sailboat these days. At that time, however, the San Pedro was probably the largest ship ever built in the Americas. Size mattered. In rough seas, smaller craft were tossed around, testing their physical integrity and exhausting their crews, while heavier ships were more stable and forgiving. The San Pedro would also enjoy the protection afforded by the smaller vessels in the fleet, scouting ahead for shoals and making sure that there was deep enough water for the flagship to pass. On the day of departure, those boarding the San Pedro could count themselves extremely lucky.14

  At the other end of the spectrum, those piling into the smallest of the four vessels, the San Lucas, could expect a very different experience. At a mere forty tons, it was essentially a souped-up boat of about twenty-nine feet in length and eight feet across. The San Lucas was what sixteenth-century mariners referred to as a “patache,” or tender, a small, shallow boat intended for coastal navigation rather than deep-blue sailing. It would carry a minimal crew of twenty in cramped conditions, working day and night, trimming sails, throwing lead lines, signaling to the other vessels, and keeping lookouts for hidden and not-so-hidden dangers ahead. If caught in a mid-ocean storm, these twenty men would face the full impact of the large waves and strong winds and would have to struggle mightily to steady the course. Even without a storm, they would run a great risk by crossing the world’s largest ocean with only eight casks of water and modest food stores.15

  * * *

  Fleet Commander Miguel López de Legazpi had ample powers to distribute the voyagers as he saw fit. Sometime in September 1564, he made the two-week journey from Mexico City to Navidad, took formal possession of the four ships in a scripted ceremony, and got down to business. His orders were to carry between 300 and 350 men because “all the provisions have been calculated for that number and, although plentiful, if more people go, they would become scarce sooner.” Erring on the side of caution would have been wise. Yet Legazpi ended up admitting 380 voyagers, an excessive number probably forced on him by prominent passengers who insisted on taking their servants. The commander also had been instructed to prohibit all Native Americans, Africans, and women, whether married or single, from joining the fleet, except for “a dozen black men and black women of service.” Women must have taken part in this risky adventure under conditions that we can only imagine, and the same is true for Black slaves and Native Americans. In a letter to the king, the expedition commander summed up this human microcosm in a single sentence: “It consists of 150 people of the sea, 200 soldiers, 6 friars of the order of Saint Augustine led by Friar Andrés de Urdaneta, and some people of service for a total of 380.”16

  Legazpi needed to strike a delicate balance in the distribution. On the one hand, it made sense to assign the most capable navigators, the best troops, the most loyal supporters, and the expedition leadership to the most seaworthy ship, the San Pedro, to maximize the chances of reaching Asia. This was all the more sensible because, once on the other side of the ocean, Commander Legazpi would have to dispatch a vessel back to America to attempt the elusive vuelta. On the other hand, Legazpi needed to appoint officers, pilots, and mariners loyal to him in all four ships, and distribute the resources equitably to make sure that the fleet remained together and more or less contented under his command. If we are to judge by the final distribution of passengers, he neglected this second objective.17

  The fleet commander ended up assigning the entire expedition leadership to the flagship San Pedro, which would carry Legazpi along with all his relatives and friends, sixteen in total, the royal officials, and three of the five surviving Augustinian friars, including Urdaneta, all “in proper accommodations.” The concentration of navigational resources in the flagship was notable. It had two assigned pilots—Esteban Rodríguez, the lead pilot of the entire fleet, as well as a somewhat mysterious Frenchman whom Spaniards called Pierres Plín (or sometimes Plún)—in addition to Friar Urdaneta. But that was not all. One of the other friars aboard the San Pedro, Martín de Rada, was also a reputed cosmographer and “a great arithmetician,” according to one source, and “one of the greatest arithmeticians, geometricians, and astrologers in the whole world,” according to another. Therefore, no fewer than four world experts would be traveling aboard the San Pedro, discussing their estimates and comparing their plots across the ocean. Their collective experience and knowledge (and probably the charts and instruments available to them) easily surpassed that of all the others.18

  The second vessel in the fleet, the San Pablo, was only slightly smaller than the flagship at four hundred tons. It would carry the military commander, Mateo del Sauz, along with his one-hundred-strong company of soldiers. Sauz was a veteran of the wars in Peru. He had risen against the Spanish crown and been pardoned by a later viceroy provided he left Peru within two months and never came back. “This pardon had spared him from being hanged, drawn, and quartered,” as the visitador Valderrama had quipped, “but it hardly qualified him for additional service on behalf of His Majesty.” Nonetheless, Legazpi must have been satisfied by the formerly treasonous Sauz’s loyalty. He not only supported Sauz’s appointment as military commander but also gave him the second-largest vessel in the fleet along with two excellent pilots.19

  At eighty tons, the third ship, the San Juan, was a big step down from the first two and something of a self-contained operation. The captain and pilot were brothers, Juan and Rodrigo de la Isla (or sometimes Rodrigo de Espinoza). During the outfitting of the fleet, Juan de la Isla had demonstrated his vast administrative and maritime acumen. He traveled to Veracruz to procure nautical equipment and oversee the transportation of artillery pieces across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and went to Oaxaca to select and cut down large trees to manufacture the masts of all the vessels in the fleet. His brother Rodrigo was no less experienced and capable. He was an excellent pilot who had impressed the viceroy and his advisers greatly. Although Juan and Rodrigo would be risking their lives in a smallish vessel capable of carrying only about forty people, these two siblings and their dependents constituted a compact and able group.20

  The last vessel, the tender San Lucas, with capacity for only twenty, was a gamble from the start. For unknown reasons, the appointed captain failed to appear in Navidad. “Because I have been informed that he is still in Mexico City and has no intention of coming,” Legazpi wrote on November 19, a mere two days before departure, “I name Don Alonso de Arellano as captain on behalf of His Majesty. He is a gentleman and willing to serve, as is assumed and trusted of him.” Don Alonso was the most socially prominent individual in the entire expedition. Indeed, the Arellanos were among the noblest and best-connected families not just in Mexico but throughout the Spanish Empire. Hernán Cortés, the conqueror of Mexico, had married Doña Juana Ramírez de Arellano de Zúñiga, daughter of the second Count of Aguilar. He had gone on to strengthen this dynastic connection by marrying both of his children to members of the Arellano clan. Don Alonso, the man present at Navidad, appears to have been on the main line of the Arellanos but conceived out of wedlock and therefore illegitimate. Nonetheless, Don Alonso counted several highly placed relatives in both Mexico and Spain. The wording of Arellano’s appointment is revealing. The honorific “Don” (reserved for people of noble descent in the sixteenth century, unlike its wider usage today) precedes his name, and the document specifies that he was “a gentleman.” The appointment also makes cle
ar that Legazpi knew Don Alonso by reputation only, as his willingness to serve was “assumed and trusted of him” (“como de él se presume y confía”). In all likelihood, Commander Legazpi was acquainted with Don Alonso only superficially and, with less than forty-eight hours to go, chose him as captain on the basis of his social prominence.21

  Acting as sole pilot of the San Lucas would be none other than Lope Martín.

  Before departing, the expeditionaries went over basic procedures derived from decades of hard-earned experience of Pacific exploration. Some were obvious: “You will prohibit any dealings between your men and native women because, in addition to offending God, such relations produce great harm,” or “If any native were to bring you cooked food, wine, or water, make sure to have them eat and drink first.” Others stemmed from specific incidents that had occurred in the past: “Whenever the ships are moored in populated lands, you will keep guard on the ropes, especially at night, because the natives try to cut them or pull the ships ashore to run them aground.” Yet other admonitions seemed excessive. For instance, Commander Legazpi’s galleon would constitute his fortress and castle during the entire voyage, and under no circumstance was he to go on land. If an Indigenous leader requested a parley, Legazpi would ask that person to come aboard instead. If that was not possible, the fleet commander could always dispatch one of his officers, but only after the leader had left one of his own kin aboard the fleet, who would not be released until after the safe return of the Spanish envoy. Only in extreme circumstances was Legazpi authorized to get into a rowboat and approach the land, and in these rare cases he would be surrounded by many soldiers and well within range of their powerful artillery.22

  Preserving Legazpi’s life was a top priority. Yet, as the instructions went on to observe, “all of us are at the mercy of death.” An ironclad procedure was therefore in place for such an eventuality. No second-in-command had been named. Bitter experience had shown that designating a successor could incite rivalries, mutinies, and murder. Instead, Legazpi’s replacement was to remain unknown until the time of his death, when the survivors would be permitted to look in the commander’s cabin for a steel coffer “of about one palm in length and one hand and two fingers in width.” This hidden box, “nailed shut and wrapped in cloth with three royal seals,” contained a piece of paper with the name of the substitute commander. Should this person die too, a second steel coffer, slightly smaller than the first but similarly closed, wrapped, and with three royal seals, bore the name of the third person in the line of command. The identities of the two replacements were wholly unknown to the expeditionaries—including Legazpi and the two chosen successors themselves. Now we know that the first (and surprising) replacement was the once treasonous military commander Mateo del Sauz, and the second was the expedition’s royal treasurer, Guido de Lavezaris, a man of Genoese ancestry who had been involved in earlier attempts to find a practicable route to Asia. Clearly, Pacific exploration was dangerous as much for the forces of nature as for the human element, an insight that we shall have ample occasion to confirm.23