The lead pilot aboard the flagship, Esteban Rodríguez, took the time to sketch the first island that the fleet encountered on its way to the Philippines—possibly Mejit—on Tuesday, January 9, 1565. “The Indians here have beards,” the pilot added in his logbook, “and for this reason our general gave it the name of the Island of the Bearded Ones.”
The larger two vessels, the San Pedro and the San Pablo, could never find a suitable anchorage in spite of their persistent searching. It was as if this elongated island emerged straight up from the depths of the ocean. The two unmoored vessels had to keep sailing close by at great peril of running aground while some of the men got into rowboats to reach the island and join those who had already gone ashore from the anchored San Juan. Commander Legazpi’s grandson Felipe de Salcedo and the friar-mariner Urdaneta were among the members of the landing party. They were to take possession of the island and seek contact with the locals. On seeing the large vessels lurking in front of their village, however, the Micronesians had prudently sought refuge in the interior. The only ones left at the village consisted of a very old couple and a young woman with a baby. Father Urdaneta tried to communicate, using the Malay that he had learned in his youth when living in Southeast Asia for eight years, but neither the friar nor the other translators were able to understand the islanders’ tongue. Still, the old man “appeared well disposed and the women’s gestures were welcoming.” The Europeans gave beads and other trade goods to them and communicated well enough through signs and by pointing at things. The old man returned the favor by giving them a tour of the village, “showing them their houses and the fruits that they had to eat, and giving them some to taste, and pointing to the fish that they had in great quantity both in piles and already cooked.” It was a pleasant first encounter. The elderly couple and the younger woman probably did not understand that their island had become a part of the far-flung Spanish Empire. But the Spaniards would not be back for decades.3
Pilot Rodríguez sketched an atoll that came into view on January 10, 1565, possibly Ailuk Atoll. The dots represent coral, fringing a shallow lagoon in the middle.
That strip of land was only the first of what Legazpi’s company would soon discover to be a forest of low-lying islands. The next morning, the fleet ran into a very characteristic atoll with a lagoon in the middle, quite likely Ailuk. “The island is all broken up and low,” wrote pilot Esteban Rodríguez, “and even though we could not find a bottom around it, the shallow water between one part of the island and another reaches only up to the knee.” The fleet commander likened such lagoons to mid-ocean “corrals,” undoubtedly drawing on his pastoral Iberian background. By sunset, the expeditionaries had found yet more islands but could not stop at any because the anchors did not hold.4
* * *
Sailing many miles ahead of Legazpi’s squadron and slightly to the south, the San Lucas also had to negotiate the jungle of basaltic columns in the middle of the ocean. The first encounter proved nearly fatal. A strong breeze was pushing the San Lucas around midnight on January 5, 1565, four days ahead of Legazpi’s arrival at the atolls, when some of the men on the deck suddenly heard the sound of crashing waves. A calm evening turned to pandemonium in an instant. As the small ship continued its rapid forward momentum, streaks of foam and rock glistened straight ahead. They were about to crash into an incongruously shallow spot in the middle of the largest ocean in the world—possibly Likiep Atoll. Over the roar of the surf and shouts of alarm, the pilot Lope Martín barked orders to lower the sails “just as the helmsman made a sharp turn to port [left], prompted by Our Lady of Guadalupe, and this was our salvation because the breeze was strong. Had he turned the other way, we would have been lost,” reported the nobleman captain Don Alonso de Arellano. The men of the San Lucas had narrowly avoided a direct collision, but the danger was hardly over. They scraped against rock and coral and then entered a shallow area. In the pitch darkness of the ocean, it was nearly impossible to see how to get back out into deeper water. The pilot ran to the front of the deck to scout the way forward, “but at that instant the sea pushed him out of the vessel, and he was saved only because he held onto a loose rope with one hand, and he was swimming so close to the rocks that he thought that the ship was already stuck.” Mercifully, that night ended only in a scare. The San Lucas remained in the vicinity of the breaking waves and the next morning attempted to make landfall. “But the island was entirely surrounded by reefs,” Don Alonso noted, “and we could not find a place to stop even though we came so close that a man could practically jump onto the reef.” After that first harrowing encounter, the crew worried constantly about hitting land lying “so low that one could barely see it even when passing right next to it.” Over the next few days, they journeyed through many islets and atolls.5
On January 7, the voyagers of the San Lucas saw in the distance a small canoe with a triangular sail, crossing from one island to another. They decided to follow it. Two men and a boy were aboard, sailing fast. By the time the San Lucas pulled near enough, the canoe had entered a shallow area where the deeper-keeled Spaniards could not follow. The voyagers signaled to the canoers to come to the ship. “And so they turned around, grabbed a line that we threw them, and climbed aboard,” Don Alonso remembered, “and we gave them beads and a knife and offered a shirt to the boy, and they gave us coconuts and fish and all the water they were carrying.” After this exchange, the canoers agreed through signs to lead a party of Spaniards to their houses in another part of the island (perhaps Kwajalein Atoll). Don Alonso, Lope Martín, and eight sailors got into their rowboat and tried to keep up with the fast-moving canoe as it glided over reefs and coral banks until arriving at a stretch of shore where the two men had built their homes. Two women and a child were there. The two men explained “that they were fishermen who had come from larger islands farther west and had set up camp there only for some time.” Lope Martín remarked that no armada had ever visited that island, so he gave it the name of “the Island of the Two Neighbors” because only two families lived there.6
Sixteenth-century documents make clear that Spanish expeditionaries were impressed both by the paraos, the boats used by Pacific Islanders, and by the skill of their operators. This is a nineteenth-century drawing made by a French admiral while visiting the Caroline Islands.
These islanders were the ultimate ocean dwellers, never straying more than a few feet away from the water and sustaining themselves through the bounty of the sea. “They live a thousand leagues away from the mainland, and their small islands are occupied by coconuts,” marveled Don Alonso. “Anyone seeing these lands would think that they are like floating carpets, they are so small and so low that they would sink under the water in a storm.” He was entirely correct. Typhoons do occur in this region and indeed swamp the low-lying islands. In the worst of such instances, Pacific Islanders had no other recourse but to fill the hulls of their canoes with fresh water, venture into the open ocean, secure the rigging, and wait out the storm, displaying extraordinary aplomb and seamanship. Less apparent to the Europeans was the extent to which these sea people, over the course of two or three thousand years of occupation, had thoroughly transformed the tiny coral islands. Originally no coconut palms had existed there. Early settlers had propagated them purposely to build their houses, clothe their families, weave rugs, and obtain practically every item required for their vessels, from the hulls, sails, and rigging to the food and water conveniently packaged in natural round containers. By cutting open the coconuts, they could also fashion cups and use them to drink the fermented sap and juice of the plant itself. “It is astounding that out of a single tree,” remarked a later Spanish visitor, “these natives can make so many different things and fill all of their needs.” The first inhabitants of the Marshalls may have “seeded” the islands in advance, leaving coconut plants in their seasonal visits before settling down permanently. They also introduced chickens (domesticated originally in South Asia) as well as breadfruit and taro (from Sou
theast Asia) and thus transformed what had once been a very challenging island world into an eminently livable corner of our planet.7
Although biased and uninformed, the voyagers’ observations constitute our earliest sources on the original inhabitants of what are now the Marshall Islands. The visitors immediately noted the long beards of the males, reaching to the chest and sometimes all the way to the waist. Commander Legazpi called the first island that they saw “la Isla de los Barbudos,” or “the Island of the Bearded Ones.” In addition to their beards, Marshallese men let their hair grow “like women,” according to Don Alonso, “but they comb it and tie it in a knot at the top of the head.” Man buns were apparently in fashion in the sixteenth century. Predictably, Europeans dwelled on the nakedness of both men and women, although the women covered their private parts with garments made of palm tree fiber “that are very thin and beautiful.” The expeditionaries found the islanders “attractive and tall,” especially the women, although their opinions of their character were far less flattering. Don Alonso judged them to be “covetous,” “great traitors,” and, in short, “a people of the devil.” Excursions into the villages afforded Europeans glimpses of their simple and effective material world, which included fishhooks made of bone, fishing nets, and “very well-made canoes.” The voyagers were especially curious about their hosts’ military capabilities, and some Spaniards remarked that they could not find “any defensive or offensive weapons,” while others identified clubs, sticks with sharp points of bone, and slings.8
The expeditionaries of the San Lucas sighted many more islands on their way to the Philippines. On January 8 the ship arrived at an island that was small but densely populated. The men pulled their vessel as close as possible, threw a line, and signaled to the islanders watching from the shore to grab it. Instantly, several of them jumped into the water and took the rope. They were expert swimmers, infinitely better than the Spanish seamen, many of whom did not know how to swim at all. “And they began pulling us toward the land,” the San Lucas captain recounted, “but some of the Indians did not think that allowing us ashore was such a good idea, so they pulled sometimes and let go of the rope at other times, and they kept us like this.” As this discussion unfolded among the people holding the rope, other islanders jumped into the water or boarded their canoes and reached the European vessel to offer coconuts and other goods. They were so many that they threatened to overwhelm the San Lucas. After what seemed like an eternity of uncertainty and confusion, the Europeans finally cut the rope and began sailing away, “but the Indians were so covetous for what we carried in our ship, that we could not kick them out even when we were one league [more than three miles] away from their island.” Don Alonso called it “la Isla de los Nadadores,” or “the Island of the Swimmers,” as a testament to their prowess in the water.9
Amidst the many atolls and low-lying islands that make up eastern Micronesia, there was little hope that the San Lucas would ever become reunited with the other vessels. Before the separation, the plan had been to head to nine degrees of northern latitude to visit the “Islands of the Kings” and the “Islands of the Corals,” then steer to ten degrees, toward the “Island of Reefs” and “Matalotes,” and finally on to the Philippines. Anticipating the possibility that one of the vessels could become accidentally separated, the expeditionaries had agreed on a contingency plan. The stray vessel would proceed immediately toward the next stopover island and wait for eight or ten days for the rest of the fleet to catch up. “And if the vessel could not make landfall or, having waited for ten days, had not reunited with the others,” the written instructions read, “it would continue but not before its crew had marked a tree with a cross and buried below it a bottle with a letter describing everything that had happened and the route that it would follow.” The theory was clear but the practice less so. Legazpi’s squadron accidentally drifted from nine to ten degrees, while the San Lucas navigated between nine and eight degrees. This seemingly small difference of one or two degrees was more than enough to preclude a rendezvous. More fundamentally, none of the ships could stop in the coral-ringed islands of Micronesia. “In spite of our instructions to wait for the others, we could not do so because there was nowhere to stop,” Don Alonso remarked later, “and we were barely twenty people strong between men and boys, some of whom were ill already, and we lacked weapons, all of which had been kept in the other vessels.”10
Commander Legazpi nevertheless came to believe that the San Lucas had abandoned the rest of the fleet deliberately. He surmised that the pilot Martín, possibly in collusion with the nobleman captain Don Alonso, was a traitor to the Spanish crown, perhaps pursuing an independent plan of enrichment. As we shall see, such an accusation is at least excessive and quite likely unfounded, especially considering the trajectory of the San Lucas parallel to that of the other vessels and the geology of the Micronesian islands. The San Lucas remained within one degree of the agreed plan and could not stop for the same reason that Legazpi’s fleet could not make landfall. Indeed, the separation became permanent not because of the San Lucas’s trajectory but because of Commander Legazpi’s sudden decision to change course on Wednesday, January 17, 1565. On that day, Legazpi convened a mid-ocean gathering with his remaining pilots and captains. They had been sailing for nearly two months, and the pilots were convinced (mistakenly) that they were nearing the Philippines. Striking the archipelago at ten degrees of latitude or less—corresponding to the southernmost Philippine island of Mindanao—entailed a very real risk. Twenty years earlier, the southerly winds and currents prevalent in that part of the Philippine archipelago had made it impossible for the Villalobos expedition to “turn the corner of that island [Mindanao] and head north from there.” Urdaneta himself had experienced the same contrary elements in the southern Philippines nearly forty years earlier. To avoid a repeat of such a scenario, Legazpi’s navigators and captains agreed to “go up to thirteen degrees and then continue due west.” After that unplanned turn to the north, it was certain that the San Lucas would never be able to rejoin the others.11
In this drawing by one of Legazpi’s pilots, we can see on the left the contours of Guam. The Spanish gloss “surgidero y agua,” or “landfall site and water,” at the lower left identifies the exact bay where the fleet landed in January of 1565. At the top one can read “Esto no se descubrió,” or “This part was not discovered.” On the right, the Spanish pilot sketched a parao, showing its sails made of palm leaves—“velas de palma”—and an outrigger or secondary hull to stabilize it.
This full-length portrait of Philip II by the Flemish painter Antonis Mor (or in Spanish, Antonio Moro) was originally done in 1557, the very year when the young monarch ordered his viceroy in Mexico to conquer his namesake Philippine islands. Philip is dressed in armor for the Battle of Saint-Quentin against France on August 10, 1557.
Patrimonio Nacional, 10014146.
Viceroy of Mexico Don Luis de Velasco in 1549, one year before his arrival in Mexico.
Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropolog a e Historia.
No contemporary painting of Andrés de Urdaneta has survived, so this is an idealized rendition by Víctor Villán de Aza from 1895. Urdaneta appears in the habit of the Augustinian order surrounded by geographic and nautical equipment.
Alamy Stock Photo. Used by permission of Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo de El Escorial.
No image of Lope Martín survives, but this sixteenth-century drawing of two slaves filling up water barrels provides an idea of the milieu from which he came.
Illustration by Christoph Weiditz, c. 1530. Courtesy of Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Digitale Bibliothek. Image 189.
Several pataches, or dispatch boats, not very different from the San Lucas, are visible in this painting of the naval battle of Ponta Delgada in 1582. Dispatch boats had two masts for sails, but they were small enough that rowing was also possible.
Patrimonio Nacional, 10014921.
One of four
wind heads blowing from the corners of Lopo Homem’s 1519 mappa mundi. Sixteenth-century navigators understood that there was a stable pattern of winds in the world, represented by these four fascinating heads blowing from different directions. The mapmaker added the inscription: “This is the map of the entire globe now known that I, cosmographer Lopo Homem, drew with great effort, having compared many other maps both ancient and modern, in the illustrious City of Lisbon in the year of Our Lord 1519 by order of Manuel, eminent King of Portugal.”
Bibliothéque nationale de France.
Notice the elaborate attire, jewelry, and dagger of this royal couple from the Philippines, circa 1590. The color red denotes their exalted position. As the drawing was done in ink on Chinese paper, it is likely that the artist may have been Chinese, under commission by the Spanish governor of the Philippines Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas.
Courtesy Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
Conquering the Pacific Page 11