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8. On the naming of “the Island of the Bearded Ones,” see the entry for January 9, 1565, in Legazpi, “Relación circunstanciada”; entry for January 9, 1565, in Rodríguez, “Derroteros y relaciones de los pilotos del viaje a Filipinas”; and entry for January 9, 1565, in Pierres Plín, “Derroteros y relaciones de los pilotos del viaje a Filipinas,” AGI, Patronato, 23, R. 16. On beard and hairstyles and the character of the islanders, see entry for January 8, 1565, in Arellano, “Relación mui circunstanciada.” For women’s clothes and objects at the village, see the entry for January 9, 1565, in Legazpi, “Relación circunstanciada”; and entry for January 8, 1565, in Arellano, “Relación mui circunstanciada.”
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9. Entry for January 8, 1565, in Arellano, “Relación mui circunstanciada.” One possibility is that this island may have been Lib. See the discussion in Landín Carrasco and Sánchez Masiá, “El viaje redondo de Alonso de Arellano,” 478. Given the previous trajectory of the San Lucas, however, it seems too far south to me.
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10. The quote about the contingency plan is from the orders issued by Commander Miguel López de Legazpi, Pacific Ocean, November 25, 1564, AGI, Patronato, 23, R. 16. The last quote is from Arellano, “Relación mui circunstanciada.”
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11. The quotes are all from Legazpi, “Relación circunstanciada.” On the inability of the Villalobos expedition to turn north from Mindanao, see the letter from Friar Gerónimo de Santisteban to Viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza, Cochin, India, January 22, 1547, in Varela, El viaje de don Ruy López de Villalobos, 25. On Urdaneta’s earlier experience with the same contrary winds in Mindanao, see Rodríguez, “Andrés de Urdaneta, agustino, 500 años del descubridor del tornaviaje,” 180.
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7. “The Island of the Thieves”
1. The quotes about bananas and thieves are from Pigafetta, Magellan’s Voyage Around the World, 1:95. Nonetheless, bananas were known in Iberia at least since the thirteenth century, but they may have been somewhat exotic. For additional context on the Chamorros’ trading practices and their first encounters with Europeans, see Frank Quimby, “The Hierro Commerce: Culture Contact, Appropriation and Colonial Entanglement in the Marianas, 1521–1668,” Journal of Pacific History 46, no. 1 (June 2011): 1–26. Strictly speaking, the Mariana Islands arose out of the plunging of the Pacific Plate underneath the Mariana Plate, which is itself a “micro tectonic plate,” in other words, possibly a piece of the Philippine Sea Plate. Sometimes the term Micronesia is restricted to mean the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), but here I use the term in its broader historical sense to encompass Palau, the Marianas, the Marshalls, Kiribati, and Nauru, as well as the FSM.
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2. On Legazpi’s arrival at Guam, see entry for January 22, 1565, in Legazpi, “Relación circunstanciada.”
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3. The quote is from Pierres Plín’s logbook, Navidad, entry for November 20, “Derrotero de Pierres Plín,” in “Derroteros y relaciones de los pilotos del viaje a Filipinas,” AGI, Patronato, 23, R. 16. For the east-west distance between Hierro and Navidad, see Landín Carrasco and Sánchez Masiá, “El viaje de Legazpi a Filipinas,” 447. The quote about Rada is from Friar Andrés de Urdaneta in his “Parecer sobre si el Maluco y las Filipinas pertenecen al rey de Castilla y si las Filipinas caen dentro del empeño,” Madrid, October 8, 1566, AGI, Patronato, 49, R. 12. See also Uncilla, Urdaneta y la conquista de Filipinas, 264.
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4. Logbook entries are from the “Derroteros y relaciones de los pilotos del viaje a Filipinas,” AGI, Patronato, 23, R.16. Legazpi’s quote is from the entry for December 18, 1564, in Legazpi, “Relación circunstanciada.”
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5. Rui Faleiro’s story is well known. For specific citations about him and the text that he submitted to the Spanish crown, see chapter 1. On his mental problems, see Gil, El exilio portugués en Sevilla, 350–54. On Francisco Faleiro, see Collins, “Francisco Faleiro and Scientific Methodology at the Casa de la Contratación in the Sixteenth Century”; and Teixeira da Mota, “A contribuição dos irmãos Rui e Francisco Faleiro no campo da náutica em Espanha.” The “Tratado da Agulha de Marear” of João de Lisboa (1515) is the first known source to propose a linear relation between longitude and magnetic declination. Francisco Faleiro wrote down much of what he knew about navigation in his 1535 Treatise on the Sphere and the Art of Navigating and broke new ground in chapter 8 by offering the first published treatment of magnetic variation or declination as it is now called. See Faleiro, Tratado del esphera y del arte del marear, passim. For appraisals of Faleiro’s work and his instrument, see Pereira da Silva, “A arte de navegar dos portugueses desde o Infante a D. João de Castro,” 2:361–63; A. Fontoura da Costa, A marinharia dos descobrimentos (Lisbon: Imprensa da Armada, 1939), 171–72 and 188–89; and Luís de Albuquerque, “Contribuição das navegações do século XVI para o conhecimento do magnetismo terrestre,” Revista da Universidade de Coimbra 24 (1921): 14–19. We have news of an even earlier instrument constructed by an apothecary from Seville named Felipe Guillén, who, according to the Portuguese cosmographer Alonso de Santa Cruz, presented his invention to the king of Portugal in 1525. It likely that Guillén and Faleiro knew each other, as they lived in the same town. For what little we know about Guillén and several other early magnetic observations, see G. Hellmann, “The Beginnings of Magnetic Observations,” Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity 4, no. 2 (June 1899): 2–86. Alonso de Santa Cruz was also involved in this effort. See Mariano Cuesta Domingo, “Alonso de Santa Cruz, cartógrafo y fabricante de instrumentos náuticos de la Casa de Contratación,” Revista Complutense de Historia de América 30 (2004): 7–40. Martín Cortés also contributed to the magnetic variation discussion some years later by correctly advancing the idea that it was caused by what he called a “punto atractivo” or “attractive point” on Earth, that is, a magnetic pole as we now call it. See Martín Cortés, Breve compendio de la sphera (Seville, 1545), passim; Francisco José González González, Astronomía y navegación en España: Siglos XVI–XVIII (Madrid: Editorial Mapfre, 1992), 76; and López Piñero, El arte de navegar en la España del Renacimiento, chap. 5. The first report of a voyage making systematic observations of magnetic declination is D. João de Castro’s “Roteiro de Lisboa a Goa” (1538). Joaquim Alves Gaspar discusses this roteiro and compares it to estimations of magnetic declination in “From the Portolan Chart of the Mediterranean to the Latitude Chart of the Atlantic,” chap. 2. I thank Joaquim Alves Gaspar for going over some of this material. Needless to say, I am responsible for any lingering mistakes or inaccuracies.
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6. The logbook entries are all from Jaymes Martínez Fortún and Diego Martín, pilots of the San Pablo, “Derrotero del viaje a las islas del poniente,” Philippines, April 9, 1565, AGI, MP-Filipinas, 2. All of my sixteenth-century estimations of magnetic declination in the text and the maps were done with the National Centers for Environmental Information calculator based on the International Geomagnetic Reference Field using the date of January 1, 1590. See https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/calculators/magcalc.shtml. Although twenty-five years may seem like a long time, the difference in magnetic variation is not that significant. The estimation of the line of zero magnetic declination 1,500 miles west of Navidad assumes a latitude of nine degrees.
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7. In the absence of a better method, pilots continued to use magnetic declination as a proxy for longitude for many years. In 1585, two decades after Legazpi’s expedition, a Portuguese cosmographer elaborated a map of the western Pacific with isogonic lines, the first isogonic chart that we know of in the history of humankind; and more than a century later, in 1702, English astronomer Edmond Halley published an isogonic chart of the Atlantic as an aid to navigation. See Alves Gaspar and Leitão, “Luís Teixeira, c. 1585.”
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8. All quotes are from Legazpi, “Relación circunst
anciada.” See also Quimby, “The Hierro Commerce,” 6–8.
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9. See W. H. Easton and T. L. Ku, “Recent Reefs and Shore Lines of Guam,” Micronesica 14, no. 1 (June 1979): 1–11. The shore bench is widest by Cocos Lagoon and Achang Reef, reaching 850 meters. On the Battle of Guam, see Gordon L. Rottman, Guam 1941 & 1944: Loss and Reconquest (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2004), 43.
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10. Magellan’s landfall in Guam probably occurred somewhere along the northwest coast, even though today a marker commemorating Magellan’s landing site exists at Umatac Bay on the southwest coast. See Robert F. Rogers and Dirk Anthony Ballendorf, “Magellan’s Landfall in the Mariana Islands,” Journal of Pacific History 24 (1989): 193–99. I thank Omaira Brunal-Perry for bringing this article to my attention. On Loaísa’s brief stay in Guam, see Fernando Guillén Salvetti and Carlos Vila Miranda, “La desdichada expedición de García Jofre de Loaísa,” in Landín Carrasco, Descubrimientos españoles en el Mar del Sur, 207–8. It is possible that Saavedra too may have seen Guam on December 29, 1527, but could not make landfall in any case. See the discussion in Génova Sotil and Guillén Salvetti, “Viaje de Saavedra desde Nueva España,” 241–44.
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11. The quote is from George Bryan Souza and Jeffrey S. Turley, eds., The Boxer Codex: Transcription and Translation of an Illustrated Late Sixteenth-Century Spanish Manuscript Concerning the Geography, Ethnography and History of the Pacific, South-East Asia and East Asia (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 40. Quimby, “The Hierro Commerce,” 3–4.
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12. All the quotes are from Legazpi, “Relación circunstanciada.” Population estimates for Guam prior to the 1660s are highly speculative, and the figure of thirty thousand is little more than a rough guess. See the discussion in Jane H. Underwood, “Population History of Guam: Context of Microevolution,” Micronesica 9, no. 1 (July 1973): 11–44. The full name of the Magellan castaway is Gonzalo de Vigo. As his name indicates, he hailed from Vigo in northwestern Spain and had joined Magellan’s expedition as a cabin boy aboard the Concepción. He had then deserted along with two Portuguese men and survived in the Marianas for five years until the Loaísa expedition found him. Father Urdaneta would have remembered him very well.
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13. Legazpi, “Relación circunstanciada.” The bundles of rice brought by the Chamorro merchants were reportedly “three or four almudes.” An almud is an old Spanish measurement of volume rather than weight equivalent to 4.635 liters. My conversion assumes that a liter of rice weighs 782 grams. The actual results would be 23.9 for three almudes and 31.9 for four almudes, which I took the liberty of rounding off in the text, given that the original source offered merely an approximation.
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14. All the quotes are from Legazpi, “Relación circunstanciada.”
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15. See ceremony of possession of Guam, Umatac Bay, January 26, 1565, AGI, transcribed for the Micronesian Area Research Center, University of Guam; and Legazpi, “Relación circunstanciada.”
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16. Legazpi, “Relación circunstanciada.” Even so, Legazpi recognized the strategic value of Guam. For the identity of the unfortunate youngster, see García-Abásolo, “Compañeros y continuadores de Urdaneta,” 451–52. In 1569 the Spanish commander petitioned and obtained from the Spanish king the right to “discover and people the said Islands of the Thieves.” For Legazpi’s later designs on Guam, see Legazpi’s title of governor of the Islands of the Thieves, Madrid, August 14, 1569, AGI; and instructions given to Legazpi about what to do in the Islands of the Thieves, Madrid, August 28, 1569, AGI, both documents transcribed for the Micronesian Area Research Center, University of Guam. It took time for Spaniards to colonize Guam. They did not build the San Dionisio church at the bottom of the bay until 1681, as well as a two-story governor’s palace also dating to the 1680s. The impact of the Spanish language on the Indigenous Chamorro is difficult to exaggerate. See Donal M. Topping, Pedro M. Ogo, and Bernadita C. Dungca, Chamorro-English Dictionary (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1975), passim.
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8. The Far Side of the World
1. Arellano, “Relación mui circunstanciada.” See also Landín Carrasco and Sánchez Masiá, “El viaje redondo de Alonso de Arellano,” 483–84.
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2. Arellano, “Relación mui circunstanciada.” Don Alonso de Arellano writes that the San Lucas reached Mindanao at a latitude of nine degrees, which seems unlikely; it may have been seven degrees or even six. From that point, the vessel followed the coast toward the south until reaching what Don Alonso described as “el remate de la tierra donde fenece la costa norte-sur,” or “the very end of the north-south coast,” a description that fits perfectly with Cape San Agustin. After that, the San Lucas entered the Davao Gulf and found shelter in one of the coves. In all of this, I am in perfect agreement with the discussion in Landín Carrasco and Sánchez Masiá, “El viaje redondo de Alonso de Arellano,” 483. For an excellent geographic introduction to the Philippines, see Frederick L. Wernsted and J. E. Spencer, The Philippine Island World: A Physical, Cultural, and Regional Geography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), passim. The conversion of some communities in Mindanao to Islam set the stage for a multi-secular religious, ethnic, and racial showdown with the Spanish that continued after the US takeover in 1898. On Mindanao and its history, see F. Delor Angeles, Mindanao: The Story of an Island (Davao City: San Pedro Press, 1964); and above all William Henry Scott, Barangay: Sixteenth-Century Philippine Culture and Society (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1994), passim.
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3. The quotes are from Arellano, “Relación mui circunstanciada.” See also Landín Carrasco and Sánchez Masiá, “El viaje redondo de Alonso de Arellano,” 483–84.
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4. The quote is from Arellano, “Relación mui circunstanciada.” The Cortés-Moctezuma encounter shows different cultural practices with respect to hugging. When Hernán Cortés approached the Aztec leader with the intention of wrapping his arms around Moctezuma, two attendant lords restrained the Spanish conquistador and admonished him that their tlatoani could not be touched. This is well known and narrated by Cortés himself in his second letter to Emperor Charles V, October 30, 1520. The dagger may have been a barong knife or a kris. Among prior commanders who had gone through the bloodletting ritual was Álvaro de Saavedra. See Vicencia de Nápoles, “Relación de la navegación de Álvaro de Saavedra desde la Nueva España en descubrimiento de los malucos . . . ,” n.p., n.d., AGN, Instituciones Coloniales, Hospital de Jesus 53, vol. 438, expediente 1. The rest of Legazpi’s fleet also performed the same blood ritual on the island of Leyte around February 20, 1565. On the Spanish side, Andrés de Ibarra cut himself.
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5. Arellano, “Relación mui circunstanciada.”
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6. All the quotes are from Arellano, “Relación mui circunstanciada.” This is the only source describing these events that we know of.
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7. Arellano, “Relación mui circunstanciada.”
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8. On the division of labor on a sixteenth-century vessel, see Contente Domingues and Guerreiro, A vida a bordo na carreira da Índia, 198–99.
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9. Arellano, “Relación mui circunstanciada.”
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10. The quotes are from Arellano, “Relación mui circunstanciada.”
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11. Arellano, “Relación mui circunstanciada.”
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12. The quotes are from Arellano, “Relación mui circunstanciada.” The list of products is derived from the “Copia de una carta venida de Sevilla a Miguel Salvador de Valencia, la cual narra el venturoso descubrimiento . . .,” Barcelona, 1566, facsimile version in Viaje y tornaviaje a Filipinas, 1564, ed. Andrés Henestrosa (Mexico City: Fondo Pagliai, 1975), 5.
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13. San Agus
tín, Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas, 1565–1615, 236–37. Amancio Landín Carrasco and Luis Sánchez Masiá speculate that a Greek crew member of the San Lucas named Nicolao may have been Friar Gaspar’s additional source, as he subsequently joined the Augustinian order. Landín Carrasco and Sánchez Masiá, “El viaje redondo de Alonso de Arellano,” 485–86.
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14. The quote is from the entry beginning on March 19, 1565, in Legazpi, “Relación circunstanciada.” There may have been a second source of local knowledge: a survivor of the Villalobos expedition held captive for more than twenty years in the Philippines. This Spaniard (whose name has also disappeared in the mists of time) had gone completely native: “married and with children, and his body was tattooed in the fashion of these Indians.” The people of Samar had been careful not to bring this man near the visiting Spaniards. Yet the captive was resourceful and made his presence known by writing a message with charcoal on a piece of wood “to please ransom him, for the love of God.” Commander Legazpi reportedly demanded the captive’s release and offered some trade goods for him. The castaway promised to lead the expeditionaries “to where they had killed Ferdinand Magellan, because in that island there was only one main port that had a great population and wooden houses with thatched roofs, and soldiers who slept at the top of these houses.” Juan de Borja, Spanish ambassador in Portugal, n.p., 1565, “Cartas de Juan de Borja,” AGI, Patronato, 46, R. 8. Borja’s letters provide information conveyed through Portuguese channels, often adding unique details. The information is usually in agreement with other accounts, but in this case, the existence of this Spanish survivor in Samar cannot be corroborated through other sources. See also Scott, Barangay, 74–75. The junk was carrying merchandise from the sultan of Brunei, but the vessel reportedly belonged to a Portuguese resident of Borneo named Antón Maletis.
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