Discovery of the route '' claims during the
Age of Discovery In 1521, a Spanish expedition led by
Ferdinand Magellan sailed west across the Pacific using the westward
trade winds. The expedition discovered the
Mariana Islands and the Philippines and claimed them for Spain. Although Magellan was killed by natives commanded by
Lapulapu during the
battle of Mactan in the Philippines, one of his ships, the
Victoria, made it back to Spain by continuing westward. in 1628, Mexican terminus of the Manila galleon To settle and trade with these islands from the Americas, an eastward maritime return path was necessary. The , which tried this a few years later, failed. In 1529,
Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón also tried sailing east from the Philippines, but could not find "
westerlies" across the Pacific. In 1543,
Bernardo de la Torre also failed. In 1542, however,
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo helped pave the way by sailing north from Mexico to explore the Pacific coast, reaching just north of the
38th parallel at the
Russian River. The frustration of these failures is shown in a letter sent in 1552 from
Portuguese Goa by the Spanish missionary
Francis Xavier to
Simão Rodrigues asking that no more fleets attempt the New Spain–East Asia route, lest they be lost. Despite prior failures navigator
Andrés de Urdaneta effectively persuaded Spanish officials in New Spain that a Philippines–Mexico trade route was preferable to other alternatives. He argued against direct trade between Spain and the Philippines through the
Strait of Magellan on the basis that climate would make passage through the strait possible only during summer and that therefore ships would need to stay the winter in a more northern port. His preference for Mexico rather than for the shorter overland route through
Darién is thought to have been due to his links to
Pedro de Alvarado. The Manila–Acapulco galleon trade finally began when Spanish navigators
Alonso de Arellano and Andrés de Urdaneta discovered the eastward return route in 1565. Sailing as part of the expedition commanded by
Miguel López de Legazpi to conquer the Philippines in 1564, Urdaneta was given the task of finding a return route. Reasoning that the
trade winds of the Pacific might move in a
gyre as the Atlantic winds did, they sailed north, going all the way to the
38th parallel north, off the east coast of Japan, before catching the westerlies that would take them back across the Pacific. He commanded a vessel which completed the eastward voyage in 129 days; this marked the opening of the Manila galleon trade. Reaching the west coast of North America, Urdaneta's ship, the
San Pedro, hit the coast near
Santa Catalina Island, California, then followed the shoreline south to
San Blas and later to
Acapulco, arriving on October 8, 1565. Most of his crew died on the long initial voyage, for which they had not sufficiently provisioned. Arellano, who had taken a more southerly route, had already arrived. The English privateer
Francis Drake also reached the California coast, in 1579. After capturing
a Spanish ship heading for Manila, Drake turned north, hoping to meet another Spanish treasure ship coming south on its return from Manila to Acapulco. He failed in that regard, but staked
an English claim somewhere on the northern California coast. Although the ship's log and other records were lost, the officially accepted location is now called
Drakes Bay, on
Point Reyes south of Cape Mendocino. By the 18th century, it was understood that a less northerly track was sufficient when nearing the North American coast, and galleon navigators steered well clear of the rocky and often fogbound northern and central California coast. According to historian William Lytle Schurz, "They generally made their landfall well down the coast, somewhere between
Point Conception and
Cape San Lucas ... After all, these were preeminently merchant ships, and the business of exploration lay outside their field, though chance discoveries were welcomed". The first motivation for land exploration of present-day California was to scout out possible way stations for the seaworn Manila galleons on the last leg of their journey. Early proposals came to little, but in 1769, the
Portola expedition established ports at
San Diego and
Monterey (which became the administrative center of
Alta California), providing safe harbors for returning Manila galleons.
The Manila galleon and California Monterey, California, was about two months and three weeks out from Manila in the 18th century, and the galleon tended to stop there 40 days before arriving in Acapulco. Galleons stopped in Monterey prior to California's Spanish settlement in 1769; however, visits became regular between 1777 and 1794 because the Crown ordered the galleon to stop in Monterey.
Trade in the Atlantic. (Blue represents
Portuguese routes). Trade with
Ming China via Manila served as a major source of revenue for the
Spanish Empire and as a fundamental source of income for Spanish colonists in the Philippine Islands. Galleons used for the trade between East and West were crafted by Filipino artisans. Until 1593, two or more ships would set sail annually from each port. The Manila trade became so lucrative that
Seville merchants petitioned king
Philip II of Spain to protect the monopoly of the
Casa de Contratación based in Seville. This led to the passing of a decree in 1593 that set a limit of two ships sailing each year from either port, with one kept in reserve in Acapulco and one in Manila. An "armada", or armed escort of galleons, was also approved. Due to official attempts to control the galleon trade, contraband and understating of ships' cargoes became widespread. , a merchant map showing trade routes with its epicenter from
Quanzhou to
Manila and the
Spanish Philippines, then across the
Far East The galleon trade was supplied by merchants largely from port areas of
Fujian, such as
Quanzhou, as depicted in the
Selden Map, and
Yuegang (the old port of
Haicheng in
Zhangzhou,
Fujian), who traveled to Manila to sell the Spaniards spices, porcelain, ivory,
lacquerware, processed silk cloth and other valuable commodities. Cargoes varied from one voyage to another but often included goods from all over Asia: jade, wax, gunpowder and silk from China; amber, cotton and rugs from India; spices from Indonesia and Malaysia; and a variety of goods from Japan, the Spanish part of the so-called
Nanban trade, including
Japanese fans, chests,
screens, porcelain and
lacquerware. Galleons transported goods to be sold in the Americas, namely in
New Spain and
Peru, as well as in European markets.
East Asia trading primarily functioned on a
silver standard due to Ming China's use of
silver ingots as a medium of exchange. As such, goods were mostly bought with
silver mined from New Spain and
Potosí. The trade of goods and exchanges of people were not limited to Mexico and the Philippines, since Guatemala, Panama, Ecuador, and Peru also served as supplementary streams to the main one between Mexico and Philippines. Around 80% of the goods shipped back from Acapulco to Manila were from the Americas – silver,
cochineal, seeds, sweet potato, corn, tomato, tobacco, chickpeas, chocolate and cocoa, watermelon seeds, vines, and fig trees. The remaining 20% were goods transshipped from Europe and North Africa such as wine and olive oil, and metal goods such as weapons, knobs and spurs. This Pacific route was the alternative to the trip west across the Indian Ocean, and around the
Cape of Good Hope, which was reserved to Portugal according to the
Treaty of Tordesillas. It also avoided stopping over at ports controlled by competing powers such as Portugal and the Netherlands. From the early days of exploration, the Spanish knew that the American continent was much narrower across the
Panamanian isthmus than across Mexico. They tried to establish a regular land crossing there, but the thick jungle and tropical diseases such as
yellow fever and
malaria made it impractical. It took at least four months to sail across the Pacific Ocean from Manila to Acapulco, and the galleons were the main link between the Philippines and the viceregal capital at Mexico City and thence to Spain itself. Many of the so-called "Kastilas" or Spaniards in the Philippines were actually of Mexican descent, and the Hispanic culture of the Philippines is influenced by Spanish and Mexican culture in particular. Soldiers and settlers recruited from Mexico and Peru also gathered in Acapulco before they were sent to settle at the
presidios of the Philippines. Even after the galleon era, and at the time when Mexico finally gained its independence, the two nations still continued to trade, except for a brief lull during the
Spanish–American War. In Manila, the safety of ocean crossings was commended to the virgin
Nuestra Señora de la Soledad de Porta Vaga in masses held by the Archbishop of Manila. If the expedition was successful the voyagers would go to La Ermita (the church) to pay homage and offer gold, gems or jewelry from Hispanic countries to the image of the virgin. So it came to be that the virgin was named the "Queen of the Galleons". Economic shocks due to the arrival of Spanish-American silver in China were among the factors that led to the
end of the Ming dynasty.
End of the galleons In 1740, as part of the administrative changes of the
Bourbon Reforms, the Spanish crown began allowing the use of registered ships or
navíos de registro in the Pacific. These ships traveled solo, outside the convoy system of the galleons. While these solo voyages would not immediately replace the galleon system, they were more efficient and better able to avoid being captured by the Royal Navy of Great Britain. In 1813, the
Cortes of Cádiz decreed the suppression of the route and the following year, with the end of the
Peninsular War,
Ferdinand VII of Spain ratified the dissolution. The last ship to reach Manila was the
San Fernando or
Magallanes, which arrived empty, as its cargo had been requisitioned in Mexico. The Manila–Acapulco galleon trade ended in 1815, a few years before Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821. After this, the Spanish Crown took direct control of the Philippines and governed directly from Madrid. Sea transport became easier in the mid-19th century after the invention of steam powered ships and the opening of the
Suez Canal, which reduced the travel time from Spain to the Philippines to 40 days. == Galleons ==