The voyage started in
Macau on July 12, 1587 and reached the
Californian shore on October 18, at 35.5 degrees North latitude, where they went on shore in a bay with sandy beaches (potentially
Monterey Bay or
Morro Bay) and made contact with some
indigenous Californians. They then sailed progressively southwards along the Western American coast to
Acapulco, reaching the area on November 22 of same year. The main goals of the journey were to find the purported islands of
Rica de Oro, Rica de Plata and Armenio (which Unamuno concluded did not exist), and also the profitable transport of Chinese goods to New Spain (which was a violation, like Gali's voyage three years earlier, of the
monopoly accorded by the
Spanish Crown to the
Manila galleons). The official trade galleon of 1587 from Manila, the
Santa Ana, reached the Californian coast one month later than the
Esperanza but was then
captured along with her cargo by two English
privateer ships commanded by
Sir Thomas Cavendish. Unamuno had Alonso Gómez as pilot, a crew of Spaniards and
Philippine Indios, and three
Franciscan friars as passengers, namely
Martín Ignacio de Loyola, Francisco de Nogueira, and a third one whose name is unknown. De Loyola brought along with him a young Japanese converted to
Catholicism. This last sentence needs definitive source that the Japanese boy had boarded the frigate, Nuestra Senora de Buena Esperanza, because page 144 of the Henry R. Wagner account, ,"The Voyage of Pedro de Unamuno to California in 1587" in The California Historical Society Quarterly. Jul. 1923, says "Fr. Martin, nephew of the great Fr. Ignacio (De) Loyola, brought along with him a young Japanese boy whom he was taking to present to the King, “as he had a story to tell;“ but he had only 60 pesos expenses to buy European clothes.” ==See also==