Cortes's original plans for discovery in the Mar del Sur, coasting north, were modified by a royal missive of June 1526: the Emperor-King was anxious to know of the success of Loaysa as soon as possible, but his recent marriage to a Princess of Portugal had made an expedition direct from Old Spain less- 92 -
Figure 12. TO AND FROM THE PHILIPPINES, 1525–65.
I, Sequeira (Portuguese), 1525–6; 2, Loaysa, 1526; 3, Saavedra, 1527; 4, Saavedra's first return, 1528; 5, Saavedra's second return, 1529; 6, Grijalva's mutineers, 1536–7; 7, Villalobos, 1542–3; 8, de la Torre, 1543; 9, de Retes, 1545; 10, Legazpi, 1564, and Urdaneta's return, 1565; 11, Arellano's return, 1564–5; 12, reasonably known coasts, c. 1550 (c. 1575 in Philippines); 13, vaguely known coasts; 14, Portuguese contacts by c. 1545.
Compiled from maps and texts in H. Friis (ed.), The Pacific Basin (New York 1967); A. Sharp, The Discovery of the Pacific Islands (Oxford 1960); G. Souter, The Last Unknown (Sydney 1963); H. Wallis, The Exploration of the South Sea, 1519 to 1644 (unpublished Oxford D.Phil. thesis 1953–4).
- 93 -than tactful. New Spain was the answer: Cortes had boasted of his ships, and details could be left to him. He therefore instructed his kinsman Alvaro de Saavedra Ceron to sail for the Moluccas, via Cebu where he was to look for any Magellanic survivors. ‘Cortes hoped to make the Moluccas an outpost of New Spain’—as the Philippines were to become—and Saavedra was told to bring back, surreptitiously, various spice plants, with directions for their cultivation.[16]
After a three weeks' shake-down cruise north from Zacatula, two caravels and a bergantin left Zihuatanejo on 31 October 1527; the total tonnage was at most 120, with 110 men, fifty of them in the flagship Florida. The pilot was a Portuguese from the Santiago, Loaysa's pinnace which had reached Tehuantepec; but he died before the Ladrones were reached. After a week the Florida was leaking badly, and his officers urged Saavedra to transfer to another ship; but he replied in the spirit of Sir Humphrey Gilbert that he would be lost or saved on his own ship: ironically, the other two ships disappeared for ever in high winds in mid-December. Around the New Year Saavedra found four small islands in the Marshalls;[17] repeating Loaysa's mistake of trying the eastern or weather coast, he failed to find an anchorage at Guam, and on 1 February 1528 reached the east coast of Mindanao. He had sailed at the right time to catch the brisas or Trade Winds—by accident, as very little was yet known about the wind systems[18]—and made fairly good time to Guam. His course (Figure 12, “TO AND FROM THE PHILIPPINES, 1525–65. ”) had several advantages: it was in the right latitudes (10 to 13°N) to pick up the Trades (if the timing was right) but avoided the dangerous concentration of atolls in the main Marshalls, so easily unseen until a ship was almost upon them; and it had a virtually assured landfall in the high island of Guam, stretching for nearly 50km athwart the track and rising to 390 metres.[19]
At the end of March 1528 they reached the Moluccas, five months out from New Spain. The Portuguese whom they met pretended that there were no Spaniards in the islands, but by mere chance Saavedra had already made contact with his countrymen on Gilolo: ‘From that time the war proceeded with much greater heat.’ Once the first almost incredulous joy was over, counsel had to be taken. The obvious course was to send the spices already collected—seventy quintals—to New Spain, and to draw new succours thence.
While Saavedra's outward course was to prove the correct one, ‘it was a route of no return. Few who ventured on it between 1527 and 1564 saw New Spain- 94 -again’.[20] Early in June the Florida left Tidore and rounded Gilolo northabout, then taking a southeasterly course which brought her to Manus north of New Guinea (the first European visit to the Admiralty Islands) and thence into the Carolines; adverse winds compelled a return through the Ladrones, reaching Tidore late in the year. Hernando de la Torre, in command since Carquisano's death, suggested going to Spain by the Cape of Good Hope: at least del Cano had succeeded. But Saavedra insisted on trying again his earlier route; he sailed on 3 May 1529, was becalmed round the Admiralties, and then made his way northeast through the Carolines and skirting west of the Marshalls, probably discovering Ponape, Ujelang, and Eniwetok. Whatever the exact course, the Florida reached 31°N before being again forced back; Saavedra died before the turn was made. Twenty-two men reached Zamafu on 8 December 1529—to find that the gallant game was over.
Portuguese pressure had increased, especially in October 1529 when de la Torre injudiciously committed about half his scanty force to eastern Gilolo. It was now the Spaniards’ turn to suffer dissension: there seemed little chance of a new fleet arriving, and it was apparent that the enemy could draw on Malacca. Perhaps more decisive was the discovery that both rivals had outstayed their welcome, and that there was a serious risk of a general rising against both sets of intruders; a rapprochement was clearly indicated. The little fort on Tidore capitulated five weeks before the Florida’s return; the Spanish had still considerable strength in the Gilolo alliance, and a truce was patched up. The Spaniards raised provisions from Gilolo for the Portuguese, now besieged by a revolt on Ternate, and Urdaneta claims that they mediated peace on that island. But once the Portuguese were again secure on Ternate, they pressed on for Gilolo, the Spanish maintaining a dangerous neutrality, despite pleas from the allies who had served them so well. It is hard to blame them: when Gilolo fell, there were only seventeen Spaniards surviving.
After the truce, an embassy to Goa confirmed that the Moluccan question had been settled not by force of arms in the Indies but by a cash transaction in Spain. There was now no point in staying, and in February 1534 the little remnant took Portuguese shipping for India. Urdaneta and another stayed on as factors for cloves already under contract; the Portuguese naturally soon put a stop to this. A tiny handful of survivors reached Lisbon in mid-1536; they included Urdaneta and Vicente de Napoles, who petitioned ‘for help in his work, and they ordered him to receive 14 ducats. These were the mercies of the Council’.[21]