Urdaneta's Tornaviaje (1565): The Return Route across the Pacific

The tornaviaje (“return voyage”) of 1565 was the first documented eastward crossing of the Pacific Ocean along a route that ships could reliably repeat. Guided by the Basque navigator and Augustinian friar Andrés de Urdaneta, the galleon San Pedro sailed from Cebu in the Philippines to Acapulco in Mexico between June and October 1565. The route made permanent Spanish settlement in the Philippines possible and opened the way for the Manila galleon trade linking Asia, the Americas and Europe.

The problem of the return

After the Magellan–Elcano circumnavigation of 1519–1522, Spain knew it could reach Asia by sailing west across the Pacific. Getting back was another matter. In the tropics the trade winds blow steadily from east to west, so ships that crossed easily from Mexico to Asia found themselves unable to return the same way.

Every attempt failed. In 1522 the Trinidad, one of Magellan’s ships, tried to sail from the Moluccas to Panama and was forced back. Álvaro de Saavedra tried twice in 1528 and 1529, and Bernardo de la Torre of the Villalobos expedition failed in 1543. Many sailors died of hunger and scurvy in these attempts.

Meanwhile, the Treaty of Zaragoza of 1529 had placed the Moluccas in the Portuguese sphere. Without a return route, any Spanish base in Asia would be cut off from Mexico.

Andrés de Urdaneta

Urdaneta was born around 1508 in Ordizia (then Villafranca de Oria), in the Basque province of Gipuzkoa. As a young man he sailed with the expedition of García Jofre de Loaísa, which left Spain in 1525, and spent about a decade in the Moluccas fighting the Portuguese and learning local languages and the sea. He returned to Europe in 1536 and later settled in New Spain.

In Mexico he served the colonial government and in 1553 professed as a friar in the Order of Saint Augustine. By then he was considered the most knowledgeable Pacific navigator in the Spanish world.

In 1559 King Philip II ordered the viceroy of New Spain, Luis de Velasco, to send an expedition to the “Western Islands” and asked that Urdaneta go with it. Urdaneta agreed to go as a friar and adviser rather than as commander. The leadership went to Miguel López de Legazpi, a Basque official in Mexico City.

The Legazpi expedition

The fleet sailed from Barra de Navidad on the Pacific coast of New Spain on 21 November 1564. It consisted of the flagship San Pedro, the San Pablo and two smaller vessels, the San Juan and the San Lucas, carrying around 350 to 380 men, including soldiers, sailors and several Augustinian friars.

Urdaneta had argued that the Philippines lay in the Portuguese zone and had suggested New Guinea as a destination. But sealed instructions opened at sea directed the fleet to the Philippines, a choice that reflected royal priorities over the friar’s legal concerns.

The fleet reached Guam in January 1565 and the Philippines in February. Legazpi made alliances with local rulers, including a blood compact with Sikatuna of Bohol in March, and on 27 April 1565 occupied Cebu, where he founded the first Spanish settlement in the islands.

The voyage of the San Pedro

With a foothold established, Legazpi sent the San Pedro back to Mexico for reinforcements, under the command of his grandson Felipe de Salcedo, a youth of about 17 or 18. Urdaneta was the expedition’s guiding navigator. The ship, with roughly 200 men aboard, sailed from Cebu on 1 June 1565.

Urdaneta’s plan was to escape the trade winds by sailing far to the north. From the Philippines the San Pedro worked north-east past Japan, reaching latitudes of roughly 38 to 40 degrees north. There it picked up the prevailing westerly winds and the warm Kuroshio current, which together carried it east across the North Pacific.

After about three and a half months at sea, the crew sighted the coast of California in September. The ship then followed the coast south, with the help of the southward-flowing California Current, and anchored at Acapulco on 8 October 1565. The voyage had taken about 130 days, one of the longest passages without landfall yet attempted.

The crossing was gruelling. Food and water ran short, scurvy set in, and a number of the crew died at sea. Accounts describe the survivors as so weak that few could work the ship by the time it reached port.

How Urdaneta found the way

Urdaneta did not have modern charts of Pacific winds, but he drew on long experience and on reasoning by analogy with the Atlantic. There, Spanish ships sailed west to the Caribbean with the trade winds and returned to Europe by first heading north to pick up the westerlies. He expected the Pacific to work in the same way.

He also benefited from Portuguese and Asian knowledge of seasonal winds gathered during his years in the Moluccas, and he timed the departure for the start of the south-west monsoon, which helped carry the ship north. Throughout the voyage he and the pilots recorded latitudes, courses and conditions, producing the sailing directions that later galleon pilots relied on.

The rival claim of Arellano

Urdaneta was not, strictly, the first to make the crossing. The small San Lucas, under Alonso de Arellano with the pilot Lope Martín, had separated from the fleet at the end of November 1564, apparently on purpose. It reached the Philippines ahead of the others, traded, and sailed back to Mexico, arriving at Barra de Navidad on 9 August 1565, two months before the San Pedro.

Arellano was accused of desertion, and his voyage left few usable records. Urdaneta’s crossing, by contrast, was carefully logged and charted, and he reported on it in detail in Mexico and in Spain. It was his route that the Manila galleons adopted, which is why the discovery is generally credited to him. The historian Andrés Reséndez has argued that Lope Martín’s role deserves far more recognition.

Consequences

The tornaviaje turned the Philippines into a viable colony. Supplies, soldiers and missionaries could now arrive from Mexico and ships could return with news and goods. In 1571 Legazpi moved his capital to Manila, described in the founding of Spanish Manila.

The route became the backbone of the Manila galleon trade, which ran from 1565 until 1815. Galleons carried silver from Mexico and Peru to Manila, where it bought Chinese silk, porcelain and other Asian goods for sale in the Americas and Spain. The westward voyage took about three months; the eastward tornaviaje usually took four to six, and remained one of the most dangerous regular sea voyages in the world. The trade is covered in more detail in the Manila galleon trade.

Urdaneta travelled to Spain in 1566 to report to Philip II, returned to Mexico, and died in Mexico City on 3 June 1568.

Timeline

• 1525: Urdaneta sails for the Moluccas with the Loaísa expedition.
• 1529: The Treaty of Zaragoza assigns the Moluccas to Portugal.
• 1559, September: Philip II orders a new expedition to the Western Islands.
• 1564, 21 November: Legazpi’s fleet leaves Barra de Navidad.
• 1565, 27 April: Legazpi occupies Cebu.
• 1565, 1 June: The San Pedro sails from Cebu with Urdaneta aboard.
• 1565, 9 August: Arellano’s San Lucas reaches Mexico.
• 1565, 8 October: The San Pedro anchors at Acapulco.
• 1568, 3 June: Urdaneta dies in Mexico City.
• 1815: The last Manila galleon voyage ends the trade.

Why it matters

By solving the problem of sailing east across the Pacific, Urdaneta’s tornaviaje linked Asia and the Americas by a regular sea route for the first time. The galleon trade it made possible carried American silver to China for two and a half centuries and is often seen as a foundation of the first truly global economy.