Spanish maritime and naval history has been victim of an overwhelming neglect not only abroad but especially at home. Today, not much is taught in Spanish schools beyond Christopher Colombus’ voyage to the West Indies in 1492 and Juan Sebastián de Elcano’s circumnavigation of the globe between 1519 and 1522. Yet, the Spanish Empire—still one of the biggest and most influential in human history—was built on the shoulders of maritime power, and many of its exploits and contributions cannot be understood without the sea and the courage of the many sailors who made them possible.
Sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish and Portuguese expeditions across the globe resulted in the first globalization, but were in many cases undermined and wrongly discredited and downplayed by other nations in subsequent centuries. This continues even today. Yet, these feats of exploration made possible the establishment of Spanish overseas territories across three continents and two oceans. Therefore, they should be very much considered as one of the pillars of Spanish sea power during the golden age of its empire.
Thus, this series of short articles seeks to highlight some of the most outstanding Spanish maritime feats during the early days of global exploration, especially those to the Pacific, and their contribution to maritime and human history. This article briefly describes the first two expeditions to the Pacific Ocean (originally discovered from the West by Spanish explorer Vasco Nuñez de Balboa in 1513[i]) in search for the “Spice Islands”: the Magellan Expedition of 1519-1522 and the Loaisa Expedition of 1525.
The Magellan Expedition (1519-1522)
As is well known, the first circumnavigation around the globe was commanded by Portuguese sailor Ferdinand of Magellan, whose fleet comprised of five ships (carracs) and a total crew of over 230 men. Like Columbus before him, who had also pitched the idea of reaching the Indies by “sailing West across the Ocean Sea” rather than down the coast of Africa, Magellan had unsuccessfully pleaded the King of Portugal to finance an expedition in the search for a route to the Spice Islands (Maluku Islands). He then went to Charles I of Spain, who agreed to support an expedition. The journey would be funded by the Spanish Crown (then Castile and Aragon), led by a Portuguese, and crewed with men from different places [ii] – a combination that does not sound unfamiliar at all today.
The expedition sailed down South across the Atlantic, reaching South America almost a year and a half after their departure from Seville to then find and sail through what is today known as the Strait of Magellan, which Magellan called the “Strait of All Saints” or Estrecho de Todos los Santos. They crossed the Pacific (until then known as the South Sea by the Spanish) in over three months, reaching Guam and then sailing to the Philippines, where Magellan and others were killed by natives in the Battle of Mactan, in April 1521.
Replica of the Victory with which Elcano completed the first circumnavigation (Source: Fundación Nao Victoria).After Magellan’s death, Juan Sebastián de Elcano was chosen as his successor.
Elcano was an experienced merchant captain from Northern Spain. By then, the expedition had lost three out of five ships and many men, so Elcano decided to give the remaining crew two options: the Trinidad would attempt to sail back to Spain through the Pacific, while the Victoria (Elcano’s ship) would do so by venturing into Portuguese waters and completing the circumnavigation of the globe, so each man had to decide which ship to sail with. This is yet the most fundamental decision of the expedition and the reason Elcano is often credited with the feat of first circumnavigating the globe.
The expedition had not set out with the aim of circumnavigating the globe, as that would necessitate venturing into Portuguese waters reserved for Lisbon by virtue of the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. Thus, without such decision, the entire expedition would have likely suffered the same fate as the Trinidad, which broke down in the Philippines months after departing from Elcano’s ship and never made it back.
Under Elcano’s leadership, the first circumnavigation was completed in September 1522, with just one ship and 18 men remaining from the original crew of more than 200. They had found the passage to the Pacific Ocean and the route to the Spice Islands all while enduring a mutiny and the death of their captain along the way. The value of the small amount of spices they were able to retrieve covered the total costs of the expedition. The circumnavigation remains, to this day, one of the most significant feats in the history of navigation.
Illustration of the route followed by Magellan and Elcano’s expedition between 1519 and 1522 (Source: Fascinating Spain).
The Loaisa Expedition (1525)
Having proven the viability of the route, a new expedition was set in 1525 with seven ships (SantaMaría de la Victoria, Sancti Spiritus, Anunciada, San Gabriel, Santa María del Parral, San Lesmes and a patache, Santiago) under the command of García Jofre de Elcano and Loaisa. This expedition was set with the aim of securing a viable route with the Spice Islands and establishing a more permanent presence on the islands, as well as searching for the Trinidad from the Magellan expedition.
The search for the Trinidad was abandoned, however, after it became clear that the ship had not reached the other side of the Pacific. Two ships were lost in poor weather before they made it into the Strait of Magellan, and another four would be lost during the transit through the Pacific. The SantaMaría de la Victoria was the only one to make it to the Spice Islands in 1526, carrying just a quarter of the crew which had departed from Spain, and without the expedition’s two leaders — both Loaisa and Elcano would die of scurvy before arriving.
Among the survivors who returned to Spain was Rodrigo de Triana, a man who had been part of Columbus’ first expedition, and the first to sight the New World on October 12, 1492. Other survivors would eventually return to the Pacific years later and make important contributions to the history of navigation. Juan Ladrillero, a sailor and cartographer, would go on to become the first to sail through the Magellan Strait in both directions, sailing from West to East and back again and mapping most of it along the way in 1557.[iii] An 18-year-old Andres de Urdaneta, whose story will be discussed in the next part of this series, would go on to find the route to cross the Pacific from East to West four decades later.
The Loaisa expedition has been subject to relevant research and gained wide historical attention due to one ship in particular, the San Lesmes, under the command of Francisco de Hoces. While largely unknown, Hoces and his crew were the first Europeans to discover the passage to the Pacific around what is today called Cape Horn and the Drake Passage.[iv]Some historians believe the San Lesmes could have reached Tasmania, New Zealand and several islands of the Western Pacific more than a century before Tasman, Cook, and others arrived, establishing along the way and leaving a mixed Spanish-Polynesian descendancy far bigger than that of the men from the Bounty in Pitcairn Island.[v]
Altogether, while this second expedition was largely a failure, it set the base for many other successful expeditions that would follow. The crew of the Victoria was the first to sight and place on the map the Marshall Islands. Subsequent Spanish expeditions would reach and explore several of them, meeting with the natives on one occasion, but they would be ultimately left out of the route to the Spice Islands due to their lack of profit.[vi]
Conclusion
The first Spanish expeditions to the Pacific during the early sixteenth century (together with those to the American continent since 1492) illustrate the important role that maritime exploration played both in developing Spanish sea power and global history. These expeditions laid the necessary foundations for the establishment of prosperous commercial routes in the Pacific, which were sustained without interruption for 250 years, effectively turning the Pacific into the “Spanish Lake” for more than a century. At a time when the globe was yet to be explored by the major European powers, the sea became the main medium of expansion and conquest, and Spain became the dominant maritime power of its day, thereby becoming the dominant global empire.
In the late nineteenth century, Alfred Thayer Mahan would go on to define the virtuous relationship between maritime commerce, foreign bases, and navies as the core components of sea power. He used the case of Great Britain during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the prime example of his thesis, which he hoped the United States would imitate. But in the sixteenth century, before the successful establishment of bases abroad with which to support future commercial routes, the world first had to be explored. Thus, maritime exploration, favored by the sound vision of the Spanish Monarchy and the courage of generations of sailors who dared venture into the unknown, knowing they would most likely never make it back home, became the first pillar of Spanish sea power.
Gonzalo Vázquez is a junior analyst with the Spanish Naval War College’s Center for Naval Thought. He has previously worked as an intern at the NATO Crisis Management and Disaster Response Center of Excellence (CMDR COE) in Sofia, Bulgaria.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
By Gonzalo Vazquez III
Spanish maritime and naval history has been victim of an overwhelming neglect not only abroad but especially at home. Today, not much is taught in Spanish schools beyond Christopher Colombus’ voyage to the West Indies in 1492 and Juan Sebastián de Elcano’s circumnavigation of the globe between 1519 and 1522. Yet, the Spanish Empire—still one of the biggest and most influential in human history—was built on the shoulders of maritime power, and many of its exploits and contributions cannot be understood without the sea and the courage of the many sailors who made them possible.
Sixteenth and seventeenth century Spanish and Portuguese expeditions across the globe resulted in the first globalization, but were in many cases undermined and wrongly discredited and downplayed by other nations in subsequent centuries. This continues even today. Yet, these feats of exploration made possible the establishment of Spanish overseas territories across three continents and two oceans. Therefore, they should be very much considered as one of the pillars of Spanish sea power during the golden age of its empire.
Thus, this series of short articles seeks to highlight some of the most outstanding Spanish maritime feats during the early days of global exploration, especially those to the Pacific, and their contribution to maritime and human history. This article briefly describes the first two expeditions to the Pacific Ocean (originally discovered from the West by Spanish explorer Vasco Nuñez de Balboa in 1513[i]) in search for the “Spice Islands”: the Magellan Expedition of 1519-1522 and the Loaisa Expedition of 1525.
The Magellan Expedition (1519-1522)
As is well known, the first circumnavigation around the globe was commanded by Portuguese sailor Ferdinand of Magellan, whose fleet comprised of five ships (carracs) and a total crew of over 230 men. Like Columbus before him, who had also pitched the idea of reaching the Indies by “sailing West across the Ocean Sea” rather than down the coast of Africa, Magellan had unsuccessfully pleaded the King of Portugal to finance an expedition in the search for a route to the Spice Islands (Maluku Islands). He then went to Charles I of Spain, who agreed to support an expedition. The journey would be funded by the Spanish Crown (then Castile and Aragon), led by a Portuguese, and crewed with men from different places [ii] – a combination that does not sound unfamiliar at all today.
The expedition sailed down South across the Atlantic, reaching South America almost a year and a half after their departure from Seville to then find and sail through what is today known as the Strait of Magellan, which Magellan called the “Strait of All Saints” or Estrecho de Todos los Santos. They crossed the Pacific (until then known as the South Sea by the Spanish) in over three months, reaching Guam and then sailing to the Philippines, where Magellan and others were killed by natives in the Battle of Mactan, in April 1521.
Replica of the Victory with which Elcano completed the first circumnavigation (Source: Fundación Nao Victoria).After Magellan’s death, Juan Sebastián de Elcano was chosen as his successor.
Elcano was an experienced merchant captain from Northern Spain. By then, the expedition had lost three out of five ships and many men, so Elcano decided to give the remaining crew two options: the Trinidad would attempt to sail back to Spain through the Pacific, while the Victoria (Elcano’s ship) would do so by venturing into Portuguese waters and completing the circumnavigation of the globe, so each man had to decide which ship to sail with. This is yet the most fundamental decision of the expedition and the reason Elcano is often credited with the feat of first circumnavigating the globe.
The expedition had not set out with the aim of circumnavigating the globe, as that would necessitate venturing into Portuguese waters reserved for Lisbon by virtue of the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. Thus, without such decision, the entire expedition would have likely suffered the same fate as the Trinidad, which broke down in the Philippines months after departing from Elcano’s ship and never made it back.
Under Elcano’s leadership, the first circumnavigation was completed in September 1522, with just one ship and 18 men remaining from the original crew of more than 200. They had found the passage to the Pacific Ocean and the route to the Spice Islands all while enduring a mutiny and the death of their captain along the way. The value of the small amount of spices they were able to retrieve covered the total costs of the expedition. The circumnavigation remains, to this day, one of the most significant feats in the history of navigation.
The Loaisa Expedition (1525)
Having proven the viability of the route, a new expedition was set in 1525 with seven ships (Santa María de la Victoria, Sancti Spiritus, Anunciada, San Gabriel, Santa María del Parral, San Lesmes and a patache, Santiago) under the command of García Jofre de Elcano and Loaisa. This expedition was set with the aim of securing a viable route with the Spice Islands and establishing a more permanent presence on the islands, as well as searching for the Trinidad from the Magellan expedition.
The search for the Trinidad was abandoned, however, after it became clear that the ship had not reached the other side of the Pacific. Two ships were lost in poor weather before they made it into the Strait of Magellan, and another four would be lost during the transit through the Pacific. The Santa María de la Victoria was the only one to make it to the Spice Islands in 1526, carrying just a quarter of the crew which had departed from Spain, and without the expedition’s two leaders — both Loaisa and Elcano would die of scurvy before arriving.
Among the survivors who returned to Spain was Rodrigo de Triana, a man who had been part of Columbus’ first expedition, and the first to sight the New World on October 12, 1492. Other survivors would eventually return to the Pacific years later and make important contributions to the history of navigation. Juan Ladrillero, a sailor and cartographer, would go on to become the first to sail through the Magellan Strait in both directions, sailing from West to East and back again and mapping most of it along the way in 1557.[iii] An 18-year-old Andres de Urdaneta, whose story will be discussed in the next part of this series, would go on to find the route to cross the Pacific from East to West four decades later.
The Loaisa expedition has been subject to relevant research and gained wide historical attention due to one ship in particular, the San Lesmes, under the command of Francisco de Hoces. While largely unknown, Hoces and his crew were the first Europeans to discover the passage to the Pacific around what is today called Cape Horn and the Drake Passage.[iv] Some historians believe the San Lesmes could have reached Tasmania, New Zealand and several islands of the Western Pacific more than a century before Tasman, Cook, and others arrived, establishing along the way and leaving a mixed Spanish-Polynesian descendancy far bigger than that of the men from the Bounty in Pitcairn Island.[v]
Altogether, while this second expedition was largely a failure, it set the base for many other successful expeditions that would follow. The crew of the Victoria was the first to sight and place on the map the Marshall Islands. Subsequent Spanish expeditions would reach and explore several of them, meeting with the natives on one occasion, but they would be ultimately left out of the route to the Spice Islands due to their lack of profit.[vi]
Conclusion
The first Spanish expeditions to the Pacific during the early sixteenth century (together with those to the American continent since 1492) illustrate the important role that maritime exploration played both in developing Spanish sea power and global history. These expeditions laid the necessary foundations for the establishment of prosperous commercial routes in the Pacific, which were sustained without interruption for 250 years, effectively turning the Pacific into the “Spanish Lake” for more than a century. At a time when the globe was yet to be explored by the major European powers, the sea became the main medium of expansion and conquest, and Spain became the dominant maritime power of its day, thereby becoming the dominant global empire.
In the late nineteenth century, Alfred Thayer Mahan would go on to define the virtuous relationship between maritime commerce, foreign bases, and navies as the core components of sea power. He used the case of Great Britain during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as the prime example of his thesis, which he hoped the United States would imitate. But in the sixteenth century, before the successful establishment of bases abroad with which to support future commercial routes, the world first had to be explored. Thus, maritime exploration, favored by the sound vision of the Spanish Monarchy and the courage of generations of sailors who dared venture into the unknown, knowing they would most likely never make it back home, became the first pillar of Spanish sea power.
Gonzalo Vázquez is a junior analyst with the Spanish Naval War College’s Center for Naval Thought. He has previously worked as an intern at the NATO Crisis Management and Disaster Response Center of Excellence (CMDR COE) in Sofia, Bulgaria.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.