The Manila Galleon

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BY WILLIAM LYTLE SCHURZ
if
THE
MANILA
GALLEON
ILLUSTRATED
WITH MAPS
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY, INC.
NEW YORK • 1939
)>>>>)>>>>>>>>>>>»<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Copyright, 1939, by E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc.
All Rights Resbrvkd :: Printed in thb U. S. A.
FIRST EDITION
P6 S<4
CARPENTIEft
TO
THE MEMORY OF MY SON
WILLIAM LYTLE SCHURZ, Jr.
1910-1931
•
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ACKNO WLEDGMENTS
Since I laid the /{eel of my book twenty-seven years ago some
of those to whom I would express my gratitude have, like my
galleons, entered their last port. Of those who are left I owe
most to the counsel and encouragement of fames Alexander
Robertson, but for whose scholarship the rich background of the
Spanish era in the Philippines would be a closed book t0 Ameri
cans. My warm appreciation for early guidance in the ways of
history goes to Professor Frederick J• Teggart, of the University
of California. Above all, I acknowledge my great indebtedness
to the Order of the Native Sons of the Golden West, whose in
terest in the history of California made possible my study of the
original Spanish sources in the Archives of the Indies at Seville.
Washington
January 7939
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAOl
15
INTRODUCTION
Part I
THE ORIENT
1. THE CHINESE
2. THE JAPANESE
3. THE PORTUGUESE AND OTHERS
4. CITY AND COMMERCE
63
99
129
154
Part II
THE NAVIGATION
193
216
251
5. THE GALLEONS
6. THE ROUTE
7. THE VOYAGE
Part III
THE FOREIGNERS
8. THE SPANISH LAKE
9. THE ENGLISH
10. THE DUTCH
287
303
342
Part IV
THE AMERICAS AND SPAIN
11. MEXICO AND PERU
12. FLEETS AND GALLEONS
361
388
APPENDIX
I. THE ROYAL PHILIPPINE COMPANY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
409
419
449
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LIST OF MAPS
a chart of the pacific ocean
Endpapers
MANILA IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
page
35
CHIRENO MAP OF THE PHILIPPINES (1638)
page
223
page
385
ROAD FROM ACAPULCO TO MEXICO CITY
....
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INTRODUCTION
v.
INTRODUCTION
THE first of the galleons crossed the Pacific in 1565. The last t
one put into port in 18 15. When the line began Philip the
Second was king of all the Spains and his enemy, Elizabeth
Tudor, was queen of England. Hernin Cortes, conqueror of
Mexico, had been dead but eighteen years. The same year Pedro v
Menendez de Aviles laid the foundations of St. Augustine in
Florida. When the line ended it was already five years since
Miguel Hidalgo had begun the revolt against Spain which was
to create the Republic of Mexico. The United States was then
nearly forty years a nation and Andrew Jackson had just won
the Battle of New Orleans.
Yearly, for the two and a half centuries that lay between,
the galleons made the long and lonely voyage between Manila
in the Philippines and Acapulco in Mexico. No other line of
ships has ever endured so long. No other regular navigation
has been so trying and dangerous as this, for in its two hundred
and fifty years the sea claimed dozens of ships and thousands of
men and many millions in treasure. As the richest ships in all
the oceans, they were the most coveted prize of pirate and priva
teer. The English took four of them,—the Santa Ana in 1587,
the Encarnacidn in 1709, the Covadonga in 1743, and the Santisima Trinidad, largest ship of her time, in 1762. As many beat
off their English or Dutch assailants.
To the peoples of Spanish America, they were the China
Ships or Manila Galleons that brought them cargoes of silks and
spices and other precious merchandise of the East. To those of
the Orient, they were silver argosies, laden with the Mexican
and Peruvian pesos that were to become the standard of value
along its coasts. To California, they furnished the first occasion
and motive for the exploration of its coast. To Spain, they were
the link that bound the Philippines—and, for a time, the Moluc
cas—to her, and it was their comings and goings that gave some
substance of reality to the Spanish dream of empire over the
Pacific.
^
16
THE MANILA GALLEON
Though the western terminus of the galleons was Manila
.and the . Philippines were always to be the center of Spanish
.activity, in "the- Eastern Indies, Spain's original objective was the
Moluccas,; or Spice. Isles, then the source of the most profitable
trade-ini-the- world. The series of expeditions from Magellan to
Legaspi were but the realization of what Columbus and his com
panions had aimed at in the other and newer Indies, where the
barrier of the American continent had stopped them short. For
Spain it was a belated achievement, since tlie Portuguese, sailing
around Africa, had already preempted the strategic points in the
eastern trade. Vasco da Gama reached Calicut on the Malabar
coast of India in 1498. In 1509 Diogo Lopes de Sequeira attacked
Malacca with a Portuguese force, among which was Ferdinand
Magellan. Two years later the viceroy, Affonso de Albuquerque,
captured the city, which Portugal held for 130 years. From
Malacca Albuquerque sent Antonio de Abreu eastward to the
Moluccas. On the return voyage, one of Abreu's captains, Fran
cisco Serrao, friend of Magellan, discovered Mindanao, the first
European to land in the Philippines. That was in 1512. That
year the Portuguese established a trading post on Ternate of the
Moluccas, from which they were henceforth to export spices to
Lisbon by way of Malacca and the Cape of Good Hope. It was
to be only seven years until the remnants of Magellan's expedi
tion, after entering the Pacific around South America, were to
reach the Moluccas from the Philippines.
Portugal's claim to the Spice Isles was not only established
by priority of discovery, but was fortified in the eyes of Christen
dom, as yet undivided by the Protestant revolt, by a series of
papal bulls. This succession of pontifical decrees extends from
the Dum divcrsas, issued by Pope Nicholas V to Affonso V of
Portugal in 1452, to the Praecelsae of the Medicean Leo X in
1514, reconfirming the Portuguese monopoly in the Golden East.
They included the famous bull of the Borgian Alexander VI,
issued less than two months after Columbus returned to Spain
from his first voyage. This sweeping dictum, based on a system
of jurisprudence which gave the pope the right to dispose of all
heathen lands, arbitrarily fixed a "line of demarcation" along the
meridian 100 leagues west of the Azores—and of the Cape
Verdes!—as the boundary between the Spanish and Portuguese
fields of exploration and conquest. King Joao II of Portugal
INTRODUCTION
17
was not satisfied with the terms of the papal arbitration, and
the next year, 1494, the two countries agreed by the Treaty of
Tordesillas to move the demarcation line to a point 370 leagues
west of the Cape Verde Islands.
Of course, none of the cosmographers of the time could tell
where the new line of demarcation would run when continued
on the other side of the globe. Actually, it followed approxi
mately the meridian near which Tokyo in Japan and Adelaide
in Australia are now located, so that both the Moluccas and the
Philippines were clearly on the Portuguese side of the line. How
ever, the Moluccas were not yet a direct issue between the two
powers. Bartolomeu Dias had rounded the Cape of Good Hope,
but another eighteen years were to pass before the far-flung trad
ing empire of the Lusitanians would reach the Moluccas on the
western edge of the Pacifie. Meanwhile, though Spain did not
actively challenge Portuguese expansion in the Far East, it was
inevitable that sooner or later the two Iberian peoples would clash
in that area.
By an irony of fate, it was a Portuguese, who, acting on
behalf of Spain, made the Moluccas an immediate source of con
tention between the two great colonizing powers of the day.
Fernao Magalhaes, already a veteran of Albuquerque's campaign
in the waters to the east of India, had been denied a favor by
King Manoel the Fortunate, in whose service he had fought so
stoutly against the Moslem at Malacca. A correspondence car
ried on half way around the world with Francisco Serrao, his
friend and companion-at-arnls, who was now a power in his own
right on Ternate, aroused Magellan's deep interest in the Moluc
cas. Aggrieved by the slight at the court of Lisbon, he crossed
into Spain with the idea that was henceforth to be the dominat
ing obsession of his life. There he importuned the young KingEmperor Charles to dispute the Portuguese claims that the
Moluccas lay within that nation's sphere, as determined by the
Treaty of Tordesillas. He represented that the Spice Isles could
be reached by sailing southwest around the American continent,
and, ignorant as yet of the difficulties of such a voyage, argued
that by this route spices could be brought to Europe at less ex
pense than around Africa, which road was clearly barred to
Spain by all the existing arrangements. Magellan was made the
instrument of this daring project and the unparalleled voyage of
i8
THE MANILA GALLEON
1519-22 at last brought Spaniards and Portuguese face to face in
the East Indies.
The matter at issue had suddenly become something more
substantial than a geodetic controversy for astrologers and mapmakers to quarrel over. Though the discovery of the enormous
width of the Pacific invalidated Magellan's argument for the
transportation of spices by that route, upon the results of his
expedition Spain founded her subsequent claims to the Moluccas
—and the Philippines. Some gold and ginger, obtained from
Mohammedan traders on Mindanao, and a cargo of spices laden
at Tidore of the Moluccas, where the sailors gave up their cloaks
and tore their shirts from their backs to barter for the precious
cloves,—this was Spain's first share of the riches of the East.
The spices brought to Seville by Sebastian del Cano in the eightyton Victoria more than paid for all the initial cost of the entire
expedition. Weighing heavily on the debit side was the life of
Magellan, lost on Mactan of the Philippines, on the same day,
it is said, that Francisco Serrao, the man who was almost his
blood-brother, died in the nearby Moluccas.
Charles V now became more insistent than ever upon his
claims to the Moluccas and even appealed to priority of discov
ery, while Joao I sorely resented what he considered an intru
sion into Portugal's sphere of influence. The two monarchs made
an attempt in 1524 to settle the question of ownership by a coun
cil held at Badajoz on the Portuguese-Spanish border. Even
then, in spite of the expert testimony of such men as Sebastian
del Cano, Fernando Colon, and Diogo Lopes de Sequeira, Ma
gellan's chief in the expedition against Malacca, no definitive
and satisfactory settlement was reached. The most advanced
geographical erudition of the age and survivals of medieval
quackery were invoked and aired by the contestants. Along
side the latest word in geodesy, Ferdinand Columbus, the son of
the great Admiral, quoted from the Book of Kings and the
apochrypha of Mandeville, while one of the delegates was a
"master of sacred theology." On the last day of the session, after
seven weeks of "wrangling most terribly," the Portuguese de
clared that the "Castillians had altered their only globe and map,
based on the voyage of Juan Sebastian del Cano." The meeting
thereupon broke up with more bad blood than ever on both
sides. Spain declared her resolve to occupy the Moluccas
INTRODUCTION
i9
and Portugal threatened with the sword any Spaniard found
there.
The next year the king-emperor sent Juan Garcia Jofre de
Loaysa with six ships to follow Magellan's path into the Pacific
and to succor the small company of Spaniards from Magellan's
Trinidad, left stranded in the Moluccas as prisoners of the Portu
guese. Loaysa, the friar-commander, died in mid-Pacific, fol
lowed a few days later by Del Cano, his second in command.
Though the remnants of the expedition reached the Philippines
and the Moluccas, it proved a disastrous failure and only aggra
vated the rivalry with Portugal. The ships were in no condition
to return the way they had come, and the 120 men of the 450
who had started on the voyage fortified themselves on Tidore,
from where they waged continuous war with the Portuguese.
However, one of Loaysa's officers, Andres de Urdaneta, had
gained the navigating experience that nearly forty years later
was to make him the invaluable guide of Legaspi, conqueror
of the Philippines. Also, of great significance for the future,
Loaysa's men had heard that Chinese junks came each year to
the Philippines to barter silks and metal work for gold and pearls.
Convinced of the futility of further efforts to develop the
route around South America, Charles V next ordered Hernan
Cortes to despatch an expedition across the Pacific from Mexico.
The small squadron of Alvaro de Saavedra, driven westward by
the trade winds to the north of the equator, reached the East
Indies in 1528 with comparative ease, but two attempts to retrace
their way back across the Pacific failed when almost within
reach of success. Like its predecessors, the expedition later dis
integrated among the Malay archipelagoes, where Saavedra died.
Its only results were the discovery of many islands, including the
Carolines and the vast land mass of Papua, and the practical
demonstration of the feasibility of the direct passage across the
Pacific from Mexico. Saavedra's route out to the East Indies was
approximately the course followed later by the Manila Galleon
on its yearly return from Acapulco. As for the survivors of the
crews, they joined those who were left from Loaysa's force, and
together, by grace of the Portuguese, who were glad to be rid of
their annoying presence, they eventually returned to Spain in
1536, eleven years after Loaysa's fleet had put out from Coruna
on its fruitless and ill-fated quest. For all practical purposes, the
20
THE MANILA GALLEON
status of the two countries in the Moluccas was again what it
had been before Magellan appeared at the Spanish court with his
plan to discomfit the Portuguese by sailing west instead of east.
The realization of the great difficulties of the navigation,
as shown by the fate of these expeditions; the persistent opposi
tion of the Portuguese, whom he desired at this time to concili
ate; the inability to establish an exact line of demarcation; chronic
financial difficulties; and the ever-recurrent wars in Europe—
"our so just employment against the tyrants of Christendom"—
all these circumstances led Charles V in 1529 to renounce all his
claims to possession of the Moluccas. By the Treaty of Zaragoza he "sold and made a gift" to the crown of Portugal for
the sum of 350,000 ducats of his "right and dominion to the
Spice Isles." A new demarcation line was also fixed by this
treaty, the faithful observance of whose terms would have for
ever barred Spain from the East. This was the extension of the
Portuguese sphere of possession to a line seventeen degrees east
of the Moluccas.
Spanish interest now shifted to the Philippines. Dazzled by
the fame and riches of the Moluccas, their concern with the
larger and less known group had been only incidental to their
quest for the little archipelago that dots the sea between Celebes
and Papua. Magellan and those who followed after him had
touched at the Visayas or Mindanao, but had found little to
arouse their curiosity or their cupidity. Magellan had named
the islands, where he found death, for Saint Lazarus or
San Lazaro, not for their apparent poverty, but because they were
first sighted on the day of that saint. To later navigators they
were early known as the Islas del Poniente,—the Western Islands,
or Islands of the Sunset. When Saavedra's relief squadron sailed
among the Visayas in 1528, it carried a letter from "Caesar
Augustus, King of the Spains" to the "good and honoured King
of Cebu,"—the same dato Humabon, who had trapped and slain
Magellan's officers after their commander had been killed on the
nearby island of Mactan! Though the islands seemed to offer
no promise of wealth, at least there were no Portuguese on them
to dispute possession. They would serve as a convenient base
for future enterprises in the surrounding seas. As for the Moluc
cas, the Spaniards would bide their time. Furthermore,
Saavedra's voyage had established the feasibility of Mexico as a
INTRODUCTION
21
starting point for future efforts. A Spanish Orient might be
made an adjunct of Spanish America.
Henceforth, the immediate impetus came from the viceregal
government in New Spain and indirectly from the crown.
Cortes and his fellow conquistador, Pedro de Alvarado, were
enthusiastic advocates of trans-Pacific expansion. Alvarado
equipped a flotilla for a voyage to the Far East, but it was diverted
to share in the invasion of Peru. Four years later, the restless
adelantado of Guatemala again took up the scheme in partner
ship with Antonio de Mendoza, the first viceroy of New Spain.
Fearful that Cortes might forestall them, Alvarado asked the
king to refuse a license to his old chief, now ennobled as the
Marques del Valle.
The expedition which was dispatched from Mexico in 1542,
under the command of Ruy Lopez de Villalobos, is significant
as having been directed to the "Western Islands," renamed
Felipinas, or Philippines, by Villalobos, for the infante Felipe,
later to become king as Philip II. In the contract with Alvarado
and Mendoza Charles V ordered them to permit no violation of
the arrangements made with Portugal, which delimited their
respective spheres in the Orient. The general purpose of the
expedition was expressed as the "discovery, conquest, and coloni
zation of the islands and provinces of the South Sea towards the
west,"—more specifically, the Philippines. Villalobos was or
dered to investigate the products of the islands, among which it
was believed spices and gold might be prominent. Alvarado had
also heard that "on the island of Cebu there are Castillians liv
ing there since the time of Magellan, and the Chinese are wont
to go thither to trade for gold and precious stones." The expe
dition resulted as ill-fated as its predecessors. There were the
usual mutinies and hardships and clashes with the Portuguese,
who ordered the Spaniards to leave Mindanao. After futile
cruisings about the islands, the remnants of the expedition dis
solved among the forbidden Moluccas. Here the survivors met
the customary fate of capture by the Portuguese, and on Amboina
of the group their disheartened leader died in the arms of the
great Jesuit missionary, later to be canonized as Saint Francis
Xavier. The little Victoria's cargo of spices was still the only
tangible return for nearly a quarter century of effort. It was to
be almost as long before another attempt was made.
22
THE MANILA GALLEON
(With Legaspi's conquest and organization of the Philippines
began the actual history of Spain's colonial empire in the East
Indies and of trans-Pacific commerce. In 1559 Philip II ordered.
Luis de Velasco, second viceroy of New Spain, to take measures
for the permanent occupation of the islands which now bore his
name. In spite of so many failures, the Spaniards still held hopes
of breaking the Portuguese monopoly of the spice trade. "You
shall stipulate," ran the royal instructions, "that they try to bring
some spice, in order to make essay of that traffic." Yet the incon
sistent king commanded that the vessels "must not delay in trad
ing and bartering, but return immediately to New Spain, for the
principal reason for this expedition is to ascertain the return
route." When the expedition sailed five years later, it carried
orders that "as much treasure as possible must be sent back with
the ship or ships that return with news of the expedition."
The fleet of five ships, with over 400 men on board, set sail
from Navidad in Mexico in November__j§64» Its commander
was Miguel Lopez de Legaspi, a Basque official of the City of
Mexico, and "a worthy and reliable man." The aging Andres
de Urdaneta, who had accompanied Loaysa out to the Moluccas
twenty-two years before and had since taken holy orders as an
Augustinian friar, left his convent in order to serve as first pilot
and guide of the expedition.
Legaspi's final orders directed him to take possession of all
lands or islands discovered, to labor for the conversion of the
natives, to ascertain the products of the regions occupied, and to
discover the return route across the Pacific,—which had baffled
all the efforts of his predecessors. The beginnings of the com
mercial legislation of the Philippines are to be found in these
orders. "The royal officials are to have entire charge of all trad
ing of whatever nature," they read, "and no individual shall
presume, under severe penalties, to trade for himself." Trading
was thus to be exclusively in the royal interest, though this re
striction was early relaxed. Careful records of all trading trans
actions were to be made and forwarded to Spain.
Urdaneta had proposed Papua or New Guinea for the ob
jective of the expedition, as being on the Spanish side of the line
of demarcation, and believed until after his departure that this
was the destination of the voyage. Fortunately for the future
cause of Spanish enterprise in the western Pacific, when his sail
INTRODUCTION
23
ing orders were opened at sea, he found that he was to steer for
the Philippines. For if an attempt had been made to settle
among the savage Melanesians of Papua, the expedition would
doubtless have met the same fate as later befell Mendana's efforts
to occupy the Solomons.
The fleet proceeded across the Pacific with little difficulty and
with little incident, except the discovery of many of the beautiful
coral islets of the Marshalls and other archipelagoes. Samar of
the Philippines was sighted in February 1565 and Cebu was
reached on April 27, exactly forty-four years after Magellan had
been killed on Mactan. Here Legaspi laid the foundation of a
settlement, which was to be the base for Spanish operations until
the seat of government was transferred to the shores of Manila
Bay six years later.
The Spaniards displayed considerable activity in investigat
ing the trading possibilities of the archipelago, but with disap
pointing results. The clove tree, which formed the riches of the
Moluccas, did not grow in the Philippines, but cinnamon grew
in Mindanao. In the beginning Legaspi had high hopes of the
spice production of Mindanao, and even proposed to develop it
to rival the Moluccas and to supply "all Christendom." But he
was quickly disillusioned as to the possibilities of this trade. In
ts68 he told the king: "This land cannot be sustained by trade."
The next year he declared to the viceroy: "The Philippines ought
to be considered of little importance, because at present the only
article of profit which we can get from them is cinnamon."
However, the supply of cinnamon available in the Philippines
was not sufficient to serve as the basis for a lucrative trade across
the Pacific. Though small quantities of gold were found in the
possession of the natives, its source was unknown. The silks in
which the local datos or rajahs were clothed clearly came from
outside the islands. The native civilization which they found
was too primitive and poor to promise a profitable trade in manu
factured products.
When Moro praus appeared at Cebu from the north laden,
among other merchandise, with porcelain and silks from China,
the Spaniards may have had an intimation of the influence which
was shortly to determine the course of their trade with the Span
ish lands in the Americas. They found these Moro craft trading
throughout the archipelago and bartered with them for their
24
THE MANILA GALLEON
first cargoes. This people had long practiced a combination of
trade and piracy as far as Borneo, the Moluccas, Java, and Ma
lacca, and the Spaniards early learned from their wide operations
the possibilities of East Indian commerce. The Moros bade fair
at this time to exercise a more than commercial suzerainty over
the more peaceful peoples of the northern islands, and after the
coming of the Spaniards they were to become the piratical
scourge of the Philippines. Though they chronically threatened
the security of local trade and navigation until well into the
nineteenth century, a greater people early took their place as in
termediaries in the commerce of the Spaniards.
The trade with New Spain began in June 1565, with the_
return of the San Pablo under the command of Legaspi's grand
son, Felipe de Salcedo, and with the veteran Urdaneta in charge
of her navigation. Though the principal object of her voyage
was the discovery of a practicable return route to the Mexican
coast, she carried a small shipment of cinnamon purchased in
Mindanao on the royal account. She was the first of the gal
leons that were to follow this same track down into the last cen
tury. Urdaneta found the prevailing westerlies in the northern
Pacific and with their aid reached Acapulco after three and a half
difficult months at sea. However, another of Legaspi's ships un
der Alonso de Arellano, who had deserted the fleet on the way
out, had turned about from Philippine waters and entered the
same harbor two months before. The navigation which had been
initiated by the San Pablo was carried on with surprising regu
larity from the beginning. Galleons came and went each year
and the continuity of the line was to be broken only by the
chance of shipwreck or war. In October 1566 the San Gerdnimo
arrived at Cebu after one of the most extraordinary voyages in
the history of the Pacific.1 The next year the little San Juan, or
San Juanillo, left in late July for Mexico, under the command
of the able Juan de la Isla. In 1568 two galleons arrived at Cebu
from Acapulco in charge of Felipe de Salcedo, who made four
voyages between the Philippines and Mexico during the first ten
years of the new colony. With him came his younger brother,
Juan, then only eighteen years of age, who, before his death nine
years hence, was to take the most active part in the conquest of
the Philippines. The same year the San Pablo cleared from the
1 See page 277.
INTRODUCTION
25
Philippines on her second voyage, only to be lost at the Ladrones,
—the first disaster in the history of the line. Besides 15,000
pounds of cinnamon for the king, she had on board 25,000 more
consigned by private individuals. "These consignments," wrote
Andres de Mirandaola to Philip II, "we allowed to be carried on
the register, mindful of the misery and necessity which the people
were suffering, and considering that they had nothing else with
which to help themselves."
During these first years the Spaniards were occupied in ex
tending and organizing their domination over the islands. This
process was carried on with a remarkable combination of courage
and tact, but with a minimum of bloodshed. Legaspi was a man
of great abilities, and the relative ease with which the Philippines
were brought under Spanish rule was due as much to the natives'
confidence in his moderation and humanity as to their own mili
tary weakness. He preferred peaceful methods, wherever pos
sible, to the sword. When the use of force was necessary, small
bodies of the highly efficient Spanish infantry, under the com
mand of Martin de Goiti, his veteran master of the camp, or of
his brilliant grandson, the youthful Juan de Salcedo, were able
to overcome the native resistance with little difficulty. As the
conquest progressed, forces of native auxiliaries, often raised
among the Pampangas of Luzon, shared in the subjugation of
still recalcitrant tribes,—a system of strategy lately employed by
Cone's in crushing the Aztec power in Mexico, and later to be
freely used by the British in India.
When Legaspi died in 1572 the conquest was virtually com
plete. The year before he had moved the seat of government to
the shores of Manila Bay, where Moro settlers had lately been
beaten into submission. Nearly all the native chiefs in the Visayas
and on Luzon had already recognized the authority of Spain.
Missionaries soon followed the soldiers into the conquered dis
tricts, where they remained to lay the foundations of their spirit
ual sovereignty over the newly Christianized population. Only
the problem of the Moro islands,—Mindanao and the Sulu archi
pelago to the southwest of it,—remained to plague the Spaniards
until the very end of their rule. Swarming up out of the south,
these truculent Moslem sectaries and pirates were to harry the
Visayas and the Luzon coasts time and again. Though the
Spaniards later won several crushing victories over large Moro
26
THE MANILA GALLEON
armaments and erected forts at Zamboanga and other points to
hold them in check, they were never able to accomplish more
than a partial or temporary conquest of this predatory and fanati
cal people.
It was not a propitious time for undertaking the economic
development of the islands or for extending the trading opera
tions which had been initiated on a small scale. The struggling
colony was still too insecure to give much thought to more than
the consolidation of its precarious position. A Moro descent in
force was an ever-present possibility. The Portuguese had block
aded Cebu for a time and threatened to appear again in greater
force and extinguish the Spanish settlement. A much more seri
ous menace came in 1574, when a large Chinese fleet under the
filibuster Li Ma Hong, or Limahon, and with over four thousand
men on board, attacked the newly-founded town on Manila Bay.
The small Spanish garrison suffered heavy losses and was only
saved from annihilation by the timely arrival of Salcedo and
fifty musketeers. The heroic deliverance of Manila was so deci
sive a turning-point in its history that its anniversary was long
celebrated by the city with Te Deums and more secular festivities.
The Spaniards were yet few in number, and these usually
hardened soldiers who were fitted to be neither settlers nor mer
chants. "The soldiers," complained Legaspi, "will rather impov
erish the land than derive profit from it." Moreover, the Span
iards were ignorant of the real possibilities of their position and
of the direction their trade would ultimately take. On the other
hand, there was a vague anticipation of the bright prospects
which the future might hold for the colony. "We are stationed
here at the gateway of great kingdoms," Guido de Lavezaris,
Legaspi's successor, wrote to the king; "Will your majesty aid
us with the wherewithal so that trade may be introduced and
maintained among many of these nations?"
It was the beginning of trade with the Chinese that fixed the
basic pattern of the colony's economic life for the next two hun
dred years. Until the latter half of the eighteenth century Manila
was to be commercially little more than a way-station between
China and Mexico. Trading junks had crossed the China Sea to
the Philippines from early times, and the Spanish expeditions
before Legaspi had either encountered these bold traffickers or
heard from the islanders of their wide trading operations. Mean
INTRODUCTION
27
while, since 1557 through their post at Macao, below Canton, the
Portuguese had been engaged in this "most extensive and advan
tageous trade that has hitherto been seen in any place where trade
has been carried on." "We shall gain the commerce with China,"
wrote Legaspi in a moment of prevision in 1569, "whence come
silks, porcelains, benzoin, musk, and other articles."
The transfer of the seat of government from Cebu to Manila
and the opening of direct trading connections with China were
almost contemporaneous. A fortunate incident ushered in the
new era of Philippine commerce. One of Legaspi's ships rescued
the crew of a large junk which was sinking in waters off Mindoro. In recognition of the Spaniards' humanity, the Chinese
spread the story of their deliverance to their fellows at home.
"At the beginning of 1572," says Padre Zuniga, the Augustinian
historian, "there arrived, with a great deal of rich merchandise,
those Chinese whom the Spaniards had saved from shipwreck
on Mindoro, together with many others of that nation. With
this the foundation of a lucrative commerce was laid." The two
galleons of 1573 carried to Acapulco, among other goods, 712 t~picces of Chinese silk and 22,300 pieces of "fine gilt china and
other porcelain ware." Some half-dozen junks came to Manila in
1574
twelve or fifteen the next year. By 1576 the trade was
already firmly established. Assured of the promising future of
the commerce, merchants from Mexico began to settle in the
islands and supply the professional element that was needed in
the direction of the business. The demand for luxuries in Span
ish America appeared to be almost as limitless as the capacity of
the Chinese to supply them. With such a prospect, the position
of the intermediaries at Manila was an enviable one.
Of all the cities of the Far East Manila was best fitted by
nature and by the economic geography of that area to be the cen
tral entrepot of Oriental trade. The two great staples of that c' commerce, silks from the north and spices from the south, could
be gathered at Manila more easily than at any other city, and
thence forwarded to Europe or to America. Japan, China, the
kingdoms of Farther India, and the long chain of islands that
reach southeast from the Malay peninsula to the much-desired
Moluccas, these were as a vast semi-circumference, whose radii
met at Manila. As concerned distance from the chief fields of
production, neither Malacca, Macao nor Batavia combined such
38
THE MANILA GALLEON
advantages of position. True, Macao was nearer the Chinese
silk producing provinces, but the destination of Portuguese ex
ports was western Europe, while, until the creation of the Royal
Philippine Company, those of Manila went eastward to America.
As a spice market Batavia was better situated. For a purely
European trade Malacca, as later Singapore, had the superior
location, but for a commerce with both America and Europe,
and in both silks and spices, the site of no other city was com
parable with that of Manila. However, of the four points of
what should have been her commercial compass,—Acapulco, Can
ton, the Moluccas, and Seville,—she was cut off from the two
latter. She relinquished the spice trade to Portugal and later
saw the Dutch supplant the Portuguese. Spain also early
acknowledged the Portuguese claims to monopoly of the naviga
tion around Africa. Apparently secure in the enjoyment of the
Chinese-American trade, the Spaniards never seriously undertook
this direct traffic with Europe until near the end of the eighteenth
century, when both Manila and Spain were long since commer
cially outdistanced by other cities and other peoples.
Even as it was, Manila was for a time the first mart of the
East. Francisco Leandro de Viana, the ablest critic of his coun
try's colonial system as it existed in the Philippines, said of her
position: "No other region is so well seated for the center of a
flourishing commerce." Grau y Monfalcon, who served the inter
ests of the islands in Spain, described the "notable and especial
greatness of the city of Manila, the mistress of so many seas and
capital of so many archipelagoes,—the key to the ancient and
ever rich commerce of the Orient." In our own time, Fernandez
Duro, the distinguished historian of the Spanish navy, has said
of Manila: "The capital of the Philippine Archipelago possessed
elements and facilities that could have made of her the center
and depository of the trade of the Far East. Connected with a
distributing center in Spain, Manila could have supplied Europe,
if the ideas and practice of her rulers had not closed the road
which led to such a consummation." Alberoni, the minister of
Philip V, first of the Bourbon kings of Spain, had realized the
possibilities of Manila in this direction and planned to make her
the center of a world-wide, and not merely Asiatic-American,
trade. Clear-sighted Spaniards always recognized the advantage
of Manila's imperial position and lamented the folly and neglect
of the policy which diverted her destiny.
INTRODUCTION
29
✓
Travelers and writers of other nations have held the same
opinion of her potential greatness. The famous French navi
gator, La Perouse, said : "Manila is perhaps the best situated city
in the world." Mallat, who wrote one of the best of the old
descriptive works on the Philippines, declared that "Manila is
undoubtedly destined to become one day the center of the com
merce of the Pacific and Indian Oceans." De Guignes, writing
in the last decade of the eighteenth century, said the Spaniards
were too intent on the trade with Acapulco to make Manila the
great emporium that might have taken the place of Canton and
other cities. Another Frenchman, Delaporte, considered Manila
"most advantageously situated for commerce with China, Japan,
Borneo, and the Moluccas," and added that "such a place in the
hands of a more active and more laborious people would perhaps
become the richest entrepot of the universe." The verdict of
the German traveler, Jagor, was virtually the same. Gemelli
Careri, the Italian traveler, who circumnavigated the globe as a
tourist in the seventeenth century, said: "The Author of Nature
placed Manila so equally between the Wealthy kingdoms of the
East and of the West, that it may be accounted one of the great
est places of trade in the world." The writer of Anson's Voyage
said: "Luzon is very well situated for the Indian and Chinese
trade." The persistence with which the Dutch tried to capture
Manila is the best evidence of the value which they placed upon
the possession of her port. Grau y Monfalc6n observed in this
regard; "The Dutch recognize that the Philippines are by their
location the most suitable of the islands in the Orient for carry
ing on the general commerce of these kingdoms and nations."
Besides the advantage of proximity to the more important
sources of production, Manila had probably the best harbor in
the Far East, as excellent a western terminus of the navigation
as Acapulco was the eastern. Although the vast and land-locked
bay is liable to be swept by the terrible baguios or typhoons, ship
ping usually found a certain security behind the head-land of
Cavite, where the galleons were laden. The official United States
"Gazeteer of the Philippines" describes Manila Bay as "one of
the finest in the world and by far the best in the Far East."
The galleon trade enjoyed a few decades of prosperity that
probably reached its height early in the next century. The orig
inal ban on private trading had long since been waived and
everyone was free to share in the rich gains of the traffic. For a
3°
THE MANILA GALLEON
time the trade profited by the oversight of the government in
Spain, which was concerned with more pressing problems in
Europe and the Americas, and had not yet given its attention to
the growing competition of Chinese silks with those produced
on Spanish looms, or to the drain of Mexican and Peruvian silver
to Asia. Though the first of the inevitable restrictive laws Wei»v
issued between 1587 and 1593, they were only gradually, and
even then half-heartedly, put into effect, so that it was long before
the expansion of the trade could be effectively checked by the
jealousy of the mother-country.
Convinced that the Philippines could not yield the wealth
which they had at first anticipated, the Spaniards early began
to entertain ambitious projects for the military and spiritual con
quest of the surrounding nations. The military phase of the
conquista in the new world had given way to the work of con
solidating and organizing the vast territories that stretched from
California to Cape Horn. But the imperial urge of the conquista
survived in the Eastern Indies—the Indias Orientates of the Span
iards. In this grandiose scheme the Philippines were to serve
only as the center of their operations, the nexus that was to bind
together the parts of a new Oriental empire. A handful of men
might even conquer China and Japan, for, after Mexico and
Peru, any feat of arms seemed possible to Spain. The colony
had able rulers and the vigor of early and enthusiastic effort.
With the Duke of Alba's conquest of Portugal in 1580, Manila
took the place of "Golden Goa" as the seat of a united Hispanic
power that reached from Ormuz around to Macao. For a glori
ous season she was the foremost city of the Eastern Indies, capital
of a proud empire and emporium for trade, not only with China,
but with the surrounding archipelagoes from Japan to the Javas
and with Malacca and the Indo-Chinese kingdoms of the main
land. Never again was Manila to know such greatness.
Though Spanish resources were never equal to the full mag
nitude of the mighty design, much of the dream was realized.
The coming of the Dutch and the English to the East greatly
complicated the execution of the plati at a time when circum
stances were otherwise most favorable to its achievement. Yet
persistent efforts to conquer the half-forgotten Moluccas culmi
nated in Pedro Bravo de Acuna's smashing blow at the Dutch
and their Malay allies on Ternate and Tidore in 1606. The
INTRODUCTION
31
realization of Magellan's ambition after the lapse of nearly a
century came too late, for, though the Spaniards stubbornly main
tained their hold on Ternate until 1662, the Dutch were able to
prevent further expansion in that quarter. The successful expe
ditions against the native princes of Borneo, the Spanish estab
lishments on Formosa and the Chinese coast, and the attempts
to bring the kingdoms of Indo-China within the sphere of Span
ish influence were all parcel of the imperial design. Yet the
strength which the fighting governors, veterans of the wars in
the Low Countries,—the Ronquillos and Dasmarinas, Guzman
and Acuna and Silva,—could draw from Mexico and Spain was
never commensurate with the gigantic tasks which they set them
selves. Moreover, they were never free to devote all their ener-_
gies to projects of aggression and expansion. The chronic fear
of a Chinese uprising in Manila, which became a reality in 1603,
the strained relations with the bellicose and susceptible Japanese,
the frequent incursions of Dutch fleets among the islands until
the middle of the seventeenth century, and the ever-recurrent
Mora raids,—all these problems preoccupied them greatly. The
internal administration and upbuilding of the colony also made
heavy demands on their crowded days. Thus, the versatile
Antonio de Morga, judge, lieutenant-governor, soldier, and his
torian, said of Governor Gomez Perez Dasmarinas that he exe
cuted, "with great enthusiasm and zeal, many and various things,
not shrinking from any kind of labor or taking any care of him
self." And when Dasmarinas was killed by the Chinese rowers of
his galley in 1593, he was leading a powerful armament of two
hundred sail, with nearly a thousand Spanish soldiers and a large
force of Filipino auxiliaries on board, against the Moluccas. As it
was, these dauntless captains, who rekindled in the East the dying
flame of the conquista in the Americas, performed prodigies of
valor and enterprise. Only the unforeseen fate that struck down
Juan de Silva on .his great armada in 1616 may have saved the
East Indies from the domination of Castile.
In spite of all the alarms and vicissitudes of that feverish
time, the galleon trade flourished. Its cargoes grew in variety
with the opening of commercial relations with every new region
of the Orient. The manifest lists of the galleons are a veritable
catalogue of the products of the Orient. Nearly all the exotic
things that the East grew or made they carried to the Spaniards
32
THE MANILA GALLEON
in Mexico and Peru. Also, some merchandise that had been
brought three fourths of the way round the world entered Mexico
through Acapulco. Thus, Viceroy Cruillas informed the king in
1765 that the China Ship imported Flemish laces "and many
other kinds of European goods" into New Spain.
Above all, save for a few years, these were silk ships. Silks
in every stage of manufacture and of every variety of weave and
pattern formed the most valuable part of their cargoes. There
were delicate gauzes and Cantonese crepes, the flowered silk of
Canton, called primavera or "springtime" by the Spaniards, vel
vets and taffetas and the nobleza or fine damask, rougher grograins, and heavy brocades worked in fantastic designs with gold
and silver thread. Of silken wearing apparel, there were many
thousand pairs of stockings in each cargo,—more than 50,000 in
one galleon—skirts and velvet bodices, cloaks and robes and
kimonos. And packed in the chests of the galleons were silken
bed coverings and tapestries, handkerchiefs, tablecloths and nap
kins, and rich vestments for the service of churches and con
vents from Sonora to Chile. Nearly all this was of Chinese work
manship.
It was largely from the Mogul Empire of India,—from Ben
gal and the coasts of Coromandel and Malabar,—that came the
fine cottons which, especially in the last century of the traffic,
filled so important a place in the cargoes. However, some cotton
goods, as the blue cambayas, were the produce of Chinese looms,
while the mantas, or heavy sheeting, of Ilocos and the distinctive
Philippine lampotes were always staple exports to the American
market. In 1792 one lot of 998 white cotton shirts found no sale
at Acapulco, "on account of their shortness, being made for
natives of the islands."
Persian rugs and carpets, imported into the Philippines by
way of India, became customary items in the cargo of the China
Ship after regular trading connections had been established with
the Malabar ports. Chinese rugs were also a staple item in the
galleon trade.
Considerable gold in the form of bullion or manufactured
articles was exported to Mexico. Though there was a legal ban
on the importation of jewelry from the Orient, in a large con
signment confiscated at Acapulco in 1767 there are enumerated
hundreds of rings, many of which were set with diamonds and
INTRODUCTION
33
rubies, bracelets, pendants, earrings, and necklaces, and many
devotional pieces, such as crucifixes, reliquaries, and rosaries, and
including a cross set with eight brilliants. There were also seized
on the same occasion "a golden bird from China," some jewelstudded sword-hilts, and several alligator teeth capped with gold.
Many uncut or unset gems were also carried to Mexico by the
Manila Galleon. Wrote Henry Hawks, an English merchant
who spent five years in Mexico in the sixteenth century: "There
was a mariner that brought a pearle as big as a doves egge from
thence, and a stone, for which the Viceroy would have given
3000 duckets."
Thousands of women's combs were often carried in a single
galleon,—nearly 80,000 in nine seamen's chests on the San Carlos
in 1767. There were always fans, with sticks of ivory or sandal
wood; ivory castanets and copper cuspidors and little brass bells,
or cascabeles; bric-a-brac and biHelotsoFTvory, jade, and jasper;
eyeglasses and bronze thimbles and paper balloons and brass
toothpicks and fruit dishes of gold and silver; finely carved and
inlaid boxes and escritoires; huge earthen jars, or tibores; and
porcelain ware of great variety. Spices, gathered at Manila from
the Moluccas, Java and Ceylon, were also sent across the Pacific,
and among the "drugs" of the Orient carried on the China Ship
were musk, borax, red lead, and camphor. As the galleons
brought out to the Philippines the chocolate of Guayaquil, so, in
the later years, they exported to Mexico the tea of Asia. Towards
the last of the eighteenth century many Manila cigars also found
their way into Spanish America through Acapulco. The Manila
Galleon was only too often a slaver, in spite of restrictions on the
traffic in human flesh. A law in 1626 levied a tax of 4000 reales,
or 500 pesos, on every slave brought in from the Philippines, and
in 1700 a royal order prohibited the trade altogether. Even
Caffirs from far-off South Africa were sold in Acapulco, and it
was customary for passengers to dispose of their personal servants
at the end of the voyage in the same manner, as Gemelli Careri
did. Now and then there was conveyed eastward to Acapulco,
and perhaps on to Spain, some curious or monstrous animal, like
the white deer which was caught in the forest of Laguna de Bay,
and, with a golden collar about its neck, sent as a present to the
king by the bishop-governor in 1746.
It seemed in the first half-century of the trade that neither
34
THE MANILA GALLEON
shipwreck nor other circumstance could ever deter its progress.
Many ships were lost at sea with their rich merchandise and
thousands of lives that could be ill spared. Though for a brief
period the colony was prostrated by its losses, the citizens quickly
recovered their confidence and resumed their trading activities.
If the Manilenos lived dangerously in the midst of so many
perils, they also lived luxuriously and recklessly, and it was the
bountiful returns from the annual voyage of the Manila Galleon
that provided the means for their lavish way of life.
It was their city that Morga described in its young prime,
and that Padre Chirino called "a copy of that Tyre so praised
by Ezekiel." The Spanish quarter was located on the site origi
nally occupied by the Moro settlement, when Legaspi moved his
government thither from Cebu in 1572. It formed a rough tri
angle with the Pasig River on one side and the bay on another,
and was surrounded by the wall built by the elder Dasmarinas.
At strategic intervals along the walls were bastions mounted with
artillery or more formidable defense works, like the fortress of
Santiago. On the land side there were three main gates, flanked
by salient towers and closed at nightfall, and a number of postern
gates opened to the shores of the river and the bay.
Around the Plaza de Armas were ranged the principal public
buildings. Here stood the governor's palace until its destruction
in 1863. Morga considered it "very beautiful and sightly," with
its "many windows opening towards the sea and the Plaza," and
its "two courts, with upper and lower galleries raised on stout
pillars," after the conventional style of Spanish colonial capitals.
Not only did it house the governor and his family and official
retinue, but there was a "large and stately hall" for the high ju
dicial and administrative court of the audiencia. It also contained
the quarters of the company of arquebusiers, who served as the
governor's guard. Facing the same great square, that was the
center of the city's collective life, were the Cabildo, or city hall,
the royal treasury and arsenals, and the cathedral, with its three
naves and its rich choir and chapels.
In other parts of the Intramuros, or walled city, were the
great monasteries of the Augustinians, Dominicans, and Francis
cans, the residencia of the Jesuits, and the Convent of San Andres
and Santa Potenciana, famous for its charities to the needy
women and girls of the city. Besides these religious establish-
36
THE MANILA GALLEON
ments there were three large hospitals,—the royal hospital for
Spaniards, supported by the king, the charitable hospital of the
Confraternity of Mercy, or Hermandad de la Misericordia, main
tained by the rich endowments of the principal society of the
obras pias, and the Hospital of San Juan de Dios for natives.
This institution was conducted by the Franciscan priests and laybrothers. "A great many natives, suffering from all diseases,"
said Morga, "are treated there with great care and attention.
The physicians, surgeons and apothecaries are so skilful and use
ful, that they cause many marvelous cures, both in medicine and
in surgery."
Morga thus describes the houses of the Spaniards in his time:
"The streets of the city are compactly built up with houses, mostly
of stone, although some are of wood. Many are roofed with clay
tiles and others with nipa thatch. They are excellent edifices,
lofty and spacious, and have large rooms and many windows, and
balconies with iron gratings, that embellish them. More are daily
being built and finished. There are about six hundred houses
within the walls, and a greater number, built of wood, in the sub
urbs; and all are the habitations and homes of Spaniards." After
the burning of the original wooden city in 1583 and the disastrous
fire of 1603, the Spanish city was soon entirely reconstructed of
stone, with roofs of red rile.
It was a colorful scene that the city made, as Morga wrote of
its crowds, with which he must often have mingled. "The
streets, squares and churches are generally filled with people of
all classes, especially Spaniards—all, both men and women, clad
and gorgeously adorned in silks. They wear many ornaments
and all kinds of fine clothes, because of the ease with which these
are obtained. Consequently this is one of the places most highly
praised by the foreigners who resort to it, of all in the world,
both for the above reason and for the great provision and abun
dance of food and other necessities for human life found there."
When the Spaniards wished to leave the precincts of the
walled city for recreation, they had the choice of two drives. One
led by the present route of the Malecon and the Luneta along
the shore of the bay through the native quarter of Bagum-bayan
to the popular shrine of Our Lady of Guidance and on to the
Augustinian monastery in Malate. Another extended inland
through the old suburb of Laguio, now called Conception, to
INTRODUCTION
37
the Chapel of San Anton and ended at the Franciscan monastery
and mission house of La Candelaria near the Japanese quarter.
Thus, the Manilenos were accustomed to mingle devotion and
pleasure in their excursions from the confinement of the city.
The better class of Tagalogs lived in the quarter of Malate,
which fronted on the beach beyond the walled town. In the
lowlands immediately beyond the walls there were grouped a
number of native settlements, which included Santiago, San
Anton, San Miguel, San Lazaro, and Dilao. However, in 1791
the government undertook to clear this section of the metropoli
tan area, in order to ensure the better defense of the walled city
from that side. At the same time, their inhabitants were settled
on lands farther removed from the old city, to which they gave
the names of their original quarters.
The Parian, or enclosed district of the Chinese, was situated
near the river in the locality of the present Botanical Garden.
A large body of Chinese also lived on the opposite side of the
Pasig in two settlements in the popular Filipino quarter of
Tondo. For a time there was a smaller Japanese community
between the Parian and the quarter of Laguio.
The belief in the splendor of Manila persisted into the time
of her decadence, when at last traders and travelers could see her
as she really was. To much of the rest of the world Manila was
still the great center of a rich commerce whose returns were
fabulously high. Morden, an English geographer, wrote in 1693
that Manila was then "the Magazine of the richest commodities
in the World." Crawford, another Englishman, writing in 1762,
the year in which the English force of occupation expected to
enrich themselves by putting the city to loot and ransom, said:
"The British public absurdly imagined that Manila, an ill-gov
erned settlement and oppressed by all the devices of Spanish
colonial restrictions, must be a place of great wealth. They were
seduced into a belief in this mischievous phantasy, by the daz
zling and popular spectacle of the millions of dollars sent annu
ally from America, by the dazzling captures of Cavendish and
Anson, and by the imposing circumstances of seeing annually
embarked in a single speculation the commercial adventures of
a whole settlement, in itself one of the most obvious sources of
a poverty, which it would have been reasonable to have pre
dicted." Not only was this fame due to the reports of the wealth
38
THE MANILA GALLEON
of captured galleons like the Santa Ana and the Covadonga,
but also to the Spanish policy of excluding foreigners from the
city, leaving them to their imagination. Thus, bright as was
the reality in early times, fancy endowed Manila with the ex
aggerated glamour of a "forbidden city."
No ship ever played the part in a city's life which the gal
leon did in that of Manila. It brought the Spanish settlers out
to the distant colony. If they survived the fevers, and were not
of the small minority who would establish themselves perma
nently in the islands, the galleon would carry them back in a
few years, enriched, to Mexico or on to Spain. It was the solitary
mail-boat that brought them the year-old or two-year-old news
from Mexico or Madrid, of new viceroys and kings, of belated
royal decrees that vitally concerned their own fortunes, and of
wars in which Spain herself might be taking a part, with letters
from the Spanish town whence they had come, and to which
they might return, to set up in state. Their only occupation
and source of income were the Acapulco trade. The character
of Manila society, in the wider sense of that word, was deter
mined, beyond the circumstances of climate and situation, by
conditions incidental to the all-important galleon commerce.
The commercial position of the Spaniards was that of inter
mediaries. Their part in the trade was a stationary one, since
without the need for exerting themselves trading routes from all
the Orient naturally converged at Manila and the products of
all those regions gravitated, without effort on their part, to its
profitable market. The Spaniards, assured of rich returns from
New Spain, paid good prices—"like gentlemen"—and the
traders of the east vied for a share of the constant stream of
silver pesos that poured in from the mints of Mexico and Peru.
In the circumstances, the Manilenos rarely felt the urgency for
venturing forth in search of new markets.
The mercantile operations of no trading system could have
been simpler or less arduous. For the typical merchant, they
amounted to taking over at a regular season of the year a part
of the merchandise brought to Manila by the Chinese or other
Orientals, registering at the treasury his consignment for the
galleon, the making out of the invoices for the galleon's register,
and the packing of his bales and chests for shipment. At the
return of the galleon he received his share of the proceeds of her
INTRODUCTION
39
voyage, and, if he were a debtor to the obras pias for the money
he had invested in his shipment, he arranged his accounts with
these clerical bankers. According to Morga, this whole series
of transactions did not consume more than three months of the
twelve. By Viana's time, nearly two centuries later, the period
of exertion had been shortened by a month.
The possession of nine or ten months of leisure in the year
permitted the enjoyment of an easy and luxurious existence,
except as it might be interrupted by the incidence of war or
catastrophe to which the city was long subject. The where
withal for such a favored life was provided by the profits from
the galleon; its proper adornment was made possible by the
availability of Oriental goods of an infinite variety and a tempt
ing cheapness. The whole Orient and the Americas, and be
yond them, the looms and workshops of Europe were drawn on
to minister to their desires for indulgence in food and dress
and equipage.
The high returns from the galleon trade and the facilities
which it afforded for a life of luxury discouraged the Spaniards
from embarking in other occupations that might have given
them more security, if less glamour. In 1586 Pedro de Rojas
wrote to Philip II from Manila that the entire colony was ab
sorbed in the Acapulco commerce. He complained that it un
fitted them for warlike enterprises, and his picture of the moral
consequences, "effeminacy, vices, luxuries, fine clothes, eating
and drinking," is similar to that drawn by Padre Zuniga over
two hundred years later. In a memorial addressed to the Coun
cil of the Indies the same year by some citizens of Manila, in
cluding Governor Vera, they lamented the unsettled and uncul
tivated state of the islands, which they attributed to the fact that
the first comers were conquerors, and that "afterwards all
thought and care were transferred to traffic and gain."
"This trade is so great and profitable and easy to control,"
wrote Morga in 1609, "that the Spaniards do not apply them
selves to, or engage in, any other industry. Consequently there
is no husbandry or field labor worthy of consideration. They
do not engage in the many other industries to which they could
turn with great profit, if the Chinese trade should fail them.
That trade has been very hurtful and prejudicial in this respect."
Governor Alonso Fajardo called it "the harvest that sustains the
4o
THE MANILA GALLEON
country," and in 1637 Grau y Monfalcon declared that the Span
iards could not exist without the trade, since all agriculture was
in the hands of the natives, and retail trade and the mechanical
arts were a monopoly of the Chinese. And he added: "The
principal motive that leads the Spaniards to those islands is the
profit from the trade with New Spain, for which they risk their
lives and property in a long and painful voyage."
Nearly a century later the city, in a memorial which it di
rected to the king, made the following appeal on behalf of the
old order: "As soon as these islands were discovered, it was
recognized that for their maintenance and increase trade was
necessary with other regions; for there were no profitable mines
in them and the products of their soil could not furnish the basis
of a commerce for their support." Francisco Leandro de Viana,
writing in 1767, said: "The Spaniards do not go out of Manila,
where all are gentlemen; they regard it as unworthy to devote
themselves to any other pursuit than commerce; they employ
themselves in swindling and begging alms, rather than seek a
living in the provinces and, above all, they live in utter idleness.
They loiter about and divert themselves with gambling and
other vices. For this reason, Manila is the commonwealth most
abominable for malicious tales, slanders and factions, for sloth
and licentiousness." The next year Governor Anda attributed
part of the bad state of the Spanish population to "the exclusion
of all other means of gain." "The products of the islands," he
continued, "are largely in the hands of the friars, the provincial
alcaldes are concerned to a certain extent, and the Chinese and
mestizos receive a large share, but the Spanish population benefit
little or none." The verdict of the chief of the insular bureau of
accounts, writing in 1805, was as severe, when he declared that
the Acapulco trade had always been "prejudicial to the state, the
inhabitants, and the city."
A memorial directed to Governor Berenguer by the City of
Manila in 1788 well illustrates the citizens' position on the trade.
"The Spanish conquerors of these islands," it read, "did not leave
Spain to take up the plow in the Philippines; much less did they
undertake so long and unknown a navigation to set up looms
and transplant new fruits. At the first insinuation of this, they
would have left the islands, and the archipelago would today be
in the hands of another power. That which led those great men
INTRODUCTION
4i
to abandon home and country and to face so many dangers was
their interest in gold and spices, which they believed they would
find on touching these shores. Once established here, it was
necessary to maintain communications with New Spain whence
they must receive reinforcements and subsidies. That led to the
concession of an annual 'permission' for Acapulco, and the fame
of the commerce of this port was the loadstone which has drawn
Spaniards from Europe and America to this city. The natural
inclination of men to seek their fortune by the shortest road led
them to migrate with the sole aim of freighting the Philippine
galleon. The result of this was the establishment and gradual
increase of this community. How could a small number of
men, already occupied in commerce, because of the advantages
they found in it, apply themselves to the cultivation of the soil,
the introduction of new plants, or the establishment of manu
factures,—objects that demand serious attention and a long
course of time, to which no one occupied in trade can attend?
The regard of the trader is directed solely to commerce, and
not to something else that would distract him from his occupa
tion. Other occupations demand other men, whose natural lean
ing is towards their profession. None but Spaniards of adven
turous temper have ever come to the Philippines and these have
not been suited for the development of industry. The European
nations who now have colonies in America and Asia all know
that to give them their present luster they purposely colonized
them with many families experienced in the arts and agriculture.
If a like course had been followed in the case of Manila, it would
have contributed to its progress. It is very evident that since
this trade has fallen in importance but few Spaniards come,
which decrease is the source of the depopulation of this city.
"Since the founding of this commonwealth there has not
been, nor is there now, any other means of conserving the
Islands, and of defending them at all times by land and sea
against whatever enemies, internal or foreign, have made at
tempts on them, save the Acapulco ship. . . . This commerce
is, then, the only base and foundation of the subsistence of this
commonwealth."
Many foreign observers in the eighteenth century com
mented on the failure of the Spaniards to develop the resources
of the islands. Sir William Draper, who was governor at
42
THE MANILA GALLEON
Manila during the short-lived English occupation in 1762, said
of the Spanish colony: "It may appear wonderful that so many
islands, so excellent in situation, should yield so little for foreign
commerce." La Perouse, the French navigator, said: "The
Philippines resemble the estates of those great lords, whose lands
remain uncultivated, though they would make the fortune of a
number of families." His countryman, Legentil, observed at
first hand the effect on the colony of its general preoccupation
with the galleon trade. "I saw," he remarked, "that although
the Spaniards derived no advantage from these islands they
could have made of them the most flourishing colony on earth."
"The regard of the Spaniard at Manila," he continued, "is fixed
on the galleon bound for Acapulco, which is to bring him back
the means of living through the next year. Thus, his ambition
passes from one galleon to another, and ends there. He sees
the impossibility in which he exists of raising himself above this
state of affairs. He thinks neither of cultivating the soil nor
of any other branch of trade. The galleon is the source of his
well-being and he is content to leave it so, but if the ship fails to
return, as has happened more than once, he vegetates in medi
ocrity or dies in misery." In another place he writes: "The Manilenos have no lands, as in France and Spain, and so no assured
income. The money which they spend never returns to thenhands. . . . The result of all this is that one sees an infinity of
ups and downs in the fortunes of the citizens of Manila, and that
today the children of those who were once very rich are often
reduced to beggary and lost in the mass of the people. I was
astonished every day to hear remarks like these in the streets of
Manila : 'Do you see that person,' one would say to me, 'who asks
for alms? Well, his grandfather—or even his father—had a
great deal of money. But the poor devil suffered heavy losses,
and his children, or his grandchildren, are in the state that you
see. The father of that man was general of the galleon and lost
everything. This other one is a descendant of the Marquis of
So-and-so, who once cut a great figure here. What fiestas and
what balls he gave! He is dead and he left very little to his
children. The executors never made an accounting of his in
heritance and his children are left in the plight you see.'" "I
have been assured," Legentil concludes, "that money very rarely
passes to the third generation."
INTRODUCTION
43
This change in the character of colonial society was also
pictured by Padre Zuniga in the beginning of the last century.
The priest described the spectacle of those creoles who had dis
sipated their own accumulations or the heritages of their fathers.
He saw them wandering about the streets of Manila, "in the
greatest misery and begging alms," while five hundred coaches
of their more fortunate fellows were rattling through the same
streets. Added to these were other classes,—renegades and ad
venturers, heedless of all the ordinary bonds of society, envious
mestizos without caste in the Spanish community, ruined and
disaffected men who had staked and lost all on a wrecked galleon,
imported criminals of expired term,—for the Philippines were
long a penal colony,—and disbanded soldiers of unsteady habits.
Such men were ready for any questionable venture, and gained
their living by fraud or violence or mendicancy.
Other reasons for the failure to develop agriculture and
manufactures were the dangers to intrainsular traffic from Moro
piracy, which was until recent times a constant obstacle to peace
ful navigation; the lack of demand in Mexico for Philippine
products (except cottons); the gathering of the small Spanish
population in Manila for greater security and comfort; the gen
eral aversion of the Spanish colonizer to agriculture where there
was any other means of enrichment; the early occupation of the
best lands by the friars—a result as much as it was a cause; the
restriction of the amount of the galleon's cargo, which favored
the more compact Chinese silks as against the bulkier products
of the islands; and the absence of any organized effort—until
the Royal Philippine Company—to foment agriculture. The
Spaniards merely followed the line of least resistance and largest
profits.
From the time of Philip II, for whom the islands were
named and during whose reign they were occupied, there existed
a movement to abandon the Philippines. In fact, the abandon
ment of the group was discussed in Spain only a year after
Legaspi's arrival on Cebu. The motives for these proposals were
financial and commercial. The colony was not self-supporting,
for the duties collected on the galleon's imports into New Spain
seldom equaled the amount of the annual subsidy, or situado,
which was sent out to Manila from the viceregal treasury in Mex
ico, In extenuation of the chronic deficit in the insular finances,
44
THE MANILA GALLEON
the Manilenos contended that a large part of the subvention from
Mexico was drained off to finance the expeditions against the
Moluccas and to maintain the Spanish establishments in those
islands, which were not relinquished until 1662. As they con
tended the costly Moluccan enterprise had not been of their choos
ing, they protested against being held responsible for its effects
on the insular finances.
The opposition of the powerful commercial interests of the
Andalusian cities was a more formidable support of the move
ment than were these considerations of fixed policy. The gal
leon trade in Chinese silks competed with their trade with the
American viceroyalties and threatened the existence of the na
tional silk industry. Therefore they intrigued and labored at
court to have the troublesome colony turned adrift.
Though the evacuation of the islands was seriously debated
at times, the skilled advocacy of their interests by the friends of
the colony always saved them. In any emergency, Manila could
depend on the powerful support of the Church with its great
spiritual and material interests in the islands. National senti
ment and the prestige of the crown were also concerned in the
preservation of the colony. The kings had a weakness for the
city to which Philip II had given the title of "Notable and Ever
Loyal." Philip IV once called it "the best and most honored
city in the overseas dominions of my monarchy."
If the Philippines were abandoned, it was certain that they
would quickly fall into the hands of the Dutch or the English,
a prospect which Spanish pride could not face with equanimity.
The Philippines also formed an advanced post for the defense
of the western coasts of the Americas against aggressions from
the side of Asia and the Eastern Indies, and so constituted an
important link in the general plan of Spanish strategy in the
Pacific. There was also enunciated on behalf of the Philippines
the benevolent principle of statecraft that "a king holds some
states because he needs them, and others because they need him."
Only out of Spain could there have come in that age a concept
of imperial policy so quixotic in its nobility.
Philippine products never held more than a minor place in
the cargoes of the galleons. The Spaniards never became aware
of the true extent of the islands' gold deposits. And the Philip
pines produced neither silks nor spices,—except for cinnamon,—-
INTRODUCTION
45
the two great staples of Oriental trade. As we have seen, the
Spaniards were early disillusioned of riches from the develop
ment of insular resources. Legaspi showed little enthusiasm for
the industrial prospects of the colony he founded. His admiral,
Juan Pablo Carrion, said: "No profit can be expected from the
islands until trading connections can be opened with China and
the rest of the Indies." And it was the beginning of the rich
trade in Chinese silks that removed at the outset all incentive
for a systematic investigation of the possibilities in local produc
tion. Doctor Sande, the third governor, called the land "as
sterile as one who lives on charity," and those who came after
him for the next century and a half accepted his verdict with
little questioning of its soundness.
It is difficult to determine the exact extent of the Philippine
goods shipped on the galleons. The Spaniards in the islands
wished the merchants of Cadiz and Seville to remain ignorant
of the potentialities of insular production, which their rivals in
the peninsula might consider adequate compensation for a pro
hibition of the trade in Chinese silks. Accordingly, it was the
policy of the islanders to minimize whatever importance this
branch of the galleon trade had, and, to accomplish this, they
were not averse to falsifying the entries in the ships' registers.
Such efforts as were made during the last century of the
galleon trade to promote the exportation of native products were
largely defeated by the inertia or open hostility of the Spanish
traders in Manila, who looked with disfavor on any innovation
in the old order, then long sanctified by time and custom. In
fact, an especially remiss application of the fiscal and commer
cial laws was designed to favor the growth of insular industry
and trade. In their case the royal authorities at Manila usually
waived the imposition of the export duties levied on goods of
foreign origin destined for the Mexican market. In this way
insular goods enjoyed the advantage of what amounted to a
preferential tariff or bounty. Nor were the products of the
islands generally included in making up the legal total of cargo,
but were shipped outside it. In 1609 Banuelos y Carrillo told
Philip III that "the inhabitants of the Manilas should be allowed
to export as many shiploads of the country's produce as pos
sible." In 1720 the royal prosecutor, or fiscal, declared that the
pcrmiso, or limitation on the galleon's cargo, had never been
46
THE MANILA GALLEON
held to apply to such goods. The colony's agents in Spain al
ways favored the formal abolition of such restrictions as there
were on the exportation of insular products. Though their pri
mary purpose was probably to secure more lading space for the
Chinese stuffs, in some cases they may have argued from a sin
cere desire to stimulate the development of Philippine resources.
For example, Grau y Monfalcon said: "The products of the
islands, by that very fact, ought to be exported freely, a claim
founded on justice, since it is not usual to prohibit to any prov
ince its own trade." He should have written "just" for "usual,"
since England and France, save in periods of laxness, were as
jealous of their colonies' unrestrained prosperity as was Spain.
At rare times, as when the Chinese trade was temporarily
interrupted, the volume, if not the value, of insular goods on
the galleons may have been considerable. Yet, during the long
and bitter contest with the Andalusian cities it was declared that
"the only products of the islands for the New Spain trade are
wax, Ilocos cottons, and cordage,—and the value of these ex
ported, with some gold chains, does not go beyond 30,000 pesos."
This was at a time when the permitted cargo was ten times that
amount. Morga gives as the insular products exported to
America in his day "gold, cotton-cloth, and cakes of white and
yellow wax."
From the very earliest appearance of Spaniards in the archi
pelago they had observed traces of gold among the natives, usu
ally in the form of ornaments, and the conquerors accordingly
had at first high hopes of a lucrative output of the metal. How
ever, they remained ignorant of the exact origin of such gold
as they encountered. Pigafetta, chronicler-companion of Magel
lan's voyage, wrote of placer mines among the Visayas, where
"pieces of gold, of the size of walnuts and eggs" were sifted from
the auriferous sands of the streams. Alvaro de Saavedra, who
was among the group in 1527, mentioned Cebu as yielding gold,
besides "many fine hogs." The famous pilot, Urdaneta, who
accompanied Loaysa's ill-fated expedition, told of "much gold"
in Mindanao and Cebu, and the credulous followers of Villalobos were regaled with like tales of gold. In his first report
to the king, Legaspi said : "The people wear gold earrings, brace
lets and necklaces. Wherever we have gone we found a display
of these articles." In a later communication he announced the
INTRODUCTION
47
presence of "more or less gold" in all the islands, but lamented
that the natives were too indolent to work the mines steadily,
while he anticipated little profit from this source for the con
querors. Two years after his arrival at Cebu, he wrote to Philip
II: "In some islands we have been informed of and have seen
mines of gold, which, if the islands were peopled with Spaniards,
would, it is believed, be rich and profitable."
A considerable quantity of gold, received as tribute from the
natives or obtained in barter from them, usually constituted part
of the cargoes of the early galleons. The provinces of Ilocos
and Pangasinan, on Luzon, paid their first tribute in gold, to the
value of 109,000 pesos. The Spaniards themselves engaged but
little in the actual work of mining and depended on what they
could obtain from the natives, who feared their cupidity and
concealed the sources of their gold. Like the management of a
lone hacienda, panning gold in a remote mountain stream was
not only more arduous but less remunerative than taking part
at Manila in the galleon trade. Governor Diego Ronquillo
(1583-84) said that in some years from 60,000 to 70,000 pesos in
gold were taken to Acapulco. But the gold carried by the gal
leons became of less and less consequence. The Spaniards be
lieved the falling-off was due to a contraband trade between
natives and foreigners, in which the former exchanged gold for
merchandise. As late as 1783 Francisco Martinez de la Costa
declared that the "Indians" took out about two million pesos of
gold each year and bartered it to foreigners. "In former times,"
he adds, "gold was sent to Mexico, since Cavendish found 658,000
libras on the Santa Ana." 2
Philippine spices proved to be as disappointing a support for
a local economy as did gold. Yet, the hopes of the conquerors,
that they had at last found what Columbus had sought in vain,
were at first as high as they were of rich gold discoveries. Guido
de Lavezaris, Legaspi's aide and successor, wrote to Philip II of
a great area of cinnamon trees on Mindanao and of rumors that
the hills on the southern island were full of the spice.3 Cinnamon
* Gold it now one of the most important products of the Philippines. The out
put in 1936, largely mined on Luzon, amounted to 19,684,976 fine grams, with a
value of $22,197,276. Gold production in 1937 was valued at $25,626,911.
3 The true cinnamon of commerce (Cinnamomum zeylanicum) is indigenous to
Ceylon. However, the bark of Cinnamomum mindanaense is very similar to the Ceylonese variety.
48
THE MANILA GALLEON
from that region was shipped on the first galleons from Cebu to
Mexico. But the Spaniards never made a serious effort to develop
a trade in the local bark and generally imported cinnamon from
Ceylon for the American market. On the other hand, they
never entirely abandoned the idea of a lucrative spice production
from the country about Zamboanga on Mindanao. In 1625
Philip IV ordered Governor Fajardo to promote the growing of
nutmegs, but that unhappy man died the year before. Insular
spices were to have an important role in the plans of the gov
ernors who ruled the Philippines in the period of revival in the
later eighteenth century, though the practical results were insig
nificant.
The Dutch, aware of its usefulness for spice production,
placed a stone on Mindanao in the early part of the eighteenth
century to signify their intention of occupying it. Nicholas
Norton Nichols, an Englishman who resided in the Philippines,
attempted to arouse the Spaniards to a belated effort to develop
a spice industry in the southern islands. "Cinnamon grows very
abundantly in Mindanao," he wrote to Charles III in 1759; "it
would be of no little advantage to be able to cultivate it as the
Dutch do." "Spain," he added, "might with as good reason send
to Holland to buy wine as cinnamon." "Nutmegs also grow
there," he said, "and need only to be cultivated; also pepper of
the best quality can be had in abundance."
But, in view of the attitude of the Manilenos, Mindanao
could never be made to compensate for the loss of the Moluccas.
An extensive cultivation of spices in that region would have in
volved incessant conflicts with the Moros, and with the assurance
of the highly profitable Chinese silk trade the Spaniards on Luzon
never felt the urgency of undertaking the systematic exploitation
of the spice industry on the great southern island. After they
gave up their temporary hold on the Spice Isles themselves, they
obtained the bulk of their spices from the Dutch in Java. They
bought large quantities each year for the Mexican market, while
the peninsular merchants bought some from the Dutch East India
Company, part of which was in turn reshipped to Spanish
America, there to compete with that shipped from Manila.
Some half-hearted efforts were early made to encourage the
manufacture of cottons by the natives for export to New Spain.
The influx of similar goods from China and India after the
INTRODUCTION
49
Spanish occupation largely caused the natives to abandon the
manufacture of cloth even for their own consumption. An ordi
nance of 1591 forbade the Filipinos to wear Chinese stuffs, but
this restriction and the efforts of Governor Dasmarinas to revive
the industry with a view to contributing to the Acapulco trade
had little effect. There was a good market for such materials in
Mexico and the demand could have been largely supplied by
Philippine manufactures. The lampotes or gauze of Cebu was
especially esteemed, both by the islanders and the Mexicans. The
cotton mantas or sail-cloth, made in the Province of Ilocos on
Luzon were also in wide demand among shipping in the East
Indies. A larger trade in these insular products would also have
served to keep in the islands some of the silver from Mexico.
Among other textile goods of domestic manufacture which found
a regular demand in Mexico were linen sheets and tablecloths
and bed canopies, bed coverlets from Lubang and Ilocos, cotton
stockings from Manila, and petticoats and hammocks from Ilocos.
During the later seventeenth century a momentous change
came over the Spanish colony. Exhausted by the efforts of the
heroic age, it gradually drew within itself and vegetated in in
glorious obscurity. The days when Spain swaggered about the
East were over. Under the threat of a Chinese pirate state on
Formosa, the Moluccas and the Moro Islands were abandoned in
1662 and their garrisons withdrawn to Manila. The armed forces
and defenses of the colony were neglected. The replacements in
the troops were now largely inferior recruits from Mexico, in
stead of the veteran infantry of former times who had seen service
in Flanders and in other continental campaigns. The result was
that toward the end of this sorry period even the Moros raided
at will among the islands in defiance of a government too supine
to hold them in check. Only Luzon and the Visayas remained,
and the once brilliant luster of Spanish prestige in the Orient was
dimmed, never again to awe its peoples with the old daring and
splendor of its imperial enterprises.
Though not to the same degree, the Philippines shared in the
decadence of the mother country under the later Hapsburgs and
the first of the Bourbons. From the great age when she had
lorded it over the rest of continental Christendom Spain had left
to her little more than her inexorable pride and the American
colonies into which England and France were already making
50
THE MANILA GALLEON
inroads. The very nation appeared weary and disillusioned, as
though by efforts beyond its strength, made in pursuit of aims
that no longer seemed worth the cost. The epic adventure of the
conqtdsta had ended, and with it there seemed to have gone for
the time much of the high spirit and energy of the race. Her
rulers governed the monarchy and its overseas empire with sub
lime ineptitude, and among the viceroys and governors who were
sent out during this period there were few who rose above the
general level of mediocrity, even when far from the dead hand
of an irresolute and unintelligent court.
The galleon trade was sustained by the impetus of the past
well into the era of political decline. In 1663 the Jesuit historian,
Padre Colin, could say of a commerce that was still varied and
far-reaching: "Manila is the equal of any other emporium of our
monarchy, for it is the center to which flow the riches of the
Orient and the Occident, the silver of Peru and New Spain, the
pearls and precious stones of India, the diamonds of Narsinga
and Goa, the rubies, sapphires and topazes, and the cinnamon
of Ceylon, the pepper of Sumatra and the Javas, the cloves, nut
megs and other spices of the Moluccas and Banda, the fine Per
sian silks and wool and carpets from Ormuz and Malabar, rich
hangings and bed coverings of Bengal, fine camphor of Borneo,
balsam and ivory of Abada and Cambodia, the civet of the
Lequios, and from Great China silks of all kinds, raw and woven
in velvets and figured damasks, taffetas and other cloths of every
texture, design and colors, linens, and cotton mantles, gilt-deco
rated articles, embroideries and porcelains, and other riches and
curiosities of great value and esteem, from Japan, amber, vari
colored silks, escritoires, boxes and desks of precious woods,
lacquered and with curious decorations, and very fine silverware."
Yet, only seven years before, the City, brooding over its waning
prosperity, addressed to Philip IV the following lament: "This
city had a vast commerce with Great China, Japan, the kingdoms
of Cochin-China, Macassar, Cambodia, and Siam, and with the
Portuguese inhabitants of the Eastern Indies, Goa, Cochin, Ben
gal, Nagapatam, Cananor, and Ormuz, from whence there came
such an abundance of merchandise and precious stuffs that with
this great trade Manila was considered, and rightly so, as a new
Venice."
Influences were at work in the trade, which, though their
INTRODUCTION
5»
full effects were long delayed, were gradually to bring about its
eventual ruin. A cautious spirit of routine was supplanting the
bold initiative of earlier times. Signs were evident of the monop
oly of the trade by a small body of professional merchants, who
were forced to share their profits with speculators in Mexico and
with the clerical bankers of the obras pias, whose credits were
partly depended upon to finance their operations. In their
sources of supply throughout the Orient the Spaniards had begun
to feel the competition of rivals with more enterprise and a keener
commercial sense, who broke into the eastern trade after the
coming of the Iberian peoples.
Also, the galleon trade was increasingly harassed by the re
strictive policy of the central government. The trade, which
profited from administrative laxness and collusion at both ends
of the line, had survived the rigorous regime temporarily put
into effect at Acapulco in 1635 by the royal visitador, Pedro de
Quiroga. It then enjoyed a long period of tolerance until 1714,
when the ancient feud between Manila and the Andalusian ports
was reopened as a result of revelations made at Acapulco by
Viceroy Linares. Four years later, at the behest of commercial
interests in Spain, the king ordered the abolition of the trade in
Chinese silks. Though the royal decree was arbitrarily suspended
by the new viceroy, Valero, the order was reissued in October
1720, by Philip V, in terms more far-reaching than that of 1718.
News of the fateful law did not reach Manila for nearly two
years. The colony, threatened with ruin, prepared strong repre
sentations to the king and invoked in its behalf the aid of all
the interests on which it generally counted in times of emergency.
Their efforts were crowned with success when the king issued a
decree in June 1724, raising the ban on the traffic in silks.
Though Cadiz and Seville again raised the issue in 1729 on the
instigation of Viceroy Casafuerte, the court turned a deaf ear to
their entreaties. Moreover, a royal decree of April 18, 1734, en
acted into law the demands of the Manilerios for further con
cessions and definitely sealed their victory over their hated rivals.
In the Philippines only the Church prospered. Its leaders
were able, its policies had the force of continuity, and the re
serves of its wealth were never dissipated. The clerical element
was dominant and the colony took on more and more the char
acter of a vast religious establishment. Manila had become a
52
THE MANILA GALLEON
"warehouse of the Faith"—"almacen de la Fe"—from which mis
sionaries issued forth to labor at the conversion of the infidels of
the surrounding regions. In 1722 there were said to be over 1500
priests in the islands, or more than the total of the Spanish lay
population at that time. Even the galleon trade was largely sub
sidiary to their interest through the ecclesiastical control of the
obras pias, or rich charitable foundations, on whose funds ship
pers were often accustomed to depend to finance their consign
ments to Acapulco. If the government, beyond the collection of
the head-tax or "tribute," largely abandoned the native popula
tion of the provinces to the care and solicitude of the clergy, it
was to the credit of the Church that whatever advantages of Eu
ropean civilization the Filipino people derived from the Spanish
regime were in large part the work of the priests. Also, most
of the lands which had been held in encomienda by lay Spaniards
had gradually come into possession of the friars, eventually to
create a problem which was only solved after the American occu
pation.
Governors found it necessary to yield before the dictation of
the all-powerful religious orders. One, Salcedo, was broken by
the Inquisition and, a prisoner of the Holy Office, died at sea on
his way to Mexico in 1669. The conflict between Church and
state was never more bitter than during the governorship of
Vargas Hurtado (1678-1684), when the high-handed and violent
Archbishop Pardo was head of the Philippine hierarchy. Ban
ishment and excommunication were freely resorted to. Vargas,
when no longer governor, was humiliated by being forced to
stand daily in the streets of Manila with a rope around his neck
and a candle in his hand, and, like Salcedo, finally died on an
outgoing galleon, a prisoner of his clerical enemies. When
Bustamante, a governor of the old school, attempted to revive
the former prerogatives of his office, he aroused the bitter opposi
tion of the clergy, who stirred up the populace in sedition against
him. At last, on the nth of October 1719, a mob, incited by
friars, broke into the palace and slaughtered the brave and defiant
governor. After the enlightened rule of Governor Arandia
(1754-1759), which presaged the revival that was soon to come,
there was a short interregnum of church control during the unfor
tunate governorship of Archbishop Rojo (1761-1762). In the
circumstances, it was natural that orthodoxy should come to be
INTRODUCTION
53
rated a higher virtue than industry and that charity should be
held above foresight and thrift. The Inquisition was entrusted
with the pursuit of heretics, and, according to Morga, it had never
failed "to have plenty to do." The Frenchman, Legentil, who
lamented the effects of what he called "the despotism of religion,"
declared that, although non-Christians were admitted at Manila
for purposes of conversion, he had not heard of a single case in
the century and a half of the city's trade where a Moslem had for
saken Mahomet or an Armenian had abjured his error.
As the Philippines had shared in the decadence of the mothercountry, so were they to participate in the revival of Spain in
the eighteenth century. The new state of affairs which developed
in the peninsula and culminated in the "enlightened despotism"
of Charles III (1757-1788) was reflected in a similar improvement
in the colonies. In the Philippines the reforming king and his
progressive ministers had their counterparts in royal administra
tors of a refreshingly new stamp, whose minds were open to the
progressive ideas of the age and who were brutally critical of the
shortcomings of the old regime. They were exemplified in gov
ernors like Arandia (1754-1759), Anda (1762-1764; 1770-1776),
Basco (1778-1787), and Aguilar (1793-1806), and other officials
like Calderon Enriquez and Francisco Leandro de Viana. They
introduced far-reaching reforms in the government and the
economy of the colony. That they did not accomplish more was
only due to the shortness of the time at their disposal and to the
opposition of those who profited by the perpetuation of old abuses.
They had everywhere to contend with the selfishness and sus
picion of long-established interests, and with an inertia that had
its roots deep in custom, the tropical environment, and the con
servatism of the Orient.
The revival took the form of (1) greater vigor and honesty
in the public administration; (2) a more intensive development
of the internal resources of the long fallow islands; (3) an at
tempt to reorientate and broaden the commercial life of the
colony by the opening of direct trade with Spain; and (4) a more
liberal attitude towards the traders of other nations. The crux
of the movement was the creation of a new local economy, based
on the long neglected productive capacity of the islands them
selves and that would take little account of the goings and com
ings of the galleons and the junks. Tobacco, sugar, hemp and
54
THE MANILA GALLEON
copra were to form a more stable economic basis for the colony
in the new age. At last the Philippines were to have a value and
importance in themselves, rather than as a mere way-station in
the two-century-old trade between China and Mexico or as a
preserve of the Church.
The tradition of the galleon monopoly was clearly incom
patible with the new order of things. A memorial, drawn up in
1805 by the royal treasury officials at Manila, was to contain this
indictment of the ancient trade: "It is well known that the pro
ceeds from the galleon commerce have been of little benefit to
agriculture and industry in the Philippines. Instead of realizing
the great advantages that were promised by the fertility of these
lands, the stream of silver which has poured in from New Spain
has only had the effect of rendering sterile those very advantages.
For the profits are only divided among a small number of real
merchants, a few of their hangers-on, some persons with influ
ence in Manila, and the intermediaries in Mexico. The result is
that, instead of promoting the welfare of the farmers and the
artisans and of the other poor classes of those islands, it has been
prejudicial to the state and to its inhabitants. For the greater
the abundance of money which passes from New Spain to the
Philippines, and thence into the dead hands of the Chinese, the
merchants of India and other peoples who supply the cargoes
of the galleons, the greater is the damage which it does. From
it ensues the scarcity and dearness of everything necessary for the
support of life, a circumstance which vitally affects the poorer
inhabitants of the islands. That is the situation now." Probably
the most vigorous advocate of a new economic order was Gover
nor Jose Basco y Vargas. In a noteworthy manifesto to "the
people of the Philippines" in 1779 he proposed the large-scale
cultivation of sugar cane, tobacco, cotton, cacao, cinnamon, and
silk worms, and the development of the islands' mineral wealth.
He realized the value of the industrial application of scientific
knowledge which had placed England in the forefront of Euro
pean nations. "When we shall really seek our own welfare,"
he said, "we shall see what by lack of study, application and
industry we now miss, and that is that these islands are pure
silver for us if we will but exert ourselves to find it." He then
enunciated the important principle that the commerce of the
Philippines should depend on the islands themselves and not on
INTRODUCTION
55
the uncertainty of foreign supply. The Sociedad Econdmica de
los Amigos del Pais, or "Economic Society of Friends of the
Country," was the principal vehicle for the propagation of Basco's
truly revolutionary and far-reaching ideas. Under the impetus
which he supplied, agriculture was developed as never before, and
much of what he accomplished was never lost. One of his en
terprises which was to have permanent results was the famous
tobacco monopoly, which placed the cultivation and export of
tobacco on a profitable basis. Also, by creating this and other
sources of new revenues, he succeeded in freeing the insular gov
ernment from its long dependence as a pensionary on the annual
subsidy from Mexico.
Four years after Governor Basco's manifesto Francisco
Martinez de la Costa, lamenting "the chaos in which these islands
are now submerged," proposed the working of their iron ore de
posits as one means of their economic rehabilitation. He de
clared that the first blast furnaces and forges for the utilization
of domestic ore had been established by Governor Anda, but that
on Anda's death they had been abandoned. He also suggested a
great expansion of the sugar industry, which had hitherto pro
duced only for the local market. Of the ban on the export of
insular sugar, he said: "This is a blind policy, since the soil of
the Philippines is so favorable for the growing of sugar cane that
they could supply a great part of Asia." *
The most comprehensive project until the creation of the
Royal Philippine Company is found in the memorial addressed
to the king by Francisco Leandro de Viana. This was in 1765,
shortly after the Seven Years' War, when the islands were all but
lost to England. Even the government in the peninsula was
rudely awakened to the problem of the future management of
the colony, and such men as Viana and Anda, who had held
Luzon against the invaders, labored to secure the adoption of
some policy that would not only insure the conservation but the
profitable development of the islands, in whose possibilities they
had such great faith. "As is admitted by those of all nations,"
he said, "these islands are the most fertile, abundant and rich,
and the country the most delightful in all these Indies." Viana's
scheme would have made the Acapulco trade but a branch of a
♦In the crop year 1933-34 the Philippines produced 1,580,000 tons of raw cane
agar, or more than any other country in the world, except Cuba and India.
56
THE MANILA GALLEON
new commercial system, whose main interest was in the opening
of communications and traffic between Spain and the Philippines.
The activities of a far-reaching commercial company would
ramify throughout the Far East in competition with the long
established trading companies of other European powers. Also,
as in the case of India and the British East India Company, the
government of the group was to be turned over to the projected
Spanish company. This company should not only rule, but ex
ploit the islands' resources with a thoroughness hitherto un
known. Viana had high hopes for a development of spice cul
tivation in Mindanao and other southern islands. Cacao, coffee,
tobacco and sugar should be cultivated on a vast scale, not only
for insular consumption, but for markets beyond even the
peninsula and the American colonies. "Our own inactivity and
lack of application," he lamented, "cause us to buy from foreigners
the very articles with which these dominions abound." Goldmining, shipbuilding, and textile manufacturing were other fea
tures of Viana's program. "In the Provinces of Ilocos and
Cagayan," he wrote, "there might be factories to work up the
great amount of fine cotton which they produce, and by bringing
skilled workmen from India the figured cottons which are
brought thence could be made here. In all the Visayas, in
Camarines and Albay are made the choicest and finest weaves,
which they call nipis, and others of commercial quality, which
they call gainaras, and use for shirts. In Cagayan and Ilocos are
woven very fine handkerchiefs, towels, coverlets, and tablecloths
of as good quality as those made in Flanders." An export busi
ness to India and a Canton-Manila trade were to be adjuncts
of the main line around Africa. He even proposed a direct trade
with Spain via Panama, which would have involved, as he as
serted, the construction of a canal across the isthmus.
Viana's scheme can only be saved from the charge of being
an oversanguine dream by his realization of the vast obstacles
that would meet such a program. He said of the creoles: "These
citizens have no thought of any further occupation than their
everlasting laziness, nor have they the spirit to risk four redes
or any zeal for the nation." The Cadiz merchants would be
hostile to the oriental company, but they could be brought in
as shareholders and the opposition of the galleon merchants in
Manila might be overcome in the same way. The only other
INTRODUCTION
57
class who could furnish the capital for such an undertaking, the
old peninsular nobility, he declared "without occupation and, as
a rule, reared in extreme ignorance and idleness." However,
even these faineants might be induced to invest in the prospective
company and the profits that would result would arouse in them
a liking for commerce. His countrymen, then generally con
temptuous of a commercial career, and lacking the experience
and enterprise requisite for the conduct of a world trade, would
become a commercial, and so a prosperous, people. Out of it all
there should come a fructified colony and a revival of prosperity
for the mother country. It was Viana's proposals which formed
substantially the basis for the Royal Philippine Company, or
ganized in 1785.
The commercial legislation of the period was truly epochmaking. In 1769 a new commercial code was drawn up to
govern the trading operations of the colony. Among other in
novations, it created the consulado, or consulate, as a corporation
of merchants, with large powers over the direction of the Acapulco
trade, as well as over all the other overseas and inter-insular com
merce of the islands. The new code also recognized the fact that
the galleon merchants had lost their former identity with the
general body of Spanish citizens and were now a class apart.
The creation of the Royal Philippine Company in 1785 aimed
at a complete reorientation of the whole commercial system of
the islands.5 Its principal feature was the opening of regular
connections between Spain and the Philippines, though a num
ber of individual trading voyages had been made since 1765,
when the Buen Consejo arrived from Cadiz. However, the
passive opposition of the Manila merchants to this radical innova
tion in their field of business was largely to defeat the purpose
of the change and to delay the full fruition of its possibilities to
a later time. The traditional attitude of the Spaniards in the
islands is seen in the memorial addressed by the City of Manila
to Governor Berenguer in 1788.6 It is a protest of the defenders
of the old order and a frank acknowledgment of the spell in
which the galleon still held the colony. "The principal object
of its establishment," they said of the Company, "was the pros
perity of these islands and of their inhabitants. In no way is
8 See Appendix I.
6 See page 40.
58
THE MANILA GALLEON
this result seen." "It is contrary," the memorial continues, "to
the commercial system of this commonwealth. You cannot con
serve a building by destroying its foundations."
In 1789 the port of Manila was opened to the shipping of
the world, but with the important restriction, designed to pro
tect the interests of the Royal Philippine Company, that foreign
ships might trade only in Asiatic goods. A more liberal attitude
towards foreign traders at Manila, if it had been demonstrated
earlier, might have prolonged the duration of the city's pros
perity. For the Spaniards persisted in their suspicion of for
eigners long after the conditions which might once have justi
fied their policy of exclusion had everywhere given way to
greater freedom of trade. Dutch and English had continued to
be treated as enemies and pernicious heretics, while neither the
friendship nor the orthodoxy of the French was trusted. Con
sequently, the ships of none of these peoples might trade at
Manila, except with the aid of various devices and subterfuges
intended to conceal the nationality of their registry and cargoes.
"Batavia opens its port to the whole world," wrote the French
man, Legentil, in 1779, "but Manila closes hers to all nations.
No foreign ship is allowed to go there to sell its goods under
any pretext."
Manila's great opportunity would probably have been in
its opening as a free port to the merchants of the world. This
was the idea that the advanced French thinker, Raynal, had of
her mission, but such a revolutionary project was beyond even
the liberalism of the statesmen who surrounded Charles III.
The other peoples who had come into the eastern Indies built
up ports, such as Batavia and Madras, that took the place which
nature destined for Manila. Meanwhile Manila went the way
of Goa and Macao into comparative insignificance, again to
build up a considerable commerce in insular staples in the last
century. The Spaniards later saw England make of Hong-kong
and Singapore such centers of the Far Eastern trade as Manila
could have been under a rational system, which would have en
couraged, instead of hindering, her development. When at last
the port of Manila was thrown open to the commerce of the
world, she was already outdistanced by her more farsighted com
petitors. Governor Anda, in 1773, and Carvajal, first intendant
in the islands under the new administrative organization of the
INTRODUCTION
59
colony, had petitioned the crown for unlimited freedom of trade
with foreigners. A special council of ministers, which included
the enterprising Viana, recommended the change to Charles IV
in April 1789. Four months later a royal decree was issued, with
the limitation which we have seen. Though the original con
cession was for only three years, it was extended again at the
expiration of the period of trial.
The results of the decree are shown by the records of ships
entering the port of Manila under the new dispensation. Thus,
for the year June 1795-May 1796, the entries at Manila comprised
the following nationalities: English, four ships from India;
Portuguese, two from Macao and one from Java; Danish, one
from India and one from China; "Irish," one from Malacca;
and American, one, the Theodosia, of Boston, from Madras.
During the same year there entered the harbor of Manila twentyone Chinese junks and twelve Spanish ships, the latter including
nine from Macao and Canton, one from Cadiz, one from
Borneo, and one from the Moro island of Jolo. In 1818, three
years after the last Manila Galleon had crossed between Acapulco
and Manila, vessels clearing from the port of Manila were dis
tributed as follows: English, seventeen; Chinese, thirteen; Amer
ican, ten; Spanish, nine; French, five; and Portuguese, four.7
7 A resume1 of the commercial operations of the port of Manila in 1810 shows the
following movement:
Imports:
Pesot
Merchandise from Bengal
650,000
Merchandise from the Coromandel Coast of India
500,000
Merchandise and silver from Europe, the United States, Mauritius,
and Jolo
175,000
Merchandise from China
1,150,000
Coined gold and silver from Mexico
2,100,000
Cochineal, copper, and cacao from Mexico
124,000
Coined gold and silver from Peru
550,000
Copper, cacao, etc., from Peru
80,000
Total
Exports:
Silver to India
Copper, etc., to India
Silver to China
Merchandise to China
Merchandise to Mexico
Merchandise to Peru
Merchandise to Europe, United States, etc.
Total
5,329,000
1,100,000
90,000
1,550,000
175,000
1,100,000
530,000
250,000
4,795,000
6b
THE MANILA GALLEON
Carried by the momentum of centuries, the galleon trade
continued until its end was decreed by law. It had become an
anachronism,—magnificent still by reason of the great tradition
which it represented, but none the less outdated in an age whose
conditions were hostile to the principles on which it had endured
so long. Certain factors were now working for the early doom of
the line. The right of the Royal Philippine Company to intro
duce eight hundred tons of Asiatic goods annually into New
Spain had created a disastrous competition between the two
branches of the islands' trade. In 1804 the consulado complained
to the king that the three ships, Rey Carlos, MontafUs, and
Casualidad, had then lain in Acapulco harbor for from one to
three years, unable to sell their cargoes. Not only had a ship
of the Royal Philippine Company introduced an exceptionally
large amount of merchandise into Mexico through San Blas, but
English and American ships were now making frequent trading
voyages to the west coasts of Spanish America.
The confusion in Spain consequent on the Napoleonic in
vasions and the disorders in Mexico attending the outbreak of
the wars of independence were shortly to hasten the end that
was already inevitable. In 181 1 Mexican rebels seized the silver
that was ready to be embarked on the galleon. Late in the same
year the last of the galleons from Manila entered Acapulco
harbor. Two years later an insurgent force under Morelos cap
tured Acapulco, and though it was retaken four months later
by a royal army under Armijo, the town had meanwhile been
burned by the patriots. On October 25th, 1813, the restored
king, Ferdinand VII, on the recommendation of the famous
Cortes of Cadiz, decreed the suppression of the line. In 1815
the Manila Galleon of 181 1 cleared from Acapulco for her home
port on the last voyage of the navigation. She bore the immortal
name of Magellan on her bow. A quarter of a millennium had
intervened since Legaspi sent the San Pablo eastward with a
few hundred pounds of cinnamon bark for the royal warehouses
of Philip II. Only 83 years were to be left to Spain in the
Philippines.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>®<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
PART I
THE ORIENT
CHAPTER I
THE CHINESE
CHINA was always the principal source of the galleon's
cargo. To the people of New Spain the galleon was the
nao de China, or China Ship, and Manila was but a way-station
between China and Mexico, where the silks that formed the great
staple of the trade were gathered for shipment across the Pacific.
Spaniards in Mexico often spoke loosely of the Philippines as
of a province of the Chinese Empire. To Manila the annual
coming of the junks from across the China Sea was the very
basis of her prosperity. Moreover, the heavy influx of Chinese
into Manila, as a consequence of their trading operations, early
resulted in their domination of the ordinary economic life of the
colony. For, though the Spaniards remained the intermediaries
in the galleon commerce, the Sangleys, as the Manilenos called
them,1 early came to monopolize the retail trade and the skilled
crafts of the community. In spite of the later entrance of native,
Spanish, and American elements into the business of the islands,
the Chinese still maintain a strong position in their commercial
and industrial life, certain branches of which they have never
ceased to control.2 Finally, at the source of the Chinese traffic
the withdrawal during nearly two hundred and fifty years of
such vast sums of Mexican pesos in payment for the goods carried
to Manila by the junks established a monetary standard for the
east coast of Asia that has endured to the present. "For this
reason," wrote Gemelli Careri, the Italian globetrotter of the
seventeenth century, "the Emperor of China calls the King of
Spain, the King of Silver; because there being no good Mine of
it in his dominions, all they have there is brought in by the
1The term "Sangley" is derived from "Seng-li," a word of the Amoy dialect,
meaning "trade."
2 According to Commerce Reports, December ai, 1935, published by the United
States Department of Commerce, there were 13,787 retail establishments in the
Philippines operated by Chinese. Chinese merchants then owned "somewhat over
56 percent of the capital invested in retailing, and as late as 1932 handled 50 percent
of the total business."
63
THE MANILA GALLEON
Spaniards in Pieces of Eight." The old "trade dollar," coined
by the United States mints until 1887 for the convenience of
Americans trading with the Orient, was a recognition of the
standard of value fixed centuries ago by the China Ship.
The Spaniards early made an attempt to establish direct
trading relations in China, but the post which might have
rivaled Macao proved to be but a short-lived venture. Legaspi
entertained such a project in the early years of the colony, and a
number of voyages, inspired as much by curiosity and religious
zeal as by a desire for the opening of trade, were made before
the end of the century. A voyage of exploration, suggested to
Philip II by Juan de la Isla, a veteran pilot and navigator, was
never realized, though it promised more substantial results than
those which were to follow. La Isla proposed to chart the
Asiatic coasts up to fifty or sixty degrees of latitude, while in
vestigating possibilities for trade, and to return thence along the
American coast to New Spain. Instructions to that effect were
drawn up, but before the skillful seaman could leave Manila
Legaspi died, and his successor, Lavezaris, refused to give the
needed support to the enterprise.
That was in 1572. It was three years later that the first
voyage was made to China from Manila. The small company
which went from Manila at that time consisted of two Augustinian friars and four officers and soldiers. The ostensible object
of their visit was to give an account to the viceroy of Fuhkien
of the measures being taken to suppress the pirate, Limahon,
who had recently sacked the young settlement at Manila and
was then besieged by Juan de Salcedo in northern Luzon.
Lavezaris, who was still governor, also instructed his emissaries
to notify the viceroy of the Spaniards' desire for peaceful trading
relations with the Chinese and for freedom to carry on mis
sionary propaganda within the empire. Finally, they were to
request the cession of a port, which the Spaniards might use as
a base for trading with the Chinese, as the Portuguese already
did at Macao. Though the Spanish envoys humiliated their
pride by kowtowing before the viceroy and submitted to all the
required ceremonials, they returned to Manila without having
accomplished the real purposes of their journey. However, they
brought back with them rich presents from the viceroy to Lave
zaris. But Lavezaris was no longer governor, and when the
THE CHINESE
65
Chinese who accompanied the returning ambassadors refused to
deliver the presents to Governor Sande, his successor, the latter
conceived such a violent antipathy towards all things Chinese that
further attempts at a closer official rapprochement with China
were suspended during the five years of his administration. When
the viceroy of Fuhkien relented and in 1526 offered the Spaniards
an island between Canton and Pakian for purposes of a trading
factory, Sande bluntly declined the offer. Moreover, he not only
refused to send any presents to the viceroy according to custom,
but put two friars on board the returning junk, who were thrown
overboard before the ship had left Philippine waters.
The interest of the regular clergy in the Philippines had
already been aroused in the possibilities for an unlimited mission
field in China. During the next few years Spanish friars—
Augustinians, Jesuits, and Franciscans—made several voyages to
the southern provinces. Two of these parties of missionaries
were fortified with letters from the pious Philip II to the "Power
ful and very Esteemed King of China," and one of them carried
from Spain as a present for the "Gran Chino" twelve falcons,
twelve horses, whose harness and caparisons bore the royal arms,
six mules with rich coverings, and twelve chests containing
Spanish silks, mirrors, and wines, and Venetian glassware. None
of these overtures advanced either the spiritual or material de
signs of the Spaniards, though the reports brought back by the
missionaries greatly increased Spanish knowledge of Chinese
civilization.
Meanwhile Chinese junks had come each year to Manila
with rich merchandise, so that the urgency for direct connections
with the mainland had largely disappeared. A ship occasionally
went to Macao to buy Chinese goods, but even this was forbidden
by a royal decree of 1593. Philip II wrote in the order to Gov
ernor Dasmarinas: "I have been informed that many persons
of those islands are going to Macao and other parts of China
to trade and traffic." The king gave as his reason for promulgat
ing the order the higher prices the Spaniards were compelled to
pay in China "and other notable inconveniences." Yet, only five
years later, in his instructions to Governor Tello, he authorized
him to undertake direct trade with any of the nearby countries,
if in his opinion it seemed advantageous to the interests of the
colony.
>
66
THE MANILA GALLEON
With this royal sanction Tello gave permission in 1598 to
Juan Zamudio to go to the Chinese coast for the purpose of secur
ing the grant of a port that might serve as a trading post. This
semi-private enterprise succeeded in its immediate end, and "by
means of great assiduity and a quantity of silver," Zamudio ob
tained from the suspicious Chinese officials the concession of the
site near Canton known in Spanish records as El Pinal, or the
"pine tree." 3 The Spaniards were also granted the use of a ware
house or godown in Canton, where they might carry on their
trade at that greatest of Chinese markets, and passports were
given to assure them freedom in their trading activities within
the restricted areas. The next year the governor dispatched his
relative, Juan Tello de Aguirre, with another ship, equipped with
arms and supplies, to follow up Zamudio's expedition. A short
time after an armament under ex-Governor Luis Perez Dasmarinas, destined for operations in Cambodia, was shipwrecked
on the south China coast and the survivors carried to El Pinal
by a Chinese junk.
The arrival of so many Spaniards in a locality where they
had hitherto enjoyed exclusive trading privileges aroused the
violent opposition of the Portuguese at nearby Macao. Zamudio
had fought off their attacks for six weeks and with the arrival
of Dasmarinas they redoubled their efforts to drive out the
Spaniards. In fact, the persistent hostility of the Portuguese
made it almost impossible for the Spaniards to carry on the trad
ing part of their program, on which depended the success of the
whole plan for a foothold on the Chinese coast. Moreover, the
Spanish king, who now ruled over Portugal as well, gave only a
lukewarm support to the venture. The need for presenting a
united front to the impending onslaught of the Dutch and the
English in the Orient, with the danger to harmonious coopera
tion that would result from trading quarrels, doubtless had much
to do with the failure of the Spaniards to develop the possibilities
of their new treaty port. The inertia of the Manilenos, satisfied
with the existing arrangements for trading with the Chinese at
Manila, also contributed to the early abandonment of the Chinese
factory. When a royal order was issued in 1609, specifically
granting the right to direct trade with China, El Pinal was al
ready a memory.
* The exact location of "El Pinal" has not been determined. It is probable that
it was situated on the island of Hong-Kong.
THE CHINESE
67
Among the most influential partisans of direct trade had been
Antonio de Morga, then president of the audiencia at Manila.
Morga favored the plan for the following reasons: that it would
save to the Spaniards the large profits of the merchants of the
junk fleet; that it would free Manila from the perpetual Chinese
peril; that the Spaniards could thereby better control prices,
since, when the Acapulco galleon reached Manila in advance of
the junks, the Chinese were in the habit of raising prices by as
much as one hundred percent; and finally, that it would enable
the Manilenos better to regulate the time of dispatching the
annual galleon. In December 1598, Hernando de los Rios
Coronel, one of the ablest officials in the islands, had written to
Morga from "the port of El Pinal, frozen with cold," urging
continued support for the undertaking. Yet at the time he was
being assailed on one side by the active interference of the Portu
guese and on the other by all the devious trading devices of the
Chinese. "Each Chinaman appears to be the devil incarnate,"
he wrote, "for there is no malice or deceit which they do not
attempt. Although here they do not rob or plunder the for
eigners openly, yet they do it by other and worse methods."
In 1637 Grau y Monfalcon, agent of the colony in Spain,
declared that the Manilenos had neither the forces nor the capital
to prosecute such an enterprise. There were too many demands
at that time on the attention and energies of the small Spanish
population in the Philippines to risk the further diversion of their
slender resources on a venture of doubtful advantage. Desultory
efforts made in the eighteenth century to enter into trade at the
source of supply usually failed of profitable results. Meanwhile,
other European powers had broken into the Chinese market by
way of Macao, where they maintained agents who sent orders to
Canton for the manufacture of specified lots of goods. When
their ships arrived from India or Europe in July or August, the
factors removed to the quarter set off for foreigners in Canton
and superintended the loading of their consignments. Though
the Spaniards made a fortunate venture at Canton in 1766, their
late re-entrance into a field where competition was fierce with
skilled English and French buyers operated against the con
tinued success of their trading. They were generally forced to
wait several months after the departure of their rivals before they
could make up a cargo. The later and more ambitious voyages
of the Royal Philippine Company to China were as unsuccessful.
68
THE MANILA GALLEON
Closely connected with the early attempts to trade direcdy
with China were the Spanish schemes for the conquest of that
monarchy. The wealth of Cathay had cast a spell over the
imagination of Europe since the publication of the account of
Marco Polo. The Spaniards believed it would be an easy prize
in view of the peaceful and unmilitary reputation of its inhabi
tants. The religious motive was strongly alleged, as well as the
need to forestall the English or the French, who, if established
there, might use it as the base for a descent on the west coast of
the Americas.
Diego de Artiega proposed to Philip II in 1573 to penetrate
China with eighty men. "I will enter the country myself," he
promised the king, "and will return by way of New Spain, after
having explored the coast. I will ascertain how both trade and
conquest must be carried on there." Governor Sande offered to
undertake the conquest of the country with from four to six
thousand men. "This people is so cowardly," said Sande, "that
no one rides on horseback." About the same time Diego Garcia
de Palacios, a member of the Audiencia of Guatemala, conceived
a similar plan. He considered raising an army of four thousand
Spaniards in Central America, where a large number of restless
men were eager for military adventure. These were to be trans
ported to Manila, where they would join a force to be assembled
by Governor Sande, and thence proceed to the Chinese coast.
Hernando Riquel considered sixty good Spanish infantry enough
for the task of overturning the Empire of the Mings. Juan
Bautista Roman, the Spanish factor at Macao, declared that "with
the divine favor," less than seven thousand men would be suffi
cient. As late as 1797 Governor Aguilar wrote to Godoy, the
first minister: "A well disciplined battalion could overcome
armies of Chinese as numerous as those whom Alexander con
quered." The Spaniards at Manila counted on the aid of a force
of Japanese, who were "redoubtable and mortal enemies of the
Chinese." However, in 1586 the king ordered his governor to
desist from entertaining such a project, and instead to guard the
friendship of the Chinese. The same year Governor Vera and
several citizens of Manila sent a memorial to the Council of the
Indies, in which they wisely observed: "If the Spaniards go into
China in their usual fashion, they will desolate and ravage the
most populous and richest country that ever was seen." All these
THE CHINESE
69
proposals for the armed invasion of China would appear quite
chimerical and fantastic if it had not been for the accomplished
fact of the conquest of Mexico and Peru by small bands of
Spanish paladins. The spirit of the conquista was still alive, with
its ardor and its confidence in the superhuman prowess of the
Spanish man-at-arms. It might even lay Cathay at the feet of
the Most Catholic King.
After their abortive plans for conquest and direct trade had
been renounced or left to the chance of a more propitious oc
casion, the Spaniards early came to rely on the Chinese imports
into Manila. In accepting so natural an arrangement they were
only taking advantage of a long established channel of trade.
For centuries merchants from China had trafficked among these
islands and penetrated southward into more remote corners of
the eastern Indies. About 1280 Chau Ju Kua, who had evidently
made a voyage to the island of Ma-i, as he called Mindoro, wrote
of the land and the barter that was carried on between its natives
and his people. In his time the Filipinos exchanged cotton,
yellow wax, pearls, tortoise shell, and hempen cloth with the
Chinese for silks, porcelain, colored glass, and beads, and iron
ware. When Magellan reached the Visayas in 1521 he heard
of the trading relations of the Chinese with Luzon, which seems
to have been visited by six or eight junks a year. Alvaro de
Saavedra heard the same reports when he passed among the
group a few years later, and Andres de Urdaneta, who accom
panied Loaysa's expedition in 1537 and was to be Legaspi's pilot
in 1564, also gave an account of Chinese trading among the
islands.
In 1567 Legaspi wrote to Philip II from Cebu: "Moros have
come to this port from Luzon and Mindoro. These men have
told us that the Chinese go to their land to trade and carry away
all the products of this archipelago." It was in 1571, the year
Legaspi transferred his headquarters to the site of the old Moro
settlement on Manila Bay, that commercial intercourse began
between the Spaniards and Chinese. As we have seen, his
admiral, Juan Pablo Carrion, rescued the crew of a junk which
was sinking off the Mindoro coast and carried them to safety.
On their return to China the survivors spread such a good report
of the Spaniards that a number of merchants hastened to take
advantage of the opportunities for trade with the newcomers in
7°
THE MANILA GALLEON
the Philippines. It was their cargoes of silks and porcelains,
which arrived early the next year, that laid the real foundation
of the galleon commerce with Mexico and fixed the course of
the colony's economic life for over two centuries. In June 1573,
Guido de Lavezaris, who was to take over the government on
the death of Legaspi, wrote to the king: "The Chinese have
come here on trading voyages since our arrival, for we have
always tried to treat them well." The same year, Juan de la
Isla, just returned from Manila, addressed the king on the need
for merchants in the Philippines to take advantage of the new
openings there. "We have friendship and trade with the people
of China," he added as an inducement for the migration of
merchants to the young colony. A year later Lavezaris wrote
again: "The Chinese continue to increase their commerce each
year, and supply us with many articles, as sugar, wheat and
barley flour, nuts, raisins, pears and oranges, silks, choice por
celain and iron, and other small things which we lacked in this
land before their arrival."
The goods were carried from Canton or Amoy or other ports
between directly across the open China Sea to Manila, a distance
of from 650 to 700 miles. After Governor Leon (1669-76) had
sent a special embassy to China to promote trade with the
Philippines merchants were accustomed to come to Manila from
as far as Ningpoo in northern Che-Kiang.
The large sea-going junks, which made the voyage to the
Philippines, carried between two hundred and four hundred
men. In fact, these limitations were placed on the number of
men who might go in a single junk by the Chinese authorities
in order to restrict emigration to the Philippines. Except for
their larger size, their general appearance and arrangement were
much like that of the smaller coastwise junk which William
Dampier saw below Canton in 1687 and described as follows:
"She was built with a square flat Head as well as Stern, only the
Head or forepart was not so broad as the Stern. On her deck
she had little thatcht Houses like Hovels, covered with Palmetto
leaves, and raised about 3 foot high, for the Seamen to creep
into. She had a pretty large Cabbin, wherein there was an altar
and a Lamp burning. I did but just look in, and saw not the
Idol. The Hold was divided in many small Partitions, all of
them made so tight, that if a Leak should Spring up in any one
THE CHINESE
71
of them, it could go no farther, and so could do but little damage,
but only to the Goods in the bottom of the Room where the
Leak springs up. Each of these Rooms belongs to one or two
merchants, or more; and every Man freights his goods in his own
room; and probably lodges there, if he be on Board himself.
These Jonks have only two Masts, a Main-mast and a Fore-mast.
The Fore-mast has a square Yard and a square Sail, but the Main
mast has a Sail narrow aloft, like a Sloops-Sail, and in fair
Weather they use a Top-sail, which is to hale down on the Deck
in foul Weather, Yard and all; for they do not go up to furl it.
The Main-Mast in their biggest Jonks seems to me as big as any
third-rate Man of Wars Mast in England, and yet not pieced as
ours, but made of one grown Tree; and in all my Travels I never
saw any single Tree-masts so big in the body, and so long, and
yet so well tapered, as I have seen in the Chinese Jonk§."
The usual number of junks to visit Manila varied from
twenty to sixty each year. In 1574 six came, but by 1580 forty
or fifty were coming. At the end of the century thirty or forty
generally came. In 1616 there were only seven, but in 1631 fifty
came and five years later thirty made the voyage. The number
varied little from one year to another in the eighteenth century.
At any period it depended on the chances for a profitable sale at
Manila, the momentary safety or danger of the passage, and local
conditions in China. When the Chinese knew money to be scarce
at Manila they cut down their shipments accordingly for the
year. Word of piratical armaments in their path might keep
the junks in port beyond the time when weather conditions
would be favorable for the crossing. Especially destructive were
the ravages of the pirate community that long flourished on the
Cochin-China coast, the Japanese pirates who plied off northern
Luzon, and the corsair attacks which used Formosa as a base.
Sometimes the menace from the Portuguese or the Dutch was as
serious, when either of those peoples were bent on crippling the
business of Spaniards at Manila. Finally, the internal dissensions
of the empire or local disturbances in the coast provinces might
suspend temporarily the junk trade to the Philippines.
Morga thus describes the coming of the junks: "Although
they do not come together, in the form of a trading and war
fleet, still they do come in groups with the monsoon and settled
weather, which is generally at the new moon in March. They
72
THE MANILA GALLEON
make their voyage to the city of Manila in fifteen or twenty
days, sell their merchandise, and in order not to endanger their
voyage return in good season, before the winds change at the
end of May or early in June." "In the moneth of March," wrote
Captain John Saris, of the English East India Company, "the
Junckes bound for the Mannelies depart from Chanchu in Com
panies, sometime foure, five, ten or more together, as they are
readie."
On the appearance of a junk outside Manila Bay it was
boarded by the watchman stationed on Mariveles, who posted
a guard on it and by fire signals announced its arrival to the
authorities at Manila. After it had proceeded up the bay and
anchored before the city its cargo was inspected by the royal
treasury officials and appraised for payment of the three percent
import duty. When import and anchorage duties had been paid
the cargo was lightered ashore and stored in the Parian or
Chinese quarter.4
Though there was an infinite variety in the cargoes of the
junks, silks always comprised the bulk of the goods from China.
Some of the early stuffs were of inferior quality, but the Chinese
merchants soon learned to meet the demand for better fabrics,
while skillfully copying the favorite Spanish designs until they
quite equaled the Andalusian cloth in color and were only slightly
surpassed, if at all, in wearing quality. "Among all the silk stuffs
brought by the Chinese," wrote Diego de Bobadilla, "none is
more esteemed than the white,—the snow is not whiter,—and
there is no silk stuff in Europe that can approach it." When the
first lots of Chinese goods reached Mexico Viceroy Ennquez
esteemed them of little value. "I consider the whole business
as a waste of effort," he said, "and a trade that is injurious rather
than profitable; for all they bring is some very miserable silks,
most of which have a woof of grass fibre, some false brocatels,
fans and porcelains, and some writing desks and painted boxes."
Yet, before the end of the century their increasing excellence
and lower prices had created such serious competition for penin* The Chinese work known as Tung hsi yang K'ao says as follows of the arrival
of the junks at Manila: "As soon as the ships arrived they sent out men to hurry with
all dispatch to the chieftain (i.e. the governor) to bring him presents of silk. The
duties which they levied were rather high, but the meshes of their nets were so close
that there was no escape." Berthold Laufer, The Relations of the Chinese to the
Philippine Islands, p. 279.
THE CHINESE
73
sular silks in the American colonies that a strong movement was
set on foot in Spain to limit or ban altogether the importation
of Chinese silks. Some of the early governors, like Sande and
Gomez Perez Dasmarinas, and viceroys like Villamanrique,
wrote of the actual or imminent threat to metropolitan industry
and trade and of the loss to the empire in the draining away of so
much silver to China. Dasmarinas advised Philip II in 1592
that the exports to America from the Orient already exceeded
those from Spain, adding the weighty argument that this "would
interfere with your Majesty's royal revenues from the silks to
Granada, Murcia and Valencia." The next year the system of
restrictive legislation was instituted, with the object of limiting
the volume of silks which the galleon might carry. And though
the Manilenos might continue to sell in Mexico, the rich market
of Peru was closed to them. Though every illegal resource was
invoked to defeat the purpose of the restrictions, and not without
considerable success, the principle had been put into effect and
at times was to give much trouble to the galleon traders during
the next two centuries.
Antonio de Morga, who was familiar with the commerce in
its heyday, gives a catalogue of the rich and varied wares that
were brought to Manila by the Chinese: "Raw silk in bundles,
of the fineness of two strands, and other silk of coarser quality;
fine untwisted silk, white and of all colors, wound in small
skeins; quantities of velvets, some plain and some embroidered
in all sorts of figures, colors and fashions, others with body of
gold and embroidered with gold; woven stuffs and brocades, of
gold and silver upon silk of various colors and patterns ; quantities
of gold and silver thread in skeins; damasks, satins, taffetas, and
other cloths of all colors; linen made from grass, called lengesuelo; and white cotton cloth of different kinds and quantities.
They also bring musk, benzoin and ivory; many bed ornaments,
hangings, coverlets and tapestries of embroidered velvet; damask
and gorvaran tapestries of different shades; tablecloths, cushions
and carpets; horse-trappings of the same stuffs, and embroidered
with glass beads and seed-pearls; also pearls and rubies, sapphires
and crystal; metal basins, copper kettles and other copper and
cast-iron pots; quantities of all sorts of nails, sheet-iron, tin and
lead; and saltpetre and gunpowder. They supply the Spaniards
with wheat flour; preserves made of orange, peach, pear, nutmeg
74
THE MANILA GALLEON
and ginger, and other fruits of China; salt pork and other salt
meats; live fowls of good breed and many fine capons; quantities
of fresh fruits and oranges of all kinds; excellent chestnuts, wal
nuts, and chicueyes (both green and dried, a delicious fruit);
quantities of fine thread of all kinds, needles and knick-knacks;
little boxes and writing cases; beds, tables, chairs, and gilded
benches, painted in many figures and patterns. They bring
domestic buffaloes; geese that resemble swans; horses, some
mules and asses; even caged birds, some of which talk, while
others sing, and they make them play innumerable tricks. The
Chinese furnish numberless other gewgaws and ornaments of
little value and worth, which are esteemed among the Spaniards ;
fine crockery of all kinds; canganes, or cloth of Kaga, and black
and blue robes; tacley, which are beads of all kinds; strings of
cornelians and other beads, and precious stones of all colors;
pepper and other spices; and rarities, which, did I refer to them
all, I would never finish, nor have sufficient paper for it."
As the ships of Tarshish brought to King Solomon ivory and
apes and peacocks, so did those of China bring them to the
Spaniards at Manila. Padre Casimiro Diaz wrote in 1669: "One
cannot imagine any exquisite article for the equipment of a house
which does not come from China." "These Chinese merchants
are so keen after gain," said Diego de Bobadilla, "that, if one
sort of merchandise has succeeded well one year, they take a great
deal of it the following year. A Spaniard who had lost his nose
through a certain illness, sent for a Chinaman to make him one
of wood, in order to hide the deformity. The workman made
him so good a nose that the Spaniard in great delight paid him
munificently, giving him twenty escudos. The Chinaman, at
tracted by the ease with which he had made that gain, loaded a
fine boat-load of wooden noses the next year and returned to
Manila. But he found himself very far from his hopes and quite
left out in the cold; for, in order to have a sale for that new
merchandise, he found that he would have to cut off the noses
of all the Spaniards in the country."
For the purchase of the Chinese imports the Spaniards
adopted an arrangement of wholesale bargaining known as
pancada. The distrustful Spanish system did not favor leaving
to individuals the chance of indiscriminate trading with aliens
and assumed that the abuses inseparable from such an exchange
THE CHINESE
75
could be reduced to a minimum by close official supervision of
the transactions. The concentration of the dealings between the
two parties in a few responsible hands would make it easier to
control a traffic whose possibilities of expansion gave so much
concern to the central government in Spain. At this point it
might have been possible to confine the volume of goods pur
chased within the limits fixed, but the local demand for Chinese
merchandise offered a convenient loophole and an irresistible in
centive for the evasion of this restriction.
Other circumstances of the trade seemed to justify the resort
to the pancada. It prevented the seller from taking advantage
of the eager competition of many buyers to raise prices. The
use of interpreters that was possible under the pancada assured
more satisfactory conclusions than could result from private trad
ing between men who could have understood one another but
imperfectly. Even as it was, the dearth of reliable interpreters
conversant with the current speech of the Kuang Tung and
Fuhkien traders hindered the operation of the pancada. More
over, the Chinese were not buyers, but sellers, and they de
manded silver in exchange for their goods. This constant pas
sage of so much silver into another country, from where it never
returned into circulation, always alarmed the Spaniards, as the
same circumstance did in Spain itself, and they believed that such
a regulative device as the pancada could somehow restrict its
export. Thus, the system was not generally applied to the traffic
with the Japanese, who usually traded by barter.
The large number of Chinese who annually came in the
junks and constituted an unwelcome addition to the already large
population in the Parian also disquieted the Spaniards. They
believed that the more expeditious pancada would enable them to
rid themselves of their presence sooner than would the custom
of long drawn out haggling at which the Oriental is so apt and
which might end in altercations that would lead to more serious
disturbances. "Also many other injuries, expenses, secret sins,
scarcities and witchcrafts will thereby be avoided," added the
royal instructions to Governor Tello in 1596.
Finally, the adoption of the pancada was partly prompted
by the Spaniard's own lack of confidence in his ability to cope
with the Chinaman in the field of trade. The Spaniards frequently testify to the shrewd and devious ways of the Chinese
7*
THE MANILA GALLEON
merchants and probably wished to safeguard their interests from
the effects of their own inferiority in this respect by limiting as
far as possible their mercantile relations with the too wily Sangleys. In a letter to the viceroy in 1576 Juan Sanchez Diaz called
the Chinese "most subtle merchants." On the other hand, he
said that a prominent Chinaman had told him that the Spaniards
were very brave and proud, but "without any industry." Bishop
Salazar complained to the king in 1590 that the Spaniards could
not be regulated or restrained in their trading, and that conse
quently "everything is going to ruin." "It is a singular thing
how poorly the Spaniard governs himself," wrote Medina, the
historian; "wherever he halts prices immediately go up." In
1729 Pedro Gonzalez de Ribera and six other citizens of Manila
wrote of the Chinese to the king: "Their astuteness and skill in
assuring themselves of what they consider their profit and ad
vantage are remarkable."
During the first few years of the trade the commercial rela
tions of the two peoples were virtually unrestricted. Then in
1586 a junta of citizens petitioned the Council of the Indies that
purchase from the Chinese "and other foreign vessels" should not
be made by individual arrangements, "as is the custom at pres
ent," but by some form of wholesale agreement. This fact that
the original initiative came from the Spaniards in the islands
shows that the pancada was not entirely instituted by the central
government for the purpose of keeping the silk trade within
bounds. Such a plan had already been adopted at Manila when
the royal decree sanctioning the arrangement was issued by Philip
II in 1589. A second law of four years later elaborated the first
provision and added a necessary corollary in the prohibition of
Spanish trade in China or even the importation in Chinese ships
of goods expressly consigned to particular Spaniards at Manila.
The audiencia and the governor's legal adviser, Pedro de Rojas,
opposed the adoption of the plan, as Governor Dasmarinas al
leged, "in order that the consignments of money sent by them
to China for merchandise might not be known." He charged
that they enlisted the support of the clergy against the measure,
and added that "if by your Majesty's command it be ordered that
the Chinese merchandise be bought at one price, theology de
clares that no such thing can be ordered." In both decrees the
pancada is made to apply to the Chinese alone. For other
THE CHINESE
77
branches of the trade were as yet comparatively insignificant,
and the conditions which led to its establishment were largely
attendant on the special circumstances that accompanied the
influx of the Chinese, greedy for silver and potentially so danger
ous by their numbers.
To conduct the pancada the governor and the municipality
of Manila were to appoint two or three suitable persons. These
men would then negotiate with representatives of the Chinese
importers the prices to be paid for the cargo of each incoming
junk. With the usual official anxiety to provide against corrup
tion, the members of this committee were prohibited from hold
ing the position a second year. A rigid inspection of incoming
vessels was intended to make evasion difficult.
If carried out to the letter, these provisions would have pre
vented any discussion of price between the individual Chinese
seller and the Spanish buyer. But here the wide inconsistency
between law and fact, which so frequently prevailed in Spanish
colonial administration, militated against the rigorous observance
of the pancada. Officials or influential citizens often forestalled
its operation by having specific consignments of goods brought
to them from China at a prearranged price. They were either
received by the consignee before the junk reached Manila Bay
or they were surreptitiously landed and stored through the con
nivance of those entrusted with the surveillance of the arriving
junks. Chinese goods were often hoisted on the galleons on their
passage out of the islands. Individual merchants would make
their purchases before the official prices were fixed, as the latter
was a leisurely process, involving extended examination of the
goods or samples of them, with an elaborate classification and
grading. Some of the wealthier merchants, in the hope of driv
ing a better bargain, would make their investments after the
termination of the pancada and the completion of the galleon's
cargo for the year. These silks were tWrn stored in private ware
houses to await the sailing of the next year's galleon.
The rigid operation of the pancada, which would have made
the whole transfer of the large quantities exchanged a matter
to be settled summarily by the small committee appointed for the
purpose, proved to be unfeasible. As the Spaniards acquired
greater familiarity with the business they gained more confidence
in their ability to deal with the Chinese on their own ground.
78
THE MANILA GALLEON
There were too many on both sides who preferred to trust to the
chance of freer trafficking. Individual initiative asserted itself
against the bonds of official regulation. Early in the seventeenth
century Morga said the goods were "freely sold" in the Parian.
A royal decree of 1594 virtually limited the pancada to the finer
goods. In 1599 no pancada was held, but Governor Tello in
formed the king that the sales were made satisfactorily to both
sides in another way.
The pancada gave way gradually to the feria or fair. In
1677 Fray Placido de Angulo informed the king that the China
man ordinarily took his goods wherever he wished and sold them
at his own price. A royal decree of 1696 declared the original
motives for the pancada no longer existent, and the substitution
of feria for pancada was ratified by a royal order of 1703. In
another order of 1777 Charles III declared that the pancada had
not been used for over a hundred years. In this document the
king reiterates a belated sanction to the actual method so long
employed. The feria was to be opened on the fourth of June,
after the Chinese merchants had contributed the lump sum of
eight thousand pesos to the royal treasury. During the fair both
parties were left without restriction to the chances of individual
trading. This method prevailed until the cessation of the galleon
trade.
The Spaniards had early attempted to apply the pancada to
the Portuguese from Macao, but the Macao traders strongly re
sented this restriction on their freedom of trading. The Manilenos,
in their eagerness for the silks, quickly agreed to waive its opera
tion. One year when it was resorted to the Portuguese merchants
refused to abide by the prices agreed on between their representa
tives and those of the Spaniards.
The trade with the Chinese must have given rise to con
siderable questionable dealing on both sides, for Morga says that
the audiencia and lower courts were kept busy settling cases that
arose therefrom. "The Chinese are very skilful and intelligent
traders," he said, "and of great coolness and moderation. They
are ready to trust and accommodate freely whomever they know
treats them fairly and does not fail in his payments to them
when they are due. On the other hand, as they are a people
without religion or conscience and so greedy, they commit in
numerable frauds and deceits in their merchandise. The pur
THE CHINESE
79
chaser must watch them very closely and know them, in order
not to be cheated by them. The purchasers, however, acquit
themselves by their poor payments and the debts which they
incur." The Spaniards accused the Chinese of adulterating their
wares and of other frauds—the famous trampas de China, or
"Chinese frauds," that Humboldt spoke of long afterward. The
Chinese complained, among other things, of the difficulty of
securing payment for their goods. The non-arrival of a galleon
from Acapulco with its return of silver or any other circumstance
that might produce a scarcity of money in the colony always
increased the difficulties, as did the strained relations which some
times existed between the two peoples. "All this business was
accustomed to be done on credit alone," wrote Governor Cruzat
to the king in 1701. And though credit played a large part in
the trade in early years, with a succession of losses and longdelayed payments the Chinese came to insist on cash. The advent
of other European trading peoples into the Chinese market made
the latter less dependent on the Philippine galleon traffic and so
enabled them to press more strongly for their own terms of sale.
The Chinese trade brought with it probably the most serious
problem in the internal administration of the colony. It was
the first instance on any considerable scale of a Caucasian-Mon
golian race question, with all the phases of economic, political,
and social antagonisms that the contact of peoples so different
has so often carried with it. It is a chronicle of suspicions and
fears, of risings and sanguinary retaliations, and of restrictions
and expulsions, with long periods of quiescence between the outbreakrof panic and violence.
jThe Spaniards early realized the peril that accompanied the
presence of so many Chinese in the city and took measures to
prevent any disastrous situation. For this reason Governor
Gonzalo Ronquillo built the Parian, or quarter where the
Chinese, who were then scattered about the city, were henceforth
required to live. At first four large buildings were reserved to
their use on a site well up the river above the walled city. The
settlement grew rapidly, as new houses were built and shops were
opened, and shortly came to cover a large area of ground, which
was enclosed by a stockade. By the end of the century there
were over four hundred shops in the Parian and more than eight
thousand men were generally engaged in trade there.
8o
THE MANILA GALLEON
Here they created a teeming community of their own, with
all the movement and color and the noises and smells typical of a
Chinese city. The principal difference was in the fewness of
women, though many of the Sangleys made unions with native
women of the lower classes, from which sprang the chino-mestizos so prominent in Philippine affairs in later times. The men
of the Parian wore long blue garments with wide sleeves—or
white for mourning—but the chief men dressed in black or
colored silks. Underneath all wore wide drawer-like trousers of
the same material and half hose of felt. They went shod in
broad shoes of blue silk or other materials, embroidered with
braid and with very thick soles. All this was topped with a
high round cap of horse-hair, made in different fashions accord
ing to the person's occupation or rank.5
The Chinese in Manila conserved the festivals and diversions
common to their home land. They were particularly given to
gambling, and William Dampier wrote of this habit of theirs:
"The Chinese are very great Gamesters, and they will never be
tired with it, playing night and day, till they have lost all their
Estates; then it is usual with them to hang themselves. This was
frequently done by the Chinese factors at Manila, as I was told
by Spaniards that lived there. The Spaniards themselves are
much addicted to Gaming, and very expert at it; but the
Chinese are too subtle for them, being in general a very cunning
People."
In 1628 the king noted that many Chinese were living out
side the Parian, "to the great peril of the Spanish population."
At this time Christian Chinese, or those married to Christians,
were permitted to reside across the Pasig in the Binondo and
Tondo quarters of the city. Considering the usual motives for
conversion among the Chinese, this liberal concession soon re
sulted in the settlement of a numerous colony of highly doubtful
orthodoxy and of dangerous possibilities for the safety of the
colony. For Christian Chinese were exempted from the payment
of the customary tribute for ten years after conversion and after
that time they paid at the low rate at which the natives were as
sessed. Chinese also settled in the provinces surrounding Manila
5 A Chinese work of the 18th century, the Huang ch'ing chih k.'">g ''«, has this to
say of the Spaniards at Manila: "The barbarians inhabiting Luzon are of tall stature,
and have high noses, pupils like those of cats' eyes, a mouth like that of a hawk, and
their clothing is much adorned." Berthold Laufer, op. cit., p. 276.
THE CHINESE
81
and were even more widely scattered about the other islands,
among which they traded with their smaller junks and sampans.
Though the law required that the Chinese who came to
Manila on the junks should return with them as soon as the
favorable monsoon arose after the discharge of the cargoes and
their delivery to the pancada committee, this was early relaxed.
Licenses were then required for permission to remain in Manila,
but in 1620 the number of those who might stay was limited to
six thousand. The failure to enforce even these restrictions
brought about the condition that was to lead to the extreme and
violent expedition of expulsion.
—By 1586 there were ten thousand Chinese in Manila and
when Morga sent twelve thousand back to China in 1596 he de
clared that as many more remained in the city. In 1621 there
were over ten thousand licensed Chinese in Manila and five thou
sand unlicensed. Fifteen years later Grau y Monfalcon informed
the king that there were over thirty thousand Chinese and Japa
nese in the city, but of this total the Japanese could have made
up only a minor part. In 1749 there were more than forty thou
sand Chinese in the city, many of whom had recently been driven
from their country by the pressure of famine. When such num
bers are compared with the few hundred Spaniards in Manila
the potential gravity of the situation for the latter is evident.
Benevolent provisions were made to protect the rights of the
Chinese, just as, the famous New Laws were issued earlier to se
cure good treatment of the Indians in the Spanish American
colonies. The governor was constituted the special protector of
the Chinese until an official was created, in 1629 for that particular
purpose. The Chinese community was under the immediate
jurisdiction of its own head-man or governor, who was required
to be a Christian , and who could appoint the necessary retinue
of officials and assistants from his own people. He had the power
to settle disputes among the Chinese, though appeals from his
decisions might go to the alcalde mayor of Tondo or of the
Parian, or higher to the audiencia. The Dominican friars always
exerted their great influence in favor of just treatment and main
tained a hospital for the treatment of Chinese.
However, with the usual admirable legal provisions for safe
guarding the rights of an "inferior" race, there was the same
customary evasion by those interested in their violation. Spanish
82
THE MANILA GALLEON
officials were often arbitrary in their treatment of the Chinese.
The inspectors of the junks harassed the merchants with exac
tions on their arrival, and at times even went to the extent of
removing the masts from the Chinese vessels and substituting
inferior ones, with which it would be difficult or impossible to
make the return voyage. Bishop Salazar wrote in 1583 that the
prices of Chinese goods had lately quadrupled because of the
scarcity due to the dislike of the Chinese to come to Manila,
where they were subjected to "annoying restrictions." In a law
insisting on more consideration for the Chinese the king said:
"We have been informed that the Sangleys who come to the
Philippines to trade receive injuries and bad treatment at the
hands of the Spaniards." One of the commonest forms of abuses
was in connection with the license of residence required of each
Chinaman who remained after the junks had cleared for home.
A non-Christian Chinaman paid sixty-four reales or eight pesos
for such a license, besides five reales as tribute, and twelve reales
as house tax. In one decree on the question the king said : "The
Chinese have been allowed to increase in numbers, because of
greed for the eight pesos which each one of them pays for his
license." However, some of the officials who had the collection
of this money were in the habit of exacting several times the same
amount during the year on the pretext that a renewal of the
license was necessary.
The Chinese resorted to just what was expected of them—
wholesale bribery—and the atmosphere of deceit and suspicion
generated was unfavorable to the harmonious relationship of the
two races. The merchant class, with their interest in order and
authority, might be depended on to show a passive endurance of
the vexations to which they were subjected and might even give
their support to the Spanish government in a serious crisis be
tween the two peoples. On the other hand, the great mass of
those who flocked to the islands in the train of the traders were
an uncertain element and constituted the real crux of the prob
lem. Twenty-four Chinese merchants, in a protest which they
presented against being included in an expulsion order of 1687,
said that the risings in the past had been limited to the lower
classes. "Those who have risen," they said, "have been vaga
bonds and idlers, and the Chinese of position and settled occupa
tion have never cooperated with them." They declared that the
THE CHINESE
83
first uprisings had originated among Chinese who had left their
country in a time of confusion, caused by internecine and Tartar
wars, and had sought to found an independent state in other
parts.
On one side, the confidence bred of numbers and discontent
at grievances, and, on the other, superior race pride and a panicky
fear made collision almost inevitable. Chinese conspiracies, real
or imagined, and sudden outbreaks, accompanied by looting and
bloodshed and quickly followed by sanguinary repression by the
small but effective Spanish force, make up several dark chapters
in the history of the two races in the islands. Governor Anda
said in 1768 that there had been fourteen insurrections of the
Chinese since the founding of the colony a little over two cen
turies before. This was an average of one every fourteen years,
though the most serious troubles occurred in the early decades of
Spanish rule, before a fairly satisfactory modus vivendi had been
established between the two races.
The Spanish terror of the descent on Manila of an over
whelming force from the Chinese mainland was in a measure
justified by a series of incidents which took place in the first fifty
years of the colony. In 1574, during the governorship of Guido
de Lavezaris, the newly-founded Spanish settlement at Manila
was attacked by a fleet of seventy large junks under the pirate
chieftain, Lin Tao K'ien, whom the Spaniards knew as Limahon.
The Chinese swarmed over the town, which was as yet unpro
tected by fortifications, and by force of numbers beat back the
little band of Spanish defenders. Martin de Goiti, the veteran
master of the camp, and many others were killed in their valiant
struggle to beat off the horde of Chinese. The survivors of the
garrison resisted for days every attempt to annihilate them, until
they were saved by the arrival from Vigan of the young con
quistador, Juan de Salcedo, Legaspi's grandson. Salcedo's little
relief party attacked at once and forced Limahon and his men
to take to their ships. The Chinese fled up the west side of Luzon
to the Pangasinan coast, whither the Spaniards followed them
and burned their fleet. The superb heroism of the Spaniards in
defending the colony against such overwhelming odds is worthy
of a bright page in the epic of the conquista which gave Spain her
great empire.
Relations between Spaniards and Chinese were again strained
84
THE MANILA GALLEON
in 1593, when Governor Gomez Perez Dasmarinas was slain by
the Chinese rowers of his galley. "Two days before leaving,"
wrote Bartolome de Argensola, "while a guest and dining at the
house of Pedro de Rojas, his assistant, where he was wont to
amuse himself by heavy gaming and merriment, he became so
gay, beyond his custom and contrary to the harshness of his
character, that many interpreted it as his last farewell and an
omen of what happened." The governor, unmindful of a similar
fate that had befallen a Spanish force sent to Cagayan a few years
before, was on his way southward into the Visayas, where he was
to take charge of an expedition destined for the conquest of the
Moluccas. His galley lay to one night under the full moon off
the island of Maricaban, while it awaited the morning in order
to follow the devious channels among the islands. There had
been festivities on deck in the evening and the Spaniards were all
deep in sleep, when at the signal of a shrill whistle they were
attacked by the Chinese, some of whom were merchants of the
Parian impressed by Dasmarinas. Each Chinaman had put on
a white shirt over his clothes, so that his fellows could readily
identify him in the confusion that was to follow. Carrying a
lighted candle in one hand and a cutlass in the other, they cut
down the sleeping Spaniards before they could offer any resis
tance. "It was done so quickly," wrote Argensola, "that when
some of those asleep in the stern awakened, the other Spaniards
were already dead." The bodies of the governor and his men
were thrown into the sea, while the Chinese turned the ship
about and made for the coast of Indo-China. Only two of the
eighty Spaniards on board had escaped the slaughter.
There was great consternation in Manila when the news of
the murders reached the city. Feeling ran high against the
Chinese population, mingled with fears of a general uprising, for
most of the city's forces were absent in the Visayas, awaiting the
governor's arrival to proceed against the Moluccas. One of the
first acts of his son, Luis Dasmarinas, who took over the govern
ment, was to send Fernando de Castro to Canton and other cities
on the Chinese coast, to search for the murderers and ask their
return to Manila. He failed in his mission, but shortly afterwards
some suspects were sent back from Malacca to Manila, where they
were beheaded as a warning to the Chinese of the far-reaching
hand of Spanish vengeance.
THE CHINESE
85
Early the next year a fleet of war junks, which carried no
merchandise but were in charge of seven high mandarins, ap
peared before Manila. Though the mandarins claimed that they
had come to take back certain renegade Chinese, who were re
ported to be wandering about the islands, their appearance at a
time when the colony would otherwise have been defenseless
put the Spaniards on their guard. However, the return of most
of the forces that had been intended for use against the Moluccas
discouraged the Chinese from carrying out any aggressive designs
they may have harbored.
Ten years after the murder of Governor Dasmarinas the
Spanish colony was again thrown into a state of great uneasiness
by the circumstances which attended the mysterious hoax of the
island of gold. One day in June 1603, the sentinels on Mariveles
signaled down the bay to the city to announce the arrival of a
ship from China with three mandarins on board, sent by their
"king" on business of state. When the junk had cast anchor
before the newly walled city Governor Acuna gave permission
to the mandarins to land and awaited them in the audience hall
of the palace, surrounded by an impressive retinue of his captains
and soldiers. The three Chinese noblemen were carried through
the streets "in very curious chairs of ivory and fine gilded woods,
borne on the shoulders of men, crimson-garbed, while their at
tendants carried the plumes, lances, and other insignia of their
high rank." At the palace there was a ceremonious reception
and then the mandarins stated the object of their coming. They
had come, they said, at the command of their ruler, to investigate
the report of an island of gold, called Cavite, which was said to
be near Manila and to be the property of no nation. They had
with them a Chinaman bound in chains, who they said "had
asked for a quantity of ships, which he said he would bring back
laden with gold, and that if it were not so they could punish him
with his life."
As the grim-faced Spaniards listened to the bizarre tale of
their visitors, their minds were filled with suspicion of the real
motive of their mission. Their apprehensions grew during the
next few days, as the mandarins began to exercise authority over
the Chinese who resided in the city. The Spaniards also heard
through Chinese who were friendly to them that the mandarins
were only the precursors of a great armament of a hundred thou
86
THE MANILA GALLEON
sand men whom the emperor of China planned to send against
the Philippines before the end of the year. Meanwhile the
Spaniards made feverish efforts to put their defenses in order
against any emergency that might arise.
In another interview with the mandarins the governor made
light of the fantastic rumor which had prompted their visit and
in order to be rid of them as soon as possible sent them down
the bay to Cavite, so that they might ascertain for themselves
how they had been duped. As they landed at Cavite they were
received with a salute of all the guns in the fort, which threw the
mandarins and their party in terror. When they had recovered
their composure they examined the land on the point for evidence
of gold and then solemnly ordered a basketful of earth to be dug,
to take back to their superior lord in China. "The interpreters
said that the prisoner, when hard pressed by the mandarins to
make suitable answers to their questions, had said that what he
had meant to tell the king of China was that there was much
gold and wealth in the hands of the natives and Spaniards of
Manila, and that if they gave him a fleet with men he offered,
as a man who had been in Luzon and knew the country, to cap
ture it and bring the ships back laden with gold and riches."
After the departure of the mandarins the Spaniards were seri
ously disquieted by the anticipation of a descent from China.
The feeling of suspense and nervous tension which prevailed in
the walled city was communicated to the minds of the natives
and foreigners who lived in the outlying quarters of Manila. The
atmosphere of unrest and suspicion threatened to precipitate an
explosion of the highly charged local situation, independently of
the danger that seemed to threaten from the mainland. "Fear of
the Sangleys became universal," wrote Morga, who was an eye
witness of the terrible events to follow, "and suspicions were cur
rent that the Sangleys were about to commit some mischievous
outbreak." Some of the Chinese themselves, in order to win
favor with the Spaniards, carried tales of a seditious movement
that purported to be on foot in the Parian. The disorderly ele
ments about the city spread the rumors, because of the oppor
tunity that an uprising would give them for looting. Some of
the natives and the Japanese mercenaries of the garrison took
advantage of the unsettled state of affairs to annoy and persecute
the Chinese. They accused the Chinese of an intent to revolt
THE CHINESE
87
and threatened to forestall their uprising by a general massacre.
The Japanese, "a race hostile to the Sangleys," and whose aid
the governor had solicited in case of eventualities, apparently took
every occasion to provoke the Chinese. As Morga wisely re
marked, "This alone was sufficient to make it necessary for the
Sangleys to do what they had no intention of doing."
Fearful of an attack, the Chinese secretly began to make
plans for their defense, while some of their more violent leaders
urged them to strike and seize the city before their enemies could
act. Convinced that the Spaniards and Japanese planned their
sudden extermination, the Chinese resolved to rise on the eve of
St. Francis' Day. At this point a wealthy and influential China
man, named Eng-Kang, took over the direction of the incipient
conspiracy and organized it. The fact that this man, who was
known to the Spaniards as Juan Bautista de Vera, was a Christian
and highly esteemed by all classes in Manila seemed to make his
leadership of the plot a particularly formidable threat to the
safety of the colony. "He had become an excellent Spaniard and
was courageous," said Morga. Though the details of the insur
rection were worked out in his house, when two thousand
Chinese had assembled on the night of the third of October pre
paratory to an onslaught on the city, he went to Governor Acuna
and informed him of the rising of the Sangleys, though the gov
ernor had already received prior information from a native
woman who was married to a Japanese. Shortly after the Chi
nese had risen Acuna, suspecting Eng-Kang's duplicity, had him
placed under arrest and summarily beheaded.
As the evening set 6,000 Chinese withdrew from the Parian,
crossed the Pasig, and began to set up fortified works. From this
base armed parties of them quickly scattered over the nearby
quarters of Binondo, Tondo, and Quiapo, setting fire to all the
buildings in their path and slaughtering indiscriminately the de
fenseless natives. Meanwhile, the bells in the churches were
ringing a tocsin of warning and all that sleepless night the
Spanish soldiery were silently moving to their positions and pre
paring the defenses. From the walled city the Spaniards could
see the flames of the houses fired by the Chinese and hear the
infernal din made by their horns and gongs as they swept over
the doomed suburbs beyond the river.
The next day, says Morga, "all was confusion, shouting and
88
THE MANILA GALLEON
outcry in the city, particularly among the natives and the women
and children, who were coming thither for safety." Throughout
the night a small company of men-at-arms under Luis Perez
Dasmarinas beat off wave after wave of Chinese from before a
stone church in Binondo. When morning came 130 men com
prising the very flower of the Spanish chivalry in Manila left the
walled city to relieve their beleaguered comrades who were still
holding the church in Binondo against hundred-fold odds. They
were headed by Tomis Bravo de Acuna, the governor's nephew,
and included such hard-bitten soldiers as Juan de Alcega, who
had fought with Morga against the Dutch, and Fernandez de
Avila, a knight of the Order of Santiago. Leaving the quarter of
San Gabriel, the mounted company soon fell in with a large body
of Chinese. After cutting down great numbers of them, the
Spanish drove the remainder into a cane field and impetuously
followed them into the low swampy ground. Unable to ma
neuver their horses as before and losing their close formation,
they were set upon by fresh detachments of Chinese from the
Parian. In the melee which ensued every Spaniard, including
Dasmarinas and his men, was killed. The Chinese then set up
the heads of the Spanish captives on the stockade of the Parian
as a warning to those in the walled city of what they might
expect.
Sunday, the fifth of October, was a day of terror in Manila,
as the victorious Chinese swept down the left bank of the river,
"burning and destroying everything in their path." In the Parian
they killed many peaceful merchants who had refused to join
their cause, while others hanged themselves out of shame for the
madness that had seized their people.
By now all the able-bodied priests of the city were under
arms. One of them, Bernardino Meneses, formerly a captain in
Flanders, guarded one of the gates. One prodigious friar, An
tonio Flores, also a veteran of the Flemish wars, was credited by
popular imagination with having slain six hundred Sangleys in
the fighting under the walls. However exaggerated the figure
may have been, his single-handed exploits were enough to make
him the outstanding hero of those terrible days. An expert crossbowman and arquebusier, Fray Antonio was commissioned by
Governor Acuna to keep the Chinese shipping in the harbor from
joining the revolt. For this purpose he was assigned only a small
THE CHINESE
89
boat and a few natives. Concealed in a mangrove thicket near
the mouth of the river he could watch the movements of the
junks in the bay as well as any hostile craft which might attempt
to cross the river. During the onslaught on the walls, as boat
loads of Chinese pushed out into midstream from the right bank,
the redoubtable friar kept up a steady and accurate fire through
out the day. Firing almost continuously as two servant boys re
loaded his guns with double charges he fired into the crowded
boats, many of which were overturned, and then calmly picked
off those who swam about in the water. A few who landed he
killed before they could reach the walls with their scaling ladders.
When the fighting was over he withdrew again to the peace of
his monastery, only to leave it again to accompany Acuna on
his victorious campaign against the Dutch in the Moluccas.
When the main body of the Chinese withdrew from before
the walls Juan Juarez Gallinato, most famous of the Spanish cap
tains of the time, followed then with a small troop of infantry
and a force of Japanese auxiliaries. When they had reached the
quarter of Dilao the Sangleys turned on them and threw the
Japanese into disorder. Gallinato then retreated, fighting all
the way, back to the protection of the walls, but not before he had
set fire to the Parian.
At this critical juncture the arrival of Captain Luis de Velasco
with reinforcements from the Visayas decided the issue of the
fighting. He threw his fresh troops at once on the flank of the
Chinese and utterly routed them. When the Chinese fled into
the interior, he followed them relentlessly and cut up their forces
in detail. When he fell in a skirmish in the Batangas hill country
others went out from Manila to continue his work. Two hun
dred Chinese, who were brought back to Manila to serve as galley
slaves, were all that were left of the thousands who had risen
against the Spaniards. It was estimated that over twenty-three
thousand Chinese were killed as the price of the savage retribu
tion which the Spaniards exacted. "At the beginning of the
war," wrote Morga, "there were not seven hundred Spaniards in
the city capable of bearing arms." When Velasco arrived from
the south more than half of them were dead or severely wounded.
Sino-Spanish relations experienced another crisis in 1639,
when large numbers of Chinese in Manila rose to protest against
the efforts of Governor Hurtado de Corcuera to force them to
9°
THE MANILA GALLEON
work in a newly-opened area of rice plantations outside the city.
The tension between the two peoples developed with the usual
rapidity into armed conflict, that only ended after many thou
sands of Chinese had been slaughtered.
Again in 1662 Manila was thrown into consternation by the
famous Chinese leader, Kue-Sing or Chang Ch'eng-Kung, whom
the Spaniards knew as Koxinga. At that time the Manchus had
only recently established themselves in power in China. During
the turmoil which accompanied the overthrow of the Ming
dynasty and the overrunning of the empire by the Manchus
Koxinga offered a bitter resistance to the conquerors that has
won him a high place among Chinese patriots. He gathered a
vast armament of war-junks, with which he harried the Tartar
positions along the coast and inflicted heavy losses on their fleets.
At last he drew off to the island of Formosa, from which he drove
the Dutch, and there set up an independent state.
It was from Formosa that he despatched the Jesuit priest,
Vittorio Ricci, to Manila with an arrogant demand for tribute.
At the same time he threatened that if the Spaniards did not
recognize his sovereignty he would build a bridge of junks from
Formosa to Luzon, over which his invading army would march
to the conquest of the Philippines. The Spanish authorities at
Manila well realized the seriousness of their position but, faithful
to the tradition of more heroic days, they as haughtily defied the
formidable power of the great adventurer.
It was inevitable that the threat from Formosa should create
a dangerous internal situation in Manila. The more violent
spirits, among whom were said to be many debtors of Chinese
merchants, called for a general massacre of the Chinese. How
ever, Governor Manrique de Lara used his influence in favor of
moderation and conciliation and personally reassured the mer
chants in the Parian of his protection. "Those in the Pari£n,"
wrote a Jesuit chronicler of the time, "displayed no courage for
any measures, for as their interests are so involved in peace they
never have incurred the hazard of war, except under compul
sion." Those Chinese who had taken up arms and attacked iso
lated Spaniards in the outskirts of Manila were put down without
mercy and other more doubtful elements among the Chinese
were expelled from the islands. One junk carried back over 1,300
and its decks were so crowded with the fugitives that the pas
THE CHINESE
9*
sengers could scarcely sit down. Though the armed forces were
put in order for resistance, the colony was saved by the death of
Koxinga, who died in a fit of wrath shortly after the return of
Father Ricci from his unwelcome mission to Manila.
During the times of stress and interruption of the peaceful
intercourse with the two peoples the galleon trade would decline
to very low proportions or even to temporary cessation. It was
thus, in a sense, a barometer of local conditions in the Philippines.
On the other hand, the depression of the commerce, due to losses
of galleons or a momentarily diminished demand in the American
market, was liable to cause serious discontent among the Chinese
in Manila. The. authorities of the city wrote to the king in 1643
of a recent insurrection of the Chinese: "The lack of business
occasioned the rising of the Sangleys."
Unable to adjust peacefully their relations with the Chinese,
the Spaniards resorted at intervals to the radical measures of
expulsion or exclusion, but the frequent repetition of these ex
pedients shows what a temporary recourse it was. The fears of
the Spaniards quieted for a moment, the Chinese would begin
to return, usually welcomed by the Spaniards themselves.
For the Spaniards recognized the economic dependence of
the colony on harmonious intercourse with the Chinese. After
the bloody rising and reprisals of 1603 Governor Acuna feared
that the Chinese would not come again to Manila, "which," he
declared, "would be of irreparable damage to this common
wealth." Later he wrote to Philip III: "This country has been
greatly consoled at seeing that the Chinese have chosen to con
tinue their commerce, of which we were much in doubt." In
the interval Acuna had sent an envoy to Canton, to urge the
Chinese to renew their trade, and thirteen junks had arrived at
Manila shortly afterwards."
Not only was regular intercourse with the Chinese necessary
to the galleon trade, but to the very sustenance of the Spanish
community, which depended on the Chinese for nearly all its
food and services. Antonio de Morga said on the same occasion :
"After the end of the war, the need of the city began, for, because
of not having Sangleys who worked at the trades and brought in
* The Chinese annals known as the Ming Shih say of this occasion: "After that
time the Chinese gradually flocked to Manila; and the savages (i.e. the Spaniards),
seeing profit in the commerce with China, did not oppose them. For a long time
they continued to gather again in the city." Berthold Laufer, op. cit., p. 272.
92
THE MANILA GALLEON
all the provisions, there was no food nor any shoes to wear, not
even at excessive prices. The native Indians no longer exercise
those trades and have even forgotten much of farming, the rais
ing of poultry, cattle and cotton, and the weaving of cloth, which
they used to do in the days of their paganism and for a long
time after the conquest of the country." In another place he
wrote: "It is true that the city could not be maintained or pre
served without these Chinese; for they are the mechanics in all
trades and are excellent workmen and work for suitable wages."
Hernando de los Rios Coronel, a contemporary of Morga and
an enlightened and sympathetic observer, said: "The mainte
nance of commerce with the Chinese and the good treatment of
those of that nation who dwell in those islands are of so great
importance that that community cannot be maintained without
them. For that reason it is advisable to treat them well." After
a royal order of 1686 had commanded the expulsion of the Chi
nese, the audiencia protested to the king that it would be impos
sible and unwise to carry out the provisions of the decree. "The
Chinese are absolutely those who maintain the islands," they de
clared; "they control the provisioning, the retail business and the
trades of the community, for the natives are so useless that they
only give themselves up to indolence. The Chinese," they
added, "seem to have been born with a special faculty for every
thing."7
After the expulsion of 1755 the Frenchman, Legentil, re
marked : "These islands, in the state in which they are, cannot do
without the Chinese. ... I did not know any Spaniard in Ma
nila who did not sincerely regret their departure and who did not
frankly admit that the Philippines would suffer for it." His
countryman, Mallat, in commenting on the fact that the exclu
sion ordinances had never been carried out, said: "There are
many people who believe the Chinese necessary to Manila and are
of the opinion that they cannot be dispensed with."
A remarkable feature of these long series of racial conflicts is
the singular indifference displayed by the Chinese authorities at
home to the treatment of their subjects who had left the empire.
7 Said Father Chirino: "From China come those who supply every sort of service,
all dexterous, prompt, and cheap, from physicians and barbers to burden-bearers and
porters. They are the tailors and the shoemakers, metal-workers, silversmiths, sculptors,
locksmiths, painters, masons, weavers, and finally every kind of servitors in the com
monwealth."
THE CHINESE
93
After the famous insurrection of 1603 the Spaniards were amazed
at the apparent callousness and lack of interest at the sanguinary
reprisals that had been taken on the Sangley population of the
islands. When the viceroy of one of the coast provinces urged
the emperor to avenge the slaughter of so many Chinese there
was no response to his appeal. Two years had already passed,
and the lethargy and pacific inertia of the huge empire, the strong
stand taken by Acuna, and his despatch of an embassy which
flattered while it impressed, had warded off whatever danger of
retribution there might have been. This attitude was in marked
contrast to that of the Japanese government, which was quick to
demand explanations and satisfaction for any harsh treatment of
its subjects. Padre Conception, the famous historian of the
Philippines, explained this insensitiveness by the fact that the Chi
nese who lived in foreign countries were held as ingrates, or
even as traitors, to their country and as such could expect no
redress for persecution endured abroad.
Though both peoples were noted for their inhospitality to
foreigners, each accused the other of xenophobia and of having
initiated the exclusion policy. Pedro Calderon Enriquez, a mem
ber of the audiencia, advised the governor in 1741 that the em
peror of China could not consistently object to the expulsion of
the Chinese from Manila, since the exclusion policy followed
towards foreigners in China only justified like treatment of the
Chinese in the Philippines. However, it is more likely that the
Chinese copied their policy of exclusiveness from the Spaniards;
and the rigor with which Spain excluded foreigners from her
overseas dominions certainly shows that the Spaniards could have
learned nothing from the Chinese in that respect.
Consideration of religion and morals played an important
part in the Spanish attitude towards the Chinese. On the one
hand, some of the powerful clerical element in the colony fa
vored a conciliatory and liberal policy towards the Chinese, on
the ground that their presence in Manila offered a favorable op
portunity for their conversion to Christianity. In this stand they
were generally supported by the pious zeal of the monarchs in
Spain and by the heads of the regular orders, who always cher
ished the hope of using the Philippines as the base for missionary
activity in China. On the other hand, the alleged vices of the
Chinese made them in the eyes of some Spaniards a grave menace
94
THE MANILA GALLEON
to the moral life of the community, while their obdurate heresy
or frivolous conversion were believed to set a bad example to
the native Filipinos.
The royal solicitude for the christianizing of the Chinese
appears on many occasions. One of the thirteen laws in the Code
of the Indies, or Recopilacidn de Lcyes de las Indias, providing
for just treatment of the Sangleys, begins as follows: "It is just
that when these people come to trade, they should be made much
of and well received, in order that, by carrying back reports of
the good treatment and welcome offered them by our subjects,
others may decide to come. Through this channel they will re
ceive the Christian Doctrine and profess our Holy Catholic Faith,
to which our principal desire and intention are directed." Again,
although the Spaniards had previously been forbidden by royal
edict to go to China to trade, the king granted permission for
such trade in 1690, in response to Governor Vargas Hurtado's
representations that direct trade with China was necessary for
the perpetuation of Christian missions in that country. Only four
years before another decree had ordered all Chinese to be ex
pelled from the Philippines within two months, if they did not
accept Christianity and promise to remain Christians—not a seri
ous hindrance to the average Chinaman's continued residence in
the islands.
Many Spaniards testified to the lightness with which the
Chinese espoused the Christian faith. In the early years of the
colony Morga said: "Their having become Christians is not
through the desire for salvation, but for the temporal conve
niences that they have there." In 1695 the audiencia said of their
Christianity: "Although they arc not very good Christians, they
make very good Catholics and loyal vassals of your Majesty."
As to the possible effect of exclusion on their conversion, its mem
bers remarked that if the Chinese were forced to be more tran
sient traders, who yearly came and went with the monsoons,
their conversion would be difficult, on account of their lack of a
fixed habitation. And they added: "Because he who travels al
ways takes things lightly, and seldom seriously." Four years later
the archbishop of Manila himself accused the insincerity of the
Christianity of the Chinese. The outspoken Governor Anda de
clared in 1768 that "even the padres" confess that the Chinese
accept conversion only to be allowed to marry in Manila and to
THE CHINESE
95
carry on business there. As evidence of the insincerity of their
conversion Anda cited the relapse of the Chinese during the Eng
lish occupation in 1762. "They all apostatized," he said, "if that
can be said of those who receive the baptism without intention,
and worshipped the Pig's Head, the Serpent, the Confucius, and
other Reptiles of this tenor." "In Manila I have seen," he added,
"God and Belial together on an altar, hand in hand and very
friendly."
The Spaniards also objected to some of the moral ideas and
practices of the Chinese. However, in extenuation of some of the
moral peculiarities and deficiencies with which the Chinese were
charged, it must be recognized that the large Sangley population
in the Philippines was mostly composed of men whose back
ground was the Canton waterfront. As such, they could not be
expected to bring with them the best traditions of Chinese cul
ture or the higher Confucian standards of conduct. In the
islands they lived without political security, distrusted by the
Spaniards for their numbers, and envied and hated by the natives
for their superior material lot that was the reward of their in
dustry and skill. Their social status lacked the safeguards and
the restraints that in China were provided by the family and age
long custom of the community. Exiles, pariahs and celibates—
too much was expected of them.
A memorial written in 1677 by Diego Calderon Serrano, a
judge of the audiencia, insists on the evil influence of the Chinese
over the natives. He charged them with inviting and even forc
ing the natives to eat meat on fast days, of dissuading them from
hearing mass or sermons, and ordering them to work on feast
days, "without the least regard for the things of the other life, or
for God or his law." A detailed report presented to the governor
by Pedro Calderon Enriquez, after a tour of inspection through
the provinces, was more damning to the Chinese. "The wealth,"
he said, "which they derive from trade, the vice of lewdness
which is common among them, and their excessive perversity and
cunning are the source of grave detriment to the community."
And he added: "Their general conduct, as it is now, in no way
conforms to divine right, and is expressly contrary to royal laws,
ordinances and decrees." When three years later a royal edict of
1744 ordered the absolute expulsion of all heathen Chinese, it
accused the Chinese, among other things, of "idolatry and athe
96
THE MANILA GALLEON
ism, lasciviousness and sodomy, craftiness, slyness and cunning,
and usury and deceit." On the other side, the remark of a Jesuit
friar stationed in China is worth quoting, as illustrating the rec
ognition of the worth and attainments of the Chinese race by
those better acquainted with their civilization. Writing to Juan
Bautista Roman, the Spanish factor at Macao in 1584, he said:
"It is a cause for wonderment that this people, who had no com
munication with Europe, should have advanced almost as much
by themselves."
In the second half of the eighteenth century important
changes in the galleon trade and in the general economic life of
the colony introduced a new factor into the periodic agitation
against the Chinese. The commerce with Mexico had come to
be controlled by a relatively few affluent merchants and had
ceased to be the direct mainstay of the whole body of Spanish
citizens. Meanwhile in the two centuries in which the interests
of the Spaniards had been engrossed by the galleon the Chinese
had so completely monopolized the trades and retail business of
the colony that the Spaniards who now wished to enter those oc
cupations found the competition of the Oriental a barrier to
success. As a result, those who were thrown between the two
monopolies began to clamor for the expulsion and exclusion of
the Chinese as the only means of restoring industrial opportunity.
As early as 1586 Governor Vera and other prominent
Spaniards of Manila had petitioned the Council of the Indies to
forbid the Chinese from remaining in Manila to retail their
goods, since this business should be in the hands of the Spaniards.
Their recommendations were incorporated in the instructions
given to Governor Gomez Perez Dasmarinas three years later,
but were observed only fitfully. In 1722 the fiscal of the colony
observed to the king: "The Sangleys have gained control of all
the commerce in provisions and other supplies and of the me
chanical trades. For this reason the Spaniards here have neither
engaged in retail business nor in the trades, as they have done in
other provinces of the Indies."
Five years later, in a plea on behalf of both Spaniards and
natives, Pedro Gonzalez de Rivera and six other citizens denied
that the Chinese were essential to the welfare of the islands and
appealed to the king for the execution of the expulsion decree
of 1686. "The Sangleys," they said, "are those who take nearly
THE CHINESE
97
all the silver that comes from New Spain and who buy up all the
products of these islands. The natives are those who labor in the
cutting of timbers for the galleons, and who drag them from the
forests and carry them in rafts to Cavite and the other yards.
They are those who do the work in the construction and over
hauling of the galleons, and who serve as seamen in the naviga
tion to New Spain. They labor in the foundries and forges, and
finally, on them falls all the heavy work of this country, even
in those trades which the Sangleys control."
The foremost champion of this policy was Simon de Anda,
one of the ablest and certainly the most aggressive and fearless of
the governors of the period of revival. Anda favored not only
the expulsion of all Chinese who might be spared from hanging,
but even of those Spaniards who should oppose such a measure.
He named as the influences against expulsion the few merchants
who were interested only in the galleon trade, the regular clergy
and the governors. The position of the first, who were largely
dependent on the Chinese in making up their shipments to
Acapulco, is easily understood. Anda accused the friars of mer
cenary motives in their support of the Chinese, whom he charged
with being a large source of revenue for the Church. He said
that when the order came for the expulsion of the non-Christian
Chinese in Arandia's time two friars had baptized four hundred
Chinamen in one day. The Chinese had also served as "a most
abundant milk cow for the government." Unscrupulous gover
nors had levied contributions on the Sangleys, while holding over
their heads the threat of expulsion—the old recourse of medieval
rulers with the Jews—but by systematic "adulation and subordi
nation" of the governors the pliant Chinese had defeated the pur
pose of several orders for their expulsion which had been sent out
from Spain.
It was utterly untrue, Anda protested, that the welfare of the
islands depended on the Chinese. However, the positive fea
ture of his scheme was the creation of an exclusively Spanish in
dustrial community, which could only be realized by first rid
ding the colony of the Chinese. On his first entrance into office
as governor a petition against the Chinese had been presented
to him by "those Spaniards who wish to work in order to live."
Henceforth, this large element, hitherto an object of charity
and in a state closely bordering on vagabondage, though once
98
THE MANILA GALLEON
participants in the galleon traffic, found a spokesman in the
governor. They had no part in the existing economic regime, but
once the Chinese were gone, they might take their place as shop
keepers and make up the personnel of Spanish business houses.
As for the trades now monopolized by the Chinese guilds, the
natives and such Spaniards as wished would be free to enter
them. For the benefit of the galleon merchants the Chinese
might still come each year to Manila, sell their goods under the
restrictions of the old sixteenth century law, and catch the mon
soon for the Chinese coast; or preferably the Spaniards might
reopen direct trade with China. The next year after Anda had
presented his memorial to Julian de Arriaga, Minister of the
Indies, the order of expulsion was put into execution. In 1778,
two years after Anda's death, and during the governorship of
Basco y Vargas, the Chinese were permitted to return to Manila.
When the United States took over the Philippines in 1898 it
inherited the perennial Chinese question from the Spaniards.
However, by a military order of September 1899 me exclusion
policy in force in the United States was applied to the islands,
though it did not affect the residence of the many Chinese who
were natives of the Philippines. The order was put into effect
against the protests of the famous Chinese diplomat, Wu Ting
Fang, who represented the antiquity and importance of the Chi
nese connections with the islands.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>»<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
CHAPTER 2
THE JAPANESE
IN former times, when the trade with Japan flourished," said
Padre Delgado, "Manila was the marvel and the pearl of the
Orient." However, the trading connection with Japan was of
short duration and many vicissitudes. Beginning several years
after the traffic with China, it was cut off in the thirties of the
seventeenth century by a combination of circumstances unrelated
to the conduct of the trade itself. For the determinant factor
in Spanish-Japanese relations was, after all, religious and not com
mercial. The character of these relations was further qualified
by a third factor,—the mutual fear of the aggressive designs
of the other. The missionary and the ambassador-spy thus played
more important roles than did the merchant, who could not
flourish in an atmosphere of chronic suspicion and untempered
zeal.
The period of Spanish intercourse with the Japanese coin
cided with the most remarkable epoch in pre-Meiji Japan. Dur
ing the last decades of the sixteenth century there succeeded to
the anarchy of the Ashikaga regime a new order. Japan was
unified as never before. And whereas daimios and bonzes had
long worked their lawless wills in the face of the impotence of
both shogun and emperor, the militant Buddhist monks and
the feudal lords were now beaten into subjection to the mon
archy. Even the redoubtable Shimadzu clansmen of Satsuma
had to submit to the centralizing forces that were directed by
Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Iyeyasu. At his death in 1582 Nobunaga, a veritable super-sumurai, was master of thirty-two of the
sixty-eight provinces. Hideyoshi greatly extended the authority
of the central government and reduced Kiushiu as well as the
Kuanto lands above Yedo. Though he never assumed the title
of shogun, this extraordinary figure was in an unprecedented
sense lord of Japan at the time when Iyeyasu succeeded to the
newly accumulated prestige of the monarchy in 1598. With the
99
IOO
THE MANILA GALLEON
latter the work of consolidation was done. In 1600 he routed
the western rebels on the field of Sekigahara and fifteen years
later broke the last serious resistance to his power by taking
Osaka castle from the house of Toyotomi. Like Richelieu, a
great administrator, he founded a system of government that en
dured until the changes of the Meiji period, while the Tokugawa
shoguns, of which he was the first, ruled the nation until the
restoration of the imperial authority in 1867.
Among other characteristic manifestations of national life
during this period was the impulse to expand beyond the seas.
The rise of the low-born Hideyoshi to mastery is an example of
the rampant individualism that also found outlets in foreign
adventure and in maritime and commercial activities. Radical
improvements were made in shipbuilding and Japanese crossed
to America, as well as to the coasts and islands to the west and
south. And besides the overseas military enterprises of Hide
yoshi, there were many Japanese adventurers at the courts of
East Indian potentates, especially among the kingdoms of Farther
India. This outward expansion of the nation encountered a
similar movement that had its origin in Europe,—a movement
whose aggressiveness was so repugnant to the Japanese that the
nation returned, after a few decades of adventuring and inquir
ing, to the old isolation and provincial content.
The most disturbing element in the occidental invasion of
the Far East was the influx of Christian missionaries. For it
was the dual fear that the efforts of the priests would undermine
the native culture and that they were the forerunners of armed
conquest which brought about the reaction against the foreigners
and the eventual closing of Japan to the outside world. "It was
recognized," says Lafcadio Hearn, "that the triumph of the for
eign religion would involve the total disintegration of society,
and the subjection of the empire to foreign domination."
For several decades after the coming of Francisco Xavier to
Kagoshima in 1549 the Japanese mission field was worked exclu
sively by the Portuguese Jesuits. This monopoly was facilitated
by the close trading relations that sprang up between Macao and
the new port of Nagasaki. It was, moreover, confirmed to the
Society by a bull of Gregory XIII, which was in turn recognized
by Philip II, then monarch of both the Iberian kingdoms. Goa
and Macao were the only authorized gateways into Japan until
THE JAPANESE
101
the brief of Paul V, which was issued "at the instance of. the
king of Spain" in 1608, opened the field to the three most im
portant orders at Manila. However, the Christian propaganda
was already on the defensive, and the ardent and militant Span
ish friars never had such success as did the labors of the Jesuits.
Yet, in spite of the rising sentiment of hostility to the whole
Christian movement, which broke out in martyrdoms and edicts
of expulsion, the missionaries from Manila continued to find their
way into Japan, either openly or through one secret guise or
other. Eleven went as late as 1632, five in 1637, tne vear °^ me
Shimabara outbreak, and four in 1642, after the nation had sealed
itself to the outside world. This disquieting element in SpanishJapanese relations made impossible the continued prosecution of
trade and friendly diplomatic intercourse.
The Japanese did not consider the preservation of the trade
with the foreigners as worth the sacrifice of much of their newlywon domestic tranquillity and their national culture. The long
closing of Japan to the world, in fact, resulted above all from
dislike of the aggressive proselytism of the subtle Portuguese
Jesuits and of the undaunted zealots from Manila. Among the
influential class whose religious attitude was Laodicean the contentions between the different orders and between Portuguese
and Spaniards only aroused disgust, while Date Masamune's em
bassy returned from the distracted lands of western Christendom,
disillusioned of the moral superiority of the new faith, and, to the
added confusion of the padres, spread the report of their awak
ening. For several years the results of the Christian propaganda
had been remarkable. Even Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, whether
out of curiosity or to secure an offset to the hostile bonzes, had
temporarily patronized the missionaries, and influential daimios,
like Takeyama, known to the Spaniards as "Don Justo Ucondono," either espoused Christianity outright or held out tantaliz
ing hopes of their conversion. Its extraordinary success among
the masses of Kiushiu greatly disturbed the Buddhist priesthood
and those who still loyally performed the rites of Shinto.
However, the growing sense of the anti-national character
of the foreign sect doomed the efforts of the missionaries to ulti
mate failure. Though the reaction had long been developing,
it did not definitely triumph until the time of Iyeyasu and of his
son and successor, Hidetada. The former, although a Gallio in
IQ2-.
:
THE MANILA GALLEON
giattefs of faith, adopted the policy of the proconsul Pliny in his
attitude toward the Christians. Little concerned with their reli
gious dogmas as such, he came to believe them a serious menace
to the state. It was the same problem that the Catholic Kings
and their successors faced with the Moors, or Richelieu with the
Huguenots, and that brought about the incorporation of the cujus
regio principle into the Peace of Augsburg. Dutch and English
agitated against the friars, alleging that here, as always in Span
ish history, the missionary was the precursor of the soldier. Since
neither of those peoples attempted religious propaganda, but were
mere traders, their reiterated charges of Spanish intentions had
the desired effect.
The rash disclosure of the Spanish pilot of the galleon San
Felipe only confirmed the suspicions of the Japanese. This too
frank seaman, in order to impress the Japanese with the might
of his royal master, produced a mappe-monde on which were
represented the territories of the Spanish empire. When asked
how the king of Spain had come to rule so much of the world,
the pilot replied: "Nothing is easier. Our kings begin by send
ing into countries which they desire to conquer some friars, who
engage in the work of converting the people to our religion.
When they have made considerable progress, troops are sent in
who are joined by the new Christians. They then have little
difficulty in settling the rest." When the incident was reported
to Hideyoshi, he swore to purge Japan of the Christians.
"What!", he said, "my states are filled with traitors, and their
numbers increase from day to day." There followed an out
burst of persecuting fury, and though Christianity was not ex
tinguished for a few decades, the further toleration of it was only
by way of reprieve.
There had been sporadic and local cases of persecution from
the beginning of the Christian movement. From 1587 the cen
tral government took occasional measures against the friars, all
of which proved more or less ineffectual, or at most of but tem
porary efficacy. In that year Hideyoshi decreed the expulsion
of the missionaries. However, this edict was carried out in desul
tory fashion and an influx of Spanish friars was to follow a few
years later, further to aggravate the situation. After the San
Felipe episode, twenty-six missionaries and native neophytes, in
cluding six Spanish Franciscans and three Jesuits, suffered mar
THE JAPANESE
103
tyrdom at Nagasaki in February 1597. There was a further series
of anti-Christian edicts in Iyeyasu's time, beginning in 1606. In
161 1 conversion to Christianity was forbidden. The next year it
was further proscribed, while in 1614 the radical decree of Hidetada, the acting shogun, was issued against the Christians, order
ing all friars from Japan. "The Emperor of Japan," the English
trader, Richard Cocks, wrote in his diary, "hath banished all
Jesuits, priestes, friers and nuns out of all his domynions, som
being gon for the Philippines and the rest for Amacon [Macao]
in China." Retaliation at the refusal of the Spaniards to permit
the cherished trade with New Spain doubtless had something
to do with the promulgation of this peremptory order. Some
priests who went out to Japan the following year were promptly
commanded to return to Mexico. In December Robert Cappindall, one of the English traders in Japan wrote: "Certain Jesuites
come out of Nova Spania in embassage unto the Emperor, with
a letter and a present from the King of Spain, which, after a
month or 6 weeks' attendance, the Emperor rec'd, but none of
the embassadors admitted to his presence. All the answer to
this embassage was, to gett from foorth of this cuntry with speede,
upon paine of his displeasure."
The persecution was particularly intense in 1616, the year
of Iyeyasu's death, and during the next few years. However,
members of the orders persisted in entering Japan in defiance
of the authorities, lay and ecclesiastical. In 1622 they paid the
extreme penalty for their zeal in the "Great Martyrdom" of Naga
saki. Ten friars went to Satsuma in 1623 and by 1629 a con
siderable number of religious were in Japan. For the next few
years they carried on a vigorous and all too open propaganda.
In 1638 they and their work were swept away in a general mas
sacre of Christians that followed the Shimabara rebellion. Chris
tianity was extirpated and Japan returned to her ancestral gods.
With it ended all intercourse with the foreigner, save for the
restricted and ignominious concessions under which the Dutch
were permitted to trade at their post on Deshima in Nagasaki
harbor.
Inextricably bound up with the missionary campaign and
overshadowing the commercial connections was the course of
diplomatic relations. The sensitive racial pride of the Japanese
was a match for the peculiar soberbia and altaneria,—the pride
104
THE MANILA GALLEON
and haughtiness,—of the Spaniard ; and in view of the contact of
two such inflammable national tempers as were embodied in the
respective ideals of bushido and pundonor, or "the point of
honor," relations were always delicate and chronically unsettled.
There was thus generated a highly charged atmosphere of mu
tual suspicion. Intensified by occasional untoward incidents and
by the irritating religious question, this threatening atmosphere
could only be temporarily cleared by the frequent despatch of
embassies on both sides. The usual state of the Spanish mind
is reflected in Padre Casimiro Diaz' account of the coming of
the Japanese embassy in 1630: "They secretly came as spies of
the state and forces of Manila, and to see if they could carry
out their intention of making themselves lords of these islands.
They were received by Governor Tabora with the ostentation
which the occasion demanded, the governor making a show of
the power of Spaniards to resist any enemy. Meanwhile they
carried on in secret their duties as spies, and noted the forces of
Manila, making plans of its walls and fortifications." The Span
iards were perpetually disquieted by fear of military complications
with their powerful and uncertain neighbor of the north, and
were correspondingly anxious to maintain the friendship of Japan
as the price of their own continued security. On the other hand,
the Japanese were disposed to regard any unusual accretion of
forces or warlike preparations at Manila as designed for their
own undoing.
The warlike renown of the Japanese greatly troubled the
Spaniards, whose sense of the peril was aggravated by the con
sciousness of their own numerical weakness. Expressing the cur
rent fear of a Japanese descent on the north Luzon coasts, the
royal treasury officials in a letter to the king called the Japanese
"a most warlike people of great military strength and capable of
great efforts." This bellicose people gave the governors of the
Philippines far more concern than did the more pacific, if more
numerous, Chinese. Governor Dasmarinas informed Philip II
in 1591 that the very conservation of the colony depended on
the friendship of the emperor of Japan. Seven years later, when
Hideyoshi died, the Spaniards were trying to conclude an alli
ance with the Chinese, in order to offset the common danger
from Japan. Fray Diego Aduarte, writing to the Council of the
Indies in 1618, said: "The Japanese are those who are more feared
THE JAPANESE
105
in the islands than all the neighboring nations, for they are very
courageous and arrogant." Another Spanish writer of the time
said of the Japanese: "There is no people more given to conceal
ing their real designs; what they say is very different from what
they feel in their hearts." "The Japanese are an energetic race,"
said Governor Vera, "skilled in the use of our weapons." The
Council of the Indies resolved in 1607 that: "It is well to keep
the king of Japan friendly. For if he were not so, he would be
the greatest enemy that could be feared, on account of the num
ber and size of his realms, and the valor of the people therein,
who are, beyond comparison, the bravest in all India."
Spanish fears of conquest by Japan appeared well justified by
the belligerent temper and threats of Hideyoshi. The dread re
gent's pretensions to tribute and vassalage, whether veiled or
expressed with arrogant bluntness, while at the same time they
were mingled with protestations of friendship and desire for
trade, kept the Spaniards at Manila in a state of apprehension for
years. In such circumstances normal intercourse between the
two peoples was impossible. Moreover, Hideyoshi suspected the
daimios of Kiushiu of leanings towards some arrangement with
the Spanish government at Manila as a counterpoise to his own
encroachments. After subjecting the most of Japan to his au
thority, Hideyoshi embarked upon a career of conquest on the
mainland that was to comprehend the subjugation of Corea and
China. It was suggested to him, while in this aggressive frame
of mind, that he undertake an enterprise against the Spanish
establishment in the Philippines; for it is virtually certain that
the project was not his own, but originated in the brain of one
Faranda, or Harada. This sinister figure, who had been a pupil
of the Jesuits, had ventured to Manila on trading voyages. He
had gained the confidence of some friars, to whom he had held
out hopes of a favorable reception among the people of Japan.
He at the same time carefully noted the situation about the
colony and estimated its probable capacity for defense. He fi
nally concluded that here was a promising field for a facile con
quest. Faranda communicated his project to a man about the
Japanese court, who was high in the regent's confidence, and
through this channel found in Hideyoshi a sympathetic response.
In 1592, a Japanese Christian, known to the Spaniards as
"Gaspar," acting as Faranda's agent, brought to the governor
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THE MANILA GALLEON
at Manila what purported to be a letter from Hideyoshi himself.
The letter contained a "demand for recognition and obedience,
made with arrogance and barbaric haughtiness." "We are not
harboring suspicions," Dasmarinas informed the king, "but veri
tably expect him here by October of this year or the beginning
of next." In the face of the peril the governor resorted to the
only adequate weapon at his command—diplomacy. In his reply
to Hideyoshi he doubted that the emissary, who had represented
himself as Faranda, was really the envoy of so mighty a poten
tate "as the great Kwambaku must be." However, he was send
ing to Japan Fray Juan Cobos to treat with the regent for the
maintenance of peaceful and friendly relations. Meanwhile, he
would submit the whole question to the king of Spain, "the
greatest monarch in the world." At home he was careful to
make every possible effort to prepare the colony against trouble
from the side of Japan. "Not only should the arms be ready,"
said the governor at the time, "but the soldiers experienced in
and accustomed to them; the galley not only finished, but the
rower skillful at the oar; food collected; and even money, which
is the sinew of war, ready and assigned for the expenses of war
—in order that the enemy, who spies on all our actions, may see
how well prepared we are, and be restrained and intimidated.
For many times battles are fought as much by means of reputa
tion as with forces."
Cobos delivered to Hideyoshi the reply of Dasmarinas and
left Japan the next year as the bearer of further overtures from
the regent. Faranda came to Manila at the same time, repre
senting himself as Hideyoshi's ambassador, though he declared
that his credentials had been lost on the ship which had gone
down with Cobos on board. As in the former case, Dasmarinas
was incredulous as to Faranda's authorization to represent the
lord of Japan, but none the less did not relax his customary
vigilance. Faranda assumed an amicable and conciliatory tone
that was evidently calculated to quiet the suspicions of the Span
iard. He expressed regret that the governor should have "mis
interpreted" the communication of the year before as a threat of
attack, and as a guarantee for the greater security of the Spanish
colony he even offered to bring about a voluntary restriction of
emigration from Japan to the Philippines. Dasmarinas showed
himself disposed to accept these overtures, whatever may have
THE JAPANESE
107
been their ultimate source. In notifying Hideyoshi of the ap
pointment of Fray Pedro Bautista as his envoy to the regent's
court, the Spaniard said: "He has power from me to accept and
establish the peace and amity which are offered in your royal
name and requested from us by Faranda."
During the next year the governor was killed by the Chinese
rowers of his galley while bound on an expedition against the
Moluccas. His son and successor, Luis, was left to continue the
trying negotiations with the Japanese. Meantime, Hideyoshi sent
to Manila by Fray Pedro Bautista a reply so haughty that Span
ish pride could not accept it. After a lofty declaration of his own
prowess, he made a blunt demand for friendship that but thinly
veiled the real significance of his message. "After going to
China," he said, "Luzon will be within my reach. Let us be
friends forever. Write to that effect to the king of Castille. Do
not, because he is far away, let him slight my words." The let
ter was discussed in a council of war called by the new governor,
and while it was decided to refuse recognition of Hideyoshi's
pretensions, the usual desire for continuation of friendly relations
was expressed.
The irritation of Hideyoshi at the persistent evasion of his
demands was still evident two years later in his attitude on the
question of the San Felipe. On that occasion, after the sacking
of the galleon and the martyrdom of the friars at Nagasaki,
Governor Tello sent Luis Navarrete Fajardo to Japan to see that
provision was made against the recurrence of similar outrages.
Navarrete carried curious and valuable presents for Hideyoshi,
among which a Siamese elephant especially impressed the regent
and his people. "The elephant was very well received," the gov
ernor wrote to the king, "and they tell me that on the day when
he entered Meaco the concourse of people in the plaza was so
great—because they had never seen elephants before—that seven
persons were suffocated. When the ambassador had ascended
to the hall, the king came out to meet him with thirty kings
who were his vassals. My letter was then read in public. It
was well received and the king said that he would reply thereto.
Then he wished to see the presents, which had been put in twelve
boxes. Greatly excited and enraged by a picture of myself, which
represented me armed and with a cane in my hand, he asked in
a loud voice whether this was intended as a threat. He was an
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THE MANILA GALLEON
swered in the negative, but that it is a custom of persons who held
high offices to send their portraits as tokens of regard and friend
ship when embassies were despatched. Thereupon he was ap
peased and ordered the picture to be placed in a large hall, and
directed his wives and children to go to see it. After this the
ambassador was invited to dine with him three times, and was
finally dismissed with a present of twelve coats-of-mail, thirty
lances, and two horses."
Hideyoshi's replies to the Spanish representations were vague
and equivocal. The two governments were no nearer a good
understanding than in the time of Dasmarinas. "The king's
greed has been much whetted," wrote a friar from Japan to An
tonio de Morga, "by what he stole from the San Felipe. It is
said that next year he will go to Luzon, and that he does not go
this year because of being busy with the Coreans." "There is
always suspicion of Japan," said Governor Tello, "and according
to the advice which I now have, those people desire exceedingly
to come here." "We are every moment fearing some movement
from Japan," wrote Bishop Benavides to the king in June 1598.
"If, for the punishment of our sins, the Emperor of Japan should
attempt the conquest of this land, as he has warned us, only a
miracle can save the Philippines," wrote a friar to the dying
king, for whom the islands had been named. However, before
the fruition of his plans Hideyoshi died, and the menace that
had hung over the Spanish colony for several years was averted.
In the words of Morga, "between demand and replies, several
years were spent, until at last Taico died."
The accession of Iyeyasu to power brought about an improve
ment in Hispano-Japanese relations. "Peace and friendship with
the king of Japan goes on continuing," wrote Governor Acuna
to Philip III in 1604. The great shogun's international policy
was on a higher plane than had been that of his blustering and
imperialistic predecessor. He had no animus against the for
eigners as such, and the onus for whatever measures were directed
against the outsiders during his time must be borne by that ele
ment itself. Iyeyasu was not so much bent on foreign conquest
as on the expansion of Japanese commerce and merchant marine.
In the prosecution of these aims he showed himself conciliatory
and reasonable, and he only changed his policy toward the Span
iards when he found they were not amenable to such methods.
THE JAPANESE
109
The lay authorities at Manila were sincerely desirous of meeting
the overtures of Iyeyasu, except as they held possibilities of ulti
mate danger to the colony, though Spanish officialdom at times
imposed upon the patience of the shogun. A royal decree of
1609 particularly enforced upon the government at Manila the
necessity of maintaining peaceful intercourse with the Japanese.
"Let the governor and captain-general of the Philippines," read
the order, "aim always to conserve good relations, peace and
quietude with the emperor of Japan. He should use for this
purpose the most prudent and proper means according to the
circumstances of the time, and he should take care not to risk
the reputation of our arms and state among the nations and seas
of the Orient." Embassies and presents were frequently ex
changed and for the time being there was little of the panicky
tension that had prevailed in Hideyoshi's time.
However, all this good impression was gradually nullified by
the growing activity of the friars, to whom Iyeyasu became un
compromisingly antipathetic. Zealots like the persistent Padre
Sotelo thus undid much of the work accomplished by the Span
ish governors and the shogun.
The hostile influence of the Dutch and English who estab
lished themselves in Japan during this period became increasingly
apparent in the growing alienation of Japanese friendship for the
Iberians. The Hollanders and Englishmen, like Richard Cocks
and Will Adams, lost no opportunity to impress on the shogun
and other prominent natives the danger of allowing the Spanish
friars to continue their propaganda in the country, always alleg
ing that the missionaries were only the forerunners of armed
invasion from Manila. According to Cocks, the Spaniards lacked
"neither money nor men for thackomplishing such a strattgim."
An opportunity came to Iyeyasu in 1609 to treat with the
Spaniards for the realization of some of the most cherished phases
of his policy. In July the galleon San Francisco, out from Manila
and under the command of ex-governor Rodrigo de Vivero, was
thrown upon the coast of Kazusa. Iyeyasu treated his Spanish
guests with gracious hospitality and both parties improved the
occasion to press certain cherished desires on the other. Though
a treaty of trade and friendship was concluded with the shogun,
its validity was, of course, seriously qualified by Vivero's doubt
ful authorization to conclude such an arrangement. Vivero re
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THE MANILA GALLEON
quested: first, assurance of toleration and protection for the Span
ish regulars engaged in mission work in Japan; second, confirma
tion of the "alliance" between the rulers of the two nations; and,
third, the expulsion of the Dutch. Iyeyasu agreed to grant the
first two of these requests, but evaded the anti-Dutch article. He
could only have tolerated the presence of the friars on condition
that it was the price to be paid for obtaining his own desires
from the Spaniards. "The profit and benefit to be derived from
friendship and commerce with the Spaniards," wrote Antonio
de Morga, "are more to the taste of Daifusama than what he
heard concerning their religion." As part of his wide plans
for the economic advancement of the nation, he requested the
services of fifty Spanish miners from Mexico, to introduce west
ern methods in the working of some newly-found mines. How
ever, Vivero insisted on attaching such conditions to this con
cession as would have seriously compromised national control
over these important resources. To further his merchant marine
program Iyeyasu asked for shipwrights who could instruct the
Japanese in the construction of ocean-going vessels. At the same
time he expressed his eagerness for increased trading relations,
not only with the Philippines, but directly with New Spain.
Now, as always, the Spaniards realized the danger of encourag
ing Japanese aspirations for maritime enterprise. On this point
Morga declared that "the greatest security from Japan has ever
been Japanese lack of ships and ignorance of navigation." Bartolome de Argensola, the historian, wrote that "The navigation
of the Japanese would be the prelude to the destruction of the
Philippines and New Spain." On these more tangible phases of
his policy Iyeyasu could gain little satisfaction from the Span
iards. However, a general treaty embodying some of the desires
of both sides was drawn up with Vivero in July 1610. To seal
the agreement Iyeyasu promised to send a mission with presents
to the king of Spain. Vivero left Japan for Mexico in the follow
ing August.
Within the next few years the Spaniards were placed more
and more on the defensive and forced to justify their very pres
ence in Japan. The net results of all the exchanges of embassies
and presents and ceremonies were very small. Iyeyasu was dis
appointed in his efforts to bring about increased trading connec
tions and increasingly exasperated by the friars. Moreover, he
THE JAPANESE
in
alleged the existence of treasonable intrigues between the Span
iards and some Japanese high in the imperial service. When an
embassy from Manila under one "Domingos Francisco" appeared
in Japan in 1610, with instructions to protest further against the
presence of the Dutch, it was ignored for a time and, when re
ceived, was commanded to keep silence on the very subject of
its coming. Another embassy, sent the same year from New
Spain under Nuno de Sotomayor, and carrying a very preten
tious set of demands, was only able to secure the concession of a
part of its program.
Iyeyasu's former attitude of cordiality toward the Spaniards
was now rapidly changing to one of impatient tolerance of their
advances and to suspicion of their intentions. The next year,
wrote Will Adams, was "put downe all the sects of Franciscannes." With Hidetada's edict of that year the persecution of
the Christians broke out with a new and systematic fury. When
Iyeyasu died in 1616 and Hidetada assumed full control, the last
moderating influence had been removed from the government
and Japanese policy became steadily more anti-Spanish. The
visits of the mysterious Padre Zuniga in 1618 and 1620 were
utterly ineffectual, and ended in the martyrdom of the unwel
come friar. The fact that he was rumored to be the son of the
former viceroy of New Spain, Villamanrique de Zuniga, or even
of the king himself, only made Hidetada the more suspicious of
the ulterior purpose of his presence in Japan. An embassy from
Manila was sent away unheard in 1622, and another two years
later from Governor Fernando de Silva was treated with even
greater curtness. By an edict of 1624 Hidetada made a deter
mined effort to cut off all connections with the Spaniards in
the Philippines. The Spaniards had already been hunted out
of Japan, or, if friars, dragooned and exterminated. Now Japa
nese were forbidden to go to the Philippines for any purpose
whatsoever.
After three years, relations between Japan and Manila again
became acute. In May 1629, Captain Juan de Alcaraso captured
and burned a Japanese junk in Siamese waters. Forty-two men
from off the vessel were brought to Manila and by Governor
Tabora's orders carried to Nagasaki. At news of the incident
opinion in Japan was greatly inflamed and a demand was raised
for reparation. The Dutch urged on the Japanese to revenge
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THE MANILA GALLEON
and at Manila there was serious apprehension of a combined
Dutch-Japanese attack on the colony. In order to avert a breach
Tabora disclaimed responsibility for the affair and offered to
give satisfaction if the Japanese would consent to the reestablishment of trading relations. Meanwhile the Japanese seized a
Portuguese galliot at Nagasaki in retaliation, so that Macao was
made an interested party in the affair and pressed the Spaniards
to satisfy the Japanese demands. A council called at Manila to
consider the situation concerned itself chiefly with drafting an
elaborate indictment of Japanese policy and justifying war against
that power. However, they recommended no definite measures
of indemnification for the aggrieved Japanese. Its ill-timed reso
lution naturally did nothing to placate opinion in Japan. Tabora
heard two years later that the Japanese were still much wrought
up over the burning of the junk "and that they were construct
ing large fleets to avenge themselves on our port and fort in the
island of Formosa, and on the city and coasts of Manila."
In 1631 a Japanese embassy appeared at Manila. The man
ner of its reception is thus described by the historian Medina:
"The governor granted them audience in very circumspect fash
ion. On that occasion he assembled all the infantry in two
columns, and had them escort the Japanese, who acted as am
bassadors to whom he gave horses and trappings and a fine car
riage. In short, they had come, on behalf of the governor of
Nagasaki, to confer about the junk, and the means by which
trade could be opened. But it was strictly stipulated that no
religious should go, for the Japanese had no liking for them.
The governor satisfied them in everything, and treated them very
well in Manila." "But," says an anonymous chronicler of that
time, "the city was put in readiness for whatever might hap
pen." Trade was reopening with the southern regions of Japan,
and by 1632 the now long-standing affair seemed on a fair way
to settlement. Tabora, if still vigilant, was yet hopeful of an
amicable adjustment. "That nation is very cautious," he wrote,
"and there is little confidence to be put in them. It is certain
that their hearts are not quiet, nor will they easily become so.
They take vengeance at a fitting time. May they bring us bread
and ammunition, as they are doing now. I give them good
treatment here, so that it is now procured that the gains which
they make on their merchandise and the lapse of time will ac
THE JAPANESE
113
commodate all things." In his last communication to the king in
regard to the affair the governor wrote: "I shall endeavor, as
heretofore, to promote peace and cordial intercourse, and they
may obtain satisfaction for the affair in Siam. If they come to
ask for it rightly, satisfaction will be given them and the guilt
of the commander who had charge of the galleons will be
asked."
The efforts of the governor and captain-general of the Philip
pines and of the lords of Harima and Bungo at a renewed rap
prochement proved abortive. The accumulated feeling of mutual
suspicion and the uncontrollable zeal of the Spanish friars made
a satisfactory working arrangement impossible. "Our relations
with Japan are broken up," wrote Governor Salamanca in 1633,
"because the Dutch, with their accustomed scheming, have con
verted into hate the old-time friendship." Then, after condemn
ing the persistence of the religious in going to Japan in defiance
of both the edicts of the Japanese and their own government,
he adds: "Now and henceforth I shall endeavor to give Japan
to understand your Majesty's desire of good friendship and rela
tionship." A year later he says: "Besides the little or no result
that they (the friars) obtain that trade is shut to these islands
for that reason; and that is what is of greatest importance to
your Majesty's service and to the conversion of Japan itself."
Governor Corcuera wrote in 1636, when an especially sanguinary
persecution had broken out: "The trade with Japan has been
spoiled by the indiscretion of certain religious." And he adds by
way of comment: "I assure your Majesty with all truthfulness
that I do nothing in your service in which I earn more merit
than in tolerating and enduring some of these religious orders."
In 1640 Diego de Bodadilla wrote that the Spaniards formerly
traded in Japan, before the persecution of the Christians was
begun.
That it was all the result of Dutch agitation, as Spaniards
were prone to allege, is clearly to impute to the Hollanders an
exaggerated influence in Japanese councils and on Japanese opin
ion, even though the Dutch evidently lost no opportunity to
prejudice the Japanese against their own late masters. It was
rather an anti-foreign movement, a violent effort to return to the
old insular isolation, which had been interrupted by Hideyoshi's
overseas schemes, and by the entrance of the contentious and un
II4
THE MANILA GALLEON
sympathetic foreigners into the national life. Above all it was a
reaction against Christianity, as propagated by the disputatious
and over-zealous missionaries from Macao and Manila. Japan
withdrew within herself until the nineteenth century and the
coming of the American fleet under Commodore Perry. The
isolation could not be quite absolute, for the inadequate policing
of the seas made possible a certain small amount of contraband
traffic, but for all practical purposes the Spaniards were hence
forth as remote from Japan as their ancestors had been from the
Cipango of Marco Polo.
In contrast to the Chinese branch of Philippine commerce
there were two phases of the trade between Japan and the Philip
pines, according as it was carried on by Japanese vessels at Manila
or by Spanish ships plying to the ports of Japan. Beginning In
1586, its course was never continuous over a long period, but was
often interrupted as a result of the chronically unsettled state of
the relations between the two peoples. However, it was as often
spasmodically renewed through the initiative, either of some
independent ship-master, some enterprising daimio of Kiushiu,
or of the shogun himself—until it was at last definitely cut off
in the final crisis of Spanish-Japanese intercourse. In 1586 a
ship from Japan laden with flour and horses destined for sale
at Manila was thrown onto the Cagayan coast of Luzon. Gov
ernor Vera had the survivors brought to Manila, where much
was made of them. "For this they were so grateful," reported
Vera to Philip II, "that they published in their country great
praises of this land and of the kind of treatment accorded."
Some of them, with others from the region about Hirado, re
turned the next year with merchandise and with friendly over
tures from the lord of that region. The Spaniards also eagerly
coveted this trade. Ships came again in 1588 and thereafter with
considerable regularity for several years. In 1589 a Japanese
vessel that put in at Manila laden with arms for Siam had its
cargo sequestered, thereby enabling the Spaniards to secure a
much-needed supply of arquebuses and swords.
The Japanese trading junks came to Manila at the end of
March or at the end of October with the favorable monsoons.
In their trading operations at Manila the Japanese enjoyed a free
dom from restrictions that was not conceded the more docile
Chinese or the traders from the Indian coasts. Greater leniency
THE JAPANESE
"5
was shown in the collection of duties and they were not forced
to submit to the irksome pancada. In 1599 Governor Tello,
fearful of the influx of Japanese to the city, attempted to limit
to three the number of Japanese vessels that might come to Manila
each year. However, two years later there were numerous Japa
nese ships, including a number of Satsumese junks, in Manila
Bay. As we have seen, this traffic, after successive periods of
suspension, was momentarily reopened as late as 1631-32, only
to terminate at last as abruptly.
A large proportion of the cargoes of Japanese ships consisted
of such goods for consumption in the local market as wheat
flour, salt meats and fish, and fruits. Morga gives an index of
peculiarly Japanese goods, a considerable part of which went
onto the galleons. "They also bring," he says, "some fine woven
silk goods of mixed colors ; beautiful and finely decorated screens
done in oil and gilt, all kinds of cutlery, many suits of armor,
spears, catans, and other weapons,—all finely wrought; writing
cases, boxes and small cases of wood, japanned and curiously
marked; and other pretty gewgaws."
The Japanese took back with them "raw Chinese silk, gold,
deerskins, and brazil-wood for their dyes,—honey, manufactured
wax, palm and Castillian wine, large jars for storing their tea,
glass, cloth, and other curiosities from Spain." They attached
special importance to the acquisition of the raw silk, since the
Chinese were generally forbidden by their own authorities to
trade with Japan. "The king of China," wrote the archbishop
of Manila in 1605, "seeing that the Japanese did not maintain
their trade with the care and honesty they should, did not make
war upon them, but took away their trade and commerce under
a singularly vigorous penalty, which is that if any Chinese trades
with the Japanese, not only he but his father, mother, and rela
tions shall be put to death. This has remained the law up to
the present, inviolably ; and no Chinese has transgressed it unless
it be some villainous and desperate man." "Those two kingdoms
bear so mortal a hatred to one another that under no considera
tions can they trade with ane another," wrote Martin Castano
to the king in 1627.
Although the Japanese never came to Manila in such num
bers as did the Chinese, yet those who remained in the city were
sufficiently numerous to constitute a serious problem for the
n6
THE MANILA GALLEON
Spanish authorities. While there was a permanent population
of from one to four thousand, the peculiar temper of the Japa
nese made their presence a much greater source of uneasiness to
the Spaniards than did the more numerous, but more tractable,
Chinese. They were disposed to be more turbulent and resent
ful of any attempt to control; and they generally conducted them
selves as though conscious of the support of a government that
was very tenacious on points of national honor, in distinction
from the helplessness with which an aggrieved Chinaman might
look to his home authorities for protection. And though they
rendered material aid to the Spaniards on some occasions, as in
suppressing the formidable Chinese insurrection of 1603, their
known sympathy with the enemies of the Spanish colony, as dur
ing the Anglo-Dutch siege of 1621, made them more than sus
pect at other times. Moreover, a series of riots or risings between
1605 and 1609 gave grave concern to the Spaniards, especially as
the Spanish forces were engaged at that time in enterprises dis
tant from Manila.
Spaniards frequently complained of these uncomfortable
transients and pressed for measures to expel them or to mini
mize the danger produced by their presence. Few more per
sistently reiterated their objections to the Japanese than did An
tonio de Morga and Hernando de los Rios Coronel. "They are a
spirited and very mettlesome race," said Morga, "and of noble
bearing and behavior. They employ many ceremonies and cour
tesies, and attach much importance to honor and social stand
ing. They are resolute in any necessity or danger." "Accord
ingly," he continues, "they are treated very cordially, as they are
a race that demand good treatment, and it is advisable to do so
for the friendly relations between the islands and Japan." Sev
eral years before Morga had written: "All the Japanese coming
hither in their vessels should be sent back to Japan. Not one
should be allowed to settle in this kingdom. Those already here
should be banished to their own country, for they are of no
benefit or utility, but, on the contrary, very harmful." Accord
ing to Rios Coronel, the Japanese were "not only of no use to
the community, but a signal danger, since they have three or
four times placed the city in danger of being ruined." Over
twenty years later the same official wrote: "The governor should
not consent to Japanese living in that country, as they are a
THE JAPANESE
117
great trouble and danger to the country, and the city is continu
ally in danger from them." The royal treasury officials de
clared that the Japanese were better informed about the islands
than were the Spaniards themselves, and were a standing danger
to the Spanish colony.
For the greater safety of the colony the residence of the
Japanese was restricted to a certain section in the outskirts of
Manila. Here, between the Chinese Parian and the suburb of
Laguio, close by the monastery of La Candelaria, and under the
spiritual regulation of some Franciscan fathers, they had their
special quarter. However, the Spaniards occasionally had re
course to the radical expedient of expulsion, though they were
too fearful of going to extremes with the Japanese to try any
abrupt ejection en masse. One such attempt by the audiencia
during Acuna's absence in the Moluccas in 1605 precipitated a
very serious crisis. "This was one of the greatest dangers," said
Morga, "that has threatened Manila, for the Spaniards were few
in number, and the Japanese more than one thousand five hun
dred. Had they come to blows on this occasion the Spaniards
would have fared ill." A royal order of 1608, issued in response
to the representations of Rios Coronel, charged the governor
to restrict the Japanese population, but directed him at the same
time to exercise all care to avert any clash with them, or to do
anything that would arouse the resentment of the emperor. The
important law of July 25, 1609 aimed to remove the danger con
sequent on the coming of the Japanese ships to Manila, by re
quiring that the trade between the two regions should be car
ried on solely by Spanish vessels operating to Japan. "Leave no
way open for the Japanese vessels to come to the islands," read
the decree, and in the order transmitting the law to Governor
Fajardo the king added, "since the Japanese are a proud, turbu
lent and incorrigible people." Several years later the municipal
ity petitioned the king to force the Japanese to leave each year
at the return of the junks. In 1620 Philip III ordered the gov
ernor and the audiencia to adopt whatever measures seemed best
to them, though they were warned to take care not to injure the
relations of trade and friendship then existing. They were vaguely
directed to "free the city from whatever could be dangerous or
superfluous." Before this order could have been received in
Manila, Governor Fajardo wrote to the king: "A large part of
n8
THE MANILA GALLEON
the Japanese have been expelled, so that for a long time there
have not been so few of them as now." However, a royal decree
of the following year complained that the Japanese were allowed
to stay because of the "negligence and carelessness" of the author
ities at Manila. With the then rapidly increasing estrangement of
relations between the two peoples and the specific Japanese pro
hibitions against leaving the country, the number of the Japanese
shortly fell, until they became altogether a negligible element
in the life of the colony.
Associated with this problem of the Japanese in Manila and
with the larger question of Japanese designs on the archipelago
were the activities of that people along the north Luzon coasts.
Though these activities were generally quite frankly piratical in
character, the Spaniards well realized that a pirate base might
be the beginning of a permanent territorial occupation. As early
as 1581 the Spaniards forestalled such a Japanese attempt on the
Nueva Segovia coast. A force sent out from Manila under Cap
tain Juan Pablo de Carrion had a desperate encounter with a
Japanese vessel near Cape Bojeador. Their musketry won the
battle for the Spaniards after the Japanese had boarded the Span
ish ship. The Spaniards later found the main Japanese base in
the Rio de Cagayan. They landed men and constructed an armed
camp which the Japanese repeatedly assaulted with desperate
courage, but without avail. "They were so thoroughly punished,"
wrote Diago de Aduarte, "that they never again thought of com
ing to conquer this country." The Japanese continued, however,
to make annual descents, in which they preyed on the Chinese
junks bound for Manila. A flotilla was sent out against the
pirates, who were "in the habit of plundering the coasts of these
islands." "The Japanese made a descent almost every year, and
it is said, with the intent of colonizing Luzon," Governor Vera
wrote to the Council of the Indies in 1586. Three years later
Governor Dasmarinas was ordered to maintain a small fleet of
galleys and other light craft along the Ilocos-Cagayan coasts, to
guard against the depredations of the Japanese corsairs. Gov
ernor Tello kept the Cagayan coast garrisoned as a precaution
against an anticipated attack in force. In 1599 a Japanese ship
was overcome and its crew killed by the Spaniards. At last Tello
protested to Iyeyasu against the piratical practices of his people
and the shogun, to show his good faith, ordered the seizure of
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119
six ships that had cleared from southern ports of Japan to plunder
in Philippine waters, and had between 200 and 400 of their crews
crucified as a dire warning against the repetition of these freebooting voyages. Yet, in 1604 Pedro de Acuna informed the
king that Japanese pirates were again operating about the Luzon
coasts.
The alternative branch of the Japanese-Philippine trade was
that conducted by Spanish ships to the ports of Japan. As we
have seen, this course was prescribed to the exclusion of the
other by the important decree of 1609, as less likely to menace
the safety of the Spanish colony. This law was furthermore an
effort to legitimize a traffic that was already in operation in con
travention of the virtual monopoly of the Japanese trading field
which Philip II had conceded to his Portuguese subjects by the
Cortes of Thomar in 1581. The Macao merchants strongly re
sented the entrance of the "Castilians" into this market, and
they were supported by the Jesuits, who objected to having their
missionary monopoly invaded by the Franciscans and other reli
gious from Manila. On the other hand, friars like Sotelo and
Geronymo de Jesus were as insistent on the establishment of
Spanish trading connections with Japan, because of the avenue
that it would furnish their orders for entering that field. Enter
prising governors like the elder Dasmarinas desired the opening
of such a traffic, though for the more temporal advantage it
might bring to the Spanish colony.
The trade in the earlier years largely centered at Hirado and
Nagasaki, at the latter of which places the Spaniards had for a
time a flourishing post. For the most part the southern daimios
were friendly, and the existence of a considerable Christian popu
lation in Kiushiu strengthened the Spanish position there. There
was little regularity in the course of the trading voyages to Japan.
From one to four privately-owned vessels might make the ven
ture in a year. Occasionally, too, when the arsenals and public
storehouses at Manila were in need of certain materials and sup
plies, the governor would send a ship to Japan to make the neces
sary purchases.
Iyeyasu attempted to divert the Spanish trade from still semiindependent Kiushiu to the more northerly parts of the empire.
Here it would be of more immediate profit to his government
and could at the same time be more closely controlled. The
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THE MANILA GALLEON
project was all a part of his larger scheme for the promotion of
the foreign trade of his dominions. He accordingly invited the
Spaniards at Manila to send ships to Yedo Bay. This port was
located in the Kuanto region, which was the original seat of the
Tokugawa power. In 1603 Governor Acuna sent the Santiago
to Japan to initiate the trade. "It was ordered to make its voy
age to Kuanto," says Morga, "in order to comply with the wish
of Daifusama." The vessel was, however, "not able to make
Maga, alleging bad weather," and put into Hirado. From here
word was sent to Iyeyasu at Kyoto, with Acuna's presents for the
shogun. The latter regretted the failure of this initial attempt,
but was reassured by the indefatigable Fray Geronymo de Jesus
as to Acuna's intentions in regard to the Kuanto trade. The
Spanish governors realized the political value of this trading con
nection to Yedo Bay, and, though the pilots objected to the added
risk and effort incurred in coasting up the outside of Hondo,
for several years sent a ship with considerable regularity. How
ever, the Spanish pilots and the merchants from Manila never
prosecuted this trade with much enthusiasm. Any temporary
slackening of Spanish interest in this cherished traffic only drove
the impatient shogun the more eagerly toward the newly arrived
Dutch and English. Naturally, the trade suffered from being
essentially, at least in its inception, a state enterprise.
Occasional Spanish ships appeared at Nagasaki and at other
southern ports during this period, and the English narratives of
the time testify to the frequent presence of Spanish merchants
and seamen in Japan. With the gradual unsettling of political
relations and the intensifying of the religious persecution, the
continuance of trade gradually became impossible. About 1625
the ports of Japan were closed to vessels that had cleared from
Manila, and four ships, which later appeared in Nagasaki harbor,
were turned away. The lord of that city threatened one Spanish
captain that any of his countrymen who dared to enter the port
in the future would have both ship and crew burned. Finally
an edict of 1638 forbade the Spaniards, on pain of death, to put
foot on Japanese soil or to enter a Japanese port under any
pretext.
The direct relation of the Manila Galleons to Japan was only
accidental and occasional. Sometimes in the earlier decades of
their navigation they sailed close enough to make out the Japa
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121
nese coasts lying far to port, but their usual course lay well out
of sight of land. It was only when they were too crippled by
storms to proceed that they voluntarily sought the forbidden
coasts of Japan, with the hope of finding a port of refuge where
they could refit. Iyeyasu's invitation to have the galleons put
in to Japan for purposes of trade was never seriously considered
by the Spaniards. It was a matter of concern, however, that the
galleons should be free to put in at a Japanese port in case of
necessity and to be immune from molestation until they were
able to continue their voyage.
The realization of this need largely furnished the motive for
the expedition which Viceroy Salinas sent to Japan in 1611 under
Sebastian Vizcaino, the famous explorer of the California coast.
Four years earlier the Council of the Indies had resolved that
"For the ships which go from the Philippines to New Spain it
is of the greatest importance to have a safe harbor in Japan, in
which to repair and supply themselves with the necessities for
so long and dangerous a voyage." The fate of the San Felipe
and the threat to the Espiritu Santo had already made this ques
tion an acute one.
The first of these galleons cleared from Manila for Acapulco
in July 1596, under the command of Matias de Landecho. She
was a large ship, with an unusually valuable cargo and a longer
passenger list than was ordinary. She encountered a succession
of storms and was forced to jettison much of her cargo. In lati
tude thirty-seven degrees she lost her rudder when some 150
leagues out from Japan. At this point it was decided to turn
back, whereupon a council, largely influenced by the religious on
board, determined to make for the unfamiliar coast of Japan
rather than attempt to return to Manila. With much of the
rigging carried away and her sails blown to shreds, the galleon
appeared to be in imminent danger of foundering. After six
more days the Spaniards sighted Shikoku and shortly reached
the neighborhood of Hirado. A large number of boats came out
to the galleon from land and urged the Spaniards in the name
of the local daimio to come inside the port. Under the assur
ance of good treatment the Spaniards consented to let the boats
tow the San Felipe inside. During the process she was run onto
a shoal by design, as the Spaniards alleged, and her keel broken.
The intentions of the Japanese rapidly became clear to those on
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the galleon, as they saw the cargo transferred to warehouses on
shore, where its owners could have no supervision over it. Nor
were they encouraged in their hope of repairing the ship and
proceeding for New Spain. Meanwhile, the lord of Hirado sent
to Hideyoshi for instructions as to the final disposition of the
galleon and her cargo, while Landecho at the same time sent an
embassy to the regent at Meaco or Kyoto to treat with him
for the restitution of the sequestered property. Hideyoshi's cu
pidity had been aroused and he sent down one Ximonojo, a
favorite of his, to take possession of the cargo in his name. The
regent's deputy interned the Spaniards in a stockaded corral and
forced them to give up what remained of their belongings. In
spite of their protests the cargo was soon distributed beyond all
possibility of recovery, and Landecho's appeals in person to Hide
yoshi were as unavailing.
The arrival of Landecho and the other survivors at Manila
in May of the next year gave the colony its first inkling of the
disaster. "Great grief and sadness were caused by the news,"
said Morga, "of the death of the holy religious, and by the pros
pect of the disturbances which were expected to take place in
future dealings between Japan and the Philippines, as well as
by the loss of the galleon and its cargo." "The loss of this ship
was a very great one," he wrote to Philip II; "she was worth a
million and a half,—a mighty loss for so small a country, hence
it is more needy than ever and more wretched." When Luis
Navarrete Fajardo was sent to Japan to negotiate for reparation
and for security against the repetition of such treatment in the
future, Hideyoshi justified the seizure of the galleon on the
ground of a national strand-law which made the cargoes of all
ships driven onto the coasts the property of the ruler. He prom
ised future exemption for Spanish ships from the operation of
the law. As to the cargo of the San Felipe, that was already
irrevocably lost.
In 1602 the Espiritu Santo was only saved from the San
Felipe's fate by the resolution of her commander, Lope de Ulloa,
"an experienced and courageous knight." When well out from
Manila the galleon was driven by stress of storms, which swept
her mainmast overboard, to head for a port of Japan. Like the
San Felipe, she appeared before the entrance of the harbor of
Hirado, and the initial proceedings of the Japanese pointed to a
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123
repetition of the same treatment which the former galleon had
undergone. She was towed up the channel by Japanese boats,
and after she was made fast a guard was put on her and anyone
going ashore apprehended. Armed men began to pour into the
port from the surrounding country and a conflict with the Span
iards was rapidly impending. Ulloa refused to grant the Japa
nese demand that he give up his sails and kept close watch of
every move of his hosts, with the intent of repairing his ship and
getting out to sea before a clash were precipitated. He opposed
every attempt of the Japanese to remove the cargo and would
not allow any of his men to leave the ship; the twenty men who
had gone ashore before his order was issued were kept in con
finement. Meanwhile he sent his brother, Alonso de Ulloa, and
Alonso de Maldonado up to Kyoto to negotiate with Iyeyasu for
some way out of the difficulty. Fray Diego de Guevara, the
Augustinian superior at Hirado, came on board and informed
Ulloa of the bad character of the Hirado men, a fact increas
ingly apparent to the captain, and advised him to clear from the
port as soon as possible. Fray Diego himself was held up as he
returned ashore and robbed of some silken vestments which Ulloa
had given him for his church.
Ulloa finally determined to make a break for the open sea
before it was too late. He drove the Japanese guard over the
side, and with only a foresail and spritsail in position, he cleared
his ship from the anchorage before the town. The Japanese had
stretched a strong rattan cable across the entrance of the inner
harbor and were massed in a fleet of small boats to block his
egress. When Ulloa observed this situation, he offered freedom
to a Negro slave if he would cut the cable with a machete. He
first cleared the intervening channel with the fire of his arque
buses and cannon, and then drove the galleon against the cable.
At the moment of contact with the boom the negro was let down
over the bow and by "strenuous efforts" severed the cable. The
ship then worked her way out through the tortuous channel,
while she kept up a running fire against the Japanese on the
hills. When entirely clear of the port, Ulloa improvised a jury
mast and with a strong north wind the Espiritu Santo turned to
wards Manila and in twelve days crossed to Luzon.
Meanwhile Alonso de Ulloa and Maldonado had had audi
ence with the shogun at Kyoto. The Spaniards obtained com
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plete satisfaction for the attempt on the galleon. Iyeyasu prom
ised them restitution of whatever had been taken by the Hirado
men and sent down orders for the punishment of those who bore
the principal guilt in the affair. Iyeyasu's attitude throughout the
incident was in marked contrast to the conduct of Hideyoshi on
a similar occasion. He, moreover, granted the Spaniards written
guarantees against the recurrence of such an outrage. These
documents were henceforth entrusted to the commanders of the
Manila Galleons in order to secure their ships proper treatment
in case accidents of weather drove them into a Japanese port.
Iyeyasu's assurances to the Spaniards were put to a decisive
test in 1609. Both galleons left Manila in company during that
summer, but were separated by a typhoon. The Santa Ana
reached the region of Japan almost dismantled by the fury of the
baguio, and was thrown on the Bungo coast. Though the people
of that vicinity were strongly tempted to imitate the predatory
habits of the Hirado men, they refrained from taking advantage
of the galleon's plight—whether through dread of the shogun's
displeasure or through fear of injuring their trade with Manila.
The vessel was allowed to refit without serious molestation and
later continued her voyage to New Spain.
The other galleon, the San Francisco, under the command of
ex-Governor Vivero, was struck head on by a succession of sav
age gales that left her crippled beyond all power to continue on
to her destination. Heading for Japan, she was wrecked on the
Kuanto coast. Though some were drowned, most of the 400
on board survived, but only a portion of the cargo could be sal
vaged. Vivero visited Iyeyasu at Suruga and was received with
every courtesy, while the rest of the Spaniards were treated with
consideration. As we have seen, the shogun profited by the occa
sion of Vivero's enforced stay in Japan to press upon him an
arrangement for the further promotion of Spanish-Japanese trade.
The San Francisco was ruined beyond hope of restoration, and
Vivero crossed to Acapulco the next year in a ship of Will Adams'
making. In 1613 Adams wrote of his ship, "which theay found
so good theay never returned agayn, butt sent so much monny ass
shee wass wourth, and afterwards wass imployed in the voyages
from Nova Spaynia to the Philippines."
In 1616 two Acapulco galleons, blown far out of their course
by contrary winds, put into ports of the Satsuma country. How
THE JAPANESE
125
ever, "both shipps being full of souldiers," the Japanese did not
attempt to plunder them of their "greate store of treasure," whose
value, according to Richard Cocks, of the English trading post,
was rumored at "above 5 millions of pezos."
Probably upon no phase of his ambitious foreign policy was
Iyeyasu so persistent as in his desire for commercial intercourse
with Spanish America. And to no phase of it were the Span
iards so consistently opposed, for in the trans-oceanic navigation
of the enterprising Japanese they saw a grave threat to the Span
ish scheme of things about the Pacific. The shogun desired not
only that his people should trade with New Spain, but that
Manila Galleons should break their passage to call at a Japanese
port. In 1602 Iyeyasu sent to Manila an envoy whom the Span
iards call Chiquino, to treat for this privilege. Governor Acuna
did not think it politic to give a shogun a direct refusal, but par
ried his insistent request for the time, while he referred it to
Spain, where it would be eventually lost in the interminable
processes of official examination. Chiquino, the envoy, was en
tertained with all the splendor at the command of the Spanish
authorities, and then dismissed with the usual lavish presents
and vague promises. Fray Geronymo de Jesus, who had either
suggested to Iyeyasu the idea of the trade, or had at least encour
aged the shogun in the project he had himself conceived, was
reproved for his indiscretion. For several years nothing further
was done.
Then in 1609 the question was reopened as a result of the
accident which threw ex-Governor Vivero into the hands of Iye
yasu. The latter pressed his shipwrecked guest to satisfy his
long-harbored desire for trade with America, but Vivero was as
loath to yield the point as his predecessor had been. As we have
seen, when the Spaniard crossed to New Spain it was in a Japa
nese ship of Will Adams' construction. The vessel was largely
manned by Japanese sailors, and carried a company of Japanese
merchants and an ambassador from Iyeyasu to the viceroy.
The Japanese ship was utilized the next year, 161 1, by the
viceroy of New Spain to carry a special embassy to Japan. While
the diplomatic side of the expedition was entrusted to Nuno de
Sotomayor, the actual command of the ship was in the hands of
Sebastian Vizcaino. Also twenty-three Japanese, who had crossed
to Mexico with Vivero, now returned to Japan. The aims of the
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THE MANILA GALLEON
expedition were altogether too pretentious in view of the current
temper of the Japanese government in that age. Its ultimate fail
ure was largely due to the attempt of Vizcaino to sound the bays
and harbors along the east side of the archipelago. Though
this effort at a hydrographic survey of Japanese coastal waters
probably had no ulterior purpose, but was intended only to
furnish charts for any Manila Galleons that might be forced to
put in there, the natives were disposed to regard it as the prelude
to an attack by the Spaniards. In this misconception they were
enthusiastically encouraged by the Dutch and English in the
country. As a consequence of this attitude of suspicion Vizcaino
found his work seriously hampered. Moreover, the Basque navi
gator was ill-suited for dealing with a people so susceptible as
the Japanese, and his clumsy attempts to play the diplomat on
the grand scale, instead of adhering to his trade of sailor, would
have doomed the expedition to failure, even if other circum
stances had not concurred to that end. In fact, in the records of
the expedition the assertive sea-captain seems to have dwarfed
the real titular diplomatic head of the enterprise. Vizcaino spent
about two years in Japan. He arrived at Uraga on July 10, 1611,
and did not leave for Acapulco until October 27, 1613. He spent
the three months September-November of the first year in a
search for the islands of Rica de Oro and Rica de Plata in the
seas to the east of Japan. There was evidently considerable dis
cord among the Spaniards who had come to Japan with Viz
caino. Captain John Saris, of the English East Indian Company,
wrote in his diary on July 30, 1612: "I entreated Mr. Addams to
dynner aboard the shipp, where he made little staye, divers spannyards and portingales of Langasaque [Nagasaki] salors being
come to vizite him. . . . These spannyards, as I am credablye
informed by the Captain Chinesa, have overthrone their Generall
[Nuno de Sotomayor] here, whoe was sent out by the King of
Spaine from Perowe [Peru] to discover to the Northward of
Japan [Rica de Oro] ; And here been kept in obscuryte by Mr.
Addams, whom they use as their Jurebassa and hoste."
Iyeyasu himself was early disillusioned of his expectations
from the trading connection with America by the obstacle of illconcealed Spanish opposition to his schemes in that direction.
The Spaniards discouraged his projects for a Japanese trade to
America and the Manila Galleons failed to call at his ports.
THE JAPANESE
127
Richard Cocks wrote in his diary for November 6, 1615: "He
also hath made proclamation, in payne of death, that no Japan
shall goe into New Spaine from henceforward."
During the next few years the immediate impulse behind
the movement came from an enterprising daimio named Date
Masamune. How far either Iyeyasu or Hidetada was concerned
in the inception of Date's voyage is difficult to establish. Even at
this period the southern lords were accustomed to indulge in such
independent activities as this undertaking would represent. And
though Christianity deeply aroused his curiosity, it is doubtful
if he ever accepted the foreign faith in real sincerity.
Yet the first expedition which he despatched to New Spain
was largely in the nature of a religious pilgrimage. The em
bassy, whose ultimate destination was Rome, was headed by one
Hashikura and consisted of sixty-eight other persons. It was
accompanied by the irrepressible Padre Sotelo, who had urged
the holy venture upon the daimio. The ship reached the coast
of New Spain early in 1614, whence Hashikura and his immediate
retinue proceeded by leisurely stages on their way to Madrid and
Rome. Some of the Japanese remained in Mexico, and the pres
ence of these created a difficult situation for the viceroy. This
official, with a view to preventing brawls with the natives, directed
Antonio de Morga, now alcalde, or mayor, of Mexico City, to
disarm all save seven of the strangers. At the same time the
Spaniards were warned under severe penalties not to provoke
the Japanese or take advantage of them. Moreover, the for
eigners were to be allowed to trade freely about the city. They
carried back to Japan with them a considerable cargo of goods,
which they had traded for in Mexico. However, they had been
warned under pain of death never to return unless it be by way
of the Philippines,—a warning which in practice clearly amounted
to a definite prohibition. Resentment rose very rapidly against
the intrusion of the Orientals into the seclusion of New Spain
and their departure from Acapulco in 1615 was scarcely regretted.
In December Richard Cocks wrote: "A shipp arrived at Kuanto
this year, which came out of New Spain and brought good quan
tity of broad cloth, kersies, perpetuanos and raz de Millan, which
they offer at a loe rate; but I thinke it is the last that ever will
be brought from thence, for it is said the Spaniards made procla
mation with 8 drums at Aguapulca and other ports that, upon
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THE MANILA GALLEON
payne of death there should never any more Japons come nor
trade into New Spaine."
Date Masamune was undaunted by the unfriendly turn of
feeling in New Spain and in 1616 sent a second ship across the
Pacific. The voyage was a hard one and only about fifty of the
two hundred who began it survived at the end. The Japanese
succeeded in disposing of their cargo at Acapulco before the vice
roy's prohibition reached the port, but they were notified that
the ban on such further voyages was definite. It was this ship
that carried back to Japan the somewhat disillusioned embassy
of Hashikura's suite and their guide, Padre Sotelo. The return
voyage was made by way of the Philippines, for the Japanese
ship was purchased by Fajardo, the new governor, to carry him
out to his post at Manila. The arrival of the Japanese travelers
in Japan in 1620, after an absence of about seven years, marked
the end of direct Japanese intercourse with the new world until
the nineteenth century.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>»<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
CHAPTER 3
THE PORTUGUESE AND OTHERS
BEFORE the entry of the Dutch and English into the East
the Portuguese maintained a flourishing chain of trading
stations from the mouth of the Red Sea around the southern
coasts of Asia. The key positions in their widely scattered em
pire were Goa, on the Malabar coast of India, and Malacca, near
the site of the modern city of Singapore. Beyond the Straits of
Malacca they had reached up to the Chinese coast and founded
Macao down the river from Canton. To the southeastward from
the Asiatic mainland they had ventured down among the rich
islands of the East Indies and set up their trading posts and mili
tary settlements at many strategic points of the Malay archipel
agos. Thus, before the Spaniards occupied the Philippines the
impulse which began in the fifteenth century with Prince Henry
the Navigator and his captains had reached the western edge
of the Pacific. For a few brief and opulent decades the whole
usufruct of the Orient was theirs to choose from. Then other
peoples, with a sounder instinct for trade and a surer feeling for
the sea and a greater persistence in their undertakings, broke
into the field that had been preempted by their ruthless daring
and their diplomacy. They took from Portugal all the empire
that the great Albuquerque and his successors had built up in
the early sixteenth century, only leaving to her Goa, now an
insignificant enclave in the vast body of British India, Macao, a
somnolent suburb of Canton and Hong-Kong, and part of Timor,
overshadowed by the bulk and wealth of the Netherlands Indies.
When the Spaniards first crossed the Pacific from the Americas
to claim the remainder of the Pope's prodigal gift, the Portu
guese power in the East had not yet begun to wane, though the
forces were already at work at home that were to undo the
achievements of her merchants and her navigators. In spite of
the antipathies which existed between the two branches of the
Hispanic race, it was inevitable and natural that trading relations
119
130
THE MANILA GALLEON
should spring up between Manila and the Lusitanian colonies in
Asia and the islands.
Macao
A second and minor branch of the all-important Chinese
trade centered at Macao, the Portuguese post founded below Can
ton in 1557. From here the Portuguese not only tapped the silk
industry at its source, but were later able, through the advantage
which this position gave them, at times to influence greatly the
course of the Chinese traffic to the Philippines. "The trade of
Great China has declined, inasmuch as the Portuguese of Macao
have become masters of it, as they are so near," wrote Governor
Salamanca to the king in 1633. Since they had forestalled the
Castilians in that field they bitterly resented the entrance of the
latter into the East, virtually all of which, they contended, fell
to their side of the Demarcation Line. They tried to expel
Legaspi's force from the Philippines as Portuguese territory, and
openly clashed with the Spaniards on several occasions. It was
in the course of these encounters that the Spaniards heard of their
rivals' relations with the Chinese and Japanese. In 1569 Andres
de Mirandaola wrote to Philip II: "When the Portuguese were
in this harbor it was learned that they were bargaining and trad
ing on the coast of China and Japan." The resentment of the
Portuguese persisted and they did not formally acknowledge the
Spanish right to the Philippines until 1750.
The revival of Spanish ambitions in the Moluccas furnished
another cause for contention and during the sixty years of the
"union" which followed Alba's conquest in 1580 no satisfactory
basis for amicable relations was found. The fact of commercial
rivalry remained and the Portuguese feared the designs of great
Spanish soldiers like Pedro de Acuna and Juan de Silva. The
Lusitanians opposed any move toward a close amalgamation of
the two colonial empires, and the Spanish government allowed
virtual autonomy to the Portuguese Indies, except in larger mat
ters of policy. The two peoples only forgot their rivalry in their
common danger from the Dutch, and in fact Macao was once
saved from falling into the hands of the latter by succor from
Manila. A royal order of 1623 required the governor of the
Philippines to send aid to Macao in case of need.
The Portuguese wished to be the sole intermediaries in the
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131
Chinese-Spanish trade, and so prevent any direct intercourse
between the two races. In this way they would draw a share of
the profits from the lucrative galleon commerce, since they were
themselves barred from direct participation in that traffic. To
accomplish this end it was necessary to keep the Spaniards from
the Chinese coast and the Chinese from Manila. As early as 1573
the Portuguese tried to dissuade the Chinese from trading at
Manila. Thus, the attempts of the Dasmarinas to spread Spanish
power and trading activities to the mainland, and the establish
ment of the rival trading-post of El Pinal were met by threats and
actual violence from the Portuguese. The Portuguese urged the
mandarins to forbid Spanish trading in China. "It is impossible
to describe the bitterness which the Portuguese feel at seeing us
come here to trade," wrote Rios Coronel to Antonio de Morga
from El Pinal in 1598. Purchas, the English geographer, wrote of
the conflicting interests of the two peoples: "It [the Spanish en
trance into China being likely to prove the destruction of that
citie (Macao)], if the Spaniards with their plentie of Silver from
Peru and New Spain, should have trade in China; neither did
this belong to the Spaniards, but to the Portugals, according to
the Composition betwixt the two Kings made by Alexander the
sixth; and although they are both subject now to one Crowne,
yet their priviledges remayne distinct without confusion."
The Portuguese at Macao sometimes went to Canton and
bought up the available silk output of the year, which they car
ried to Manila, or they offered to carry it thither and sell it for a
commission from the Chinese principals. They also tried to deter
the Chinese from going to the Philippines by picturing to them
the Spanish colony at Manila as on the verge of financial ruin,
and so unable to pay for any goods. With a view to keeping the
junks off the China Sea they magnified the danger from Dutch
pirates. And, finally, they profited by the fitful periods of Chi
nese exclusion at Manila.
The Portuguese early made a direct effort to tap the market
of New Spain. In 1590 Joao da Gama, former governor of
Macao, took a ship of 600 tons across the Pacific to Acapulco.
He was arrested by the viceregal authorities and the cargo of his
ship confiscated as contraband. The next year by order of the
king he was taken to Seville for trial by the tribunal of the Casa
de Contratacidn, or House of Trade, charged with violation of the
THE MANILA GALLEON
ban against foreigners trading with the American colonies of
Spain. The Manilenos realized that a direct trade route between
Macao and Acapulco, by dispensing with Manila and the galleon,
would threaten the commercial life of the Philippines, and
Gomez Perez Dasmarinas expressed the alarm of the citizens in
a letter to Philip II in 1592. The fact that the San Martin, which
was sold at Acapulco to some Mexican merchants by Viceroy
Villamanrique, had made a trading voyage to Macao three years
before made the danger all the more real.
A Spanish law of 1593 prohibited Spaniards from going to
Macao, among other places—and this after the Portuguese colony
had been forced to take the oath of allegiance to the king of
Spain. However, a royal order of February 4, 1608, permitted
the Manilenos to send one ship a year to Macao to buy supplies
for the government storehouses, but this ship was forbidden to
indulge in essentially mercantile operations. Some of the early
governors, like Santiago de Vera and Gomez Perez Dasmarinas,
favored unrestricted and reciprocal trading connections between
Macao and Manila. Portuguese ships did come to Manila for
several decades with considerable regularity, particularly after
1619. In 1620 ten ships came from Macao, and six years later one
vessel brought a rich cargo to the value of over 500,000 pesos.
In 1630 Jose de Navada Alvarado declared the usual value of the
imports from Macao to be about 1,500,000 pesos.
The Portuguese thus carried on at times a large and ex
tremely profitable trade at Manila. Though silks constituted by
far the larger part of this trade, there were other commodities,
among which Morga lists "beds, writing-cases [escritorios], parlor
chairs, and other finely-gilded furniture." Fray Gregorio Lopez
writes of a vessel from Macao that was "laden with wealth of
amber, musk, pearls, and precious stones, and more than 300
slaves." In years when the regular Chinese junks came only in
small numbers, or not at all—as for short periods after the expul
sions from Manila or during the Dutch wars—the Spaniards were
dependent for cargo for the galleon on the supply of silks re
ceived by way of Macao. "If it were not for what has come from
Macao," said Fernando de Silva in 1626, "the ships for New
Spain would have nothing to carry." However, the advantage
of this occasional accommodation was largely offset by the higher
prices which the Spaniards were forced to pay to their fellow
THE PORTUGUESE AND OTHERS
133
Iberians. The Portuguese refused to accept the pancada arrange
ment, and whenever they had anything approaching a monopoly
of the market at Manila their exactions cut down the Spaniards'
profits on the transactions at Acapulco to much below the normal
figure. The Spaniards therefore accepted their occasional depen
dence on the Portuguese with very ill grace, while many de
manded the prohibition of the trade, with the preferable, though
precarious, alternative of complete reliance on the Chinese. The
latter were also aggrieved at the none too scrupulous competition
of the Portuguese. Rios Coronel proposed the deportation of the
Portuguese population of Macao to the settlements in India, and
as late as 1797 Governor Aguilar advised the forcible occupation
of Macao by the Spaniards, on the ground that its possession by
the Portuguese did not benefit the latter. At last, in 1636 a royal
decree was issued for the suppression of the connection between
Macao and Manila. The king alleged against the Portuguese
their extortionate prices, which impoverished the city of Manila—
the former taking away each year three times as much money as
the Chinese had taken. The Portuguese were also accustomed
to remain at Manila throughout the winter in case they could not
get their first price from the Spaniards, or even sent their goods
on to Acapulco by the medium of Spanish agents. Sometimes
the Spaniards marvelled at the prodigality of the Portuguese mer
chants who visited Manila. "As the Portuguese are so courtly
and liberal a people," wrote Padre Diaz, "and inclined to boast
of the obligations of nobility, some Portuguese gentlemen usually
return quite destitute of funds, as occurred this year to Joao
Tabora, a cavalier of the Order of Christ. He spent the wealth
which he brought here, which was much, in elegant gallantries
and in bull-fights."
Four years after the king had issued the order suppressing the
Macao-Manila trade the Portuguese gained their independence
from the decrepit Spain of Philip IV on the battlefield of Villavicosa. When Portuguese sovereignty was restored in the East
and the viceroy at Goa ordered Spanish property at Macao to be
seized and the owners deported to Manila, the sequestration of
over 300,000 pesos worth of goods showed how well the Spanish
had kept their part of the non-intercourse act.
Governor Hurtado de Corcuera proposed the union of Macao
and Manila under a Spanish governor and the removal of the
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presidio or fortified post from Formosa to Macao. He declared
that such a move would greatly strengthen the position of Spain
in the Orient. In 1643 the miserable king, who could not recon
cile himself to the loss of the Portuguese empire, then three years
an accomplished fact, ordered the newly appointed governor,
Diego Fajardo, to carry out the project of his predecessor. He
advised, however, that the union should be accomplished with
great tact, in order not to antagonize the national sentiments of
the Portuguese.
There was little commercial intercourse between the two
cities for many years. Then Manuel de Leon, who was governor
from 1669 to 1677, revived the old connection and Portuguese
ships came again to Manila. However, each spring monsoon
now brought its never-failing stream of junks from the ports of
China, and the Portuguese were never permitted again to gain the
position they had occasionally held at Manila. They henceforth
always constituted a minor factor in the silk commerce, but they
sold to the Spaniards goods of local manufacture and some from
India and Europe. Like most lines of traffic in the Indies, this
one paid little heed to official regulation from the home govern
ment, but in February 1727, it was freed from all restrictions by
a decree of Philip V.
India
From the time of Governor Gonzalo Ronquillo (1580-83)
trade was carried on between Manila and Malacca. Thence the
Spaniards received the products of all the rich and vast region
beyond from as far as Persia and Turkey. By the delimitation
of the fields of activity of the two peoples that area was reserved
to the Portuguese, and Malacca, situated almost on the border
between the spheres of each power, was thus well suited to be
the place of exchange for the goods of both. Now and then the
Spanish authorities at Manila sent a ship through the straits and
as far as Goa for naval stores or munitions of war, and during
the union of the two governments official correspondence be
tween Manila and Madrid often went by the Portuguese galleons
around the Cape of Good Hope, but most of the trade between
the Spaniards and the Portuguese was carried on by ships which
visited Manila from Goa and Malacca. This trade flourished
particularly in the time of Governor Vargas Hurtado. Con
THE PORTUGUESE AND OTHERS
135
cepcion writes of the ships from the Coromandel coast, Surat and
Bengal about 1693. In establishing this branch of trade the Span
iards, under the leadership of the Catalan, Juan Ventura Serra,
and of Luis de Matienzo, displayed unwonted initiative and en
terprise. However, in face of the old obsession for the Chinese
silk trade, this new trade was not energetically pursued for a long
period; and it was only with changed conditions in the galleon
traffic that the Spaniards turned more eagerly to the commerce of
the Coasts. But in this latter period the role of the Spaniards was
a more passive one than it had been in the last decades of the sev
enteenth century. The English had now been long established
on both coasts and had superseded the Portuguese as the domi
nant trading power of the region. They had largely restricted
the Dutch to the great archipelago to the southeast, and were in
rivalry with the French East India Company.
In their search for markets English ships reached Manila be
fore the cession of Bombay as the wedding dowry of Catharine of
Braganza, the unhappy bride of Charles II. The Spanish mer
chants were disposed to welcome their overtures, but the authori
ties frowned upon open commerce with the English as "enemies
of the state." The Council of the Indies declared, in answer to
the East India Company's proposal, that Spain did not desire
trade with the English and ordered Alonso de Cardenas to ascer
tain if the latter were actually trading with the Manilenos.
To circumvent the Spanish prohibition the English and
French from India had recourse to a ruse that was "advantageous
to all parties." Since no ships flying the flags of those nations
might enter Manila Bay, their owners generally resorted to nonEuropean go-betweens as a cloak for their operations. Vessels
destined for the Philippine trade were accustomed to fly the
colors of one of the Mohammedan states of India or the islands,
though sometimes an Irish flag was used as being politically in
nocuous and religiously acceptable. Though the Spaniards ob
jected to the faith of the "Moros," as they called all Moslem in
the East, they had no fears of their political designs, as they did
of the English and French. Accordingly the ship was given a
name true to character, such as Omar or Sultana, and was
manned with Lascars or other Mohammedan sailors. The super
cargo, who had charge of the venture, was an Englishman or
Frenchman, and the captain might be of the same nationality,
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THE MANILA GALLEON
though he was occasionally an old Arab seaman, who was half
pirate, half trader. As the precautions at Manila became stricter
an Armenian was often taken aboard, to act as intermediary in
the dealings with the Spaniards. The Armenians had no ships of
their own and no political connections to complicate their use
fulness. They were poor sailors, but shrewd traders, and their
status as Christians eased their way at Manila. However, they
insisted on too large a share of the profits and used every oppor
tunity to trade on their own account, so that their European em
ployers dispensed with them whenever possible. The "Moros,"
though infidels, were at least more trustworthy, once they had
sealed a bargain.
Much of the success of the voyage depended on the laxness
of the Spanish authorities at Manila. Though the latter were
inclined to be meticulously legalistic in the formal observance
of their laws and regulations, in practice they usually proved
amenable to such material inducements as were offered to them.
The ship always carried a supply of "presents" for the different
officials who might be expected to obstruct their trading. Espe
cially tempting gifts were always held in reserve for the governor,
on whom it was accustomed to call on reaching Manila. On
these occasions the English or French supercargo and captain
were introduced by the "Moro" or Armenian "dummies" as their
"interpreters." If they had been sufficiently browned by the
climate of India, they might even pass as natives of that country,
though a suspicious governor once seriously complicated the ven
ture of a French trader by raising the issue of his complexion and
features. When the governor had been "convinced" that the
cargo of a ship was owned as represented, the arrangements to be
made with the minor authorities of the place presented little diffi
culty, unless the fiscal should intervene and demand an investiga
tion by the audiencia.
A perplexing case of this kind arose in connection with the
arrival of the Sultanesa Began from the Coromandel Coast in
1766. Though the great bulk of the cargo actually belonged to
some Frenchmen and Armenians who posed as passengers on
their arrival at Manila, two Spaniards who had come from India
by her represented the merchandise as theirs. The governor and
the audiencia conducted a lengthy inquiry into the ownership of
the cargo, and decided that it belonged to the two Spaniards and
THE PORTUGUESE AND OTHERS
137
the Armenians, leaving the Frenchmen to indemnify themselves
as best they could.
Although the Seven Years War interrupted the course of this
trade for the time being, as had earlier wars, the occupation of
Manila by the English would most probably have had the same
invigorating influence on the commerce that it did at Havana,
if the Spanish government had not set about to discourage this
increased trading movement. On the other hand, the efforts of
the Spaniards to stimulate the movement of shipping toward
India had little effect beyond the sending of an occasional ship
or two to the Coasts. Governor Anda sent the Deseada to Mala
bar in 1771 to establish trading relations with the nabob of the
Carnatic, but the venture appears not to have prospered. In 1787
Paxton, Cockerell, Delisle and Company, of Madras made over
tures to the Royal Philippine Company for reciprocal trade be
tween British India and Manila. They painted a glowing pic
ture of the possible advantages to Manila that would accrue to
her from this utilization of her splendid position, and Lord Cornwallis, formerly commander of the British forces in the Ameri
can colonies and then governor-general of Bengal, promised good
treatment to the Spaniards. However, the Spaniards were still
loath to concede such freedom of trade to the people who had
taken Manila—and might take it again. The year after the
receipt of the offer from Madras Governor Basco y Vargas de
clared for an open port, and Manila was thrown open to Euro
peans in 1789, but only for non-European goods. Under the new
regime five Spanish ships left Manila for India in sixteen months
of 1792-93, while four French and two English ships cleared from
the port during the same period.
The Indian cottons came to hold a place second only to the
silks of China in the cargoes of the galleons. A junta called in
1768 to inform the king of the advisability of increasing import
duties at Manila declared the Bengalese goods "the best sent to
New Spain." These cottons, white or figured, were sold as cloth
or worked up into articles of clothing. Early in the seventeenth
century Morga had listed among the imports from Portuguese
India, "slaves, both blacks and Cafres; cotton cloths of all sorts,
fine muslins, gauzes, linens, and other delicate and precious
cloths; amber and ivory; hangings and rich counterpanes from
Bengal, Cochin and other parts; many gilded articles and curiosi
i38
THE MANILA GALLEON
ties; jewels of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, topazes and other pre
cious stones, both set and loose; wine, raisins and almonds; deli
cious preserves and other fruits brought from Portugal and
prepared in Goa; carpets and tapestries from Persia and Turkey;
needle-work in colors and in white, and other fancy-work of
great beauty and perfection." Nearly a hundred different kinds
of cloth and articles of clothing are enumerated in the cargo
list of the Sultanesa Begdn, which arrived at Manila from the
Coromandel Coast in 1766, over a century and a half after
Morga's time. The English still sent the same Indian stuffs to
the Philippines in addition to such goods as woolens, hats and
glassware. Some of all these commodities remained with the
luxury-loving Spanish inhabitants of the islands, but the bulk
of them were forwarded to Mexico by the galleons.
The Moluccas
Though the early hopes from them were never realized, the
Moluccas became either directly or indirectly one of the minor
contributing branches of the galleon trade. This group was the
most coveted of the islands of the East, because there was found
there "that brown gold they call cloves." For nearly a century
and a half, from the appearance of Magellan's ships to the final
withdrawal of the Spaniards from Ternate in 1662, there was a
quadrangular rivalry for the archipelago. Portuguese and Span
iards, Dutch and English, fought with singular bitterness to gain
the monopoly of the clove production. Of these peoples the
English were the first to be eliminated from the field. At the
time of Drake's incursion the Spaniards feared that the English
intended to take possession of the Moluccas, and English designs
in the region did recur after the establishment of the East India
Company, until the English withdrew to the Indian mainland
and left the exploitation of the islands to the Dutch.
Though the Moluccas had been the original Spanish objective
in the Orient, they remained for Spain a liability rather than an
economic asset. "The chimerical projects of the Moluccas cost
us infinite expense," wrote the far-sighted Viana in 1765. Yet
he adds, "we would not have abandoned that valuable piece of
territory if our Spaniards had been as industrious and assiduous
in trading as are the Dutch, or if they had realized what they
THE PORTUGUESE AND OTHERS
139
lost, which has been immense treasures that the Dutch have
gained. The importance of the Moluccas was not thoroughly
understood until we lost them." At the time a party in Spain
favored giving up the Philippines, and Viana continued his re
flections: "nor will the loss resulting from the abandonment of
the Philippines be realized until they are in the power of some
other nation less indolent and negligent than ours."
The Spanish interest in the Moluccas was complicated by
two factors—the peculiar nature of their relations with the Portu
guese and the entrance of the Dutch into that area. After the
early rivalry between the two Hispanic peoples for possession of
the islands the Spanish accepted the Portuguese claims of priority
and for a time turned their attention elsewhere. The Portu
guese were frequently engaged in hostilities with the native rulers,
and in 1581 Governor Ronquillo sent an expedition to the south
with the object of helping the Portuguese to reconquer Ternate.
The two crowns had already been united in the person of Philip
II, and in 1593 Governor Dasmarinas undertook to carry out the
policy of military cooperation on a scale that would have involved
the complete subordination of Portuguese interests to those
of Manila. A great armament prepared by Dasmarinas and de
signed to wipe out the last vestiges of opposition in the Moluccas
returned to Manila when the ambitious governor was murdered
by the Chinese rowers of his galley and before it had reached its
objective.
Before the end of the century the Dutch had reached Java
and cast their eyes eastward towards the Moluccas. Then in 1605
they expelled the Portuguese from Ternate and Tidore. Four
hundred Portuguese withdrew to Manila, whence the next year
Pedro de Acuna led a formidable armament for the reconquest
of the Moluccas. With 1423 Spanish troops and nearly 1000
Filipino auxiliaries Acuna cleared the Dutch from most of the
group and left a strong Spanish post on Ternate, whose fortifica
tions were taken by storm. "The Spaniards," wrote Purchas, the
Elizabethan, "who whilest the Portugall remayned there, was or
dered both by the Pope and King of Spaine not to meddle with
them, came from the Philippines, beat the Flemmings out of both
the Hands,—and kept Ternate and Tydore under their com
mand." For a time the Dutch were forced to confine their op
erations to the other parts of the East Indies. In 1608 Admiral
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THE MANILA GALLEON
Cornelis Matelief, just returned from the East, wrote as follows:
"Of the clove trade it is very difficult for us to render ourselves
masters. We have the product of Amboina, Luho and Cambelo;
but not that yielded by the Moluccas. The only means of obtain
ing it is to drive the Spaniards from Ternate, and it can easily
be imagined that the task is not easy."
Four years later an order sent out from Madrid placed the
government of the Moluccas under that of the Philippines. How
ever, another order of the next month reserved the monopoly
of the spice trade to the Portuguese. This apparently anomalous
arrangement, by which the superior government was to bear all
the expenses of maintenance and defense, while a virtually sub
ject people were to reap all the profits, was dictated by broader
considerations of policy than are immediately evident. The
maintenance of the Portuguese strength in the more westerly
region beyond Malacca was part of the general scheme of de
fense, and the authorities believed that a serious weakening of
the Portuguese position in Indian waters would endanger Spain's
hold on the Philippines. The Portuguese needed the resources
of the Moluccas and this demanded that Manila make a sacrifice
of economic advantage to Goa.
Grau y Monfalcon said in 1640 that of 2,816,000 pounds of
cloves taken annually from the Moluccas, the Dutch took 1,098,000
pounds, and the Portuguese and "Castilians" 1,718,000 pounds.
Three years before he wrote that the Dutch exported from
Ternate 384,000 pounds of cloves a year, from Motir 468,000
pounds, from Bachian 896,000 pounds, and from Amboina 1,152,000 pounds—a total of 2,900,000 pounds. "Only by virtue
of good management and the freedom of their policy," he ob
served, "the Dutch derive so much profit that they are able to
maintain a large force in those seas." At this time the Spanish
and Dutch posts on Ternate were in sight of each other, where
"every day they fought on land and sea." There was a keen
rivalry between the two peoples to gain the favor of the native
"kings," and the overloards of Ternate and Tidore were long
under Spanish influence. "The Spaniards by bountie and
liberalitie wonne their hearts," wrote Purchas, "and made them
averse to the Hollanders. These [the Spaniards] have the chief
city in Ternate, and call it now Our Lady of the Rosarie, strong
and fortified with all munitions from the Philippines. Here are
THE PORTUGUESE AND OTHERS
141
two hundred Spaniards, ninetie Papoos [Filipinos], besides portugall householders, eightie Chineses, sixtie Moluccans with their
families,—Tidore they have wholly, and therein three Forts. In
Gilolo the Spaniards have first Sabongo, which John de Silva
took from the Dutch in 161 1, and fortified strongly, imposing a
garrison of sixtie Spaniards; secondly, Pilolo craftily taken from
the Dutch also, and well provided with sixtie Spaniards. The
third, at the west side of Gilolo, over against Machian, called
Aquilano. . . . Half the cloves belong to the King, and the mer
chandise is in the PortugalPs hands. The King's costs for sixe
yeeres were very great with little profit. Jeronimo de Silva is
now Commander in those parts, an old warie souldier."
When the spice trade seemed at last to be in their grasp, the
Spaniards were compensated for its renunciation to the Portu
guese by the possession of the equally lucrative silk trade. Though
the dissolution of the union in 1640 released Spain from her
obligation to Portugal, the Dutch reoccupation of the Moluccas
had proceeded so far that it would no longer have been possible
for the Spanish to become a great spice trading power. Yet, for
many years after Juan de Silva's gigantic effort to drive the Dutch
from the East had failed the Spaniards stubbornly clung to their
hold on Ternate, until the threat of a Chinese pirate descent on
Manila led to the abandonment of the post in 1662.
In 1640 Grau y Monfalcon wrote: "The Philippines and the
citizens of Manila derive no advantage or profit from the
Moluccas. Their only interest there is in the constant labor of
succoring them and supplying their garrisons and presidios." At
this time the Moluccas cost over 230,000 pesos a year—nearly all
the situado, or subsidy, received by the Philippine government
from New Spain. Grau had said of the clove trade of the Manila
Galleons: "Only what is necessary is carried to New Spain." Yet
Manila did actually become for a time the entrepot whither the
Portuguese came from Goa and Malacca for the spices brought
from the Moluccas. It is, however, difficult to determine how
far the Spaniards really shared in the profits of this arrangement.
That some of these cloves passed to America without having
gone through the hands of the Portuguese is certain. In spite
of the prohibition of 1607, the king sent the following order to
Governor Fajardo in 1618: "You will exercise special care and
judgment in all ways and means that are practicable and possible
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to introduce the greatest possible profit and benefit that can be
obtained from the trade in cloves, by such measures as may
appear to you best." As early as 1583 the royal treasury officials
at Manila had written to Philip II: "With these communications
from the Moluccas soldiers and other persons have begun to bring
some cloves here." However, they said further: "We have no
orders regarding this business of the spice trade." The fact that
Manila was an intermediate stage in transportation to Goa facili
tated the evasion of the law of 1607, which many regarded as a
too altruistic concession to the unpopular Portuguese. Between
1640 and 1662 the Spaniards, released from the harassing restric
tion, collected cloves at their factory on Ternate and part of these
reached New Spain by the galleons. Yet in 1656 the City of
Manila petitioned the king to remove the prohibition on the clove
trade, and this petition was repeated, even after the loss of
Ternate.
However, the American market was largely supplied from
the other direction. From the East Indies Dutch or Portuguese
ships carried the spices to Cadiz, where they were transshipped
by the flota to Vera Cruz. Thus, the fleet of Fernando Chacon
carried 170,437 pounds of cinnamon and 70,986 pounds of cloves
and pepper. There appears to have been an arrangement be
tween the Dutch and the Cadiz merchants to prevent a large
spice trade by the Manila Galleon, for the Spaniards had to pay
the same prices at Batavia as at Cadiz. There was also a con
siderable smuggling trade with the Spanish colonies in spices,
as well as in other commodities. However,- when the Andalusian
commercial interests offered to indemnify Manila for her aban
donment of the Chinese-American silk traffic by an offer of the
monopoly of the colonial spice market, the Manilenos refused to
consider the proffered compensation as a sufficient equivalent
for the surrender of the lucrative silk trade, in which contention
they were eventually supported by the authorities at Madrid.
The order of October 27, 1720, which suppressed temporarily
the galleon trade in silks, provided that the cargo for Acapulco
should consist, among other things, of "cinnamon, cloves and
pepper." These commodities were always carried in the galleon,
but at no time did they constitute the bulk of their freight.
THE PORTUGUESE AND OTHERS
143
Java
As long as the wars continued with the Dutch trade between
Manila and Batavia was impossible, but after the cessation of
hostilities and after the abandonment of the Moluccas, the
Spaniards had recourse to the Dutch factories on Java for the
bulk of the spices for the American trade and for consumption
in the Philippines. This traffic was sometimes carried on by
Spanish ships, but usually by Malay craft, since the Dutch seldom
entered Manila Bay in time of peace. The Spaniards refused a
Dutch request for trading at Manila from Batavia as late as 1744.
On their part the Spaniards had begun a promising trade with
Batavia in Governor Salcedo's time (1663-8), and though subse
quent trading operations were rather desultory, after the third
decade of the eighteenth century one or two Spanish ships gen
erally made the voyage to Java each year. Although Batavia
was the principal spice market of the archipelago, some cinna
mon, pepper, nutmeg, and cloves were imported from Sumatra,
Banda and Macassar. In describing an embassy from the "Grand
Subanco and King" of Macassar in 1658, Casimiro Diaz says:
"It had a very rich trade with the Philippines in former times,
but it has entirely ceased since 1673, when commerce was first
established with the coasts of India." In the later years of the
commerce ships proceeding from the Dutch islands, usually from
the central entrepot of Batavia, carried, beside Ceylon cinnamon
and Moluccan cloves, some cheap cottons of Javanese, or some
times of British-Indian, manufacture.
Borneo
The natives of this great island had trafficked with the
Filipinos and practiced widespread piracy in the neighboring seas
before the coming of the Spaniards. Imports from Borneo rather
supplied native demands than contributed to the cargoes of the
galleons, though some goods, such as wax and camphor, oc
casionally found their way across the Pacific. This trade between
Malay peoples was largely carried on by the light Moro praus,
that are so prominent a feature of navigation in those tortuous
waters. The bulk of their cargoes generally consisted of trinkets
THE MANILA GALLEON
of brass, palm nuts, slaves, sago, and black glazed water jars,
which were highly esteemed by the natives of the Philippines.
There was little in Borneo to attract the attention of the
Spaniards. In Governor Sande's time one of the Malay potentates
of Borneo came to Manila to ask for help against his usurping
brother. In return he promised to acknowledge the overlordship of the Spanish king. In accordance with the agreement
Sande took a considerable fleet to Borneo and restored the native
ruler, but made no further effort to establish Spain's authority
over the island. Governor Ronquillo later sent a small fleet
under Captain Gabriel de Ribera to explore the coasts of Borneo
and decide on the advisability of making a settlement there.
Though Ribera was sent to Spain on his return and named
Marshal of Bonbon by the king, no serious effort was made to
develop direct relations with Borneo on a larger scale or to make
a fact of Spanish claims of sovereignty over the island.
Farther India
Among lesser feeders for the galleon line were Siam, Cam
bodia, Cochin-China, Tonquin, and other minor and now extinct
kingdoms of the great southeastern peninsula of the Asiatic main
land. These tributary routes were opened at various times, and
their operations were very irregular. Francisco Leandro de Viana,
writing in 1765, when for several years there had been no trade
with these countries, said that commerce was begun with Cam
bodia in 1594, with Cochin-China in 1596, and with Siam in 1599.
The establishment of these trading connections owes most to
Governor Luis Perez Dasmarinas and Juan Tello de Aguirre.
The Dasmarinas, like the Silvas, were ambitious for conquest on
the mainland and for close commercial relations with that region.
Much of the preliminary work in this direction was per
formed by two remarkable adventurers, who took advantage of
the internal dissensions of those turbulent kingdoms to dominate
the dynastic politics which kept them in a chronic turmoil. One
of these kingmakers, Diogo Belhoso—Diego Belloso in Spanish
records—was a Portuguese; the other, Blas Ruys de Hernan
Gonzalez, was a Spaniard. If the Spaniards in the Philippines
had not been so preoccupied with immediate problems of defense
or more pressing schemes of aggrandizement in other quarters
THE PORTUGUESE AND OTHERS
145
it is probable that they would have made a more serious effort
to utilize the opening for conquest created by the amazing ex
ploits of these two freebooters. Their first appeal to Manila for
support for their projects was made during the governorship of
Gomez Perez Dasmarinas. The occasion was the despatch of an
embassy by Prauncar Langara, king of Cambodia, to the governor
of the Philippines. The mission was headed by Diogo Belhoso,
who brought with him a gift of two elephants "of noble disposi
tion" and offers of friendship and trade. He was also the carrier
of a request for Spanish aid against the Siamese, who were
threatening to overrun Cambodia. The Spanish governor, en
grossed at the time in his designs against the Moluccas,
gave little encouragement to the appeal for help against the
enemies of the kingdom, but sent back a horse and a few emeralds
in return for the two elephants.
Meanwhile the king of Siam had precipitated events. He
had conquered Cambodia with a large force of men and war
elephants and driven its king into exile in the wild kingdom of
Laos to the north. Among his captives were Blas Ruys, the
Spaniard, and two Portuguese soldiers. The Siamese king put
Blas Ruys and his companions on board a large junk and ordered
them to go to Manila to open up trading relations with the
Spaniards. Siamese guards were put on the ship, which had a
Chinese crew, and beneath the hatches were some Cambodian
slaves and other goods to be sold in Manila. Once out at sea
Blas Ruys and the two Portuguese, aided by the Chinese, seized
the junk and killed or imprisoned the Siamese guards. Blas Ruys
and the Chinese then came to blows as to who should have the
prize and where it was to be taken. The three Europeans over
came the Chinese, killing most of them, and took the junk on
to Manila. In the meantime Gomez Perez Dasmarinas had been
killed and his son, Luis, was now governor.
The king of Siam, who still sat in Chordemuco, or Pnom
Penh, the conquered capital of Cambodia, had now begun to
suspect that all had not gone well with his junk. About this time
the ship that had been sent to Manila by King Prauncar arrived
bearing Diogo Belhoso and the horse and emeralds intended for
that fugitive monarch. The Siamese king kept the presents for
his own use and promptly accepted Belhoso's offer to return to
Manila to find out what had happened. He put the ship in
*
146
THE MANILA GALLEON
charge of a Siamese officer of his confidence and sent along two
more elephants and some goods which were to be sold in Manila.
After leaving the mouth of the Mekong a storm struck the vessel
and forced it to take refuge in the harbor of Malacca, where they
learned of the fate of the previous junk. On hearing of the death
of the guards of the other ship the king's Siamese representative
began to lose interest in the trip to Manila and promptly un
loaded the elephants and the rest of the cargo. The next morn
ing he was found dead on the junk, though he had retired in
good health the night before. Diogo Belhoso immediately took
charge of the ship, moved the elephants and goods on board
again, and cleared for Manila.
Here he met Blas Ruys again and together they hatched an
ambitious scheme for Spanish intervention in Farther India. They
agreed to urge the governor to send a fleet to Cambodia to help
King Langara recover his throne from the Siamese. As an in
ducement they promised the governor that he would gain a foot
hold on the mainland which the Spaniards could use as a base
for further expansion. With the aid of some Dominican friars,
who had considerable influence over the governor, Luis Dasmarinas was easily won over to the project. He had a ship
fitted out for the expedition and placed the veteran soldier, Juan
Juarez Gallinato, in charge of the enterprise. One hundred and
twenty Spanish soldiers and a body of Japanese and Filipino
auxiliaries were to accompany him. The two junks from Cam
bodia were to go along, one under Blas Ruys and the other under
Belhoso.
The squadron left Manila in January 1596. A storm scat
tered the three ships shortly before they sighted the Asiatic coast,
and the two junks arrived at the Cambodian capital ahead of
Gallinato's flagship. Here it was learned that the head men of
the country had driven out the Siamese and set one of their num
ber, named Anacaparan, on the throne. The disorder into which
the land had fallen was favorable to the plans of Blas Ruys and
Diogo Belhoso, who immediately began to fish in the troubled
waters. Meanwhile, six Chinese trading junks arrived on the
scene and engaged in an affair with the Spaniards, who killed
many of the Chinese and seized their ships. This incident created
a great commotion in the city and much resentment against the
Spaniards, who were blamed for the affair.
THE PORTUGUESE AND OTHERS
147
When the two leaders with a small party of their men went
up the river to explain to the king their part in the incident and
to press their overtures for trade on him, he had them locked up
in a house on the opposite side of the river and threatened to
have them killed. They escaped at night, crossed the river and
penetrated into the royal palace, where they stabbed the king
to death in his bed. They then set fire to the palace and other
buildings, after which they started towards their ships. On their
way they were forced to fight off a host of natives, who pursued
them with several elephants.
Shortly after they reached their boats Gallinato came up the
river with the remainder of the expedition. He refused to en
dorse their plan for restoring Prauncar Langara to his kingdom
and in no uncertain terms expressed his disapproval of their
recent actions. Without further ado he washed his hands of the
whole business and decided to return to Manila. Some of the
principal men of the country wanted to make him king of Cam
bodia, but he refused to yield to the temptation that was held
out to him. However, a legend of his kingship grew up in Spain,
where the famous captain was represented in the theaters as an
Oriental potentate. There is little doubt that, given the circum
stances of the moment and the force at his command, Gallinato
could easily have added Cambodia to the Spanish crown.
As it was, he agreed to put in on the coast of Cochin-China
on his return to Manila, to inquire about the galley of Gomez
Perez Dasmarinas, which his Chinese assassins had carried away
from Philippine waters. He also consented to take with him Blas
Ruys and Diogo Belhoso, who asked to be set ashore at a point
where they might go inland into the Laos country in search of
their old friend, King Prauncar Langara.
Arrived on the Cochin-China coast, Gallinato was glad to be
rid of the two soldiers of fortune, of whose informal ways he
so strongly disapproved. He not only failed to find any trace
of the fatal galley of Dasmarinas, but had to fight his way out
to sea to save his own ship from the natives, who had been set
on by their king.
Meanwhile, Blas Ruys and Belhoso had traveled around
through southern Tonquin and reached Lantchang, probably the
old city of Vien Chan, capital of Laos, where they were well re
ceived by the lord of the country. Here they found that King
148
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Prauncar Langara and his eldest son and daughter had died, and
that the heir to the Cambodian throne was a younger son, also
named Prauncar. However, this prince was still an immature
and irresponsible youth, who was governed by a family council
made up of his step-mother, grandmother and aunts.
Shortly after their arrival in Laos a Cambodian appeared at
Lantchang and announced that Chupinanu, son of the slaughtered
Anacaparan, was the latest incumbent of the kingship. He also
reported that the country had fallen into anarchy and that the
majority of the people wanted their lawful king to return. A
few days later Ocuna de Chu, a prominent mandarin, reached
Laos with ten large boats and orders from his colleagues to bring
back the royal family. Young Prauncar thereupon embarked
with his female regency on the boats, which set off down the
Mekong to Chordemuco. Two very interested passengers in the
boats were Blas Ruys and Diogo Belhoso.
With the aid of the two companions-at-arms the country was
finally subdued and the usurper Chupinanu met the fate of his
father. Blas Ruys and Belhoso were made the military chiefs
of the kingdom and given two provinces as their private domain.
"Whatever we attacked we conquered, with God's assistance,"
Blas Ruys wrote to Antonio de Morga at Manila, "but where we
did not go losses always resulted. Consequently we gained great
reputation and were esteemed by our friends and feared by the
enemy." Attracted by the disorders in the neighboring kingdom,
an army from Laos invaded Cambodia, only to be driven out by
the two paladins.
Yet their position was always a precarious one. The support
of the young king was a slender reed on which to lean. "He is
a child and is addicted to drink more than was his father," wrote
Blas Ruys; "he only thinks of sports and hunting and cares noth
ing for the kingdom." The affairs of state were largely managed
by his women, who distrusted the foreigners and used all their
influence against them. The sinister Lacasamana, a Moro, who
had brought in a large force of men from the islands to the
south, had a strong ascendency over these women and was a
paramour of the king's step-mother. He was jealous of the
"Grand Chofa Captain Don Blas" and his Portuguese companion,
and was constantly plotting against them and trying to under
mine their prestige with the king and the people.
THE PORTUGUESE AND OTHERS
149
Blas Ruys well realized that unless he could receive sub
stantial aid from the Philippines his project for adding Cambodia
to the Spanish empire would end in failure. If he should fail
his life would be worth little in this maze of intrigue and hatred
where he had thrown his lot many years before. There was no
one he could trust, save his Portuguese companion, and he even
suspected Belhoso of treating with the governor at Malacca in
an effort to forestall the Spaniards. As for the king, "he fears
the Spaniards," he said, "even while he esteems them, for he
dreads lest they deprive him of his kingdom."
In July 1598 he wrote to Morga, then president of the
audiencia at Manila, asking for men to secure his great venture.
He wished to hold some stronghold in the country, where he
could beat off any force of enemies, and which he could use as
the nucleus of his cherished undertaking. "It is very important,"
he wrote, "to possess a fortress on the mainland, since it will be
the beginning of great things." At the same time he transmitted
some presents from the harried king. "On account of the many
wars, the king does not possess many things to send your Grace.
He sends two elephants' tusks and a slave." As for himself, he
said: "I am poor, for I have lived hitherto by war and subsisted
from its gains." And he adds, "Recollecting your Grace's unique
collection, I send you a bottle and a little flask of ivory. You
will forgive the trifle, for I promise to make up for it next year."
In Manila he had a loyal and tireless ally in the Dominican
priest, Fray Alonso Jimenez, who had fought side by side with
him in one of his early combats in Cambodia. Also, Luis
Dasmarinas, no longer governor, believed as strongly as ever in
conquest on the mainland. The government frowned on the
idea, and when Dasmarinas organized his expedition it was at his
own expense. He fitted out three vessels and manned them with
200 men raised among the unemployed of Manila. He also re
cruited some Japanese and Tagalog auxiliaries and took along
twenty-one friars, including Padre Jimenez. In order to obtain
the official consent to his undertaking he alleged as the motive
for his going the conquest of the now-extinct kingdom of
Champa, long a refuge for pirates, who preyed on shipping along
those coasts.
Under these auspices he cleared from Manila too late in the
year for favorable weather on the China Sea. His two largest
150
THE MANILA GALLEON
ships- were blown north onto the Chinese coast and wrecked.
Dasmarinas made his way to Macao by a Chinese junk and there
fell afoul of the hostile Portuguese, though he later found succor
with some of his countrymen at their new trading post of El
Pinal. Only the smallest of the three ships, a galliot under the
command of Luis Ortiz, reached Chordemuco and joined Blas
Ruys and Belhoso.
Events now moved rapidly towards their inevitable con
clusion. Though Captain Juan de Mendoza, who had secured
permission from Governor Tello to take a trading ship to Siam,
put into the Mekong and added his small force to the Spaniards
already there, the odds were still heavy against the intruders.
Soon after a further element of irritation was added to a highly
charged situation by the arrival of a ship from Nagasaki. This
vessel, which belonged to a mestizo named Govea, son of a Portu
guese and a Japanese woman, had come down the coast of
Cochin-China, trading or committing piracy as the occasion
offered. Govea's ruffianly company of Japanese and Portuguese
conducted themselves in such a high-handed manner with the
natives that the position of the Spaniards in the Combodian capi
tal quickly became critical. They very unwisely attacked the
followers of the Moro Lacasamana, who rallied his men and
raised the native population against the Spaniards. Pandemonium
reigned in the city, as the multitude closed in on the small band
of Spaniards and their allies. The force of numbers was too
great for the heroism of Blas Ruys and Diogo Belhoso, who were
finally overwhelmed after a long and desperate struggle. They
fell sword in hand, as they had lived, among the bodies of their
men.
The bloodletting in Cambodia continued, as the young king
and then the Moro chieftain were killed. Then the mandarins
sent to Siam and asked the king to release a brother of old King
Prauncar Langara, who had been held captive since the Siamese
conquest. The king of Siam not only granted their request, but
sent along 6,000 men to install him on his throne. One of the
first actions of the new king was to look up Juan Diaz, the sole
survivor of Blas Ruys' company, and to despatch him to Manila,
where he was to ask for friendship and trade—and for more
Spanish soldiers and priests to live at the Cambodian court!
Pedro de Acuna was governor, and in 1603 he sent a ship to
THE PORTUGUESE AND OTHERS
151
Chordemuco with four priests and five soldiers, including Juan
Diaz.
The Spaniards never revived their projects of aggrandize
ment on the mainland, and future governors, save Fernando de
Silva, relied on embassies and presents to obtain the consent of
Indo-Chinese kings for trading with their subject. This com
merce was interrupted for long periods by internecine wars or
by the dissatisfaction of the natives at their treatment by the
Spaniards, only to be reopened by the efforts of successive gov
ernors. In 1622 a royal decree ordered the governor to prohibit
private persons from sending ships to Siam and Cambodia, as
well as to other parts within the commercial area of Manila.
This was a war measure, for the dispersal of the small force of
the colony in too widespread trading activities endangered the
colony in the critical times of war with the Dutch. Manila was
a presidio, as well as a trading post and mission, and defense
was the first consideration during such a period. Moreover,
navigation about the western edge of the South China Sea, which
was always subject to piratical attacks in ordinary times, became
increasingly precarious with the added presence of hostile Euro
pean ships in those waters. Though Fernando de Silva's expedi
tion thither in 1626 met with failure—most of his force being
beheaded by Siamese and Japanese—friendly relations with the
states of the mainland were not interrupted for long, nor did
the efforts of the Dutch to alienate the friendship of the native
potentates meet with success. In Tabora's governorship (1626-32)
Indo-Chinese junks came to Manila with considerable regularity.
Then, after another interval of non-intercourse, trade was revived
by the efforts of Governor Diego de Salcedo (1663-68) and suc
cessively reestablished, after two more periods of suspension, by
Governors Bustamante (1717-19), and Obando (1750-54).
In Obando's time a company was formed at Manila, of which
he was the head, with the object of trading with Siam and con
structing a galleon there for the Acapulco line. Jose Pasarin,
Obando's special envoy for the purpose, has left an interesting
account of his ceremonious reception at the Siamese court. After
his ship had anchored in the river below the capital the king
sent down a delegation of his nobles to greet him and sound out
his designs. The Spanish emissary was then conducted upriver to
the royal palace by a flotilla of long boats, each manned with
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THE MANILA GALLEON
seventy-eight skilled paddlers. On arriving at the palace he was
led through the outer corridors into a large courtyard, where he
was filled with "admiration and respect" by two lanes of "mon
strous elephants," richly caparisoned with trappings of gold set
with stones. He was much impressed by their "vast and rotund
corpulence," and by the "silent gravity with which they slowly
moved their huge trunks." After passing between two lanes of
"splendid and veteran" infantry, he was escorted into a majestic
hall, adorned with rich Persian rugs and large mirrors. Here
he found himself in the presence of the "most distinguished
mandarins of the empire and some others of lower hierarchy,"
all squatting about on the carpeted floor and without shoes. The
Spaniard was struck "by their aspect of mysterious gravity and
wisdom," but he refused to accept the formalities prescribed for
entering this "strange and ridiculous theatre," which required
that one should appear "without shoes, or slippers, sword, cane
or hat, and no more seat than the floor itself." As a representative
of the "most August Monarch of the Universe and a member of
the most glorious nation on earth," he threatened to turn about
and return to Manila rather than suffer these affronts to his
dignity and indirectly to that of his king. "But," he says, "the
Emperor excused me from the impertinent rigor of so many cere
monies, and allowed me to go in with my hat, sword, cane, shoes,
and two cushions to sit on."
When this point of etiquette was arranged to the satisfaction
of the proud Spaniard the public audience in his honor proceeded
with overpowering solemnity. He first greeted all present in
European style, and then sat down on his cushions, where he
towered above the whole assemblage. The mandarins shortly
relapsed into a profound silence and immobility. Pasarin imi
tated their "mysterious and ecstatic posture" the best he could,
only to be awakened from his contemplation by the sound of a
gong. Looking up, he saw the prime minister of the kingdom,
as he took his place on a magnificent throne. At this dignitary's
feet there prostrated themselves, "in barbarous obsequiousness,"
several damsels, "naked from the waist up," while others waved
beautiful fans before his face. Meanwhile, the mandarins bent
forward to the floor, without daring to cast their eyes in the direc
tion of the minister and his attendants. The nobles showed their
displeasure at the Spaniard's "serenity and lack of embarrassment,"
THE PORTUGUESE AND OTHERS
153
as he gazed in wonder upon "a spectacle so rare." However, when
Pasarin saluted the minister in his best Spanish manner, he smiled
his appreciation and beckoned to him to bring his cushions and
sit alongside the throne. Here he answered various questions
regarding the health of the Spanish monarchs, their ages and
the number and dispositions of their progeny, after which he
took his leave with great formality. A few days later he received
a written inquiry from the court as to the ages at which the
Spanish rulers had married—a question which he learned was
always put to foreign envoys in Siam.
These ceremonious preliminaries completed, he was able
after tedious negotiation to arrange for the reopening of trading
relations between Manila and Siam A huge galleon, christened
the Guadalupe, was later built at great cost on the Siamese coast,
but it proved to be unadaptable to trans-Pacific navigation, and,
after the heavy loss incurred in this failure, the trading part of
the company's program was not prosecuted. Moreover, the cen
tral government held the arrangements made with the Siamese
as illegal.
Of this never very important traffic with Indo-China Morga
wrote in 1609: "Very seldom a few vessels sail to Manila from
Siam and Cambodia. They carry some benzoin, pepper, ivory
and cotton cloth, rubies and sapphires, badly cut and set,
rhinoceros horns, and the hides, hoofs and teeth of this animal,
and other goods."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>^ • <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
CHAPTER 4
CITY AND COMMERCE
HE operation of the galleon trade was unique in the annals
X of commerce. This trading system was based on the prin
ciple that the entire Spanish community in the Philippines largely
depended for its sustenance on the profits from the galleons. As
the logical corollary to this rule, every member of that community
had the privilege of participating in the freighting of the galleons.
The naos themselves were property of the crown. And it was
the crown which so minutely regulated the conduct of the trade,
with the object of assuring to every citizen of the colony a share
in its rich proceeds. Thus, "City and Commerce," which often
addressed the king as though they were one and the same person,
were for a long time virtually synonymous.
The first laws which governed the galleon commerce were
issued from time to time in the form of royal decrees. Many of
them date from 1593. Most of this body of law was later codified
in the "Laws of the Indies." The governors were also accustomed
to exercise their ordinance power in matters affecting the trade.
Obando (1750-1754) took it upon himself to introduce many
revolutionary changes into the proceedings at Manila, and
Arandia (1754-1759) was responsible for many salutary reforms.
The first comprehensive legislation for the trade was contained
in the royal decree of April 8, 1734, which put an end to the long
controversy between Manila and the cities of Andalusia. This
remained the law of the trade, except for the temporary innova
tions introduced by Governor Obando, until 1769. In that year
were issued the Adiciones or Supplementary Regulations, which,
save for minor changes, served the trade until the end.
Between the pancada, the process by which the Spaniards
acquired the silks from the Chinese, and the clearing of the
galleon there intervened an elaborate series of official transactions.
Always given to over-regulation in such matters, the Spanish
government was particularly anxious to restrain the covetousness
CITY AND COMMERCE
i55
of individual traders in the galleon commerce. The inevitable
alternative to such a policy would have been the early monopoly
of the trade by a small minority of the citizens. As the applica
tion of the policy was relaxed in the course of time that is exactly
what happened. Since a share in the profits of the galleon was
the lodestone that attracted Spaniards across the Pacific, it was to
the interest of the crown to maintain equality of opportunity in
the commerce. If this stimulus to migration were removed, fur
ther retention of the colony would be difficult and expensive.
Minute governmental supervision of the operations at Manila
was also deemed necessary to keep the galleon commerce within
the bounds of the permiso, or "permission." The permiso limited
the volume of the trade to a specified sum, and was the basis of
the whole regulatory system as applied to the commerce. It had
the force of an export quota for the colony, and served the double
purpose of limiting the competition of Chinese silks with those
of Spanish manufacture in tlie Mexican market and of restricting
the passage of Mexican silver to China. Moreover, such a definite
limit to the volume of the traffic provided a convenient measure
for its regulation.
The trade ran unrestricted by laws for a few flourishing
decades after its inception. The first permiso was established in
1593, limiting the value of the annual cargo to 250,000 pesos at
Manila and with a sale value in New Spain of not over double
that amount. The same limitation was reaffirmed by decrees
of 1604 and 1619. This legal maximum remained in force until
1702, when the permiso was raised to 300,000 pesos. In 1734 it
was increased to 500,000 pesos and in 1776 to 750,000 pesos, at
which figure it remained until the cessation of the commerce
in 1815. In each case the return value of the cargo was fixed at
double the permiso. No allowance was made at either end of
the line for the payment of duties, which were to be included
in the total of the permiso. At least, such was the law of the
trade; its observance was another matter, and there was generally
a very wide margin between the two.
The first step in regulating the trade in line with the permiso
was the apportionment of lading space on the galleon. In the
early years of the commerce the governor distributed the lading
space without interference from any other element in the colony.
However, by a decree of Philip III in 1604 he was forced to share
156
THE MANILA GALLEON
his powers with an ex-officio board of apportionment represent
ing the principal interests in the community. These interests
comprised the royal government, the Church, and the "City and
Commerce." The board or junta de repartimiento, as thus or
ganized, included, besides the governor, the senior judge of the
audiencia, the important fiscal or attorney-general of the colony,
two regidores or members of the city council, and the archbishop
of Manila. The regulations drawn up for the trade in 1734 sub
stituted for one of the municipal councilmen a district judge of
the city. By the same law the other councilman was compelled
to alternate every other year with one of the eight compromisarios,
who represented the "Commerce" or strictly trading interests of
the community.
The introduction of this latter member into the junta is
significant of the next change in the make-up of the committee.
For the eight compromisarios were the nucleus of the consulado
or consulate, which was instituted in 1769 as the governing body
of the trade at Manila. It is also indicative of a division in the
colony between "City" and "Commerce," which had long been
virtually identical. For by then actual control of the trade had
fallen into the hands of a few wealthy merchants. This class
wished neither to endure the virtual dictatorship of the governor
in the junta, a condition which often prevailed, nor to share its
authority with the non-trading part of the citizens. This im
portant stage of the trade was henceforth to be directed by busi
ness men, with as little intervention as possible from the govern
ment. Accordingly the consulado assumed the functions of the
old heterogeneous committee and exercised them until the ex
tinction of the galleon line in the second decade of the last
century.
The meetings of the junta were seldom harmonious. The
stakes were too large and the interests represented were too irrec
oncilable. Francisco Leandro de Viana said in 1767 that the
members of the junta considered only their own personal wel
fare. There were violent clashes within the committee from the
beginning, generally between the "City and Commerce" on one
side and the crown, or crown and Church, on the other. Objec
tions were frequently made against the inclusion of the governor
or of one or the other of the elements represented. Hernando
de los Rios Coronel, as spokesman for the colony before the court,
CITY AND COMMERCE
157
early proposed that the members should be chosen in open
cabildo or town meeting. A petition to the royal council asked
that the "City and Commerce" should be permitted to make the
distribution of space without the intervention of any official of
crown or Church.
Nor did each member of the junta exert an equal influence
in its deliberations. The governor, who was long supreme in
the direction of the commerce, was accustomed to dominate his
associates on the board. Governor Hurtado de Corcuera entirely
usurped the authority of the junta in 1635, thereby arrogating to
himself the prerogatives that had belonged to his office before its
transfer to a board in 1604. However, Hurtado's blunt effort
to legalize his assumption of powers was short-lived. Governor
Obando instituted even more radical changes in 1753. "I pro
pose," he wrote to the king, "to cut the Gordian Knot of the
repartimiento [distribution of space], which since time im
memorial has been located in the temple of private interest."
The "City and Commerce" protested against Obando's innova
tions as contrary to "customs, rights, privileges and laws." The
governor named the senior judge of the audiencia and three other
citizens of his confidence to replace the old body, and commis
sioned them to "expurgate" the lists of those eligible to receive
boletas or licenses for lading. Such an order naturally struck
consternation into the whole body of citizens. As naturally, too,
they attributed the governor's move to self-interest, charging that
his four appointees would be more compliant with his wishes
than was the old ex-officio body. With the "City and Commerce"
against him Obando's schemes could be only a temporary move
to extirpate abuses which too many were interested in perpetuat
ing. A few years later Viana declared that the attempts of
Obando, like those of Arandia and Raon after him, were entirely
ineffectual to reform the evils in the distribution of the galleon's
lading space. Though the governor's preponderant position in
this business was greatly curtailed by the authority conferred on
the consulado in 1769, he still reviewed the acts of the consulado
as they related to the work of allotting the boletas.
The archbishop, who was expected to exert his influence as
mediator and by the churchmen to guard the clerical interest in
the trade, seldom took an active part in the sessions of the com
mittee. Next to the governor the fiscal was the most influential
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THE MANILA GALLEON
member of the junta. He was nearly always present at the meet
ings, where he represented the crown more truly than did his
superior, whose trading activities were not always consistent with
the royal interest. After his exclusion under the Obando regime,
the fiscal seems to have recovered some of his old authority, for
he later shared with the governor the revision of the allotment
lists drawn up by the consulado.
The amount of lading space to be allotted to each citizen de
pended on the capacity of the galleon available for the voyage
that year. The ship's hold was measured by a committee ap
pointed for that purpose, and the volume of space available for
cargo was divided into equal parts, each to correspond to a bale
of definite and uniform size. These bales or fardos were again
subdivided into four packages or piezas. The average measure
ments of these piezas in the earlier galleons were 2l/2 feet long,
2 feet wide, and 10 inches deep, though there was no absolute
uniformity in these dimensions. Nor was the prescribed division
of the cargo space into four thousand shares, each corresponding
to a pieza, always adhered to. Some galleons carried six or seven
thousand piezas, and the San Jose" went down with 12,000
"packages" in her hold. Of thirty-five galleons that made the
eastern passage between 1736 and 1770, only five carried the regu
lation number of piezas. According to the official registers the
majority during those years carried between two and three thou
sand, while the Santa Rosa in 1764, the year after the English
occupation, had a cargo of only 389*4 piezas.
A boleta, or ticket, was issued as a certificate of ownership for
each unit of a pieza. Again, these boletas were sometimes further
divided into sixths or other fractions. This often happened when
the value of the entire boleta was particularly high. Thus, each
person's proportion of the lading space was expressed in terms
of boletas. On the basis of a division into four thousand piezas,
and assuming the original permitted returns of 500,000 pesos from
a voyage, a boleta should have been worth 125 pesos at Manila.
Though these two ideal conditions probably never co-existed
during the course of the commerce, the arbitrary value of 125
pesos was a convenient standard for the assessment of duties and
the keeping of statistics. Yet, when shippers were automatically
swearing that each of the piezas consigned by them on the gal
leon was worth but 250 pesos, Governor Anda and the fiscal,
CITY AND COMMERCE
159
Viana, declared that each pieza represented goods to the value of
1500 or 2000 pesos.
As to the eligibility requirements for the recipients of boletas,
the law of 1593 provided that the lading should be divided among
"all the citizens of those islands, in proportion to their wealth,
in order that everyone may share in the advantage and profit of
this traffic." The early theory on which the regulations were
based was that the merchant class and the body of citizens were
one and the same. It assumed that every boletero or recipient of
a boleta was a galleon trader, who actually made use of his license
to ship. The early state of affairs did approximate closely to this
condition. The lists of shippers are much longer in the sixteenth
century than in the eighteenth. Those who promulgated the law
aimed at stimulating individual thrift by assuring an equal op
portunity to all, and so to promote the general prosperity of the
community. They probably little foresaw its possibilities in the
other direction, when a boleta would be but a dignified form of
dole, with a high market value in itself, the sale of which would
provide the funds for the support of the original recipient until
the drawing of the next year. The law of 1620, ordering a stricter
observance of the original regulation, laid down as the basis of
distribution the "position" and "means" of the citizens, a very
indefinite criterion that could be made to sanction any violation.
Actual citizenship in the islands was the first requisite, and
preference was given to those of longest residence in the colony.
Favoritism and self-interest broke down the law, as they nullified
many another salutary ordinance for the government of the
Indies. The important series of regulations issued in 1734 an
nounced no general principle of qualification for the receipt of
boletas. It proclaimed more definitely, however, than had the
earlier laws, the inclusion or exclusion of certain classes. The
decree of 1769, constituting the consulado, specifically limited the
allotment to bona-fide merchants, who were to compose the body
of the new organization. The monopoly of the consulado was a
recognition of the fundamental change that had occurred since
the early decades of the galleon trade, when the large mass of
Spaniards in Manila traded with Mexico on their own account.
They had gone out to the Philippines to participate in that trade,
for the quick enrichment that was promised by the galleon was
the only inducement for leaving Spain or Mexico in favor of the
i6o
THE MANILA GALLEON
distant colony. No ordinary motives could lead men to risk
the hazardous crossing of the Pacific or the vicissitudes of life in
a place so notoriously unhealthy and constantly threatened by
enemies from within and without. And for a long period there
were not the glaring inequalities of fortune among the citizens
of Manila that became so prominent in the eighteenth century.
But the number of actual shippers on the galleon decreased in
the course of time. Trading families acquired wealth and a
settled status in the commerce that no transient investor or ad
venturer could obtain, which enabled them, together with the
rich endowments of the obras pias, to dominate the course of the
trade. These were the "professional merchants," whose impor
tance the regulations of 1734 recognized. One hundred ninetyfour citizens, a large proportion of the Spanish lay population,
consigned goods on the San Martin in 1586. When the San
Andres made the crossing two centuries later, her cargo belonged
to twenty-eight men. Among them were rich merchants like
Antonio Pacheco and Francisco David, whose names appear on
the manifest lists year after year. Of 2,135 Pezas in the hold of
the San Andres, 496 bore David's mark. Viana said in 1767 that
of seven or eight hundred who received boletas about forty dis
posed of sufficient capital to make up a shipment. Seven years
before Governor Arandia had informed the king that there were
only ten men in the colony who could trade on their own capital.
The wide distribution of boletas and the ease with which money
could be borrowed from the obras pias for a venture on the gal
leon prevented such a condition from having its logical conse
quences, in forcing all save the more affluent into utter indigence
or into some other means of earning a living.
In the original distribution the active merchants did not re
ceive lading space enough to contain a consignment of goods
in proportion to their superior means. Accordingly, they were
forced to purchase sufficient boletas for their purpose. An ex
tensive system of trading in boletas grew up, which was more
immediately important to the majority of the citizens than was
the actual business of freighting and despatching the galleon.
The law of 1620 had reproached the governors with granting
lading space to non-traders, thus forcing the real shippers to buy
at excessive prices the privilege of filling their true quota on the
galleons. A decree of 1638, issued in response to the representa
CITY AND COMMERCE
161
tions of Grau y Monfalcon, agent of the colony at the royal court,
prohibited the transfer of boletas without the intervention of the
junta. If any recipient were unable to lade goods to the extent
of his allotment, this law required that he return the surplus
boletas to the junta, which would dispose of them to any shipper
in need of more cargo space and indemnify the original holder
at the assessed value of the boletas for the year. The important
regulations of 1734 confirmed the general principle of the decree
of 1638, but added the exception of the "poor and widows," who
might sell their drawings to an active merchant without further
ceremony. The supplementary regulations of 1769, although ex
pressly reserving to various non-trading elements their customary
quota of boletas, suggest that it would be "more useful, equitable
and proper" to reimburse these classes in money for relinquish
ing actual possession of the boletas, which would then be dis
tributed directly to the legitimate merchants of the consulado.
The execution of such a plan would naturally have put an end
to the old business of trafficking in boletas. However, a decree
issued seven years later against trading and speculating in boletas
illustrates the futility of these reiterated prohibitions.
The charitable impulse which led to the granting of trading
licenses to widows and orphans, and the principle of subsidizing
the ecclesiastical organizations and supplementing the income
of public officials by the widespread distribution of a lucrative
gratuity, laid the inevitable basis for a speculative traffic in the
licenses themselves. On one side there were a few shippers in
urgent need of additional lading space on the galleon; on the
other were a large number of boleteros, eager to convert these
papers into as much money as possible. It was the bargaining
which ensued that an English observer characterized as a "rivalry
in roguery," and the archbishop-governor, Rojo, called a "laby
rinth of entanglements, complaints and vileness." Viana, who
saw in a meeting of the junta a very witches' sabbath of corrup
tion, denounced the whole business of the distribution of boletas
as "the root and origin of all the disorders tolerated in this com
merce." He proposed as a remedy the sale of the boletas out
right to those who could utilize them for their real purpose. In
making his unwelcome innovations in this stage of the galleon
trade Governor Obando wrote to the king that the frauds in the
system began in the original distribution, where, self-interest,
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favoritism, or "the claims of flesh and blood" often dictated the
list of recipients. Hernando de los Rios Coronel said that in
1613 the governor did not allow the citizens a single ton of
space on the galleon, and Viceroy Villamanrique, never a friend
of the galleon trade, declared that "the governor and the audiencia
permit only those to lade who have their favor." Viana charged
further that the governor championed the illegal boleteros in the
junta because of a common interest in the frauds of the trade.
Such instances as the issuing of boletas to widows who had fol
lowed their husbands or remarried had their counterpart in the
subsequent transactions, when a speculator collected the price of
the same boleta from four different merchants. At times a sys
tem similar to the old Roman custom of clientage prevailed,
whereby certain active merchants and groups of parasitical
boleteros mutually depended on each other for lading space and
subsistence respectively. Usually, however, there was no such
working arrangement between the two parties, and the holder
of a boleta preferred to maintain his independence in the open
market, so that he could force the merchants to bid for his hold
ings.
The price of boletas depended on certain factors: the results
of the pancada, or transactions with the Chinese, the prospects
for a profitable sale in Mexico, the quantity of ready money in
the colony, the total lading space available in the year's galleon,
and the number of boletas for sale. Sometimes the majority of
boletas were cornered by a clique of the governor's friends, by
a small group of wealthy merchants, or by the obras pias, either
through influence and favoritism in the original distribution or
by buying them from other holders. When the junta allotted the
bulk of the cargo space to the religious and charitable establish
ments, or to other classes prohibited by the law of 1620, the
genuine merchants were obliged to buy at exorbitant prices the
lading space essential for a profitable consignment. This led
to the common excess of the permiso or the despatch of cargo
beyond the legal limit. One of the most serious abuses growing
out of the traffic in certificates of lading was the opportunity
which it gave to merchants from Mexico or Peru, or their agents
in Manila, to participate in the trade at its western end. Plenti
fully supplied with silver, their entrance into the market sent
up prices to a point where few merchants in the islands could
CITY AND COMMERCE
163
compete with them. In response to the loud complaints of the
latter new laws were issued, providing for severe penalties against
any invasion of the islanders' monopoly of the galleon trade.
However, these prohibitions were evaded through the interces
sion of the Spaniards in the islands, who, for a commission, were
ready to represent the investors from the other side of the Pacific.
The whole process of the distribution of lading space, as it
was generally carried on, was demoralizing to the mercantile
habits of the colony. Viana, to whose active spirit the majority
of boleteros were only contentious sluggards and greedy hangerson, could see nothing in the system but an oppressive incubus on
the economic life of the colony. The judge, Gonzalez Carbajal,
later to be the first intendant of the Philippines, began a me
morial to Jose de Galvez, the Supreme Minister, in 1783: "The
charity of the king distributes annually for the benefit and sup
port of this commerce and of the commonwealth the lading space
of the galleon. The purpose of this generous gift, directed to the
prosperity of the islands is not realized, nor is the important
design of the monarch attained, but the results are entirely con
trary."
Gonzalez Carbajal divides the merchants into three cate
gories. The first class consists of rich men, who satisfy all the
qualifications prescribed by the law. These do not need the free
donation of boletas, but could well afford to pay an assessment
for the lading space which their consignments occupy on the
galleons. The second group consists of individuals "who call
themselves merchants, but who are not, nor can be such, and
who do not possess the requisite property or any of the other
qualifications which his Majesty ordains." This class he arraigns
as "enemies of work and of all settled occupation." They have
acquired the status of traders by "false pledges and proofs," and
have thereby founded entailed estates, as it were, with which they
are maintained at the expense of the royal liberality, given up to
a life of ease and not obliged to gain their living "by the sweat
of their brow." He denies to this class any claim in justice to
the right of receiving boletas. The third class consisted of men
in other employ, who "neither do trade, or could, except in vio
lation of the laws." The majority of these were civil or military
officials, who already received substantial salaries from the insular
treasury. Beyond continuing a certain quota of tickets to eccle
THE MANILA GALLEON
siastics, members of the municipal council, soldiers, and widows
—a custom which few men would have been bold enough to
challenge—Gonzalez Carbajal would have used the distribution
as an incentive to the development of the islands. He would
restrict the boletas to those who were willing to devote their
capital and energies to the agricultural and industrial develop
ment of the islands and to widening the scope of the colony's
commerce, hitherto confined to the galleon trade and its feeders.
An analysis of his list of the 150 members of the original
consulado, who accordingly possessed the privilege of shipping
by the galleon, shows the following results: Twenty-five were
active merchants. Fifty-six others commissioned their own trad
ing operation on a percentage basis to the twenty-five. Of these
eight were women. Among those who had other occupations
than their subsidiary ventures in the galleon were ten members
of the city council, twenty-one others holding government posi
tions, seven employees of the government Tobacco Monopoly,
three surgeons, two pilots and a notary. Thirty are classed as
"idlers and triflers"—-the drones of the commerce. Some of the
members fall into two or three categories, and so accumulate
a correspondingly large number of boletas. The status of a
member might change from year to year, according to his chang
ing fortune or occupation. As to the registered working capital
of the members, four are officially credited with a minimum of
100,000 pesos, nine with between 50,000 and 100,000 pesos, and
the vast majority with from 2,000 to 50,000 pesos. Their aggre
gate working capital was declared on the books of the consulado
as 2,558,000 pesos.
The widows of Manila were always beneficiaries of this
unprecedented bounty. A Dominican friar declared this chari
table provision unique in the world. Their claim to this dignified
form of pension was not questioned by even the critical Viana
or by Gonzalez Carbajal. It is generally confirmed in all the
successive ordinances of the commerce, though the law of 1769
proposes the substitution of a money compensation for the quan
tity of boletas heretofore allotted to this class. The change was
apparently never made, for ten years later Viana, then sitting in
the Council of the Indies as the Count of Tepa, was again advo
cating the same measure. Gonzalez Carbajal said there were 412
Spanish widows in Manila in 1783, at a time when the population
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165
of the colony was probably less than 2,000. Three years later
the consulado reported to the king that there were only fifty
Spanish families in Manila. Each widow customarily received
from one-half to two boletas.
Of the privileged classes who shared in the proceeds of the
galleon trade the clergy probably had the most vital interest.
It is difficult, however, to determine the exact extent of clerical
trading operations, as it is in the case of the intruders from
Mexico. The old distinction between the clergy as individuals and
as corporations, between Padre Gomez and the member of the
cathedral chapter, or between Fray Domingo and the provincial
of the Dominican Order, with their identity merged in the or
ganization—makes all the more difficult the problem of cata
loguing the commercial activities of the cloth. Furthermore,
the prominence of the obras pias, which were charitable institu
tions, largely conducted by regulars, only complicates the ques
tion. Naturally, too, the churchman who traded in violation of
the papal ban was silent as to his investments on the galleon.
A convenient lay proxy, to conduct his trading activities, would
protect him from the necessity of exposing himself to the remote
risk of censure from his overseas superiors.
Ecclesiastics were trading long before the royal decree of
1638 gave them the express right to take part in the commerce.
A law of 1696 ordered the allotment of lading space to be con
tinued to the chapter of the Manila cathedral, "as customary."
This provision was re-enacted in 1751, with the more definite
specification of 132 boletas as the annual quota for the chapter.
Meanwhile, the regulations of 1734 had prohibited the assign
ment of boletas "under any pretext or simulation, under pain of
the royal indignation, to any ecclesiastics, secular or regular." In
its application to churchmen as individuals the language of this
clause is sufficiently clear. The law of 1769 reserves to the
"churches and obras pias" their customary right to a share of the
boletas, or at least to a monetary compensation for the relinguishment of actual possession of the licenses. Thus, throughout the
existence of the trade the law concedes the right of certain eccle
siastical organizations to trade, just as it as consistently denies
the individual churchman the same privilege.
As usual, practice was in contravention of law. Viana de
clared in 1767 that the interdiction of 1734 was "publicly and
166
THE MANILA GALLEON
notoriously transgressed." However, Viceroy Villamanrique's
charge that most of the galleon traders were of the clergy cannot
have been true at any period. The viceroy informed the king at
the same time that he was then sending one such offender to
Spain and that the year before three priests had gone out to the
Philippines with large sums of money of their own, besides com
missions from others. Governor Dasmarinas, writing about the
same time and a more competent judge, said that "from the
bishop down to the humblest of them, they are as good merchants
as the most secular and the most skillful trader." Governor Cruzat y Gongora, who appears to have been fearful of violating
papal edicts by allowing churchmen to trade, said that during
the seventeenth century ecclesiastics were not always granted the
lading license conceded by the law of 1638, or that the allot
ment, if made, was small. He declared that the assignment of
space to the clergy had been suspended in 1683 and was still
lapsed, pending the decision of the king as to its propriety. It
was the next year after the writing of this letter, 1696, that a
decree from Spain confirmed the ancient "custom" of the grant
to the dean and chapter of the cathedral at Manila. As early as
1590 Bishop Salazar had written to Philip II of the extensive
trading by his assistants, "to the great scandal and bad example
to both Spaniards and natives." However, in the register of the
San Felipe the next year "Fray Don Domingo de Salazar, Bishop"
is credited with a shipment of fifteen bales and thirty-three boxes
of merchandise. The dean of the cathedral chapter consigned
in the same galleon thirteen bales and seven boxes, one of the
canons five bales and three boxes, and the schoolmaster six bales,
besides Padres Cervantes, Morales, Tamayo, and Gutierrez to the
total amount of ten bales and eight boxes. In the lists of ship
pers on the two galleons of 1635 appear the following entries:
the archbishop, eight piezas; the bishop of Camarines, six piezas;
the dean of the Manila cathedral, three piezas; and the master of
the cathedral school, two piezas.
For consideration of their trading operations the ecclesiastical
organizations may be classified as the cathedral chapter, the regu
lar orders, and the obras pias. As we have seen, the first of these
had a traditional claim to an annual donation of boletas. The
priests attached to the service of the metropolitan church were
early included, collectively, of course, "on account of their poverty
CITY AND COMMERCE
167
and their high dignity and character." Two years after the royal
government had forced a somewhat reluctant "City and Com
merce" to allow the chapter 132 piezas of lading, Governor
Obando cut down the apportionment to 40 piezas, but their quota
seems to have generally varied between 100 and 132 boletas.
The orders, as such, might not receive any lading space, but,
given the opportunity for buying boletas, this was not a serious
hindrance to commercially-minded friars. The names of friars
frequently appear on the manifests of the galleons. For example,
two cases of goods were shipped on the San Carlos Borromeo in
1766 by the "very Reverend Padre Fray Pedro de San Miguel,
Provincial of the Augustinians." It is not easy to determine the
ultimate destination of the proceeds of all the investments made
by the convents or the humanitarian bodies which were directed
by the regulars, but it is at least charitable to assume that the
great bulk of the funds was applied to the ostensible purposes of
the foundations. However, the communications of lay officials
frequently refer to the trading enterprises of the friars, as in con
nection with the controversy over the alleged Jesuit consignments
on the Santa Rosa in 1683.
But neither the cathedral chapter nor the Dominican order
nor the Society of Jesus in their corporate capacity ever held such
a place in the economic life of the colony as was occupied by
the obras pias, or "pious works." The foremost of these chari
table foundations, which at times exerted a dominant influence in
the commerce, was the powerful Hermandad de la Misericordia,
or Brotherhood of Mercy. Other obras pias of importance were
that of San Juan de Dios and the Tertiary Order of St. Francis.
The origin of these institutions dates from the early years of the
colony, the original endowment of the Misericordia having been
established in 1596. They usually originated in the wills of
benevolent merchants or affluent churchmen, who left a fund
to be administered for various charitable ends. Influential lay
men often sat on their boards of trustees. The foundations were
to invest the money in commerce and devote the income accruing
therefrom to the purposes prescribed in the original bequests.
Among the services performed by the obras pias to the commun
ity were: the provision of dowers for poor girls, the education of
orphans, the giving of relief to the widowed and poor and to
the inmates of prisons, the support of hospitals, the burial of
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THE MANILA GALLEON
the dead, the support of missions among the Chinese, and the
maintenance of regular religious services. Governor Torre
Campo called them "the universal comfort of this common
wealth." In 1748 five agents of the commercial interests of the
peninsula, always hostile to the galleon trade, made the following
interesting observations on the obras pias in a communication to
the king: "Although it is certain that the profits which they make
in the galleon commerce are devoted to praiseworthy ends and
to the service of God, yet it would be more meritorious for them
to devote their resources to a business that were more useful to
the interests of the islands, since it seems to us a better work of
charity to remove the causes of need than to remedy it." Part of
the profits from their investments were set aside to increase the
original endowments of the obras and the gifts of other philan
thropic-minded donors augmented their capital from time to
time.
In 1589 the fiscal, Ayala, petitioned the king that a certain
hospital in Manila should be permitted to ship annually four
tons of pepper to Mexico. With this privilege, he says, "which
would little affect your Majesty's interests, they can further the
work and support themselves." In 1594 Governor Luis Perez
Dasmarinas conceded to one of the foundations three tons of
lading space on the galleons, a privilege confirmed by Governor
Tello three years later. In 1630 the king reproached the governor
for granting boletas to the obras pias, who in turn disposed of
them to the actual traders, but the law of 1769 recognized the
traditional right of the obras pias to receive lading space on the
galleons on their own account.
Year after year—and century after century—the obras waxed
richer and more influential, as their financial hold on the com
merce was strengthened. They were favored by several consid
erations. They traded with the advantage of organized effort
and of a continuous policy which gave a greater steadiness and
certainty to their operations than was possible with the trading
of the majority of independent merchants, who were usually
transient citizens of the islands. Especially was this true before
the rise of wealthy creole trading families in the eighteenth cen
tury. A layman could scarcely be expected to learn about the
trade in a few years what was the traditional knowledge of the
management of the obras. Their large capital and reserves,
CITY AND COMMERCE
169
which in the Misericordia rose to several million pesos, gave them
the command of resources that were lacking to the "merchant
adventurers" who went out to the islands, lured by the prospect
of rapid enrichment. Not only could they make larger invest
ments when the prospects for unusual returns were large, but
when the outlook for profits was small they could refuse to risk
a large sum. The sense of security which their reserves gave
them made the obras in one sense the conservative element in the
traffic, while on the other hand their system of loaning to private
traders encouraged a speculative spirit that was anything but con
servative.
It was as virtual commercial banks and marine insurance
companies, rather than as active traders themselves, that the
obras pias held such an important place in the galleon trade.
"The Acapulco ship," declared the city authorities to Governor
Berenguer de Marquina in 1788, "created the funds of the obras
pias, which, like so many banks of commerce, place their treas
ure at the disposal of these merchants." As bankers of the trade,
they financed much of its operations in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries; Garcia de Villar, secretary of the Miseri
cordia, said that between 1734 and 1766 that body had loaned to
traders on the galleons a total of 3,319,787 pesos. The eight
minor obras, on the basis of their comparative resources, probably
loaned an aggregate of at least 5,000,000 pesos during the same
period. Even the richer merchants often had recourse to their
loans, while they furnished much of the money for the invest
ments of lesser traders.
The rate on loans for the Acapulco line fluctuated between
twenty and fifty percent. The directors based the current rate on
the several circumstances which determined the financial condi
tion of the colony at the moment, while their calculations were
also affected by the balancing of these conditions over a number
of years. The elements of risk were computed by weighing the
solvency and personal credit of the prospective debtor, the pros
pects for the fair at Acapulco, the chance of shipwreck—a difficult
factor to forecast—and the possibility of capture by pirates or
enemies. Allowing for some tangible basis for conclusions in
any of these factors of probability, there remained, of course, seri
ous elements of uncertainty that could scarcely be reduced to a
percentage. Thus, the difficulty of securing advance information
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from Mexico as to the state of the viceroyalty, which would not
be useless by the time it reached Manila, made it difficult to pre
dict the prospects for a profitable sale of the galleon's cargo.
The chance of the earlier arrival of the regular fleet from Spain
at Vera Cruz might seriously affect the outcome of the fair at
Acapulco. Also, an unexpectedly rigorous administration at the
Mexican port, as happened in 1635, would nullify any calcula
tions based on the habitual leniency of the port officials in regard
to the admission of excess cargo. A prosperous year in New
Spain—an unusual production of silver or an exceptional harvest
in the valleys of Jalisco and Puebla—would bring a heavier de
mand for the luxuries of the Orient. The coincidence of a ship
newly arrived from Peru would ensure better prices at Acapulco
for the galleon's cargo. Beyond taking account of the season
at which the galleon would clear from Cavite and the external
evidences of her seaworthiness, the obras could not, of course,
determine with any approach to mathematical accuracy the
chance of shipwreck. The obras were accustomed to carry on
their books a special reserve against possible losses from such
disasters. However, the rates of interest were maintained on high
enough a scale to ensure a safe margin, unless a succession of
calamities should draw too heavily on the resources and credit of
the community. A series of unforeseen calamities might seriously
cripple the colony for several years, as actually occurred during
several dark periods of the galleons' history. The amount of
money at large in the city and available for investment also in
fluenced the rate of loans by the obras. In times of confidence
and well-being, when men were eager to invest in the trade, the
obras could exact high rates of interest. When the colony throve
the foundations flourished, but in periods of depression and mis
fortune their revenues and their reserves would decrease and
they were forced to lower their rates of interest in order to en
courage traders to invest at all or to collect their already out
standing debts. "Because of the depression in this commerce
during the past few years," wrote Governor Arandia to Arriaga,
the Supreme Minister, in 1758, "the obras pias have been obliged
to lower their interest charges from 50 percent to 25 percent, in
order to redeem some of the claims which they hold against
the citizens of this community." The obras received severe blows
from the capture of the Covadonga by Lord Anson in 1748 and
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171
from the depredations of the English in 1762, when they held
Manila for ransom and took the great Sant'tsima Trinidad.
Under the system which usually prevailed, the person who
desired to invest a sum on the galleon would generally borrow
about twice as much as he intended to put out in merchandise.
He reserved enough to pay the interest in case he might be forced
to postpone payment of the principal to another year. The bulk
of the remainder he used in purchasing his consignment of goods.
In case this were lost as a result of shipwreck or otherwise proved
a bad venture, he would invest the third part in the next year's
galleon in the hope of recouping his losses and meeting his obli
gation to the obras. Though the lucrativeness of the trade in
ordinary years insured a considerable gain to both parties, when
ever the returns from Acapulco were small or failed altogether
a debtor of the obras, who had not providently made plans
against such a contingency, might be hard pressed to settle his
accounts with them. To repudiate his obligations would mean
the loss of his credit in the money market of the colony, and so
disqualify him from further participation in the galleon trade.
For the purpose of liquidating, investors were sometimes able to
borrow money in Mexico at 25 percent, with which they paid
debts contracted of the obras at 40 or 50 percent.
The influence which the obras pias were able to exert over the
commerce was not an unmixed benefit. Padre Zuniga, the his
torian, whose order had profited largely from the trade, severely
condemned the system. However, he granted the usefulness
of the services which the obras could perform to newcomers to
the islands who desired to trade but lacked capital and powerful
connections in the lay community. The readiness with which
they loaned money in good times put a premium on speculation
and discouraged investment in the development of local enter
prises. An Englishman, who visited the islands during the gal
leon regime, said: "More harm than good has been done by
these establishments." He declared further that "when, without
risking any capital of his own, the merchant might thus share
the enormous profits of this trade, with no more exertion than
signing the invoices and letters, and receiving the treasure on
the return of the vessel, it is not surprising that for nearly two
centuries they neglected the other commercial advantages around
them, or that such a commerce produced such merchants." The
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THE MANILA GALLEON
severest indictment of the obras pias came from the consulado,
which, from its foundation in 1769, represented the lay interest
in the trade, as opposed to the traditional preponderance of the
powerful foundations. The importance of the obras, it informed
the king, proved that the city of Manila was only "a magnificent,
useless, unique and extravagant hospital constructed at a dis
tance of six thousand leagues from the metropolis, at the expense
of the treasury and the commerce of the commonwealth." Yet,
the consulado made this concession to the obras: "Each year they
put out from 100,000 to 120,000 pesos, so that the poorer mer
chants who succeed in making three or four shipments build
new houses, and every six years one may count twenty merchants
with from 40,000 to 50,000 pesos made solely by means of ad
vances from the obras."
It would have been impossible to expect, in view of the liberal
interpretation of royal decrees customary in the Philippines, that
lay officials would deny to themselves the opportunities provided
by the galleon trade. The government in the peninsula de
manded of its representatives in the Indies an aloofness from the
essentially local interests of their jurisdiction which should have
confined their attention to the service of the crown. Neither
viceroy nor governor, nor official of lesser category was to have
a material stake in the land over which he ruled in the name of
a far-off king. However, this disinterestedness varied largely
in proportion to the particular official's distance from the itinerant
court of Spain. Governors and their subordinates in the Philip
pines could trade until their coffers were filled with Mexican
silver in defiance of a remote government whose long arm was
rendered almost impotent by the two oceans and the continent
which lay between. Contraband trading under any guise has
always been considered a venial peccadillo among Spanish peo
ples, all law and theory to the contrary. The dread residencia, or
formal reckoning held after his retirement from office, might
reach out and enmesh a too flagrantly thrifty governor, but the
very accumulation of his investments might insure him from sen
tence.
A decree of 1598 forbade trading by royal officials, and the
regulations of 1734 barred them with the same insistence that it
excluded ecclesiastics. The law of 1769 omitted them from those
special classes who might receive boletas. The extent to which
CITY AND COMMERCE
173
these laws were observed may be illustrated by a few examples.
In 1586 the judge, Pedro de Rojas, wrote to Philip II: "Nothing
else has wrought such ruin in this country as the trading and
trafficking of those who govern it." Yet, in the register of the
San Felipe a few years later the same Pedro de Rojas consigned
seventeen bales and four boxes of merchandise. At the same time
Santiago de Vera, president of the audiencia and former gover
nor, was credited with sixty bales and twenty-nine boxes, and
the judge, Ribera Maldonado, and the fiscal, Ayala, with respec
tively fifty-two bales and twenty boxes, and twenty-seven bales
and seventeen boxes. Most of the governors whose administra
tion extended over several years left the islands rich men, unless
an especially severe residencia of his term of office or such an
implacable sentence of the Inquisition as fell on the unfortunate
Salcedo drained them of their gains. Hernando de los Rios
Coronel, agent of the colony, informed the king that in two
ships which had been despatched to Acapulco the governor had
not allowed the citizens a single ton of lading space. It was this
protest which had its effect in the decree of 1620, reprehending
the governor for his maladministration of the galleon trade. Yet
this same governor, Fajardo y Tenza, ordered the audiencia to
prevent "secret and clandestine" trading by government officials.
Viana, writing in 1767, said that in his time the governor usually
shipped goods to the value of 100 boletas. This quantity of
lading space would imply a return value of 25,000 pesos, but its
actual value might be many times that amount.
As to the commercial activities of the oidores or members of
the audiencia, a petition of the Dominican friars in 1610 for the
suppression of the audiencia charges the judges of that high
court with using their position to promote their own trading
interests and those of their sons, relatives and connections, "to
the very great injury of the poor and of the inhabitants of the
city." Governor Acuna charged that the members of this body
traded through the medium of their "creatures and connections."
Yet, in 1753, when Governor Obando, in his radical reorganiza
tion of the whole scheme of allotment, assigned five boletas to
each judge and the fiscal and five additional boletas to the dean
of the audiencia for his services on the new junta, all, save one
not too squeamish judge, indignantly returned them as prohibited
by law. Such displays of scruples were so rare that one is almost
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THE MANILA GALLEON
justified in questioning the expressed motives of the self-denying
judges, who may not have considered five boletas as commensu
rate with their office, and who certainly resented the governor's
disturbance of the old order in the trade without their coopera
tion. Obando declared that the judges were preparing to send
their lading clandestinely, as before, rather than to accept his
allotment.
The regidores, or city councillors, of Manila, did not trade
under the ban which deterred the royal officials so little. Their
right to receive lading space on the galleon was specifically con
firmed by royal orders and was seldom questioned, except by
Viana, who proposed that they should be paid forty pesos per
boleta, to indemnify them for relinquishing the actual use of
their trading licenses. The law of 1769 had recommended this
change to the consulado, but it had apparently not been put into
practice. The councilmen usually received one ton of space, or
the volume represented by eight boletas, which carried the sub
stantial legal value of 1,000 pesos in Manila. However, these mu
nicipal officials generally had other sources of income, and one
case was known in which a councilman received a total of sev
enty-eight boletas, by the combination of different qualifications
which he was able to offer to the junta.
When Governor Obando revised the lists in 1753 there was
scarcely a public servant in the islands who was omitted from the
rolls. The first official of the treasury received two piezas, on
account of his "much work and little pay"; the secretary of gov
ernment and war, eight; and the Spanish mayors of distant pro
vincial towns, the advocate of the poor, and the officers of the
palace guard, from one to eight. Among others, Obando in
cluded several foreigners resident in Manila—Edward Wogan,
Don Diego O'Kennedy, and a M. Boutet. One hundred
and eighteen boletas were given to various persons "for past
services."
One of the most revolutionary features of Obando's program
was that of 2,000 piezas, he assigned 900 to military and naval
officers in active service. The "City and Commerce" complained
to the king that Obando granted lading space to army officers
independently of what they received as citizens, which would
seem to show that officers might satisfy the eligibility require
ments for shippers by having the qualifications demanded of ordi
CITY AND COMMERCE
175
nary citizens. Nearly a century and a half before Antonio de
Morga had written: "His Majesty prohibits all who are in his
pay in the military forces from engaging in commerce; and
orders the governor not to allow them to export goods to New
Spain. It would not be amiss if the governors would observe
this order." Under Obando's plan the high post of maestre de
campo, or master of the camp, was rewarded with eleven and
one-fourth boletas. The sergeant-major of the forces was as
signed five and infantry captains from two to four. All other
grades were included, whether at Manila or Cavite, or in the
presidios of Zamboanga, Palawan, Vigan, Dapitan and Cagayan.
Liberal allowances were also made to those in command of two
expeditions destined for operations against the Moros on Palawan
and among the Jolo Archipelago.
The concession of lading space to retired officers was not
unknown, and was probably the general rule, as a convenient
form of pension. In 1620 the king reprimanded the governor
for this donation, which he declared detrimental to the interests
of the actual merchants. The regulations of 1734 included in
the allotment the officers of the garrison at Cavite, and the law
of 1769 recognized the "custom" of giving trading licenses to
"soldiers," along with "churches, obras pias, widows, orphans
and the city council." Viana, raised to a seat in the Council of
the Indies, advised in 1778 that, in view of their recent increase of
salary, the officers should be deprived of the income which they
received from the boletas. About the same time the judge, Gon
zalez Carbajal, complained that membership in the consulado
was so lucrative that officers abandoned the profession of arms
to enroll themselves as merchants, until it was difficult to keep
up the quota of officers needed for the command of the forces.
"A purely mercantile spirit reigns in this colony," he said, "and
riches are preferred to titles of honor."
A royal order of 1740 directed that all parts of the islands
must share in the trade in proportion to the numbers and wealth
of their Spanish inhabitants. This decree was issued on receiv
ing a petition from the city of Cebu, requesting that its citizens
be allowed 400 of the 4,000 boletas distributed by the junta. Cebu,
as well as Zamboanga, was included within the scope of Obando's
plan of reorganization. Thus, the galleon came to carry in its
hold the material hopes of every Spaniard from the ramparts of
176
THE MANILA GALLEON
Zamboanga to the lonely post that guarded the Cagayan coast in
the north.
Those who navigated the galleons also shared in the proceeds
of the cargoes stowed away in the hold and piled high on the
decks of their rich argosies. However, in the early legislation for
the traffic a law of 1604 prohibited officers of the line from trad
ing. The law continued to be generally violated, and in 1703 the
"City and Commerce" petitioned the king to order its strict en
forcement. In the clause of the regulations of 1734, granting per
mission for a chest of lading to each sailor and soldier on the gal
leon, officers are excluded. However, the law of 1769 ordered the
allotment to officers of "as much lading space as the junta should
consider necessary for their aid." A few years later the governor
reported to the Council of the Indies that he permitted officers
of the galleons to trade in their own names, as though this were
a new concession. The Council observed that the prohibition,
which they assumed to exist, had been the "cause of false oaths,
and of recourse to the employment of a dummy, in whose head
the invoice reposes, while it is notorious that the officer is the
legitimate owner of the consignment." These inconsistencies can
only be explained by the assumption of ignorance of the laws
concerned, a condition by no means uncommon in the adminis
tration of the Spanish empire. In view of the mass of colonial
legislation and the press of business before the Council of the
Indies it is only surprising that the legal ignorance of the govern
ment was not often more glaring.
Whatever the law, the officers of the galleon traded. Her
nando de los Rios Coronel complained very early that the officers
sometimes owned as much as a third of the cargo, largely "be
cause they were appointees of the governor." On the galleons
of 1635 the commander had seven tons of lading and the lesser
officers and crews a total of 560 bales. In 1753 Governor Obando
conferred forty-seven and one-fourth boletas on the commander
of the galleon, the Marques de Villamedina, who had been his
private secretary. At the same time he granted thirty and threefourths boletas to the first pilot, while the allotment to the rest
of the officers was graduated according to their rank, down to
one pieza for the "master of the water rations."
The crew usually received an allotment of space, the pro
ceeds of which were expected to net each of them about sixty
CITY AND COMMERCE
pesos. This privilege was confirmed by the regulations of 1734,
which excluded the lading for the crews from the total of 500,000
pesos, to which the original value of the cargo was limited.
Each seaman was permitted to carry a chest, which he might fill
to the extent of the above nominal value. However, these chests
had a most expansive capacity when Chinese packing methods
were applied to their contents. The seamen often loaded more
than one chest, under the pretext that they contained their own
personal wearing apparel, until they accumulated prodigious and
luxurious wardrobes of Chinese silks. Viana complained that
the chests belonging to the crews littered the decks of the gal
leons, "to the great danger of the ship on the longest and most
trying voyage in the world." Long before his time, in 1608, a
royal order had attempted to provide against the danger and
inconvenience resulting from this abuse, but the violation was
so gross and apparently so inevitable that the king issued a
blanket pardon for all previous infractions and increased the
sailors' allotment from sixty to one hundred pesos. The seamen
would often sell the space at high prices to traders in Manila.
The authorities at both ends of the trade were particularly toler
ant towards disregard of the restrictions by the seamen, for they
believed that the possession of a share in the galleon's cargo gave
the crew a greater interest in her defense if she were attacked, and
that it would induce them to remain in the arduous and trying
service of the line.
The conduct of the galleon traffic at Manila amounted to a
progression of the shipper from one junta or committee to an
other. He received his allotment of lading space from the junta
del repartimiento, and through the commissioner of the pancada
he obtained a supply of goods more or less in conformity with
the volume of this apportionment. He next submitted to the
junta de evaluo, or board of appraisement, a detailed statement
of his consignment. He then had his invoices registered and
entered on the books of the galleon in the contadurta or bureau
of accounts.
The work of valuation was entrusted to a committee made
up of the fiscal and one or both of the royal treasury officials,
representing the government interest, and two deputies named by
the "City and Commerce." The fiscal was charged with the
general superintendence of the operations of the body. Beyond
178
THE MANILA GALLEON
the primal duty of assuring the limitation of the aggregate con
signments within the legal limits, their work also served as basis
for the levying of duties and the assessment of the freight. Each
shipper was required to present an itemized account of his con
signments with a declaration of the volume and contents of each
bale or chest. He was obliged to swear that the goods were as
described and that he was the sole and original consignor of the
shipment. By the law of 1769 a simple assertion was accepted
in lieu of the "grievous burden" of taking an oath. Over a
century before Grau y Monfalcon, representing the interests of
the trade in Spain, had protested against the exacting of a sworn
declaration by the board of appraisement. On the basis of a lightsitting perjury or a conventional statement the official valuation
was made. The reasonable method for ascertaining the value of
the invoices submitted would have been by the actual examina
tion of the goods themselves, but any such procedure was impos
sible in the face of general opinion. The government was not
able to insist on such a measure for long and it quickly fell into
abeyance, until the regulations of 1734 expressly disavowed the
idea of physical valuation. The formal acceptance of the word
or, at least, of the facile oath of a gentleman, was in accord with
the tacit and ubiquitous covenant which existed in Manila for
the disregard of the restrictive laws. The supreme government in
Spain probably preferred the perfunctory observance of its orders
to a hopeless effort to enforce a series of regulations which the
whole body of citizens were united to ignore. As so often in
Spanish history, the purpose of legislation was defeated by the
interference of a scrupulous respect for the individual's word, to
challenge which would have constituted a serious affront to his
person and his "honor." The fiscal was expected to guard against
the effects of this atmosphere of illegality, but every fiscal was
neither zealous nor incorruptible, though a few like Viana could
be veritable scourges against those who offended under the toler
ance of venerable traditions. The Council of the Indies recog
nized in a decision of 1698 that the weakest link in the elaborate
concatenation of provisions made to prevent the exceeding of
the permiso was in the low valuation placed on goods at Manila,
and the officials sent down to Acapulco by the Visitor-General,
Galvez, in 1767 held the same opinion as to the origin of the
frauds which confronted them on the arrival of the galleon.
CITY AND COMMERCE
179
The valuation set on goods by the official board at Manila was
calculated according to a scale of values which was seldom
changed in early times, but was later put at intervals of five years
for non-Philippine and at ten years for insular products. The
appraisal was made with becoming solemnity on the basis of
the contents of two bales of standard weight, one of which had
been pressed. The results arrived at were publicly proclaimed
and posted. The fluctuations in the prices of Asiatic goods in
the eighteenth century made it particularly difficult, in view of
the rigidity of the permiso, to establish equitable valuations for
the goods sent by the galleons. Thus, a vara of Chinese taffeta
sold in Manila at about the same price for the decade 1590-1600
as in the ten years between 1640 and 1650; but between 1730 and
1770 there was a great rise in the prices of Chinese merchandise.
A chart of comparative prices of oriental goods carried by the
galleons for the years 1736 and 1770 gives the aggregate price of
a certain lot of similar goods at respectively 1,248 and 3,081 pesos.
Governor Anda declared in 1768 that the average increase in
prices since 1734 had been about 300 percent. Foreign competi
tion at Canton and Amoy had had much to do with complicat
ing the original simplicity of the Chinese market for the
Spaniards.
After being certified in the board of appraisement the in
voices were taken to the bureau of accounts. Here they were
copied into the galleon register and the duties assessed on the
basis of the value sworn to before the former body. Viana said,
however, that it was customary for the shippers to substitute false
invoices with a much reduced appraisal, which were drawn up
by the regular deputies of the city's trading interests.
A royal decree of 1583 begins: "It is important to our service
always to be informed of the state of the Philippine trade, in order
to know whether it is increasing, and of the prices current and
what medium of exchange is used." Therefore the viceroy was
ordered to send in each fleet from Vera Cruz a copy of the register
of the last galleon from Manila. In the early years of the trade
these were little more than a few manifest sheets, which had been
submitted to the port officials at Acapulco, but in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries some of them were huge volumes of
over three thousand pages. The register contained a list of the
merchants of the colony, with the apportionment of boletas made
i8o
THE MANILA GALLEON
by the board of apportionment. The bulk of the register con
sisted of the manifests of shipments which made up the cargo.
These gave a highly detailed description of each consignment.
Besides the name of the original consignor and a reproduction of
his private mark, which was put on all his packages, three names
were given of those who were consecutively designated to dis
pose of the goods at Acapulco. The alternates were appointed
to succeed in turn in case of the death of the original representa
tive of the owner. The high chance of death on the galleons from
scurvy or other cause made such a three-fold precaution necessary.
During the first years of the trade no duties were levied on
the cargoes of the galleons. However, with the end of the brief
period of unrestricted trading duties began to be levied at both
terminals of the line. The first form of contribution was a tax on
Chinese and other imports into Manila. This actually amounted
to an indirect impost on the galleon trade, since the Chinese nat
urally shifted the final incidence of the duty onto their cus
tomers. The original rate of three percent as fixed by Governor
Ronquillo in 1582 was raised to six percent in 1606 and to eight
percent in 1714. In 1760 the rate was reduced to five percent for
Orientals and to three percent for cargoes owned by citizens of
Manila. Total collections from this tax usually varied between
40,000 and 60,000 pesos a year.
Direct taxation of the galleon cargoes was so unpopular at
Manila that it could never be consistently applied on any appre
ciable scale. In 1591 Governor Gomez Perez Dasmarinas laid a
two percent export tax on the galleon trade to pay the cost of
building a wall around the city, but a royal decree of six years
later prohibited the continuation of the assessment after the
completion of the wall in that year. In the face of local senti
ment efforts to revive the tax were of no avail, though after the
end of the Dutch wars in 1648 an export duty, which generally
yielded about 7,500 pesos, appears to have been imposed with
considerable regularity.
The bulk of the duties on the galleon trade was collected
in Mexico. This was in the form of a tax called by the Arabicsounding word of almojarifazgo. Here there was no such or
ganized and permanent opposition to taxation as impeded the
levying of duties at Manila. Apparently on viceregal authority,
a duty of twelve pesos per tonelada was early exacted from the
CITY AND COMMERCE
181
cargoes that arrived at Acapulco. By an order of Viceroy Villamanrique this rate was raised in 1586 to forty-five pesos, but five
years later a ten percent ad valorem rate was established by royal
decree. In 1684 Viceroy Paredes substituted a fixed contribution
of 74,000 pesos for the old ad valorem basis, but the general law
of 1720, reorganizing the trade, set the lump payment at 100,000
pesos. The regulations of 1734 restored the former system and
fixed the rate at sixteen and two-thirds percent on the Acapulco
valuation. This basis remained in effect until 1776, at which time
the permiso was raised from 500,000—1,000,000 pesos to 750,000—
1,500,000 pesos. The same law reduced the rate on the amount
of the original permiso to nine percent, while the old rate of
sixteen and two-thirds percent was collected on the excess over
that figure. This reduction was in force for but a few years, to
be revived in 1806, after a return to the old arrangement of a
fixed sum in payment. However, by 1808 the Manila consulado
was again complaining of the high duties at the other terminal,
which, they claimed, amounted to thirty-five percent of the Ma
nila valuation.
The Philippine trade was subject to other contributions at
Acapulco. Some of them were extraordinary imposts, like the
averia tax for the occasional defense of the galleons, but others
were assessed with greater continuity. Among the latter was a
small admiralty tax or almirantazgo. On passing through the
internal customs outside Mexico City goods off the galleons also
paid an dcabala or sales tax generally amounting to six percent
of their value.
The proceeds of the almojarifazgo tax were remitted to
the insular treasury at Manila as part of the so-called situado or
subsidy. At times, the tax thus rebated to Manila constituted the
entire situado payment for the year, but an additional sum was
normally added from the viceregal treasury. This arrangement
represented no special generosity on the part of the royal govern
ment, but was a common feature of the fiscal system of the Span
ish empire. The silver-producing regions of Mexico and Peru
were required to contribute to the support of less productive parts
of the empire, such as Florida, whose value was more strategic
and sentimental than economic. Of the insular government
Antonio de Morga wrote early in the seventeenth century: "These
expenses are generally greatly in excess of these duties, and the
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THE MANILA GALLEON
amount is made up from the royal treasury of Mexico." In 1640
Grau y Monfalcon gave as the total expenses of the region under
the jurisdiction of the Philippine government 850,734 pesos, much
of which was spent in maintaining the costly establishment in the
Moluccas. To offset this sum he declared that the total revenue
derived from the galleon trade at that time was approximately
300,000 pesos.
There was never any uniformity in the amount of the situado, even after the king ordered it in 1700 to be fixed at 140,000
pesos. The figures for a number of years chosen at random will
illustrate its fluctuations in quantity: 1666, 85,000 pesos; 1673,
136,138 pesos; 1678, 338,832 pesos; 1680, 120,208 pesos; 1725,
72,801 pesos; 1730, 90,922 pesos; 1742, 211,000 pesos; 1786, 346,912
pesos; 1787, 74,383 pesos. The situado was not abolished until
1804, many years after Governor Basco y Vargas' establishment
of the state tobacco monopoly and other innovations had made
the Philippines self-sustaining.
The merchandise for the galleon was packed with great care,
generally by Chinese. The silks were compressed to extreme
compactness, in order to take the fullest advantage of the limited
space for lading. The Spaniards found in the skill of the Chinese
packers one of the most convenient means of exceeding the limits
fixed by the permiso. Representatives of the trading interests of
the peninsula informed the king in 1748 that a Manila chest con
tained twice as much goods as one of similar size in Spain. A
mule, they declared, could not carry even two chests of cotton
goods packed in Manila, whereas any mule could carry at least
two of the larger Spanish chests. To select a few typical packages
at random: one chest on the Concepci6n in 1774, containing 250
pieces of pearl-colored Cantonese taffeta and 72 pieces of scarlet
gauze, weighed about 250 pounds gross. A chest containing 1140
pairs of stockings weighed about 230 pounds and one containing
9,564 Lanquin combs about 330 pounds.
Every package was tightly covered, to protect its contents
from the seas which sometimes broke in through the hatches and
from the insects bred in the ship on the long voyage. Methods of
packing were also devised with a view to the chances of inspec
tion at Acapulco. Whenever there was a question of actual
examination of the contents the sight of the solid covering in
itself discouraged the opening of a bale or chest. Disinclination
CITY AND COMMERCE
183
to physical exertion in the climate of Acapulco further insured
the immunity of the forbidding packages from handling. In
ferior goods were often placed on the outside, and if a package
were opened by some overzealous port official, he generally ap
praised the entire lot on the basis of a hasty examination of these
cheaper stuffs. The rough transportation by mule-back from the
coast into the interior of Mexico also necessitated unusually care
ful packing.
The galleons were sometimes laden in the open roadstead
off the city, but more often at the ribera or shore at Cavite, the
point of land situated about ten miles across a wide curve of the
bay of Manila and opposite the scene of the naval battle of 1898.
It was in the yards at Cavite that most of the galleons had been
built and here they were repaired and refitted for each new voy
age. They were also better protected there under the guns of the
fort than they would have been in the open bay, where they
would have been exposed to surprise attacks by piratical raiders
from the Moro islands or by Dutch or English ships in their
occasional descents on the Philippines. When lying off Cavite
they were also better sheltered from the force of the typhoons
which sometimes swept over the bay.
The "Laws of the Indies" provided for almost every detail
in the loading of the galleons. The customary provisions were
made for this, as for the other stages of the traffic, and with
much the same results. Again the fiscal was entrusted with first
place in the work of supervision. Occasionally the governor
came over from Manila to inspect the operations. Governor
Campo y Cosio (1721-29) sent two semi-official watchers to ob
serve the process of embarking the cargo and supplies. His suc
cessor, Governor Valdes, continued the plan, but the opposition of
the "City and Commerce" to the prying of the two inquisitive
appointees of the governor led the king in 1737 to "suppress and
extinguish" the two watchers. The law of 1769 gave the first
officer of the galleon particular oversight of the work of loading
the cargo.
These different officials were to take account, either in per
son or through a subordinate, of every package that was carried
onto the galleon. They were to compare it with the entries in the
corresponding invoice and to see that it bore the proper marks
and did not exceed the prescribed dimensions. For the latter
184
THE MANILA GALLEON
purpose they were equipped with a standard bronze measure to
which every bale and chest were expected to conform. In case
the volume of a package was found to exceed the regulation di
mension it was to be rigorously sent ashore. However, their use
fulness was greatly limited by their inability to open a suspected
package. They were to allow no lot of goods to pass that was not
accompanied by a voucher showing that the shipper had paid the
prescribed duties to the insular treasury. The fiscal and his col
leagues were also required to ascertain if sufficient supplies and
stores of every kind were being embarked. With the same view
to the safety of the voyage, they were instructed to guard against
the overloading of the vessel.
With the strict observance of the requirements for measur
ing beforehand the capacity of the galleon's hold and for restrict
ing the aggregate of lading permits to this volume the cargo
could have been automatically confined within the limits of both
legality and safety. However, the usual overloading of the gal
leon and the exceeding of the permiso can only be explained by
the habitual laxness or downright corruption of those charged
with the surveillance of the work of embarcation. Furthermore,
the officials at Manila were powerless to prevent the loading of
goods on the way out of the islands, since their functions ended
when the hatches were closed in Manila Bay. A law of 1608
required that the cargo should be restricted to the main hold,
while the extra sails and tackle, the provisions and the chests
containing the seamen's effects were to be stowed between decks.
Every cubic inch of space available in the hold was crammed
with merchandise, so that there would be little danger of the
packages being thrown about and broken open in rough weather.
Not only was this space filled to capacity, but in spite of the law
of 1604 the ships were habitually overloaded. Bales and chests
were piled in the cabins and passage-ways and along the decks.
They were stowed in the compartments reserved for necessary
stores and supplies and in the powder-magazine itself, while a
flotilla of rafts, laden with water-tight bales, was sometimes
dragged after the galleon, to be hoisted on deck when the sea
was high.
All this not only hindered movement about the ship, but
the overweighting of the galleon was the cause of several disasters
in the history of the line. Among others, Viceroy Monterey
CITY AND COMMERCE
185
ascribed the loss of the Santa Margarita and the San Gerdnimo
in 1600 to this cause. Several times captains had to turn their
galleons back to Manila in order to unload enough of the excess
cargo to prevent their vessels from foundering. Ofter necessary
equipment and provisions were left on shore at Cavite in order
that the space thus made available might be utilized for the lad
ing of a few more of the precious bales of silks. When they thus
put to sea without the extra sails and spars for an only too prob
able emergency and without the supplies of water and food for
a voyage that so often stretched into a fatal seventh month, those
responsible for this criminal negligence were sacrificing every
consideration of safety for the chance of speedy enrichment. For
this they were willing to face the risk, not only of the royal dis
pleasure and the sentence of the residencia, but of shipwreck or
starvation in the last stages of the long voyage.
The elaborate system of regulations which were designed to
keep the galleon commerce within the bounds of the permiso
remained virtually a dead letter. "By the same difficulty and im
possibility in practice," said Pedro Calderon Enriquez, "it has
always been permitted on payment of a quota to return to the
islands the full yield of the cargo, either under the pretence that
the excess is a residue from previous shipments or has a special
right to exemption. Sometimes it is with the express tolerance
of the viceroys, who recognize that the literal observance of the
regulations is impossible." On one side was the universal interest
of the Manilenos in circumventing the restrictions. In the other
was the central government, struggling paternally and ponder
ously to hold a proper balance between the discordant demands
of the various parts of the Spanish empire. Between them lay
two oceans and the breadth of Mexico—over half the circum
ference of the earth. Translated into terms of time, they were
separated by years. It required nearly three years for an exchange
of communications, a circumstance which strained nearly to the
breaking point the sentiment of obedience to the orders of the
crown, when those orders conflicted with self-interest. The in
struments for the execution of the king's laws were for the most
part very fallible men. They were either too venal to resist the
advantage of an interested collusion in the violation of the laws
or powerless to withstand the unanimous sentiment of the com
munity they governed. Governor Corcuera protested that he
i86
THE MANILA GALLEON
was too busy with other matters to enforce the permiso. Viana
told the king in 1770 that if he should oppose the system at
Manila "the whole city would rise against me and without doubt
they would either kill me, or they would with the greatest ease
block any investigation." He gives as the principal causes and
manifestations of the irregularities in the trade: (1) the "abuse,
disorder and falsity of the valuations placed on the goods in the
bureau of accounts at Manila;" (2) the false oaths made as to
these valuations; (3) the casuistical opinions held by certain
theologians as to the venality of such perjuries; (4) the excess
value of the piezas or packages, often worth 500 to 900 pesos
instead of the legal maximum of 125; (5) the permission granted
by the viceroy and the Acapulco port officials for the embarcation
of the excess silver on the payment of a consideration of ten per
cent of the silver involved; and (6) the distribution of boletas,
"the root and origin of all the rest."
Few governors or viceroys exerted any deterrent effect on the
illegal practices at their respective ends of the line. Instead, many
of them profited greatly from its operations. Sande was one of
the first governors to enrich himself by investments on the gal
leon. In 1767 Viana said that the governors were accustomed
to leave the islands after four or five years with 300,000 to 500,000
pesos accumulated above the expenses of their term of office.
The viceroys too, were prohibited from trading. Yet Thomas
Gage, the English friar, said of Cerralvo: "This man was thought
to get a million a year, what with gifts and presents, what with
his trading to Spain and the Philippines." The Marques de
Paredes was said to have been interested in the trade to the extent
of 50,000 pesos a year.
Villamanrique complained as early as 1587 of the laxness
of officials at Acapulco and Manila, and took positive steps to
secure greater rigor in the port administration at Acapulco. There
was as yet no permiso, but the viceroy attempted on his own
responsibility to hold the young trade within bounds. Monterey
confessed his inability to check the irregularities which he knew
to exist in the trade. "The excess of contraband cargo amounts
to a large figure," he advised the king. "It would be almost im
possible to prevent it, even though I do not grant a license, either
express or tacit, for a real more than the permiso." When a royal
decree was issued in 1606, ordering the suppression of the frauds,
CITY AND COMMERCE
187
Montesclaros did little to put it into effect. And while the
younger Velasco declared his willingness to attempt its enforce
ment, he had little faith in the results of his efforts. "Nothing
can be found out," he said, "and the merchants are not so
scrupulous that their conscience gnaws them." He acknowl
edged that no remedy was possible so long as the trade existed.
Linares in 1714 declared his helplessness in the face of conditions
at Acapulco. The tacit understanding among the merchants
baffled all attempts to place the responsibility for frauds, while
the port officials were "vitiated by self interest." Fuenclara tried
with the "greatest rigor" to suppress the frauds, but was able to
accomplish little against the ingenuity of the merchants and the
avarice of his subordinates. Representatives of Andalusian in
terests in Mexico declared in 1748 that Fuenclara was the only
viceroy who had ever even partly succeeded in limiting the gal
leon trade. Cruillas wrote at length to Charles III of the irregu
larities which he declared necessary evils in all commerce, and
"much more inevitable in that of the Philippines." The viceroy
was so far from Acapulco, he said, that he was forced to trust
to the good faith of his agents, whom the merchants deceived
rather than suborned. "They labor to seek devices," he said, "for
defeating by their contraband dealings all the severities of the
laws and all the vigilance of the authorities."
The only effective expedient for securing even occasional
conformity with the restrictive laws was the extraordinary inspec
tion known in Spanish administrative law as the visita. The
king might commission a visitador or "visitor" to go out and
report on conditions in any part of the empire, even of an entire
viceroyalty. As the immediate and special representative of the
crown, he held precedence over the ordinary administrative
officials within the jurisdiction of his visita, and might take such
action as he deemed for the royal interest. Consequently, like the
somewhat analogous depute" en mission of the French Revolu
tion and the interventor of the Latin American republics, he was
an official to be feared—and courted.
Most famous of these royal commissioners in the history of
the galleon trade was Pedro de Quiroga y Moya. This visitador
was sent to Acapulco in 1635 with instructions to inquire into
the notorious laxity of affairs at that port and to make provision
against continuance of the illegalities. "If the commission borne
i88
THE MANILA GALLEON
by Quiroga had been fulfilled," declared Grau y Monfalc6n,
spokesman for the insular interests, "the islands would have been
ruined."
As it was, during the four months of his stay at Acapulco
he threw the trade into consternation by the unprecedented
severity of his actions. He revalued the cargo of the incoming
galleon and then collected duties accordingly. He laid an em
bargo on the line, requiring a composition of 600,000 pesos to
raise it, and then interfered with the return of what proceeds
remained from the sale of the cargo.
Though "God permitted" that the terrible visitador should
die "in the midst of his cruelties," the effects of his mission were
felt for several years. When the news reached Manila that its
shippers could no longer count on official leniency at the other
terminal of the line the merchants refused to freight another
galleon until the old regime were reestablished at Acapulco.
For two years the only ship to leave the islands for America was
a patache with a cargo worth 150,000 pesos consigned to the
account of the all-powerful Conde-Duque de Olivares, chief ad
viser of the king.
A reversal of policy was finally obtained at court and a sec
ond visitador, Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, was commissioned to
reestablish the tranquil operation of the trade, and to fix some
equitable arrangement for its future conduct. The conciliatory
proceedings of the new agent reassured the Manilenos and the
operation of the commerce gradually reassumed the comparative
serenity and laxity that had prevailed before the incorruptible
Quiroga's harsh irruption into its sphere.
The motive of concealment of the real value of the galleon's
cargo was so strong that only approximate figures as to the actual
extent of the traffic are possible. The ships' registers and the
records of the treasury officials at Manila and Acapulco are of
little value, as they generally take no account of excess cargo.
The accounts of their booty as reported by the foreign navigators
who took one of the galleons are likely to be more trustworthy
as authorities. Other foreign writers, further removed from actual
contact with the trade, and apparently relying on their own
imaginations or on sailors' stories, value the cargoes of these
mystery argosies at the exaggerated figures of romance. "The
trade to Asia by ships from Acapulco was estimated at 10,000,000
CITY AND COMMERCE
189
of dollars," said William Walton, and Savary de Bruslons de
clared that five to six million pesos were annually returned to the
Philippines.
Andalusian agents in Mexico in 1748 declared that the total
returns of the Manila Galleon for three years exceeded those of
the trading fleet for the same period. Twelve and ten million
pesos are the respective figures given. A general junta called in
1723, during the controversy between Manila and the Andalusian
cities, declared that the cargo of the galleon regularly amounted
to ten or twelve thousand fardos—four thousand was the legal
maximum—"whose proceeds amounted to as much as 4,000,000
pesos." According to the Council of the Indies in 1772, the gal
leons always returned to Manila from two to three million pesos.
The Council adduces as evidence the 3,000,000 pesos worth of
goods taken from the Santisima Trinidad by the English. Its
members condemn the "culpable frauds committed by the gov
ernment of the Philippines and by that community, which have
never observed any ordinance, regulation or royal decision relat
ing to trade." They characterize the attitude of the Manilenos
as "the spirit of corruption which has always been typical of the
citizens of the Philippines." The Council declared in 1764 that
2,000,000 pesos were regularly embarked at Acapulco over the
permiso. Ten percent of this excess, they charge, was divided
among the officials at Acapulco and the viceroy.
Without doubt a more authentic basis for computation is the
information of Spaniards who were closely conversant with the
traffic, either as ordinary officials or as special investigators. Both
Antonio Fernandez de Castro and Viceroy Monterey asserted that
the Santo Tomds, lost in 1601, carried over 2,000,000 pesos above
the permiso. The fiscal at Manila declared in 1688 that the gal
leons generally returned at least 2,000,000 pesos. The archbishop
said in 1701 that the San Francisco Xavier brought 2,070,000 pesos
in 1698, and the Rosario an equal amount the next year, and he
declared further that "two millions in fabrics are generally em
barked." "What galleon has returned from Acapulco since time
immemorial," asked Governor Valdes in 1732, "without a mil
lion, a million and a half, and at times more?" Governor Anda
said that from 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 pesos were taken each year
from Mexico to Manila. The San JosS in 1784 carried back to
Manila 2,791,632 pesos.
190
THE MANILA GALLEON
In ordinary times the yearly returns probably ranged be
tween the figures given by Anda. There can also be little doubt
that the average for the more prosperous periods was about
2,000,000 pesos, while cargoes of 3,000,000 or even more were
quite possible, though not common. There were periods, how
ever, when the silver cargo of the Acapulco galleon must have
fallen considerably below a million, as when the Dutch inter
fered with the trade lanes from China.
And instead of the arbitrary eighty-three percent, which the
central government allowed, or of the five hundred to one thou
sand percent which their rivals alleged, or the five or ten percent
which the Manilenos themselves declared to be their meager gain,
the rate of net profit must have varied from one hundred to three
hundred percent. Many circumstances caused great fluctuations
in the proportion of profit. The multifold vicissitudes to which
the traffic was subject introduced unusual elements of uncer
tainty. The most lucrative period was the early decades of the
line, before attempts at restriction had unsettled the steady course
of trade, or the effects of Dutch and English competition became
evident. The navigator, Sebastian Vizcaino, wrote to his father
of his investments in the galleon trade in the sixteenth century:
"I can certifie you of one thing: That 200 ducates in Spanish com
modities, and some Flemish wares which I caryed with me
thither, I made worth 1400 ducates there in the countrey. So I
make account that with those silkes, and other commodities which
I brought with me from thence to Mexico, I got 2500 ducates
by the voyage; and had gotten more if one packe of fine silks
had not bene spoiled with salt water. So as I have said, there is
great gains to be had if that a man return in safetic." Losses from
shipwreck, arribadas [returns to port], and captures, kept down
the profits for a time and very materially lowered the general
average. The entrance of Dutch, English and French into the
Chinese market, with the consequent rise of prices in that field,
and at times the wholesale smuggling operations of those peoples
on the eastern side of Spanish America, certainly told in diminu
tion of the profits of the Manila Galleons. During much of its
history the obras ptas, while they largely financed its operations,
at the same time levied heavy tribute on the commerce, and much
of its returns thus went into the coffers of the charitable and
religious organizations.
PART II
THE NAVIGATION
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>®<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
CHAPTER 5
THE GALLEONS
IN the early years of the line, before regulation from Spain
began, there was no uniformity in the number or the size of
the galleons. From one to four vessels of various tonnage were
despatched yearly. In 1570 three ships arrived from Acapulco
under the command of the able Juan de la Isla. In 1602 three
ships cleared from Manila; in 1603, four; and in 1604, three.
Again, in 1620 there were three Manila Galleons. The laissez
faire era ended in 1593 with a decree of Philip II, restricting to
two the number of ships that might cross yearly and the tonnage
of each ship to 300. A third vessel was to be maintained at the
Acapulco terminal as a reserve ship. Henceforth either one or
two ships annually made the voyage until the famous decree of
October 27, 1720 expressly prescribed that there should be two,
and not one, "as has been the case up to this time." Two galleons
were the usual rule during the first half century of the line.
Woodes Rogers had fought two galleons from Manila only nine
years before; but one galleon crossed yearly, in spite of the law of
1720, until 1731, when the Covadonga and the San Cristdbal
reached Acapulco from Manila. In 1733 and again in 1736 there
were two, but only a few times again in the history of the com
merce did two galleons clear from Manila in the same year. The
Manilenos usually preferred to risk their entire venture in one
hold rather than to support the greater expense of two ships.
Their protests led to the regrant of the old privilege, and when
the trade was reorganized by the regulations of 1726 and 1734 the
two galleons were not insisted upon. When two ships sailed the
flagship of the general-commander was known as the capttana
and her consort as the almiranta, or the admiral's ship.
In spite of the provision for a reserve ship there was often a
serious scarcity of bottoms on the line. And at such times the
lack of a galleon for the transport of the annual cargo entirely
J93
194
THE MANILA GALLEON
disrupted the economic life of the colony. This was the plight
of the islands in 1589, when of five ships which the colony had
possessed two years before but one small tender was able to go
to Acapulco. The viceroy had sold the San Martin, Cavendish
had taken the Santa Ana, a storm had wrecked another at Cavite,
and the fifth was too unseaworthy to be risked away from her
moorings. In 1637 there were no galleons in the islands to make
the voyage, and a tender of a hundred tons was sent to Acapulco
to advise the viceroy of the straitened condition of the colony.
Sometimes the trading naos were pressed into service for the wars
against the Dutch, or the reduction of the regular number of
ships by a succession of disasters might deprive the islands of the
annual supply from New Spain. Sometimes in an emergency
they were forced to buy a vessel from the Dutch or the Portu
guese, or at Acapulco from Peruvian traders, to freight it for
the line.
The restrictions on the size of the galleons were never en
forced. Although the law of 1593 limited their tonnage to 300
each, the citizens refused to confine the volume of their trade to
these small vessels. Though probably not so large as the legend
created by the tales of English raiders made them, they steadily
exceeded the prescribed size. By 1589 there were ships of 700 tons
and before 1614 thousand-ton vessels were employed in the trade.
Some of the great galleons used against the Dutch and the Portu
guese were of over 2000 tons. In Juan de Silva's fleet, designed
for the conquest of the East Indies, there was one galleon of
2000 tons, one of 1600, two of 1300, two of 800, and two of 700.
In 1718 Governor Bustamante informed the king that the three
galleons then in the Acapulco service were of respectively 612,
900 and 1000 tons. It was the smallest of these, the Begona,
which beat off Woodes Roger's attack.
The legal increase in the size of the galleons to 560 tons in
1720 had no more effect on the history of the trade than did the
earlier restriction to 300. The Rosario, which was in the service
from 1746 to 1761, one of the most famous ships in the course of
the traffic, had a tonnage of 1710. She had space for 18,667 piezas,
or packages, whereas the permitted maximum was 4,000. The
length of her keel was 156 feet and her length over all was 188
feet. Her beam was 56 feet and the depth of her hold 26 feet.
Even this was exceeded, and the Santisima Trinidad, captured by
THE GALLEONS
195
the English in 1762 and taken to Plymouth, was of 2000 tons.
She drew thirty-three feet of water when laden and her dimen
sions were : length of gun deck, 167 feet, 6 inches ; beam, 50 feet,
6 inches; and depth of hold from poop-deck, 30 feet, 6 inches.
The following table of dimensions for the building of ships
in the royal arsenals gives the regulation measurements of ships
of different size and armament, as prescribed in 1724:
Tonnage
Length of
deck
Length of
keel
Beam
Depth of
hold
Number of
guns
1095
990y<
488K
4IOJ4
303 K
I99#
I44K
1 74 feet
156 "
140 "
120 "
112 "
102 "
88 "
78 "
145 feet
130 "
126 "
100 "
73 "
85 "
73 "
65 "
49 feet
43 "
42 "
34 "
31 "
29 "
25 "
22 "
25 feet
22 "
21 "
17 "
15 "
15 "
13 "
11 "
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
The galleons had the high forecastle and poop characteristic
of their class. The apparent topheaviness of ships whose ends
stood so high out of the water was partly offset by their unusual
breadth of beam. Their half-moon appearance was thus very
different from the straighter lines of their predecessor, the oared
galleass of the Mediterranean, and of their successors, the frigates.
It was their unwieldy and lumbering aspect that led Thomas
Carlyle to call the heavy coach in which Louis XVI and Marie
Antoinette attempted to flee from France an "Acapulco Ship."
In the latter half of the eighteenth century, in accordance with
world changes in marine design, the high stern and bow were
cut down to approximate the lines of the frigate.
Most of the galleons of the line were built in the yards at
Cavite on the Bay of Manila, where a great force of Chinese and
Malay workmen carried on the work of construction and repairs.
However, many were built in other parts of the northern islands,
where there were found together the three requisites of a safe
port and a plentiful supply of good timber and of native labor.
Thus of several naos built in Governor Juan de Silva's time, two
were constructed on the Camarines coast, two at Bagatao in the
province of Albay, one on Marinduque, and others on Mindoro
and Masbate and at Cavite. Many were built at Bagatao and on
•
196
THE MANILA GALLEON
the Pangasinan coast to the north of Manila. In the seventeenth
century Governor Salcedo had the Buen Socorro built on the
Albay coast. He entrusted her construction to Diego de Arevalo,
a man "most experienced in maritime affairs," and promised him
command of her when she was finished. She was said to be the
largest and best galleon yet built.
Some were built outside the islands. One great galleon, the
Guadalupe, was constructed in Obando's time on the Siamese
coast, only to prove unfitted for the difficult trans-oceanic service.
Diego Fajardo had one built on the Satsuma coast of Japan. The
colony agent, Rios Coronel, proposed about the same time (1620)
that the galleons should be constructed in India or Cochin-China.
He declared the woods of those regions superior for ship timbers
and the cost of completion less, while the excellent Lascar sailors
could be secured to operate them when finished. However, an
order of 1679 prohibited the construction outside the Philippines
of vessels intended for the Acapulco line.
The hard woods of the islands were very well adapted for
ship-building. Casimiro Diaz considered them "the best that can
be found in the universe," and added "if it were not for the great
strength of the galleons and the quality of their timbers that so
dangerous voyage could not be performed." The framework was
often made of teak, while other native woods were used in the
remainder of the ship. For the ribs and knees, the keel and
rudder, and inside work the hard Philippine molave was gen
erally employed. The sheathing outside the ribs was usually of
lanang, a wood of great toughness, but of such peculiar nature
that small cannon balls remained embedded in it, while larger
shot rebounded from a hull made of this timber. Excellent
cordage for the rigging was obtained from the abaca or Manila
hemp. Sail cloth was produced in the province of I locos, while
the metal necessary was mostly bought from China, Japan, Macao,
or even from India and worked up by Chinese smiths. When
completed, these galleons were of unusual strength, "Each one
is a strong castle in the sea," said Padre Diaz, hardly a tribute
to their mobility, which was sacrified to resistive power. "These
large ships are built with excellent timber, that will not splinter,"
said Woodes Rogers, a competent critic; "they have very thick
sides, much stronger than we build in Europe." Pedro Calderon
Enriquez says that the English put 1080 eighteen and twenty
THE GALLEONS
197
four pound balls into the Santisima Trinidad without penetrat
ing her sides.
The labor of cutting the timber in the mountains and trans- ?
porting it to the coast was performed by great gangs of natives.
While the more skilled work of construction was performed by
Chinese carpenters, the islanders were used in large numbers for
the rough work in the yards. These Filipinos were generally im
pressed under a sort of corvee or repartimiento system, and their
condition probably represented the most oppressive phase of the
Spanish domination in the islands. Sometimes the natives were
drafted as punishment for some local sedition or insurrection,
while their harsh treatment by Spanish or Moro foremen was in
itself a source of riots and more serious commotions. Thus the
inhabitants of a part of the Pampanga country rose in revolt in
1660 against the forced labor of timber cutting. Casimiro Diaz
said that, while the San Diego cost the king 60,000 pesos, the cost
to the natives was 150,000 pesos. Writing in 1676, Fernandez
Navarrete tells of the sufferings of the natives from "the infernal
fury of some Spaniards," and three years later the king ordered
Governor Vargas to see that the native workmen were treated
with "benignity." There was often, too, a dearth of skilled ship
wrights to direct the work. Instead of practiced naval construc
tors, men without any experience in ship-building were some
times put in charge of the work. Governor Obando found in the
yards at Cavite "a total negligence and a lack of practice and
knowledge of modern construction," and he declared the arsenals
to be in a "thoroughly grievous state." However, an English
man who was in the islands a half century later said that the
work at Cavite, though expensive, was "remarkably well exe
cuted." Legentil, the French navigator, who spent some time at
Manila in the late eighteenth century, said: "The Manilenos
have excellent carpenters, and one must recognize that the work
at Cavite is very skillfully done. The overhauling of the galleons
is very well done, but costs exorbitantly dear."
The cost of the galleons and the great expense of main
tenance were a heavy burden on the treasury. Governor Vera
informed Philip II in 1587 that he had built a 500-ton ship for
the trade at a cost of 8,000 pesos, and about the same time Viceroy
Montesclaros declared that three ships had been bought for the
line at a cost of respectively 3,500, 13,500, and 14,000 pesos. Grau
198
THE MANILA GALLEON
y Monfalcon said that in the third decade of the seventeenth
century one galleon was built each year at an average cost of
30,000 pesos. By the eighteenth century the cost of construction
had increased enormously, far more than proportional to the
greater size of the galleons, and taking into consideration the rise
in values. The Filipino, which escaped the English in 1762 and
furnished Simon de Anda with the sinews of war, was built at
an initial cost of 95,857 pesos. The San Carlos, built a little later
on the Pangasinan coast, cost nearly 100,000 pesos; the San ]os6,
built in the same locality, 180,000 pesos; and the Santisima
Trinidad, built at Bagatao, cost the Treasury 191,000 pesos.
Legentil was scandalized at the prodigality with which money
was spent in building and repairing the galleons. A thirty-gun
frigate, he said, cost over 100,000 pesos, or 525,000 livres. "Here,"
he said, "it is worth observing that the King has the woods, and
that he buys none, since the Philippines contain superb timber.
Further, the labor supply at Manila costs him nothing. Then
whence comes this enormous and exorbitant cost of 680,000 livres
for the constructing of a vessel of five or six hundred tons ?"
It was only natural that the expense of careening and refit
ting should be very large, in view of the trying conditions of
the line, but the cost of keeping the ships seaworthy exceeded all
reason. In the first place, "no care was taken of them at Manila."
"When the galleon returns from New Spain," continues Legentil,
"they completely dismantle her. For over six months she is then
abandoned to the deteriorating influence of the atmosphere and
the burning heat of the sun. One can readily see what damage
a vessel receives from the heavy rains and excessive temperature
that she endures during the six months from July to February
and after a year at sea." From the overhauling, which began in
February, the governor reaped a "rich harvest." And Legentil
illustrates the corrupt management of this work by an account
of the refitting of the Santa Rosa in 1766. On her arrival from
Acapulco the directors of the Cavite yards estimated that the
work would cost at least 40,000 pesos. At this, De Caseins, com
mander of the Buen Consejo, the first vessel direct from Spain
for over a hundred years, objected and asked to be allowed to
inspect the ship with the purpose of calculating the value of the
work. After a ten days' examination he informed the governor
that for 10,000 pesos at most he could put the galleon in condi
THE GALLEONS
199
tion to make the voyage. With the aid of a capable Spanish
officer, Josef de Cordova, De Caseins performed the work most
efficiently and at a total cost of but eight or nine thousand pesos.
Scarcely had the too scrupulous Frenchman left Manila for Spain
when a committee of inspection, appointed by the governor, con
demned the work done on the Santa Rosa and recommended a
complete overhauling. This was carried out at a cost of 50,000
pesos. "Some Spaniards assured me," concludes Legentil, "that
in this incident I saw an example of what ordinarily went on at
Manila."
It was this same De Caseins who put the new San Carlos in
condition to cross to New Spain, when she had put back the
same year in imminent danger of foundering. Those at Cavite
ascribed her unseaworthiness to the bad arrangement of her cargo,
but De Caseins declared that the cause lay in her topheaviness.
He cut down the high forecastle and the great poop which were
such hindrances to speed and safety and gave her the efficient lines
of a frigate, instead of the unwieldy bulk of the old galleon form.
Thus reconstructed, she was able to make her voyage in safety.
Even before the seventeenth century the operation of the
line had cost enormous sums. Though, by the law of 1593, the
naos became state galleons, supported at the royal expense, the
viceroys of that period urged the great cost to the king as a reason
for adopting private ownership of the trading ships. Villamanrique, who sold the San Martin and the Santiago to merchants
of Mexico in 1589, constantly recommended the transfer of the
line to private ownership. The next year Viceroy Velasco said
that the trade at Manila preferred that the galleons should be
owned by the king, since private owners would raise the freight
rates too high. Viceroy Monterey advised the king in 1596 that
it cost about 150,000 pesos a year above the revenue from freights
to maintain the Philippine service. Montesclaros said that it cost
130,000 pesos to despatch the galleons in 1607, and recommended
that the Manila interests be forced to take over the line and sup
port its operations without recourse to the royal treasury. How
ever, the governors opposed any such change and put obstacles
in the way of private merchants who essayed a voyage on their
own account. Thus, when Esteban Rodriguez brought a new
ship to Manila to freight it for New Spain, the governor forced
him to sell it for "a certain exploring expedition,"—Gali's voyage
200
THE MANILA GALLEON
to examine the eastern route to New Spain. Though the outcome
of this venture and the arming of the governor with the law of
1593 generally discouraged further attempts, the San Gerdnimo
was later owned by Federico de Castro and two others in 1602
belonged to Luis Dasmarinas, Juan Tello de Aguirre and other
prominent men at Manila. However, private enterprise could
not compete with the subsidized state galleons and it shortly
gave way entirely to royal ownership of the line.
The personnel of the galleon officers consisted of the com
mander, two mates, three or four pilots, two boatswains, two
boatswains' mates, two constables, and two surgeons. In the
earlier years of the commerce an officer with the impressive title
of capitdn de mar y guerra, or "captain of sea and war," was sec
ond in command of each vessel. The commander was always
known as general, or "general of the sea," and when there were
two galleons, the officer in charge of the almiranta, or second
vessel, was styled "admiral." Each ship also carried a notary,
chaplain, commissary, calker, carpenter, diver, and chief steward.
Two officers, who had no concern with the actual work of naviga
tion, were the contador, or accountant, and the veedor, or over
seer. On the return voyage from Acapulco there was added a
maestre de plata, or master of the silver, an alférez, or ensign, and
a sargento-mayor, or sergeant-major, and sometimes there were
several captains of the troops carried to reinforce the garrisons in
the Philippines or the Moluccas. The number of officers was
generally multiplied unnecessarily to make places for friends of
the governor or of the viceroy. Morga informed the king that
the galleon officers were mostly relatives and servants of the
viceroys,—"mere youths without experience in naval affairs."
For about the first half century of the trade both governor
and viceroy shared in the distribution of places on the galleons.
A law of 1583 gave the royal treasury officials at Manila a share
in the examination and appointment of "pilots, mates and other
officers." Viceroy Velasco wrote in 1591 of the "ancient custom"
by which his predecessors had appointed all the officers in the
Philippine service. Such divided authority inevitably resulted in
clashes between the governments in Mexico and in Manila and
between their appointees on the galleon. Thus, a commander
who owed his office to the viceroy was disposed to disregard the
jurisdiction of the governor at Manila, and an officer from the
THE GALLEONS
201
islands was liable to act independently of the viceregal authorities
at Acapulco. The viceroys usually appointed members of their
own official retinue or favorites from outside the viceregal house
hold. When the king accused Monterey of appointing his private
"creditors, servants and friends" to posts on the galleons to the
detriment of the royal treasury and the personal advantage of the
viceroy, Monterey replied that of the very few in New Spain
competent for such positions a large number were in his service
in Mexico,—caballeros and hidalgos of nautical experience. At
least one of this viceroy's appointments was worthy of the great
confidence placed in him. Lope de Ulloa, a "Galician gentle
man" and captain in the viceregal guard, was placed at the age
of twenty-seven as second in command of one of the galleons.
"Of persons of his quality and talent," Monterey observed to the
king, "there is a great lack in the South Sea." Later as general of
the Espmtu Santo, Ulloa by his resourcefulness and daring saved
his galleon in a Japanese harbor from suffering the fate of the
San Felipe. Even after the four decrees issued between 1609
and 1622, transferring the entire appointing power to the gov
ernor, the viceroy continued to name officers for the galleons.
In 1662 the viceroy removed the general, Garcia del Fresno, and
put in his place Andres de Medina. However, because Medina
ordered the pilot to try a new route to the islands those on board
deposed him from command and reinstated Garcia. Where the
galleon did not have a full complement of officers for her western
voyage, and no provision had been made from Manila for such
a contingency the viceroy was clearly justified in supplying the
deficiency. Viceroy Salinas informed the king that it was cus
tomary for the officers to leave the galleon at Acapulco to go to
Mexico, where they remained or went on to Spain with the pro
ceeds of their sales. That they were often mere trading agents
of the viceroy was another question.
A decree of 1663 established an order of succession by which
the ranks of officers could be automatically filled by promotion
in case of the death or voluntary disappearance of the commander
or any of his assistants. The viceroys persisted in appointing
officers, and in 1681 the king wrote to Viceroy Paredes, express
ing great wonder at the appointment as commander of Francisco
Enriquez de Losada, accountant of the royal treasury, "being a
person of so different a profession." A few years later Viceroy
202
THE MANILA GALLEON
Moctezuma deprived Francisco de Arcocha of his place as general
and named instead Inigues del Bajo, captain of cavalry.
A law of 1599 gave the governor the right to name all the
officials of the galleons, but the successive repromulgation of this
order in 1604, 1608, and 1620 shows the persistence with which
the viceroys clung to their appointing power. However, with
such occasional usurpations by the viceroys as have been noted,
the governors henceforth selected the high officials of the line.
The control over the galleon service which this gave them was
one of their most important—and lucrative—prerogatives. In
its exercise they displayed much nepotism and favoritism. Royal
cedulas reiterated the order that only experienced seamen must
be appointed to places on the galleons and attempted to hold the
governor responsible by means of the residencia, or public ac
counting at the end of his office. "It is highly necessary that they
be most skillful and expert," ordered a law of 1697.
But experienced seamen were scarce in Manila and most
governors were venal. They sold the offices to relatives or
favorites or to anyone who would pay their price. Sometimes
the governor named only the two or three highest in rank and
allowed the commander to choose his subordinates by the same
process. A decree of 1784 suppressed the title of general and
some others, whose occupants it declared to have been "nothing
more than merchants subsidized at the expense of the royal
treasury." The commanding officer was henceforth to be an
experienced seaman. A law of 1800 finally took the right of ap
pointment out of the hands of the governor and reserved it for
the king and the minister of marine. However, the reform had
come too late seriously to affect the history of the line.
Many of the governors were veterans of the European wars
and had little cognizance of or regard for nautical skill. Banuelos
y Carrillo wrote to the king in 1638 that it was "important for
the governor to be a seaman rather than a soldier of the Low
Countries." When not dictated by interest, their appointments
were too often determined by ignorant good intentions rather
than by considerations of efficiency in maritime affairs. Most of
them had acted as commanders of the galleons on their way to
assume office in the islands, and their appointees in subsequent
voyages—merchants, soldiers, adventurers, or hangers-on of the
THE GALLEONS
203
household—usually possessed as few qualifications for the diffi
cult navigation of the line. The Marques de Villamedina, named
by Obando in 1753, was his secretary. One governor selected as ac
countant of the galleon a favorite of his who could not write. Gen
eral Joaquin Gonzalez de Ribero, one of Raon's appointees, de
serted his ship at Acapulco to sell his goods in Mexico. Although,
as Anda declared, the commanders "usually have no acquaintance
with navigation," there were generals who would have been a
credit to any navy. Of such were Diego de Zamudio Manrique and
Bruno de Hezeta. Governor Acuna said of the former, "No one
has ever said anything of him other than that he is a good servant
of your Majesty." Hezeta was an experienced sailor and also
companion of Bodega in the work of exploring the Pacific coast
to the north of California in the latter eighteenth century. Others
on the honor roll of the line were Juan de la Isla, Pedro Flores,
Fernando Centeno Maldonado, Diego de Arevalo, and Tomas
de Endaya. Another was Andres de Arriola, of Seville, a sea
man "of great courage and renown."
In the work of appointment the governors were to a large
extent the victims of the circumstances that surrounded them.
The force of traditions in the service was stronger than the ce"dula
issued from Madrid or Valladolid, commanding the governor to
name only experienced navigators. There was generally lacking
a personnel trained on the sea. The very remoteness of the line,
the hardships of the long voyage, and the sufficiency of the pro
ceeds of a single passage to enrich all, from boatswain to com
mander, did not encourage the long service which could have
produced a supply of experienced officers. There was no such
institution as the Casa de Contratacidn for the training of officers.
A scheme to place sons of the Spanish families in Manila on the
galleons in order to secure their practice as cadets that would
qualify them to become officers was never realized. It is doubt
ful if the governors favored the creation of a professional marine,
for the esprit de corps of men who followed the sea for a liveli
hood would hardly have brooked the role of commercial agent
of the governor or of the mercantile interests of the colony.
The rate of pay for the personnel of the galleons' officers in
the early seventeenth century was according to the following
scale:
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THE MANILA GALLEON
Commander (general)
Admiral (commander of the almiranta) . .
Mate
Pilot
Boatswain
Boatswain's mate
Notary
Chief steward
Master of the water rations
Surgeon
Constable
Cooper
Calker
Gunner—west bound
Sergeant-major
Adjutant
Ensign
4,325 pesos
2,900
4°°
7°° u
325
225
225
225
225
225
325
325
325
225
600
412
865
"
The richest gift within the power of the governor was the
command of the galleon. Padre Zuniga said that the governor
named as general "whomever he wished to make happy." The
salary of some 4000 pesos would have been a very small part of
his proceeds from a voyage. Anda said that the commander paid
from 600 to 10,000 pesos to the governor for his place, and on
such a scale the 4000 pesos of salary was but a bagatelle. A
thrifty captain should clear from 50,000 to 100,000 pesos from his
various ventures, "a sum," says Gemelli Careri, "that may make
a man easy as long as he lives." Woodes Rogers' Spanish pris
oners from the Encarnacidn told him that while the lowest sub
altern could gain at least 20,000 pesos from a voyage, the general
seldom made less than 150,000 or 200,000. This he derived from
several sources: gratuities made up for his benefit by the mer
chants of Manila ; a commission of four percent on the registered
cargo ; an indefinite percentage for the unregistered lading, whose
carriage depended on the favor of the commander; his commis
sions from Mexican or Peruvian merchants and officials; and the
returns from his own private investments. General Arguello
told Gemelli Careri in 1697 that he would clear from his com
missions between 25,000 and 30,000 pesos. He estimated that
the admiral in charge of the almiranta would gain from all
THE GALLEONS
205
sources 40,000 pesos, while even the boatswain would reach
Acapulco a rich man. Another irregular perquisite of many
commanders was their profits from gambling. One general made
12,000 pesos from cards between Manila and Acapulco, and an
order of 1679 prohibiting gambling on the galleons declared that
in the gaming "the general always comes out rich and the pas
sengers ruined."
Legentil said of the office of general and his relations to the
governor: "As there is no Royal Marine at Manila there are no
officers of that body. The vessel is directed by merchants, who
have at their head a man of their own number, who bears the
title of General of the Sea. This General is then himself a mer
chant, and he names his officers and his pilots. The expenses
which he is obliged to make are very large, and reach the sum of
at least 16,000 pesos. The king gives him 4,500 pesos for the
voyage, from which he is obliged to keep his officers, but he does
not even touch these 4,500 pesos. The governor appropriates
them for the trouble of having appointed him, and for having
signed the patent that constitutes him General of the Sea. He
pays besides 500 pesos to the Secretary for delivering the decree."
A few seasoned pilots were the mainstay of the navigation.
Particularly was this true in the eighteenth century, when the
operation of the line was on a sounder basis than before. The
piloto-mayor, or chief navigating officer, was a personage of great
prestige and influence on the galleons, and at Manila he was
generally the object of much respect. The pilots were generally
the only high officers with any nautical skill, and the actual direc
tion of the voyage was usually turned over to them by the lands
man commander. As it was, there was commonly a dearth of
these professional seamen, for it was impossible to keep the force
of trained pilots up to the requisite number of ten or sixteen. A
decree of 1603 insisted on the employment of none but experi
enced and examined pilots, but again laws had little force in
the face of circumstances. The career of pilot on the Philippine
line was far more arduous than in the service between Spain and
America. The voyage was much longer and more dangerous,
and other conditions were less attractive. The compensation for
all these was in the ease with which a pilot might enrich him
self by trading, but this very opportunity removed the stimulus
of further service. It was seldom that a pilot remained on the
206
THE MANILA GALLEON
line as long as did Geronimo Monteiro, the Portuguese com
mander of the Covadonga, whose career on the galleons covered
fourteen years, as pilot, admiral, and general, before his ship was
taken by Anson in 1742. The first piloto-mayor was Fray Andres
de Urdaneta, who charted the eastern passage in 1565. Cabrera
Bueno, whose book supplemented the charts of Urdaneta for the
guidance of other pilots, is another name famous in the naviga
tion. Like Monteiro, he was also entrusted with command of a
galleon. Other outstanding Spanish pilots were Sebastian
Vizcaino, Lorenzo Lazcano, who was pilot, admiral, and general,
Juan Perez, explorer of the northwest coast of America, and
Vicente Vila, who commanded the San Carlos in the Portola
expedition to California in 1769.
Few pilots saw such long and honorable service as Geronimo
Galvez. Certainly the life of none was more dramatic. Galvez
was a native of the ancient coast town of Cartagena and from
his early years had followed the sea, first on the Mediterranean
and later on the Atlantic between Cadiz and the West Indies.
There was much Moorish blood in the people of his native city
and his own orthodoxy was suspect to the Inquisition. So was
that of his young wife, Solina, whose father had died on the rack
in the dungeons of the Holy Office, and whose mother had
shortly afterwards died of grief.
To escape the vigilance of the inquisitors Galvez and his wife
emigrated to New Spain and after a year in Vera Cruz crossed
the country to Acapulco. Thence, in 1689, the pilot took the
Santa Rosa de Lima across the Pacific to Manila, while Dona
Solina remained in Acapulco. For three years there was no
threat to their happiness, though the intervals between their
reunions were long. Then, in 1692, a young courtier from
Madrid, named Sebastian de la Plana, arrived at Acapulco on his
way out to the Philippines. While he awaited the sailing of the
galleon he stopped at one of the inns at the port. Wandering
about the town, he discovered the pilot's wife and quickly be
came infatuated with her. When his advances were rebuffed,
La Plana had her seized by ruffians as she was strolling along
the shore of the bay and ravished her. Returned to her home
she wrote a last letter to her husband, recounting La Plana's
attack on her, and within a few days died, whether from grief
or poison was never known. Shortly afterward La Plana boarded
THE GALLEONS
207
the west-bound galleon for Manila, and was well at sea when
Galvez arrived at Acapulco on the Santa Rosa.
When he heard of the circumstances of his wife's death the
pilot swore vengeance on La Plana, whom he considered her
murderer. He had a monument raised to Dona Solina's memory
in the cemetery at Acapulco and on it had carved the unfinished
line: "I will repay—." In terror of Galvez' revenge, La Plana,
on arriving at Manila, changed his name, grew a beard and had
his face altered and scarred by a surgeon in order to conceal his
identity.
Meanwhile, when the pilot had reached Manila and cleared
the Santa Rosa again for Acapulco he left a number of spies
commissioned to find La Plana. They searched every recess in
the Philippines and carried their hunt overseas to China and
Japan, and to Goa and the Moluccas. At last one of the spies
found him in Macao, where he had entered the service of the
Portuguese. He skillfully inveigled him into returning to Manila
by representing to him that his crime had been forgotten and
by holding out to him the prospect of marriage with a certain
rich widow.
The spy accompanied La Plana back to Manila, where he
informed Galvez, who had returned again from Acapulco, of
the success of his search. The Santa Rosa was tied up at Cavite,
pending the usual repairs for her next voyage, and the only
persons aboard her were the pilot and a few watchmen. On the
pretext that he was to share in some contraband cargo the spy
rowed La Plana across to Cavite and up to the side of the gal
leon. As they climbed to the deck Galvez seized his man and
threw him violently to the deck. He then had the spy tie their
left hands together for a duel to the death. When this was done
he ordered his opponent to draw his dagger and defend himself.
After the pilot had stabbed him several times, La Plana managed
to free himself in the scuffle and made a dash for the rigging.
Galvez climbed after him, his dagger between his teeth, but the
wounded man slipped and fell to the deck, breaking his back in
the fall.
La Plana was then bundled overboard and into the boat,
which Galvez and the spy rowed back to the walled city. It
was night when they entered through the postern gate, dragging
the form of La Plana after them. They took him to an old house
208
THE MANILA GALLEON
in Calle Rada, the haunt of criminals and broken men. Here
they propped him up on a pallet, while Galvez showed him a
minature of Dona Solina. After the doomed man's request for
a priest and for water and a surgeon had been denied, he was
informed that he had been brought there to die. While Galvez
repeated the story of the crime that had prompted his vengeance,
he placed the open locket on a chair facing La Plana, where he
could not avert his eyes from the portrait.
Here he lingered for three days, the lower half of his body
paralyzed by his fall on the ship and always under the eyes of
the spy who had tracked him to the Chinese coast. When he
died the friars of the Misericordia came and buried him in an
obscure spot.
Shortly afterward Galvez piloted the Santa Rosa eastward on
his last voyage. At Acapulco he quit the sea forever. For a time
he wandered over Mexico as a penitent, visiting one shrine after
another, but always returned to Acapulco. Then one day peo
ple found him dead by the grave of Dona Solina, her miniature
in his hands, and the monks of San Hipolyto's convent buried
him beside her.
At times it was so difficult to obtain Spanish pilots enough
that foreigners were employed, even after a decree of 1696 had
prohibited their appointment to places on the galleons. A pilot
of long experience was Philip Thompson, an Englishman, who
served in the latter half of the eighteenth century. John Kendrick, who was sent to Spain in 1796 as interpreter for the Scotch
man, Thomas Muir, and six English prisoners taken from Nootka
Sound, had been a skillful pilot in the galleon service. The
Spaniards feared his sympathy with the United States, which
they suspected of designs on the coast of California. On the
galleon of 1753 the second pilot was a Frenchman, and the third
an Irishman. Montero, or Monteiro, was a Portuguese and
Antoine Limarie Boucourt, who brought the great Santisima
Trinidad to Acapulco in 1755 and took her back to Manila the
next year, was a Frenchman. Legentil tells of another French
pilot, Fraslin, in the Spanish service. He says that Fraslin had
enabled the galleons to shorten considerably the voyage by in
creasing the spread of sail and by following a shorter route to
New Spain. "This man has been very useful to the navigation
and all the Spaniards have spoken of him in the highest terms;"
THE GALLEONS
209
he wrote: "his last voyage cost his life. The General, a brusque
man, who disliked him, demoted him en route and put him in
second place. He took the affront so hard that he died of it.
That was in 1766 and his loss is still being mourned." A third
French pilot of the line was Pierre Laborde. Two pilots of other
nationalities were Raymond Kelly-Kelly and a German named
Heinrich Herman, a man of long and honorable experience in
the navigation. Kelly-Kelly was killed while valiantly fighting
the English in the defense of Manila in 1762. Another Irish
pilot, Richard Bagge, was referred to in a royal decree of 1759
as "a man of evil conduct and a pilot of no skill." A better pilot
was William Eagle, whom the Spaniards knew as Guillermo del
Aguila.
The contador, or accountant, and veedor, or overseer, were
charged with the guarding of the register of merchandise and
with the duty of seeing that no surreptitious introductions were
made either in its pages or in the cargo. With such functions
they were naturally personae non gratae to their commercially
minded fellow-officers and to the compromisarios, or agents of
the trading interests at Manila. They were expected to be per
sons worthy of "approbation, satisfaction and confidence," and
a salary of 2,000 pesos apiece, higher than that of any other officer,
except the general, was intended to place them above the severe
temptations of corruption that were so peculiarly attendant on
their office. Writing in 1636, Grau y Monfalcon informed the
king that his order of 1604 had apparently not been carried out,
as he found no record of these officers in the reports of expenses
and salaries at Manila. "It is doubtful whether they are pro
vided," he adds.
The earlier galleons carried a crew of from sixty to one
hundred, according to the size of the ship or the supply of sea
men available. When experienced sailors could find profitable
employment in other parts of the Indies it was difficult to make
up the necessary complement or lista for the long and arduous
voyage to Acapulco. With the increase of the galleon's tonnage
they naturally needed more men for their operation. The City
and Commerce advised the king in 1732 that a galleon of 500
tons required a crew of 150 men to handle her properly, though
some of the ships of that period carried 250 men. No galleon
ever carried the 1200 that the author of Anson's Voyage writes
210
THE MANILA GALLEON
of. The huge Santisima Trinidad in one voyage carried a total
of 384, classified as follows: forty gunners, a hundred sailors or
able seamen and a hundred each of Spanish and native common
seamen, besides forty-four soldiers.
The proportion of Spaniards to Malays in the crews varied
from one to two, to one to five, but was generally nearer the latter
ratio. In 1724 hardly one-third were said to be of Spanish birth.
Some of these Spaniards were men who worked their passage to
and from the islands, while others followed the sea for a living.
When it is considered that the outward passage to Manila cost
1000 pesos and for the return 1500 pesos, while the wages of a
sailor were never over 350 pesos, this opportunity was a great
boon to prospective colonists without means or to stranded Span
iards who desired to return to New Spain. It was the small body
of professional seamen who formed the strength of the crews.
They did the work about the galleons that required any degree
of skill, and they might rise to the post of boatswain or even of
pilot.
The Malay seamen employed—the Indios of Spanish records
—were generally Filipinos, though the seafaring Lascars from
the Asiatic coasts sometimes served on the galleons. Natives who
had gained some experience at sailing among the islands were
preferred, but, failing a supply from this source, natives from the
interior of Luzon were occasionally drafted by the royal factor.
"A wretched people, unfit for the sea," Rios Coronel said of them.
At times half of the crew were ineffective and of litttle value at
a crisis in the voyage, causing, as the remedial law of 1620 de
clared, "a great danger in sailing so difficult a navigation." The
City and Commerce said they were generally "unskilled and pu
sillanimous," and that as a rule a third of the crew were utterly
incompetent. The percentage of incapables among the Span
iards was also large. "Many," says Rios Coronel, "have been
named as sailors without any knowledge of their duties, but only
by favor." "The Sailors are lazy and vagabonds," wrote Viceroy
Montesclaros, " but few times have I seen enlisted in any region
those who are not such or who do not desire to be such." In a
moment of intolerance at the disorderly habits of long-suffering
men, Bishop Benavides called the galleon crews, "an ungodly
people, guilty of sins of the flesh and of other offenses."
THE GALLEONS
211
Nearly two centuries later Francisco Leandro de Viana paid
this tribute to the Filipino seamen: "There is not an Indian in
those islands who has not a remarkable inclination for the sea,
nor is there at present in all the world a people more agile in
manoeuvres on shipboard, or who learn so quickly nautical terms
and whatever a good mariner ought to know. . . . They can
teach many of the Spanish seamen who sail in those seas. . . .
There is hardly an Indian who has sailed the seas who does not
understand the mariner's compass, and therefore on this trade
route there are some very skilful and dextrous helmsmen. . . .
When placed on a ship from which they cannot escape, they fight
with spirit and courage."
The better class of Spanish sailors, the men who could
manipulate the sails and rigging and perform the necessary re
pairs on shipboard, received from 150 to 300 pesos a year, ac
cording to the work done or to the current rate of wages. In
Gemelli Careri's time (1697) they were paid 350 pesos for a
round-trip voyage. Common Spanish seamen were paid 100
pesos or more, while the natives were to receive from 48 to 60
pesos. A monthly ration of rice was added to the base pay of the
common seamen. Part of the sum was advanced at the beginning
of the voyage and the rest after reaching Acapulco, or preferably
after beginning the return voyage, for the galleon was often left
at Acapulco without a crew for the return trip to Manila. In 1618
the Espiritu Santo lost seventy-four of her seventy-five native
seamen, who were hired by Mexican Indians to teach their tribe
the manufacture of palm wine. Once in port the sailors broke
away from the control of the officers, and after submitting to the
hard discipline and confinement of the long voyage, became dis
orderly and mutinous and frequently deserted. Governor Corcuera said: "They have always had some men under them who
have ability and have served well and are very competent, but
are disorderly in port." Some of them had real grievances against
either the galleon or port officers, generally on account of delays
or fraud in the payment of their wages. As early as 1589 Gov
ernor Vera complained that the crews often went unpaid, and
added: "Therefore the seamen serve half-heartedly and desert."
They were often paid in treasury warrants, a form of scrip, which
was discounted by those who cashed them. "As for these poor
212
THE MANILA GALLEON
men," said Governor Corcuera in 1636, "they have not been paid
in one, two, three, or even ten and fifteen years. They sell their
vouchers during such times for the fourth, fifth, or sixth part of
their face value; and many have been paid at 100 pesos for 1,000.
The warrants are bought by the servants of the oidores, royal
treasury officials, governors, and other officials, and to them is
paid the face value." Governor Manrique de Lara protested to
the viceroy against the abuses at Acapulco. "On reaching Acapulco," he says, "after a voyage of seven months or longer, where
they expect rest and good treatment, they find everybody in a
conspiracy against them." A law of 1633 was aimed to prohibit
the maltreatment and fleecing of sailors at Acapulco by royal
officials. When men were lacking to take the galleon back to
Manila the press was resorted to, and vagabonds and "other men
of no occupation" were liable to be hurried over the south road
to Acapulco to be mustered onto the galleon.
The ablest advocate of the native seamen was Hernando de
los Rios Coronel, agent of the colony, whose memorial to the
king, written in the spirit of Las Casas, but more tempered in its
reasonableness, led to the issuance of orders for the better treat
ment of that unfortunate class. The Malays, especially those
from the interior of Luzon, could not endure the cold of the
higher latitudes. Pneumonia caused a high mortality among
them. "When each new dawn comes," said Rios Coronel, "there
are three or four dead men." He declared that the Filipino
common seamen were "treated like dogs," but that the Spaniards
were better cared for and more accustomed to provide for them
selves. "It is very pitiful," he said "to see what occurs in that
navigation." One of the laws of 1620 attempted to protect the
natives from their own improvidence or the officers' disregard
of their welfare, by requiring that they be sufficiently clothed and
fed and treated with greater kindness. An entry in Gemelli
Careri's diary reads: "That day the cloth the king allows the
seamen to keep them warm was divided among them." The
rations allowed to the Indios were about half that granted to the
Spaniards, and near the end of the voyage, when the provisions
grew scarce and foul, it was the fare of the native seamen that
was most restricted in amount and quality.
Besides the seamen proper, artillerymen, and sometimes in
the early days, arquebusiers, and later musketeers, were carried.
THE GALLEONS
213
Usually the only soldiers in the ships were the prescribed number
of gunners, unless imminent danger from pirates or from attack
by hostile ships required a larger armed force for the galleon's
defense. On the return voyage, however, two or three hundred
troops were sometimes carried from Mexico to reenforce the gar
rison in the islands.
In the first years of the line no provision was made for arm
ing the galleons beyond placing small arms in the hands of those
on board. It was with such an armament that the Santa Ana
tried to stand off Cavendish's Englishmen in 1587. However,
the shock caused by the incursions of Drake and Cavendish led to
the adoption of more serious measures of defense. The report of
Governor Vera to Philip II in 1588 is indicative of the change
already produced by the loss of the Santa Ana. "The ships are
well supplied with artillery," he said. "All the passengers have
arquebuses, swords, and bucklers; the seamen carry at least a
sword, and each ship is armed with pikes, partisans, large stores
of powder and munitions, bombs and grenades." A law of 1601,
designed to prevent the practice of equipping the fortifications
with artillery taken from the galleon, forbade the removal at
Manila of guns mounted on the nao at Acapulco. A decree of
three years later required that each piece of the galleon's battery
should have a trained gunner. A more general law of 1608 com
pelled the governor of the Philippines to see that the naos were
provided "with the arms necessary for their defense, and that
soldiers, crew and passengers were well armed." The ordinances
of Governors Valdes and Arandia were more detailed in their
provisions for keeping the galleons in an adequate state of
defense.
However, in spite of the excellent cannon cast at Cavite, the
galleons seldom sailed with a sufficient equipment of guns. For
the sake of the additional lading space which the omission of
the guns would permit those in charge were willing to risk the
chance of attack. Whatever guns were carried were often stowed
away in the hold, while the decks were piled high with bales and
chests of merchandise. In case of a sudden attack in such cir
cumstances as occurred with the Santisima Trinidad, a sixty-gun
ship that fought with only ten in position, the result for the gal
leon was calamitous. On the outward passage from Acapulco
greater precautions were usually taken to prepare for emergen
214
THE MANILA GALLEON
cies. At this time the ship had also the advantage of the small
arms of the reinforcements on the way out to the islands. More
over, space was not then at such a premium for the accommoda
tion of cargo, and the guns could be put into place without dis
commoding the mercantile interests of the galleon.
Convoys were seldom resorted to, unless the danger to the
galleon was quite imminent. Such a regular system of convoys,
for example, as was employed in the navigation to the Spanish
Main, was never adopted, nor was anything like the armada de
Barlovento, or Windward Fleet, maintained. Save for the time
of the Dutch wars, and that of the buccaneer-privateer inroads
into the Pacific in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries, the menace was not chronic, as it was for long periods
in the West Indies. Armed vessels were, however, occasionally
sent up the coast of New Spain to escort the galleon past the
dangerous tip of California and on into Acapulco harbor. The
governor of the Philippines likewise frequently despatched ships
from Manila to meet the galleons from New Spain outside the
islands and accompany them through the straits and up to their
anchorage before Cavite. Thus, Richard Cocks heard in Japan in
July 1615, that "don Jno. de Silva was gon to keepe the straites
with a gale and a phriggat, attending the coming of shipping
from Agua Pulca." In 1686, when fears were entertained for the
safety of the San Telmo, the governor armed the Santo Nino
with over 100 cannon and 1,000 men, and sent her to the Embocadero to convoy the Acapulco ship up to Cavite. Sometimes
advice-ships, usually small galleys or tenders, were sent out to
warn the nao of enemies, and order it to change its course ; or the
galleon might carry orders from the viceroy to the same effect.
In this case she generally followed the route around the north of
Luzon, or put in at one of the bays on the east coast, as Albay,
where she could place her silver in safety. A system of fire
signals was also devised by the Jesuit, Francisco Colin, with the
aid of which galleons were warned by fires built on outlying
prominences of the eastern coasts. A code was developed by
varying the number of fires or the frequency of the puffs of
smoke, in such a way as to indicate the course to be followed, or
the strength and location of the enemy. Recourse was had to
some such expedient on the American side, where signals were
THE GALLEONS
215
made from the Island of Cedros, which was usually the first land
fall of the galleons, and also from salient points on the mainland
coast. After the founding of the missions on the peninsula the
Jesuits in charge were expected to advise the naos which put in
there of any strange sail observed off that quarter of the coast.
>>>>>>>>>>>>> »» ®
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CHAPTER 6
THE ROUTE
IN the days of sail navigation was at the mercy of the prevail
ing winds. To the innovator of the sea it was a puzzling
affair of trades and monsoons and of variables that blew from
any quarter. His problem was liable to be complicated occa
sionally and locally by the extremes of calm and hurricane and
was only to be solved by the painful process of trial and error.
Seamen often had to resort to stupendous tacks, as did Vasco da
Gama when he ran south of the latitude of the Cape of Good
Hope for two months before turning north-eastward to round
Africa. There were few straight lines in the sea lanes of those
days, but often much beating about the ocean to gain a little
distance. And frequently the navigator's task was not half done
when he had reached his objective. For the discovery of the re
turn route required acquaintance with an entirely different set
of winds than had originally carried him out from his starting
point.
So it was with the Pacific. Five separate expeditions had
reached the East Indies from the side of the Americas before a
single ship had been able to return in the opposite direction.
The vaguely recorded trans-Pacific voyages of Asiatics added as
little to the permanent fund of knowledge as did the voyages of
the Vikings to America. Urdaneta and Arellano were, therefore,
as truly pioneers as was Columbus.
The eastward and westward paths of the galleons were sepa
rated by over twenty degrees of latitude. The westward route
lay within the wide belt of the northeast trades, whose southern
limit is close to the equator and whose northern limits lie under
the thirtieth parallel. During most of the year these winds could
be depended on to carry a ship across the Pacific speedily and
steadily with all canvas filled. To the north the prevailing west
erlies, blowing above latitude thirty, marked the natural path of
the galleons on their eastward passage. The discovery of these
n6
THE ROUTE
217
winds offered the first serious problem in the history of the navi
gation. It was the variables in the western part of the Pacific,
blowing uncertainly between the zones of these two primary
winds, that accounted for many of the difficulties and disasters
incident to the operation of the galleon line.
Navigation within the area of the Philippines themselves
was governed by the two regular monsoons. The northeast
monsoon begins in late September or early October and blows
until April. During October, November, and the early part of
December it blows strong from north and northeast, with
thick weather and squalls of rain. This is the worst season of
the year for getting out through the straits. After mid-Decem- \
ber the winds change to east and east-southeast, accompanied by
much heavy weather until the equinox in March. During April
and May the winds vary from north around through east to
south, with occasional thick weather and squalls, alternating with
calms. Though in some years it attains its full force in May, by
June the southwest monsoon is always well established and blows
from south-southwest to west. It is less steady and uniform than
the other monsoon. It is a prolongation of the great seasonal
movement of air which is so important a factor in the climate of
India and is responsible for rains along the west coast of Luzon.
The departure of the galleon from Manila ordinarily fell within
the first months of this monsoon, which the Spaniards knew as
the vendaval.
Another, but more irregular, factor in the galleon navigation s
was the chance of typhoons, or baguios as they are known locally.
These cyclonic storms generally originate over the seas to the
east or southeast of the Philippines, whence their course is west
or northwest, frequently blowing across the islands and out onto
the China Sea. They correspond in their general characteristics
and destructiveness to the hurricanes of the West Indies. They
are most prevalent between July and October, which explains
the anxiety of the Spaniards to have the galleon clear of the
Philippines before that season. They may strike the islands to
the south of Manila at any time up to December.
Efforts of the Spaniards to find a practicable easterly route
across the Pacific began with their first expedition into that sea.
In 1522 the Trinidad, of Magellan's squadron, tried to reach the
Isthmus of Panama from the Moluccas. Leaving Tidore on the
2l8
THE MANILA GALLEON
sixth of April with a crew of fifty-four and a cargo of fifty tons
of cloves, she passed in a northeasterly direction through the
chain of the Ladrones and far beyond to forty-three degrees
north. She had, in fact, now covered the most difficult stage of
the eastward crossing and was in a position to strike across to the
mainland of America. But her crew was already on starvation
rations and stricken* with scurvy. She was shattered by storms,
one of which had carried away her mainmast. In view of the
great distress of his ship, Espinosa, her captain, decided to retrace
his way to the East Indies. He put in at Saipan of the Ladrones,
whence he reached Gilolo of the Moluccas six weeks later with
nineteen of his original crew, and these so enfeebled by scurvy
and other afflictions that they could no longer manage the ship.
Alvaro de Saavedra, who was sent out by Cortes in 1527 to
succor the survivors of Loaysa's expedition to the Moluccas,
made two attempts to retrace his way back across the Pacific.
However, as he struck eastward into the wide belt of trades that
had brought his ships from New Spain, he was forced to beat
about across several degrees of latitude at the mercy of the head
winds. When he finally turned back to Tidore of the Moluccas
he sighted New Guinea and other islands of the Melanesian
archipelagoes, but he had done nothing to solve the problem of
the return route to the American coast.
Again, when Ruy Lopez de Villalobos crossed to the East
Indies in 1542 he bore instructions to send a ship for the discov
ery of the vuelta, or return route, as soon as he was well estab
lished on the Asiatic side of the Pacific. In accordance with these
orders, the San Juan de Letrdn of his command attempted to
make the eastward passage by the northerly route. She was,
however, forced to turn back after touching at the Ladrones, and,
like the Trinidad, finally limped into a port of Gilolo, badly
weather-beaten and with her crew suffering from disease and
privation. Another effort, made close to the equator by New
Guinea, failed as utterly after a voyage of over four months.
Like Loaysa, Villalobos died shortly afterward, discouraged by
the failure of all his endeavors. Though all these attempts ended
in failure, much useful information had been gained, particularly
on the voyages of the Trinidad and the San Juan de Letrdn.
This knowledge became common possession of Spanish seamen
and made easier the ultimate attainment of the original objective.
THE ROUTE
219
The accomplishment of the great task was reserved to the >
better organized and conducted expedition of Legaspi. As soon
as Legaspi had gained a foothold for the occupation of the
Philippines the early reestablishment of connections with New
Spain was imperative. If supplies and reinforcements could not
be secured from that source, the nascent colony was as surely
doomed to extinction as had been its predecessors. Philip II and
the authorities in New Spain showed great concern for the dis
covery of the eastward passage and a reward was offered to
whomever could find a practicable route. The royal instructions
to Viceroy Velasco for Legaspi's guidance read: "You must issue
orders to the vessels that they are not to delay in bartering and
trading, but to return immediately to New Spain, for the prin
cipal reason for this expedition is to ascertain the return route."
After Legaspi's arrival at Cebu in 1565 preparations were
soon begun for the return attempt. The first ship actually to
cross the Pacific from west to east was the patache, or tender,
San Lucas, which had disappeared from the body of the squadron
in circumstances that strongly pointed to desertion. The char
acter of her pilot, the resolute and skilled, but faithless, Lope
Martin, lent color to the suspicions of Legaspi, and these were
further confirmed by the failure of the San Lucas to appear later
at the appointed rendezvous among the Visayas. The renegade
ship had separated from the rest of the expedition on the twentyninth of November, and after cruising among some groups,
among which were probably the Carolines and Marshalls,
reached Mindanao. She remained in that vicinity for several
weeks and then proceeded to the northward, passing near Cebu,
but avoiding an encounter with Legaspi. Then, in late April
Lope Martin and Alonso de Arellano, her captain, resolved to
make a desperate dash to gain the American continent. Of this
wild cruise across that trackless waste of sea Fernandez Duro,
the Spanish naval historian, has said: "We are astounded at the
resolution of these men, who, in a crazy bark of forty tons, scan
tily provisioned, without extra sails, lacking every kind of sup
plies, with a small crew, and those discontented, fearlessly
launched themselves upon one of the most daring voyages re
corded in the history of navigation."
The San Lucas rose to forty-three degrees, but in her east
ward crossing kept close to the fortieth parallel, though dropping
220
THE MANILA GALLEON
gradually to a lower latitude as she approached the American
coast. Provisions and water early ran short, and a plague of rats
threatened their scanty supplies. Scurvy developed in the ship
and decimated the little crew of twenty. Insubordination broke
out under the strain of suffering and two men were thrown into
the sea as punishment—and warning. Finally, on the night of
the sixteenth of July the pilot made out ahead the coast of the
Californias in about twenty-seven degrees and forty-five minutes.
On the ninth of August the ship entered the harbor of Navidad,
whence she had departed the year before. At Mexico Arellano
and Martin convinced the audiencia, which was ruling until the
arrival of Peralta, the viceroy, of the legality of their proceedings.
They then went on to Spain to claim the reward which had been
promised for the discovery of the return route across the Pacific.
They were on the point of success when Fray Andres de
Urdaneta arrived at court and denounced their desertion of
Legaspi's expedition.
Though the expedition despatched by Legaspi was under the
nominal direction of his nephew, Felipe de Salcedo, the guiding
spirit of the enterprise was the veteran navigator, Urdaneta, who
sailed in the capacity of advisory pilot. Like Martin of the San
Lucas, Urdaneta had accompanied Loaysa's ill-fated voyage to
the East Indies in 1525, and had spent eight years in the Moluccas
before returning to Spain around the Cape of Good Hope. After
a time he had entered an Augustinian convent in Mexico and
was living in orders when he was prevailed upon to guide Le
gaspi's fleet out to the Philippines. The actual work of pilotage
was now in the hands of Esteban Rodriguez and Rodrigo de la
Isla Espinosa, but they followed a theoretical course which Ur
daneta had mapped out five years before and consulted him in
regard to all the larger details of the voyage. Their ship, the
San Pablo, cleared from Cebu on the first of June 1565, and
mounting with the monsoon past Leyte and between Masbate
and Samar, debouched from the group by the Strait of San
Bernardino. By July first she was in twenty-four degrees north,
above the Ladrones, and, still climbing in a general northeasterly
direction, rose to between thirty-seven and thirty-nine degrees.
She had now encountered the westerlies that were to carry her-^
over to the American coast, which was sighted oh September 22
in almost the very locality where the San Lucas had made her-—
THE ROUTE ry/*1
=7
f '
221
landfall a little over two months tafore£\From thence she
reached Acapulco on the eighth of(September) after 129 days at
sea, having lost sixteen of her men, including Rodriguez, the
pilot. From Mexico, Urdaneta journeyed on to Spain, where he
related to Philip II the story of the San Pablo's voyage, and
where, as we have seen, he exposed the misconduct of Arellano
and Lope Martin. His route was approximately that followed
during the most of the history of the Manila-Acapulco line and
his charts long remained the guide of the eastward-bound pilots
of the galleons.
In the actual practice of the navigation the first stage of the
voyage was the leisurely and difficult passage out of the archi
pelago. To get out to sea the galleon had to follow the tortuous
channel which runs in a general southeasterly direction to the
Strait of San Bernardino, generally known in Spanish times as
the Embocadero, and sometimes as the Paso de Acapulco. For
lying, as it does, on the western side of Luzon, Manila is more
advantageously situated for communication with the Asiatic
mainland than for connections with America.
As a rule, the time consumed in clearing from the straits was
inordinately long. The galleon which carried Gemelli Careri
sailed from Cavite on the twenty-eighth of June and did not
reach the open sea until the tenth of August. The Santtsima
Trinidad in 1755 was a month on the way and the San Carlos
Borromeo in 1766 took three weeks to pass the straits. Gemelli
describes this part of the route as a "Labyrinth of Islands, eighty
leagues in length, and very dangerous." Driving squalls and
fogs were frequent, while shifting tides and treacherous currents
threw the galleon about in the winding channel, where shoals
and rocks and low-lying islands menaced her safety.1 "The pas
sage is among islands and through channels," wrote the critical
chronicler of Anson's Voyage, "where the Spaniards, by reason
of their unskilfulness in marine affairs, waste much time, and are
often in much danger." A lost galleon is associated with almost
every step in the way out of the straits—Lubang, Calantas, Isla
Verde, Marinduque, Ticao, the Naranjos, and San Bernardino.
1 In November 1935, the 5,300-ton British freighter, SilverhazeJ, with fifty-four
persons on board, was wrecked on a rock in the Embocadero. According to the
Associated Press report of the disaster, "Lifeboats sent out by rescue ships were tossed
about by the rip tide and heavy swells of San Bernardino Straits, in which the wreck
was discovered, and were forced to turn back."
222
THE MANILA GALLEON
The passage of the Embocadero was especially feared. Gemelli
Careri thus describes his sensations at this point: "As we were
upon getting out, there fell such violent storms of Rain, that to
gether with the contrary Current, whilst the Moon was above
the Horizon, we could not, tho' the Wind blew hard for us, ad
vance one Step, but rather lost Ground, so that we are all Night
in great Danger, I was Astonish'd, and Trembled to see the Sea
have a Motion like Water boiling over a hot Fire,2 understanding
that several Ships, notwithstanding the help of their Rudder had
been by the Violence of the Current whirl'd about, and at last
Wreck'd. Friday ioth, the Tide turning for us, we got out of
the Streight before Noon." Sometimes, too, a ship had to lie for
days in a dead calm, while the galleon was always delayed at San
Jacinto on Ticao, or some other port in the vicinity, where she
put in to take on fresh stores and await propitious weather for
clearing from the strait.
The course as described by the standard pilot's guide of
Cabrera Bueno was substantially that followed by nearly all the
galleons. The largest variations were in the height at which
the eastward crossing was made and in the course laid off the
coast of the Californias.
The successive stages were as follows : from Cavite on Manila
Bay out through one of the bocas, generally between Mariveles
and Corregidor; thence SSW, keeping well clear of Fortun to the
left and high Ambil to the right; past Cape Santiago on the
Luzon coast, and E between Mindoro and Maricaban; by the
Punta de Escarceo, or "Tide Rip Point," where currents run
strong, and under Isla Verde, outside Subaang Bay, within which
there was a fair anchorage in case of need ; SE past the islets of
Baco, with a good channel off Calapan; SE by E down the Min
doro coast by Punta Gorda de Pola; E by SE between the Tres
Reyes and the Dos Hermanas; thence by the wide bocana be
tween Marinduque and Banton, out onto the tablazo, or open
water, above Sibuyan; SE by E between Burias and Masbate;
turning ENE around the Punta de San Miguel and the Punta del
Diablo; coasting around the east side of Ticao to the anchorage at
San Jacinto; clearing from thence and working out seaward with
a "Numerous swirls and eddies are found in the channel between Caput and
Luzon, the water seeming to boil up from beneath, the center of the eddy in some
cases appearing to be at least a foot higher than the edge." United States Coast Pilot:
Philippine Islands, part I, 191.
Chirino map of the Philippines (1638). From copy in the Library of Congress.
2*3
224
THE MANILA GALLEON
the monsoon; E eight leagues, with the dangerous Naranjos to
starboard and the shoal of Calantas to port; NE by N and then
ENE seven leagues around Capul; NE with the Sorsogon coast
to port and San Bernardino to starboard and NE by E seven
leagues to the Embocadero, with San Bernardino now to port and
the island of Biri to starboard. At this point, according to Cabrera,
"the rapid currents require skilful pilot work." 3 The galleon was
now in the open sea.
To all appearances the route up the west coast of Luzon
should have been much safer and quicker than that by the Em
bocadero. Many proposals were, in fact, made to change the
route to this more open and direct way. In 1613 the king au
thorized Hernando de los Rios Coronel to search for a new and
shorter route to New Spain. The procurador had represented
that the passage around Cape Bojeador, if undertaken by the
middle of June, would enable a galleon to reach Mexico in a little
over two months. However, the project bore no immediate fruit
and nothing further was done for a century and a half. Agita
tion was begun again in 1730 and four years later the king or
dered a reconnaissance of the Bojeador route. Governor Obando
recommended the change in 1754, but a more serious movement
was initiated in 1762. The innovation was indorsed by the most
capable officials in the islands, such as Viana, Anda, and Basco
y Vargas, and by the most experienced pilots of the line, like
Philip Thompson.
Governor Anda declared that a ship sailing up the west side
of Luzon could climb to the twentieth parallel in two and a half
or three days, as against the nearly two months sometimes re
quired to reach the same latitude around by the Embocadero.
He believed that the average time to Acapulco could thereby
be shortened from five or six months to three months. Thomp
son, a highly capable navigator, who held the rank of ensign
and first pilot in the royal navy, was the most persistent advocate
of the Bojeador route. In his appeal to Charles III on behalf of
his plan he advised the king that the loss of over thirty galleons
during the history of the line had largely been due to the delays
and dangers incident to the use of the Embocadero route. He
complained that the seasons of the prevailing winds over the
1 "The channels between Luzon, Capul, Dalupiri, and Samar are all subject to
strong currents, tide rips, whirlpools, and eddies." United States Coast Pilot, op. cit.
THE ROUTE
225
entire course had been ignored, thereby exposing the navigation
of the galleons to needless difficulties and to an excessive length
ening of the voyage. He pointed to the example of a French
ship which had crossed from the Philippines to the Lower Cali
fornia coast in 1721 in fifty-one days. "From the circumstance
of navigating in the months of September, October, and Novem
ber in the eastward crossing," he said, "and in those of April,
May, June, and July on the return voyage, contrary to the general
rule of the constant and variable winds prevailing in those
months, there results the absolute certainty of the navigation in
these seas being always doubtful and perilous." Thompson pro
posed that the galleons should clear from Manila between the
fifteenth and twentieth of May. They should then be among
the Bashees to the north of Luzon by the first of June, after which
they would take advantage of SSW and NW winds on their
easterly course, crossing the Pacific during the summer. He
calculated that they would reach the California coast by the
middle or end of August. It was his plan that the galleon should
put in at one of the new settlements of San Francisco or Monte
rey, where they would remain until the first of November before
proceeding on to Acapulco. They could utilize their stay on the
California coast, not only to refit and to restore their passengers
and crew to health after the trying passage from Manila, but to
leave supplies needed for the young colony. This schedule would
enable tlie fair to be held at Acapulco in December or January
and the galleons to leave for Manila again by the first of Febru
ary, when the winds would be most favorable throughout the
westward passage. His plan then provided for the galleons'
reaching Manila by the middle of April.
Commenting on Thompson's memorial to the crown, Gov
ernor Basco y Vargas declared that a ship, which left Manila in
May with winds from the third quarter and coasted north
ward off Pampangas, Pangasinan, and Ilocos, would be free from
the risks of the traditional route through the straits. A junta
of pilots was held in Manila, and though there were violent
differences of opinion, the consensus of views was found to be
in favor of the projected modification of the route. Meanwhile,
the course had been reconnoitered by Juan Rodriguez Montene
gro, but though two galleons, the San Jos6 and the Concepcidn,
the latter under Montenegro himself, were given orders to go
226
THE MANILA GALLEON
via Capes Bojeador and Engano, they turned back and left by
the Embocadero.
In 1777 a royal decree directed the change of route to be
made permanent and, furthermore, for stops to be made at San
Francisco and Monterey, the new stations on the California coast.
Though a few galleons were actually despatched by the new
route, the consulado, which embodied the commercial interests
at Manila, was opposed to the change from the beginning, and
the loss of the San Pedro north of Luzon in 1782 appeared to
confirm their reasoning. The successful navigation of the pas
sage largely depended on the galleon's clearing from Manila
earlier than was customary, for, after the beginning of July or
earlier, a ship was liable to be thrown upon the Luzon coast by
a baguio, or typhoon, while the seas about the Bashees above
Luzon were famous for their storms.
A repetition nine years later of the original royal order of
1777 again brought the question to a head. The merchants who
dictated the policy of the galleon trade still refused to accept the
revolutionary changes in route and sailing time. They also ob
jected strongly to the requirement that the galleons should put
in at San Francisco or Monterey, since it delayed their arrival at
Acapulco, though the powerful Viceroy Revillagigedo believed
the galleons vital to the California colony at this stage of their
development. Then in 1791, under pressure from the conserva
tive stand made by the consulado, Governor Berenguer de Marquina took it upon himself to suspend the execution of the royal
decree. The Council of the Indies reconsidered the whole ques
tion in 1794, but the galleons had returned to their old path,
which they were to follow for the twenty years that remained to
them.
To resume the traditional route—when the galleon had left
the strait between Luzon and Samar she was driven to the north
east before the monsoon, past the Catanduanes, lying to the left,
on which so many galleons were lost. Cabrera Bueno gives the
route from the Embocadero as follows: E by NE about fifty
leagues; then ENE in the general direction of the Ladrones;
through Los Volcanes or the higher Ladrones NE by E to thirtyone degrees latitude and longitude twenty-eight and a half east
of Manila; ENE to thirty-six or thirty-seven degrees in longitude
forty; thence to the region of Cape Mendocino; SE to thirty-five
THE ROUTE
227
degrees latitude without sighting land; SE to the landfall at the
island of Cenizas in thirty degrees, or at the island of Cedros a
degree and a half lower at the entrance to Sebastian Vizcaino. *
Bay.
The original force of the monsoon, which the galleon caught
on clearing from the Strait of San Bernardino, was counted on
to carry her up to about the fifteenth parallel of latitude. In her
further ascent to gain the required altitude she was liable to
encounter variables and storms, which either prolonged her pas
sage or might drive her back in distress to the Philippines. When
she had beaten up to a sufficient height she fell in with the east
ward-flowing Kuro Siwo or Japan current and the prevailing
westerlies, which propelled her across the open Pacific within a
few degrees of latitude. "The return," said the Jesuit historian,
Josef de Acosta, "is like unto the voiage from the Indies unto
Spain, for those which return from the Philippines or China to
Mexico to the end they may recover the Westerne windes, they
mount a great height, until they come right against the islands
of Japan, and discovering the Caliphornes, they return by the
coast of New Spain to the port of Acapulco." It was the Japan
current that may have brought the Chinese to Fusang or Mexico
many centuries before, and in our time it has carried at least two
dismantled fishing barks from Japanese waters across to the
northwest coast of the United States, one of them with all hands
dead on board.
The height at which the galleon made her crossing varied
from about thirty-one to forty-four degrees, but the majority
varied between the thirty-second and thirty-seventh parallels. In
his instructions to the commanders of the galleons Governor
Valdes said: "The success of the crossing probably depends on
the greater or less altitude at which it is made, but, as the weather
conditions are so variable, it is not known beforehand which may
be the best course to follow." Many of the earlier galleons sailed
above forty, where the winds were believed to be more depend
able. Antonio de Morga says that it was customary in his time
for the galleons to go up to forty-two degrees. However, in the
later years of the line the tendency was to follow a lower track.
Gemelli Careri was told by the pilot of his ship that thirty-six
to forty degrees was the highest elevation at which it was the
habit of the galleons to cross. In 1703 the Rosario went only to
228
THE MANILA GALLEON
thirty-two degrees and twenty-four minutes, and in 1737 the
Nuestra Senora de la Guia rose no higher than thirty degrees and
thirteen minutes. The Santisima Trinidad crossed in 1755 be
tween the thirty-fourth and thirty-seventh parallels, and the San
Jos6 in 1773 between the thirty-ninth and fortieth.
The orders issued to the commanders of the galleons forbade
any greater deviation from the customary course than the particu
lar conditions of the voyage might dictate, and any desire on the
part of a too inquisitive commander or pilot to turn the voyage
into an exploring expedition was discouraged. Some providen
tial island might well have lain within close reach of the beaten
track, while ships had passed for two centuries and hundreds had
died of scurvy or hunger for lack of a port of call in the critical
stage of the voyage. Yet accidental discoveries made in the reg
ular course of the navigation were always welcomed by the Span
ish authorities as of possible utility to the galleon navigation.
"If by chance or necessity the galleon should make port in some
little known locality," read the instructions issued by Governor
Arandia in 1757, "you shall endeavor, if possible to draw up a
chart of the place—and keeping always within sight of the coasts
of California, or, if it should happen to be another that is sighted
—you shall take particular note of the currents, soundings, varia
tions of the compass, and make any other observations that might
be helpful to subsequent ships."
Much was made by foreign navigators of the latter eight
eenth century of the failure of the Spaniards to discover the
Hawaiian Islands. The appearance on early charts of a group
of islands in the general position of Hawaii gave a certain plausi
bility to the belief that some Spanish seaman had actually sighted
the Hawaiian Islands. Certain vague statements, made by one
Juan Gaetan, a minor officer of Villalobos' crews, lent further
credence to the theory, which was accepted by the able French
navigator, La Perouse, and by the great German scientist, Alex
ander von Humboldt. Though the existence of the islands,
which usually appear on the maps as La Mesa, or Los Monjes,
La Disgraciada, and La Vezina, has never been explained, except
by the loose geodesy and cartography of the early Pacific, the
strongest evidence is against their identity with the Hawaiians.4
* The subject has been exhaustively discussed by the Swedish scholar, Erik Wilhelm
Dahlgren, in his study entitled, Were the Hawaiian Islands Visited by the Spaniards
before their Discovery by Captain Coo\ in 1778. (Stockholm, 1916).
THE ROUTE
The possibility of an unrecorded Spanish voyage remains, but it
is too tenuous to form the basis for more than a tantalizing
hypothesis.
Captain Cook, who discovered the Hawaiian Islands in 1778,
did not understand the navigating problems of the Spaniards on
their crossing between the Philippines and Mexico. "Here they
might have found plenty," he said "and have been within a
month's sure sail of the very part of California which the Manila
ship is obliged to make." During the same period, Martinez, the
principal Spanish figure in the Nootka Sound controversy, wrote
in his diary : "The Hawaiian Islands, which abound in everything
that is necessary, are placed in the center of the Pacific Ocean
at an almost equal distance from San Blas, Nootka, Prince Wil
liam Sound, Siberia, Japan, the Philippines, and Canton. The
voyage each way requires but a month and they are an advan
tageous stopping place, where ships sailing between this coast
(i.e., northwest North America) and Canton can take on a store
of provisions."
Those who would criticize or marvel at the failure of the
Spaniards to discover the Hawaiian Islands fail to take account
of two basic circumstances in the problem. First, as the islands
lie outside the zone of the prevailing westerlies in the north
Pacific and almost midway between the eastward and westward
lanes of the galleons, it was not to be expected that the Spaniards
would find them in the ordinary course of the Manila-Acapulco
navigation. Second, in the long Spanish epoch in the Pacific the
spirit of discovery was early superseded by a cautious business +,aversion to taking unnecessary risks. For the galleon was, after
all, a trading ship, on whose safe voyage depended the welfare
of the Spanish colony in the Philippines. Humboldt, though rec
ognizing that a chance Spanish voyage may have come upon the
Hawaiians, says in justification of the conservative policy of the
Spaniards as it concerned the return voyage to the Philippines:
"For nearly three hundred years the pilots of the Acapulco gal
leons have had the prudence always to run along the same paral
lel, for it has seemed to them all the more necessary to follow
that route, since they believed they would run onto shallows or
shoals if they should deviate from the line to either the north
or the south."
From the time the galleon left the Philippines until she made
230
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her landfall on the American side the only islands sighted were
during the stage of the voyage when she was rising to gain the
necessary altitude for her easting. Though she usually sailed far
out from Japan, a galleon occasionally passed close enough to
make out the mountains of Hondo to the west. Generally they
passed much lower through the broken series of island groups
that reach from the coastal waters of Hondo south to the region
of the Carolines. At the northern end of the scattered chain of
islets are the Shichi-to or Seven Islands, close under Japan, the
outermost of which the Spaniards knew as "Cape Sestos."
Farther out are the Bonins and the Volcanes or Volcano Islands.
Then beyond a wider gap of water begins the long cordillera
of the Ladrones, which culminate in Guam on the thirtieth paral
lel. The usual easterly course of the galleons lay somewhere be
tween Uracas of the Ladrones and the Volcanes, though con
trary winds or more serious misadventures might drive them
either higher or lower than this zone. Gemelli Careri said that
the galleons usually crossed the meridian of the Ladrones be
tween twenty and twenty-five degrees. Many crossed higher,
the Rosario in thirty degrees and thirty-nine minutes in 1706.
None of these islands, not even the larger of the Ladrones,
offered a satisfactory port of refuge to a galleon in distress. They
either rise abruptly from the sea or present an open roadstead,
where a safe anchorage or landing was possible only in good
weather. In fact, the Spaniards were more concerned with keep
ing clear of them than with making their closer acquaintance or
utilizing them as a haven. For this quarter of the sea was full
of the bitter memories of catastrophe and both crew and passen
gers breathed easier when they were out of it. When ex-Gover
nor Vargas died on the Rosario in 1690 an old chronicler wrote :
"This occurred in a place which people called Dona Maria de la
Jara, of considerable note on account of the many deaths which
have occurred in that place; for among those who have died there
are four proprietary governors, and some acting governors, and
some oidores and the Bishop of Troy. Accordingly this place is
the dread of those who sail in that trade, and especially for per
sons of so high degree."
The Spaniards called this part of the Pacific "the graveyard
of Dona Maria de la Jara," for a woman of that name who, in
desperation from her sufferings, was said to have thrown herself
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into its waters from a passing galleon. At times the name was
given to an imaginary island, and when Gemelli Careri sailed
across the Pacific in 1697 and a bird came aboard his galleon in
the vicinity of the thirty-first parallel, it was believed to have
come from "the Island of Dona Maria."
Closely connected with this forbidding corner of the Pacific
was the mystery of two islands, which the Spaniards called
by the alluring names of Rica de Oro and Rica de Plata, or
"Rich in Gold" and "Rich in Silver." Belief in the existence of
these fabulous islands began very early, but the exact origin of
the myth is unknown. It probably represented the rebirth of a
legend that had its roots deep in the fancies of ancient geog
raphers, like Pliny and Ptolemy. Nurtured by the credulity and
wishful thinking of successive generations, old tales of gold and
silver islands reappeared from time to time in new guises and
new places. Early imaginations located them in the distant East
beyond the farthest haunts of travellers of each age. As the
bounds of the unknown world receded, the locale of the elusive
fiction was pushed farther over the horizon. Marco Polo's ex
aggerated account of the wealth of Cipango or Japan revived
the dormant myth at the end of the Middle Ages. And when the
first foreign visitors to Japan in the sixteenth century dispelled
the illusions of its riches, the will-o'-the-wisp reappeared in the
barren seas to the eastward. Thus, Rica de Oro and Rica de
Plata were the natural successors of the Chryse and the Argyre
of the ancients. Meanwhile, the discoveries of Aztec and Inca
gold in Mexico and Peru had given some substance to the myth
of the Greeks. The quest of El Dorado and Mendana's search
for the Isles of Solomon in the south Pacific were only other
phases of the secular fable of the land of easy wealth.
The navigator, Francisco Gali, may first have heard the tale
of the rich islands from the Portuguese at Macao in 1582. For
Fray Andres de Aguirre, who had evidently talked with Gali
and later urged on the archbishop-viceroy, Moya y Contreras,
that Gali be sent to find the islands and to explore the California
coast, first mentioned the islands in 1584. In a letter to the vice
roy the friar, who had been with Urdaneta in 1565, said a Portu
guese ship, bound from Malacca to Japan, had run well out east
of Japan where she had found two islands with rich deposits of
gold. The islands were first called "Isles of the Armenian,"
232
THE MANILA GALLEON
from an Armenian merchant on the Portuguese ship, who was
said to have traded with the islanders. For a time the two names
were used interchangeably, but the islands early came to be
known as "Rica de Oro" and "Rica de Plata."
Gali, who had already made a voyage from Asia to the north
west coast of the American continent, died at Manila in 1585,
before he could carry out the viceroy's orders. When Pedro de
Unamuno, who succeeded to Gali's commission, crossed from
Macao to Acapulco two years later he reported no trace of the
islands and expressed his disbelief in their existence.
For a while interest in the mysterious islands grew with
every voyage of the galleons, though many old sailors shook
their heads in skepticism. Not only had they taken their places
in the lush geography of Spanish fantasy, but a sounder motive
came to spur the Spaniards in their search. If such islands really
existed in the area ascribed to them, they might serve as a con
venient way-station for the Manila Galleons in that critical stage
of their voyage.
//r~ In this connection they were closely linked with Spanish
interest in California. In fact, Rica de Oro and Rica de Plata
were responsible for delaying Spanish settlement of California
for over a century and a half. "Everything," said the Jesuit, Murillo Velarde, "was thrown into confusion by the fantastic and
pernicious islands of Rica de Oro and Rica de Plata,—a sort of
Barataria of Sancho Panza." For, after Sebastian Vizcaino had
explored the upper California coast in 1602-3 and plans had been
made to follow up his work with the occupation of Monterey
Bay, all initiative was suddenly diverted to the isles of fancy on
the other side of the Pacific.
Monterey, the viceroy, who had promoted the movement
for the occupation of upper California, had been transferred to
the southern viceroyalty at Lima. His successor, Montesclaros,
had no enthusiasm for the California project and circumstances
so played into his hands that the project was definitely aban
doned for the time. Monterey had planned to send out Vizcaino
as commander of the Acapulco galleon in 1604, with the inten
tion of having him examine further the site of the proposed
settlement on his return from the Philippines. He took this oc
casion to laud the work of Vizcaino, whom he called a skilled
and trustworthy navigator. "He will give," said Monterey, "a
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233
very good account of anything he undertakes at sea." However,
Vizcaino's removal from his command and his appointment as
alcalde mayor of Tehuantepec had already been decreed, and his
patron, the viceroy, was then awaiting a ship to carry him to Peru.
The court in Spain was evidently ignorant of some of the
manoeuvres in Mexico, for in 1606 Philip III, on the recommen
dation of the Council of the Indies and of the chief cosmographer, ordered measures to be taken to establish a post on the
California coast that could serve as a way-station for the galleons
on their eastward passage. The viceroy was commanded to en
trust the expedition to the indispensable Vizcaino, who was to
proceed by way of the Philippines, where he should receive what
ever aid he might need from the governor before returning east
ward to the American coast. Montesclaros was, meanwhile, to
raise the necessary soldiers and colonists for the peopling of the
new post, of which Vizcaino would lay the preliminary founda
tions. The royal order did not reach Mexico until April n, 1607,
long delayed by shipwreck. It was impossible to put it into
execution, as the Acapulco galleon had cleared a month before
and Vizcaino had left for Spain on the previous fleet from Vera
Cruz.
It was on this occasion that Montesclaros made the counter
proposal which postponed the occupation of California for more
than a hundred and fifty years. He declared against the estab
lishment of a post on the California coast, although conceding
that Monterey Bay might be used in lieu of anything better.
The sailors, he contended, considered their voyage virtually
ended when they sighted the coasts of California, and usually
passed Monterey Bay with all sail set for Acapulco. The real
danger, he declared, lay in the earlier stages of the voyage,—
in the seas off Japan and thereabouts. And here, the viceroy
believed, Rica de Oro and Rica de Plata were providentially situ
ated for the purpose in question. He would substitute for the
reality of California two islands whose very existence was prob
lematical.
The special committee, or junta, of war and the Indies,
which was called to consider the viceroy's proposal, endorsed the
change and recommended that, "before he does anything else,"
Luis de Velasco, reappointed to the northern viceroyalty from
Lima, should take measures for the discovery of Rica de Oro and
234
THE MANILA GALLEON
Rica dc Plata. The 20,000 pesos which were to pay the initial
costs of the establishment at Monterey were diverted to finance
the wild-goose-chase in the western Pacific. In September 1608,
the junta's endorsement was incorporated into law in a royal
order to the viceroy, to the effect that Vizcaino should be des
patched around by the Philippines to search for the two islands.
"Those who have undertaken that voyage," wrote the king, "and
have made it declare that both those islands are very well suited
to be places for refitting the ships from the Philippines, and that
it would be advantageous to find them again and colonize them
for that purpose."
.
It was three years before action was taken on the royal order.
A council was meanwhile held in Mexico, composed of Morga,
Rios Coronel, Vizcaino, and other qualified persons, who decided
on a direct voyage across the Pacific to the waters about Japan.
In his History of the Philippines Morga wrote of the galleons:
"They sail among other islands, which are seldom seen, in 38
degrees, encountering the same dangers and storms and in a
cold climate, in the neighborhood of the islands of Rica de Oro
and Rica de Plata." The plans of the council provided for the
sounding of the bays and harbors along the Japanese coasts, into
which the galleons might be driven to seek refuge, as occurred
with the San Felipe in 1596, after which Vizcaino was to return
eastward in his quest of the mysterious islands. Speaking of
Rica de Plata, Rios Coronel declared it was believed to be over
one hundred miles in circumference. Ships had sighted it, but
none had ever put in there. He called its exploration of the
"highest importance" to the welfare of the galleon line, since it
would free the ships from the necessity of turning back to Manila
to refit when they were too damaged by the storms of that area
to proceed on their way across the Pacific.
As we have seen, Vizcaino crossed to Japan from Acapulco
in 1611. He not only kept a lookout for the islands in the waters
to the northwest of the Ladrones, but, after a prolonged stay in
Japan, cruised for three months in the seas to the eastward.
After riding through a heavy storm, in which the ship lost its
mainmast, Vizcaino yielded to the complaints of his crew and
put back to port in Japan. When he left for Mexico again the
next year he renewed the fruitless search. But he had already
declared "that there were no such islands in the whole world, that
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235
he had done everything in his power, and more than the viceroy
had commanded him to do."
The Dutch also abandoned their normal caution in such
matters and became victims of the same fancy. Willem Verstegen, an agent of the East India Company, heard in Japan of
the Spaniards' efforts to find the two islands and learned the
Japanese version of the myth. In 1635 he reported this infor
mation to Van Diemen, the new governor-general at Batavia.
Though Van Diemen's curiosity and interest were aroused, it
was several years before he found an opportunity to push the
search for the islands. Then in 1639 he sent out two ships, under
Matthijs Quast and Abel Janszoon Tasman, the famous navi
gator, who three years later was to discover New Zealand and the
island named for him. In case of failure to find the two islands
the alternative objects of the voyage were the exploration of the
coasts of Korea and Tartary or the investigation of the Ladrones,
with the additional purpose of waylaying the Acapulco galleon
on her way out to Manila. Neither object was realized. The
Dutchmen wandered about the seas to the east of Japan for nearly
five months, much of it in rough weather. When they returned
to the Dutch settlement on Formosa, nearly half the original
company of ninety were dead.
Undeterred by the failure, Van Diemen despatched another
expedition to the same locality in 1643. The two ships, under
the command of Maarten Gerritszoon Vries and Hendrik Corneliszoon Schaep, sailed up the ocean side of Japan and then
struck eastward around the Shichi-tos in quest of the "Rich
Islands." During their cruise they rose to higher latitudes than
any of their predecesors, but all to no avail.
Though it was a century before the project for the discovery
of Rica de Oro and Rica de Plata was actively revived, they con
tinued to find a place on the charts of the north Pacific, and many
Spaniards persisted in their credence in the reality of the islands.
Pilots of the galleon frequently refer to them in their logs.
When the pilot of the Rosario in 1703 saw some sea birds, he
noted that they "certainly" came from Rica de Plata. In 1722 the
Sacra Familia reported that it passed within 70 leagues of Rica
de Plata. Twelve years later the pilot of the San Cristdbal laid
his course for Rica de Plata, which he believed to lie in latitude
thirty degrees and three minutes and longitude thirty-four de
236
THE MANILA GALLEON
grees and four minutes east of Cape Espiritu Santo. Gemelli
Careri, who passed through the area of their problematical loca
tion in 1697, heard from those on board stories of their existence.
When in thirty-one degrees fifty-eight minutes he made the fol
lowing observation: "We thought ourselves about the latitude of
an Imaginary Island, reported to be rich in Gold, and placed
in the Sea Charts as 32 degrees wanting some few minutes,
whereas it is certain no Body ever saw any such Island." When a
bird settled on the ship in latitude thirty-four degrees seven
minutes, he wrote in his diary: "They concluded it certainly came
from Rica de Plata, an Island 30 leagues distant southward.
The Pilots suppose the Islands Rica de Oro and Rica de Plata,
with others about them, to be the Islands of Solomon, but I am
of opinion these are imaginary Islands." The next day an entry
reads: "We sail'd E. for fear of running upon Rica de Plata, and
found the lat. but 33 deg. 30 min." It was the fourth of October
and "very cold." The Italian traveller recounts one of the tales
responsible for the fame of the islands' riches. "A Galleon sailing
from Manila for New Spain," he says, "was drove by Tempest
upon an Island. The Storm having remov'd and thrown away
all the Earth about the Hearth, or Furnace in the Cook-Room,
they took some from the Island to put in the place of it. When
the Galleon came to Acapulco, this Earth being remov'd they
found under it a Mass of Gold, which the violent Heat had
melted and separated from the Earth. The Commander, admir
ing at this unexpected Accident, acquainted the Viceroy of
Mexico with it, and he the King, who order'd a Squadron to be
fitted out to find these islands, the Pilot having taken their lati
tude."
The question was reopened in 1730, when a royal order di
rected the governor to take measures for discovering and occupy
ing the islands. It was four years later when the governor in
formed the king that a private citizen of Manila, General Pedro
Gonzalez de Rivero Quixano, Marquis of Monte Castro and
Llanohermosa, had offered to fit out and finance the necessary
expedition, on condition that he were granted permission to lade
a ship with 300,000 pesos worth of goods and to sell them in
Mexico without payment of the regular duties. The nobleman's
offer was not given favorable consideration at court, and in 1738
the king asked the governor to inform him regarding the cost of
finding the islands and the possible value of their discovery.
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237
On receipt of the order the most experienced pilots of the
galleon line were consulted as to their knowledge of the islands
and their opinion of their potential usefulness. Of the pilots,
Heinrich Hermann, a German, declared the need for such a waystation was as acute as it had been in 1606, when the problem of
their discovery was first considered seriously. He said that the
galleons were accustomed to pass to the right of Rica de Oro and
Rica de Plata. Geronimo Monteiro, the Portuguese, was very
precise in his testimony and placed Rica de Oro in latitude
twenty-nine degrees, forty-five minutes and 600 leagues to the
northeast of Cape Espiritu Santo. Rica de Plata he located in
thirty-three degrees, thirty-six minutes and 760 leagues from the
Embocadero. He said that the galleons, which usually crossed
between thirty-six degrees and thirty-seven degrees, generally
sailed between the islands. Pierre Laborde, a Frenchman, had
marked the location of the islands on his sailing charts in their
relation to the volcanic island of San Agustin in twenty-nine de
grees, twenty-five minutes. He testified that Rica de Oro lay
342 French leagues to the northeast of San Agustin in twentynine degrees, twenty-five minutes and that Rica de Plata was
situated 420 leagues from San Agustin and in latitude thirtytwo degrees, fifty minutes. Manuel Galvez, the only Spaniard
of the four pilots, who had made four crossings to Acapulco,
affirmed that the galleons always passed between the two
islands. He also emphasized the need for such a port of refuge
as either of them would afford in this stage of the voyage.
When Governor de la Torre reported to the king in July
1740, it was to discourage any further search for the islands
which had intrigued so many generations. He estimated the
cost of an exploring expedition at 90,000 pesos, but recommended
against the expenditure. The skeptical governor adduced the
lack of any agreement as to the location of the islands. "The
situation of these islands has no fixed point!" he wrote. "Some
place them at a higher point and others at a lower latitude, but
so far no one has ever seen them. Everybody is ignorant of
their size and as to whether they are inhabited or unpopulated."5
The royal decision, rendered in 1741, runs as follows: "From
all the information received, there appears no reasonable encour5 Some modern geographers have perpetuated the legend of the islands. For
example, Rica de Oro is shown in longitude 140 degrees east of Greenwich and lati
tude 29 degrees north on the map of Oceania, in J. G. Bartholomew, The advanced
atlas of physical and political geography, London, 1917.
THE MANILA GALLEON
agement to attempt the aforesaid discovery; since in so long a
time as from the year 1606, in which notice was received of these
islands, to the present hour, the galleons have navigated this
passage without being under the necessity of seeking them;
moreover, their situation is not ascertained, for some report them
to lie in more degrees than others; neither is their size known,
nor the kind of people inhabiting them, nor even whether they
are inhabited or not; and the means which the Marquis of Monte
Castro has proposed for making this discovery appear imprac
ticable. It is therefore ordered, that no alteration shall be made
from the route by which the galleons have annually sailed to
New Spain."
Though the question was officially closed, in 1768 Governor
Anda wrote: "It is a well known fact at Manila that many pilots
on the way to Acapulco have frequently seen signs of land, but
as they have a fixed destination, they have never exerted them
selves to investigate a question so important to such a prolonged
navigation, nor have the governors done anything to further its
exploration. The matter seems to me to merit serious attention
on account of the great advantage and utility which the discov
ery would produce, both because it would furnish a way-station
for the galleons, and also because in those regions it would not
be strange if land were found that would be useful for other pur
poses."
To resume the various stages of the eastward route, the pas
sage across "the gulf," as the Spaniards called the open Pacific,
offered few serious problems of navigation. Though "the longest
from land to land on our globe," the crossing was fairly depend
able and much safer than the first stages of the voyage. "The
ship," said Antonio de Morga, "can run free in any weather."
Long before the galleons were in touch with the American coast
they encountered indications on the surface of the sea of its pres
ence ahead. The first of these senas or signs of land were usually
met with several hundred miles out, and from thence to the
proximity of the California coast there was a fairly regular suc
cession of them. Due to the usual inaccuracies in the reckoning
of longitude, the senas were eagerly looked for in the later stages
of the crossing, as they provided the pilot with a means of check
ing up his approximate position, which was calculated by dead
reckoning. Also their discovery was the occasion for general
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239
rejoicing on board among the passengers, wearied by the trials
of the long voyage.
The first senas encountered were the fungous aguas malas;
then at about a hundred leagues from shore, the "frolicsome"
perrillos, or seals, "with Head and Ears like a Dog and a Tail like
that they paint the Mermaids with"; next kelp, or porras, which
the Spaniards described as a yellowish onion-like herb, with long
roots floating on the surface of the water; and finally, close in
to shore, the balsas, or "rafts," which were large bunches of
matted grass. Morga describes the aguas malas as being "large
as the head, round and violet colored, with a crest in the middle
like a lateen sail, which are called caravalas [caravels]." In his
pilot's guide Cabrera Bueno gives the color of the porras as green
or red, and says their roots were from four to six feet long.
Padre Cubero Sebastian, who likens them to beets, remarks as
to their origin: "They are carried down to the sea by those great
rivers, that rise in that unknown part of New Spain, which lies
between thirty-eight and forty degrees." Cubero says of the
balsas: "As we approach the land these masses of leaves and roots
are found in quantities. Certain fish, which the sailors call
lobillos [little wolves] play on top of them like monkeys and
then plunge under the water. I saw them with my own eyes."
There were two courses open to the galleons on the discovery
of the senas. One was to continue directly ahead until land was
sighted before changing direction; the alternative was to veer to
the southeast and make land in the region of Lower California.
The former was the usual procedure in the early history of the
line, as the other route was generally followed in the eighteenth
century. However, there was no uniformity as to the exact
course during either period. A convenient and customary point
for demarcation in early times was the headland of Cape Men
docino, as Espiritu Santo on Samar and San Lucas on Lower
California were similar landmarks at other points on the route.
"Then the coast is discovered," says Morga, "and it is very high
and clear land. Without losing sight of land, the ship coasts
along it with NW, NNW, and N winds, which generally pre
vail on the coast, blowing by day toward the land and by night
toward the sea again."
When the galleons followed the upper California coast they
kept no nearer to it than was necessary to guide their course,
240
THE MANILA GALLEON
that is, to make out the more prominent landmarks. Moreover,
after the long and perilous crossing from the Philippines pilots
and commanders were averse to taking the further risks involved
in the close reconnaissance of a rugged and forbidding coast.
Commenting on their anxiety to keep clear of the coast, Diego
de Bobadilla wrote in 1640: "The Captain changed his course to
the south, to avoid getting caught in the land, or in some gulf,
whence he would have a hard time to get out." Writing a cen
tury later, the author of Lord Anson's Voyage remarked: "As
there are many islands and some shoals adjacent to California
the extreme caution of the Spanish navigators makes them very
apprehensive of being engaged with the land." A further deter
rent to familiarity with the northern coast was the dense pall of
fog that often hung over the land, concealing possible reefs and
headlands, and which has accounted for many shipwrecks in
later times. The loss of Cermenho's San Agusttn near Point
Reyes in 1595 and the narrow escape of the Espiritu Santo and
Jesus Maria from destruction near Cape Mendocino in 1604 were
effective reminders of this menace of the upper coast.
For the ships that chose this route Cabrera Bueno gives the
points of demarcation, which are practically in the reverse order
of Vizcaino's derrotero of 1602. Turning SE by E from off Cape
Mendocino, the next prominent landmark was Point Reyes, out
side the sheltered harbor of Drake's Bay. They were directed
not to follow the bend of the coast at this point, but to stand out
a little to sea, in order to keep clear of the Farallones, which lie
somewhat to the east of south. "The Philippine ship," wrote
Viceroy Branciforte to Diego de Gardoqui in 1796, "sails with
confidence as soon as she sights the Farallones off the port of
San Francisco in the Californias." Some thirty leagues south
from Point Reyes the galleons sailed well out from the broad
sweep of Monterey Bay, sighting the familiar Point Pinos.
Thence the course lay down the barren coast by Point Concep
tion and through the Santa Barbara Channel to the Lower Cali
fornia coast.
As the pilots became more familiar with the waters off Cali
fornia it became customary for them to steer southeast from some
point in the zone of the senas. Thus, in the log of the San Pedro
for October 22, 1776, an entry reads: "We passed a green porra,
and orders were given to steer ESE." The galleon was then
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241
reckoned to be in latitude thirty-one degrees, forty-two minutes
and longitude one hundred thirty-eight degrees, thirty-five min
utes west of Greenwich.
When this course was followed the galleons often made their
landfall at one of the three islands, Cenizas, now San Martin;
Guadalupe; or Cerros, or Cedros, all of which lie off the coast
of the peninsula. In one of the three courses which he describes
Cabrera Bueno gives. the following demarcation for a route in
volving a landfall in thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes: thence
around Point Concepcion and through the Santa Barbara Chan
nel, SE by S along about 75 leagues of wooded coast, where an
extra spar could be cut in case of need, to make land again at
the island of Guadalupe. The San Antonio de Padua in 1679
sighted land in thirty-six degrees, twenty-nine minutes, "some
very high, whitish, and treeless mountains." The Rosario made
her landfall in 1702 at Point Concepcion, and the Covadonga in
1731 in thirty-six degrees, twenty minutes. From the point of
lower California the galleon struck across the mouth of the
Gulf to the neighborhood of Cape Corrientes and coasted along
thence to Acapulco. She generally hove to off some port along
the Guadalajara coast, usually at Navidad, from where she sent
off her papers by a special courier to the capital. She also took
on fresh water and provisions, and left some of her sick at one
of these ports or higher up the coast at the Jesuit mission of San
Josef del Cabo on the peninsula. It was only after the district
of the Audiencia of Guadalajara had been well settled that these
stops became at all customary. Morga gives as the itinerary from
Cape San Lucas in the early seventeenth century: "One traverses
the eighty leagues intervening to the islands of Las Marias and
Cape Corrientes, which is on the other side of California in Val
de Banderas, and the province of Chametla. Thence one passes
the coast of Colima, Zacatula, Los Motines, and Zihuatanejo, and
enters the port of Acapulco without having made a way-station
or touched land from the channel of Capul in the Philippines
throughout the voyage."
The intimate connection between the Manila Galleon and
the early history of California has been pointed out above in
relation to the problem of Rica de Oro and Rica de Plata.
Voyages from the west, made by Gali, Unamuno, and Cermenho
and those from the south made by Cabrillo-Ferrelo and Vizcaino
242
THE MANILA GALLEON
had familiarized the Spaniards with the coast at least as high as
Cape Mendocino. The galleons had very probably contributed
considerable accidental and unrecorded knowledge of the coast,
gained by casual observation and in spite of the pilots' aversion
to sailing too close to landward.
In the interval between the suspension of the California de
sign and its resumption 160 years later the interest shifted to
lower California, in which may be included the harbor of San
Diego. This region had been better known from early times than
was the northwest coast. Attention was again drawn to it by Fray
Antonio de la Ascension, who had accompanied Vizcaino on his
northern expedition. In June 1609, he recommended to the king
the establishment of a settlement on the Bay of San Bernabe
by Cape San Lucas, where the galleons could put in—"leaving
Monterey, which is to be populated." The proposal was re
viewed by the Council of the Indies, and then submitted to the
examination of Viceroy Velasco. However, this project bore
no immediate results, though it probably furnished the initial
impulse for the numerous expeditions which were despatched
to the region of lower California during the seventeenth cen
tury. Other motives were at work in these movements, too,
than the need for a way-station for the galleons. There were
lucrative pearl fishing grounds in those waters. The gathering
of the pichilingues, or foreign privateers and pirates, in that
vicinity from Cavendish and Speilbergen to the later irruptions of
the buccaneers exposed a very vulnerable outwork of New Spain
to occupation and the Philippine commerce to attacks. In 1712
Woodes Rogers said of the Spanish policy towards Lower Cali
fornia: "They are jealous to keep what they have; and though
they make no Use of their Land, might be afraid of Rivals."
Also, there was a geographical interest in the question of whether
California was island or peninsula and in the associated prob
lems of Anian and Quivira. And finally the northward mis
sionary advance in New Spain was about to reach the field of
lower California, especially the Jesuit phase of this movement.
These objects, singly or conjointly, formed the impulse for the
expeditions of those Spaniards of the period, who undertook
voyages to the region of the Gulf of California. But little came
of all this for the galleons. It was long after 1700 before they
could find a refuge on the southern coast.
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243
With the Bourbons there came a new interest in California.
In 1703, and again in July 1708, Philip V ordered the establish
ment of a post on the coast, preferably near Cape San Lucas, but
the colonial officials failed to carry out the purpose of the royal
decree. Then, in 1719, on the advice of Julio de Oliban, a mem
ber of the Audiencia of Guadalajara, the king proposed the
founding of a settlement on San Diego Bay. This port is de
scribed as "capacious, pleasant, and well-situated," and says the
king, it should be settled "before the enemies of my crown
occupy it." For the immediate impetus of the proposal came
from fears of the intentions of the English, who had frequented
that coast for the past several years. The settlement of either
San Diego or Monterey would, declared the king, preserve the
coast from temporary depredations or more serious dangers from
foreigners. It was suggested to Viceroy Valero that the new
presidio could be garrisoned with idlers from Mexico, an ap
parently inexhaustible source of colonists. But this project, too,
became a dead letter when it reached New Spain, and San
Diego was not settled until 1769, after another half-century
of delay.
Except for the urgings of the indefatigable Jesuit, Padre
Kino, who was pushing the frontier of New Spain landwards
up the east coast of the gulf and towards upper California, the
impulse for the occupation of lower California during the next
few years came from the Philippines, where the lack of such
an establishment was keenest felt. The galleons of 1732 carried
orders to unite in San Diego Bay and though they approached
its entrance, they were prevented by bad weather from going
in. The next year Governor Valdes ordered the galleons to put
in at Magdalena Bay, in case their commanders considered it
advisable, and in 1734 he directed Jose Bermudez and Geronimo
Monteiro, commanders of the outgoing galleons, to reconnoiter
the coast of lower California for a site for a way-station.
Monteiro put in at the Bay of San Bernabe, where the Jesuits had
founded the mission of San Josef del Cabo four years before.
He had but one day's supply of water left and scarcely any pro
visions, while several were sick with beri-beri, "whose only
remedy is to go ashore." There were taken onto the galleon
100 head of sheep and hogs, 40 head of cattle, numerous gamebirds, fruits, and vegetables, "and other gifts." Those on board
THE MANILA GALLEON
were so revived that at Navidad, down the coast on the other
side of the gulf, people remarked: "It is not possible that these
men are China sailors, because we are accustomed to see in those
of so difficult a navigation the aspect of dead men or of mortified
penitents." The following year the Encarnacion stopped at the
Cape mission in nearly as great distress as the galleon of 1734.
However, the Jesuit station had meanwhile been blotted out in
an Indian rising, in which the missionaries in charge were
murdered. The party sent ashore from the galleon, ignorant
of the fate of the Jesuits, were set upon by the revolted Indians
and thirteen of the Spaniards killed. The mission was soon
reestablished and the galleons called there with considerable
regularity until the suppression of the Society in 1767.
As always, some of the most active advocates of the settle
ment of upper California continued to be Spanish officials in
the Philippines. Thus, in 1748, Pedro Calderon Ennquez, then
a member of the audiencia at Manila, had urgently advised the
king to order the occupation of Monterey. Twenty years later
he proposed to Arriaga, Minister of the Indies, the abolition of
the post on Guam and the diversion of the expenses for its main
tenance—about 32,000 pesos a year—to the foundation of a post
on the California coast.
/The successful and definitive effort in 1769 for the occupa
tion of upper California was the result of a composite of forces.
The first of these was the two-century-old need for a galleon
station and the newest was the fear of Russian and English
aggressions on the northern coasts. Not only had the Russians
crossed to the American mainland from Siberia by 1741, but
an ominous advance southward from Alaska did not portend
well for Spain's possessions in that direction. And between
1764-69 the expeditions of Byron, Wallis-Carteret, and Bougain
ville appeared in the Pacific, while in the latter year Cook
rounded Cape Horn and crossed the South Sea to New Zealand
and Australia. The Spaniards saw in these irruptions into the
Pacific more than astronomical or geographical curiosity and
dreaded above all the colonial ambitions of England, whose
hold on the Philippines in 1762 had for a moment brought her
to the edge of the Pacific. Spaniards had long realized the
strategic value of the Philippines as a bulwark for the defense
of the American coasts against aggressions from the west. Gov
THE ROUTE
245
crnor Anda warned the Spanish government in 1768 that the
abandonment of the Philippines would result in the loss of
Spain's American empire.
In the face of all this it became increasingly clear to the
Spaniards that actual possession alone would insure to them
what they would keep. No papal bulls or sweeping claims
would longer avail. Further, the final occupation of California
would be rendered easier by the progress of the mission field
toward the northwest through the work of such men as Kino,
and later of Serra. There was no longer the wide gap between
the inhabited parts of New Spain and the upper California coast,
and thus entire reliance did not have to be placed upon the sea
route as an avenue to the north. The policy of Spain was also
now under different guidance than it had had under the Hapsburgs. It was directed by the enlightened Charles III and by
a body of ministers and colonial officials as advanced as the
monarch. Among these was the energetic and masterly Jose
de Galvez, who, as visitor-general of New Spain in the years
between 1765 and 1771, not only saw the pressing necessity of
consummating the long-delayed occupation of upper California,
but his was the driving will that put it into execution. A com
bined missionary and military entrada into California in 1769
laid the foundations of presidios and missions. And not only
were Spaniards in actual possession of Monterey at last, but the
superior harbor of San Francisco was discovered. By 1776 San
Diego, Monterey and San Francisco, with a connecting line of
missions, had been founded. Either of the ports in question
would make a suitable port-of-call for the galleons.
On June 22, 1773, the Council of the Indies decreed that the
galleons should put in at Monterey, both for their own good
and for the welfare of the colony, and on December 14 a royal
order was issued to the same effect. But though a fine of 4,000
pesos was imposed on the commander of the galleon >for failure
to stop, the most of them preferred to continue on their way and
risk the possibility of having to pay the fine rather than endure
the delay. The governors of the Philippines, save in the case of
Basco y Vergas, were furthermore lenient in holding the gal
leon 1 officers to account. However, in 1795 the king himself
withdrew his previous order. At that time the Marques de
Baxamar declared that it was neither to the advantage of the
246
THE MANILA GALLEON
colony or vessel that the nao should call at a California port.
Against Monterey he alleged that the harbor was too shallow
for the galleon to tie up there, though the viceroy, Revillagigedo,
had advised the king in 1790 that the risks involved in calling
at Monterey were negligible. The ordinary route of the galleons
was at this period far out from the upper California coast and
they must accordingly leave their course to reach San Francisco
or Monterey. The ban placed by Viceroy Bucarely in 1773 on
trading between the galleon and the colonists—whether laymen or
priests—removed one of the main incentives for stopping. Felipe
de Neve, governor of the new province, even prohibited the
missionaries from going aboard the galleons, while Gonzalez,
commandant at Monterey, was arrested for trading with them.
In view of the potentialities of the region, such an illiberal pro
hibition greatly restricted the economic growth of the colony,
not only by depriving it of an outlet for its productions, but
of an excellent source of supplies in the Philippines.
As it was, but few galleons put in at the California ports.
The first was the San Jose, which called at Monterey in 1779.
In 1784 Basco y Vargas gave the San Felipe (Bruno de Heceta,
Commander, and Antonio Maurelle, Pilot) specific orders to
stop at San Francisco or Monterey. The San Felipe reached
Monterey October 10 and remained there until November 7
before proceeding for Acapulco, which she reached on Decem
ber 11. The San Jose" stopped again the next year, storm-wracked
and pest-ridden, but in 1786 the San Andrts passed by, although
she lost thirty-six with scurvy and left forty-five more at San
Blas to convalesce. In 1795 two galleons put in at Monterey,
while two years later one put in at Monterey and another at
Santa Barbara.
The westward route from Acapulco to the Philippines was
as direct and as easy of navigation as that in the opposite direc
tion was circuitous and difficult. In order to fall in with the
trades the galleon dropped from Acapulco, in latitude fifteen
degrees, fifty-one minutes, with a NW breeze, to somewhere
between the tenth and the fourteenth parallel. In this zone
she sailed constantly before the wind until she approached the
vicinity of the Ladrones, when she gradually rose to above
thirteen degrees, in order to fall in with the island of Guam or
of Saipan. Continued favorable winds carried her on rapidly
THE ROUTE
247
to the Embocadero at the entrance of the Philippines, unless
she should reach this area after the southwest monsoon had set
in, in which case she might have considerable difficulty in get
ting into the islands. "They always run in a strait Line," said
Gemelli Careri, "in a smooth Sea (whence this is called the
Pacific Ocean by the Spaniards) as if they were in a Canal,
without any Roughness of Water; so that they come in 60 or
at furthest 65 Days to the Marian Islands [Ladrones], and
thence in 15 or 20 to the Philippines." "Nothing interrupts the
serenity of the sky in these regions," wrote Humboldt of the
long course to the Ladrones. So certain were the galleons of
favorable weather in these latitudes that when hostilities broke
out between Spain and England during the War of American
Independence, the pilot, Francisco Maurelle, carried the news
from Mexico to Manila in a ship's yawl.
Except for the diversion northward from the direct course
to the Ladrones, this was substantially the route followed across
the Pacific in 1527 by Alvaro de Saavedra and in 1542 by
Villalobos. Legaspi followed it on the way to the Philippines,
and the instructions drawn up by Urdaneta, his navigator, were
to serve as a guide for the galleons throughout the duration of
the line.
Though the westward-bound galleons passed among the
lower Ladrones from the beginning, it was not until the latter
half of the seventeenth century that it became customary for
them to stop at Guam on the way out to the Philippines. The
group was discovered by Magellan, who noted the thieving
proclivities of their inhabitants, that were responsible for the
name commonly applied to them by the Spaniards. Sometimes
they were called the Islas de las Velas Latinas, or Islands of
Lateen Sails, and after their occupation they were rechristened
the Marianas, in honor of the queen whose intercession was
responsible for the founding of the mission on Guam.
They were formally claimed for Spain by Legaspi, but no
attempt was made to take possession of them for another cen
tury. Then a Jesuit mission was established on Guam in 1668,
and after a trying period of adjustment between friars and
natives, Antonio de Saravia was sent to the islands as royal gov
ernor in 1681. A fort was built and a garrison of between
twenty and eighty men was henceforth stationed on Guam.
248
THE MANILA GALLEON
A royal order of June 1668 required the Acapulco galleons
to put in at Guam. To prevent the galleon from passing
through the Ladrones in the darkness it was required that dur
ing June fires should be kept burning all night on the highest
points of Guam and Rota. As the water in front of the settle
ment on Guam was too shallow to permit ships of their draught
from coming in close to shore they lay to outside and sent ashore
the supplies for the following year. Fresh fruit and other pro
visions were also brought out by the natives, who, however, were
not permitted on board on account of their predatory habits.
After an exchange of courtesies and news between the gov
ernor and the commander, the galleon was soon on her way
to the westward. Sometimes she was forced to sea by a sudden
wind while lying in the roadstead, occasionally leaving her boat
behind her. Driven out to sea by a gale, the Acapulco galleon
of 1674 went on to Manila without her captain, who had gone
ashore in the ship's boat.
The maintenance of the establishment on the Ladrones cost
the crown about 34,000 pesos a year, which was sent out from
Mexico as the situado and socorro, or "subsidy and relief." Of
this the governor drew 3,000 pesos. This lonely official enjoyed
the freedom from superior control which his isolation permitted,
and it is told of one governor that, after galleons had put in
at Guam for two years in succession with orders and instruc
tions from the king, he planned to remove his residence to
another island in order to be freer from the surveillance of the
crown. Connections with the outside world remained as in
frequent until the end of the Spanish regime over two hundred
years later, and it is said that when an American warship ap
peared in the roadstead at Agana on Guam in 1898 and began
firing, the governor hastily sent out to the ship to request powder
to return the "salute."
The Acapulco galleons of 1699 and 1700 carried secret in
structions from Governor Cruzat y Gongora to change their
course 150 leagues before reaching the Ladrones and steer a
direct course for the Catanduanes. The first of these galleons,
the San Francisco Xavier, after sighting the Catanduanes, was
unable to enter the strait, and was forced to go around Cape
Engano and the northern end of the Philippines. The com
mander and pilots of the Rosario, the galleon of the next year,
THE ROUTE
decided to hold to the customary course, though in violation of
orders. She called at the Ladrones, as usual, but put into
Palapag on the eastern side of Luzon instead of entering the
Embocadero and proceeding up the straits to Manila. Four
years later the king ordered Governor Zabalburu that hence
forth the regular course of the westbound galleons should never
be altered unless after consultation with the principal authorities
on navigation at Manila or temporary consideration of military
policy should dictate. Thus, in 1616 Viceroy Guadalcazar had
ordered the outgoing galleon to change her course in view of
the reported presence of Dutch ships about the Embocadero.
The route which he directed the galleon to follow was to steer
NW from the twelfth parallel in the region of the Barbudos
archipelago, so as to pass through the Ladrones in eighteen de
grees latitude and thence to round Cape Bojeador and nothern
Luzon.
In the navigation of the galleons the way of the innovator
was hard. Andres de Medina, a Peruvian geographer and
student of nautical affairs, wrote: "It is notorious that for the
galleons to come and go between the Philippines and New
Spain there are routes that are shorter and more certain and
secure than those which have been followed in the past." As
commander of the Acapulco galleon, San Jos6, in 1663, Medina
attempted to put his theories into practice by leaving the tradi
tional track across the Pacific and searching for the superior
route which he believed to exist. However, when his intentions
became apparent he was removed from his post by Salcedo, the
new governor, who was on his way out to the Philippines. Later,
in justifying his action to the king, Salcedo wrote: "As soon
as he was out at sea, in violation of the instructions which had
been given to him in Mexico to hold the usual course, and
carried away by his own fancy, he wished to make innovations
and with this object in view he ordered the pilot to seek out
routes that were new, unknown, and unaccustomed." The gov
ernor added sarcastically of the curious Medina: "He everywhere
claims to be considered as the greatest argonaut in his pro
fession."
The galleons were early familiar with the myriad atolls
of the Micronesian archipelagoes, particularly of the Marshalls,
but the sight of these islets was only a pleasing incident of the
250
THE MANILA GALLEON
voyage and had no nautical significance to those who were re
sponsible for the line and its routine operation. The northern
rim of the Carolines was also known to the Spaniards, and in
1686 a galleon which had gone to a lower latitude than usual
sighted the Palaos or Pelew group to the east of Mindanao.
>>>>>>>>.>>>>>>>>>- ® <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
CHAPTER 7
THE VOYAGE
Eastbound
AN order of the king to Governor Fajardo in 1620 required
l that the galleons leave Manila by the last day of June, "since
the good success of the voyage largely consists in this." In 1773
the time for sailing was put forward to the first ten days of July.
It was believed that this would generally ensure the galleon's
reaching Acapulco by the end of the year. The same order fixed
the twenty-fifth of March as the dead-line for sailing from
Acapulco.
These royal edicts had little effect on actual practice at
Manila. The galleons might clear from Cavite at any time be
tween the first of May and late in September, though the usual
date was between the middle of June and the middle of July.
The San Juan, one of the first two galleons sent from Manila—
the first were despatched from Cebu—sailed on August 13, 1572;
the San Martin, on June 28, 1586; the San Diego, on May 1, 1648;
the San Antonio de Padua, on June 24, 1679; the Rosario, on July
6, 1706; the Nuestra Senora de Guia, on July 20, 1728; the
Santisima Trinidad, on July 22, 1755; and the San Andrés, on
July 14, 1787. In early times it was the ambition of pilots to get
their ships out to sea on either St. John's Day (June 24th) or St.
Peter's Day (June 29th), but it was seldom possible to hold to
such a schedule. "They leave the bay and port of Cavite," says
Morga, "at the first setting-in of the monsoon, by the twentieth
of June or later." Governor Basco y Vargas informed Galvez,
the Supreme Minister, in 1783, that, although they should sail
by the middle of May, they were usually delayed until June, or
even July, waiting for cargo from China.
June was the most favorable month for encountering the
winds that would carry the ship down to the Embocadero, where
she could catch the opportune monsoon for the north. Another
consideration that determined the proper season for sailing was
1s 1
252
THE MANILA GALLEON
the probability of hurricanes or baguios on the way up into the
north Pacific. This chance increased rapidly from July onward
and reached its maximum in September. A galleon which left
Manila after the middle of July was practically certain of running
into rough weather within the next three months of her voyage.
Frequent arribadas or returns to port and even more fatal con
sequences came of these delayed departures from Manila. To be
entirely safe she must have already turned eastward above the
Ladrones before the typhoons infested this first stage of her
course.
"The monsoons," said Hernando de los Rios Coronel, "gen
erally set in some time in June, and if they catch the ship in
port she cannot sail until the first monsoon passes, that is, for
fifteen days to a month. If she is caught outside during this
weather she can sail until she reaches the region and altitude
where she finds the usual winds with which to make the rest of
her voyage with ease. Consequently, she will have passed Japan,
where all the difficulties of the voyage lie, in good weather. If
the aforesaid monsoon ceases and the ship is caught inside the
bay, as a general thing, the brisa begins to blow, so that she is
detained. Thus, it is September or October when she reaches
the waters east of Japan, where storms are then in season."
The delays in sailing were due to several causes: the dilatoriness of those in charge of the preparations for the despatch
of the galleon; the necessity for awaiting the return of the
Acapulco galleon, with the proceeds of the previous year's sales;
and the tardy arrival of vessels from China or other ports, whose
cargoes were to go on the nao. The early reappearance of con
trary winds or the presence of enemies in the course might hold
the galleon in port until a more favorable occasion, perhaps until
the next year. Those governors who, like Salcedo, in spite of
these obstacles, always sent out the galleons on time were held
in high esteem in the islands.
The most important events of the year at Manila were the
departure and the arrival of the galleon. She carried in her hold
the material hopes of the colony. On her passenger list were
those citizens who were returning to America or to Spain to live
on the riches which the galleons of former years had brought
them, and on the incoming nao others came out to try their
fortune in the same lucrative traffic.
THE VOYAGE
253
On the day when the galleon cleared from Cavite the final
ceremonies and official formalities were performed. From her
anchorage under the headland of Cavite she was brought up the
bay as close to the walled city as her draught allowed. Here
the governor consigned the ship's papers and the royal ensign
to her officers and delivered over the galleon to her commander.
From the church of Santo Tomas a procession of chanting friars
carried the effigy of the virgin-patroness of the galleon along the
walls and then to a salvo of seven guns delivered it on board.
Prayers were offered up in all the churches of Manila for a happy
voyage, while the archbishop blessed the galleon from the ram
parts as her sails filled and she moved heavily away towards
Mariveles and the open sea.
In all the seas there was no line of navigation so difficult,
so attended with perils and hardships, as that of the Manila
Galleons. "The Voyage from the Philippine Islands to America,
may be call'd the longest and most dreadful of any in the World,"
said the much-traveled Gemelli Careri in the latter seventeenth
century, "as well because of the vast Ocean to be cross'd, being
almost the one half of the Terraqueous Globe, with the Wind
always a-head; as for the terrible Tempests that happen there,
one upon the back of another, and for the desperate Diseases
that seize People, in 7 or 8 Months, lying at Sea sometimes near
the Line, sometimes cold, sometimes temperate, and sometimes
hot, which is enough to Destroy a Man of Steel, much more Flesh
and Blood, which at Sea had but indifferent Food." Padre
Casimiro Diaz, the historian, called it "the longest, most tedious,
and most dangerous voyage in all the seas." To Grau y Monfalcon it was "that navigation, so remote, so long, so painful and
full of perils." Every crossing was liable to be accompanied by
all the dread extremities of an early voyage of discovery,—
"hunger, thirst, sickness, cold, continual watching, and other
sufferings, besides the terrible shocks from side to side caused by
the furious beating of the waves." Even with halcyon seas and
skies the easterly passage would scarcely have been a pleasure
journey. Though the winds might be propitious enough, faulty
construction of the galleon, and as faulty sailing of her, over
crowding and a criminal improvidence in the matter of supplies
often furnished the conditions necessary for a disastrous voyage.
However, no ordinary provision for comfort or safety could en
254
THE MANILA GALLEON
sure against the terrible consequences of the inordinate lengthen
ing of the voyage by adverse weather. Governor Obando, who
tried to institute many reforms in the management of the com
merce, said : "in no part of the world have ships been sailed with
so many dangers or with such boldness and disorder in their
navigation."
"These vessels," said Antonio de Morga, "make the voyage
from the Philippines to New Spain with great difficulty and
danger, for the course is a long one and there are many storms
and various temperatures." Morga himself had experienced the
vicissitudes of weather in the north Pacific. In 1604 he crossed
to Mexico in the Espiritu Santo, which, with its consort, the
Jestis Maria, was under the command of Lope de Ulloa. The
galleons left Cavite on the nth of July, but ran into rough
weather on their way out of the bay. The Espiritu Santo was
blown up onto a wide shoal off the Pampanga coast of Luzon,
where she was left stranded three miles from deep water. Chinese
junks were hurriedly brought out from Manila, cables were
lashed to the galleon and at high tide she was pulled across the
shallows and out into the channel. On the 10th of November
she was struck by a SSW gale within sight of Cape Mendocino
on the California coast. The storm lasted for twelve days, during
which the galleon was almost driven ashore several times. She
lost nearly all her rigging and on the 22nd was twice struck by
lightning. The first bolt killed three men and injured eight
others, and sixteen were severely stunned by the second, "some
of whom were speechless and unconscious all that day." The
ship reached Acapulco nearly two months later with her upper
works badly damaged and her crew worn out by their sufferings.
In spite of their anxiety to secure favorable winds the gal
leons generally ran into severe storms. They were liable to
encounter these gales at any stage of the passage from the boca
of Mariveles to far out beyond the Ladrones, and even, as in the
case of Morga's voyage, off the upper coast of California. "The
galleons have an absolute certainty of meeting hurricanes in those
months," said Philip Thompson, the Englishman, who crossed
the Pacific several times as pilot of the galleons. He writes of
the "eternally doubtful and dangerous navigation in these seas."
Typhoons might be expected during July, August, and Septem
ber, and sweeping northwestward out of the Pacific these storms
THE VOYAGE
255
were liable to strike the galleons after they had turned north
eastward from the Embocadero. Some of the tempests which
the ships encountered in higher latitudes were prolongations of
these great cyclonic movements. A galleon of 1601 survived a
series of eighteen terrific storms, and a few years later the San
Andres rode through eleven. Nearly all on board had given up
hope, but the ship "miraculously" made her voyage through the
courage of the pilot, Tozal, and of a heroic friar, Esteban Carrillo.
Near the last of February 1746, the Santo Domingo limped into
Matanchel harbor on the coast of New Spain. She had lived
through sixteen storms and was in a terrible condition from leaks
and shattered upper-works.
The terror that prevailed on the galleon during these storms
can be easily imagined. Cubero Sebastian tells of a storm that
lasted eighty hours. All, "even the pilot," confessed to the priest,
who finally calmed the storm by throwing a relic into the sea!
For days afterwards, he said, people trembled from terror as they
moved about the ship. "This voyage has always been dangerous
and dreadful," wrote Gemelli Careri; and one entry in his record
reads : "We all watch'd day and night, the Danger was so great ;
for the Waves broke upon the Galleon, and beat terribly upon its
Sides.—There was no Standing or Sitting in a place, but we were
tossed from side to side." During a storm a huge sea carried
fourteen sailors off a galleon of 1675 and the next year thirty-six
men were swept overboard by a wave. In his log of the voyage
of the Santisima Trinidad the pilot makes the following entry
for October 7, 1755: "A gale blowing from SSE. At two o'clock
in the afternoon it attained such violence that I believed the ship
was going down. Votive offerings were made to the patroness
of the galleon to abate the tempest."
Few cases were as ill-fated as- that of the storm-beaten Santa
Margarita, one of the galleons of 1600. A year later, when the
Santo Tomds approached Saipan of the Ladrones, a Spaniard
came out to the ship in a native boat. He was found to have
been a sailor from the Santa Margarita, and from him and six
others picked up later the galleon's fate was learned. After beat
ing about the seas for eight months, during which time she
weathered a succession of storms that completely crippled her,
she grounded at last on one of the Ladrones. Of 260 who had left
Manila only fifty were alive. The pilot had died, and her com
256
THE MANILA GALLEON
mander, Juan Martinez de Guillestigui, died four days before
land was sighted. About thirty-five of the survivors were dragged
ashore in a moribund state by the natives and taken to their
villages, where some were later killed. The remainder of the
fifty were either despatched by the islanders or drowned as they
were being dragged away from the galleon, which was plundered
of her gold and silks. When the Santo Tomds passed among
the group the next year on her way to the westward, she carried
away five of the survivors who came out to her. In spite of the
entreaties of those on board, Antonio de Ribera Maldonado, com
mander of the Santo Tomds, refused to delay his ship long
enough to take off the remaining twenty-six, who were reported
to be living in the vicinity. However, Fray Juan Pobre, a Fran
ciscan, who was on his way out to Manila, leaped overboard and
climbed into a native boat, which took him ashore, that he might
minister to the needs of his fellow Spaniards. Proceeding on
her way, the Santo Tomds encountered dense fogs over the
Embocadero and, turning to the north, shortly broke to pieces
on the Catanduanes off the east coast of Luzon. When the Jesiis
Maria put into the Ladrones in 1602 in distress she brought off
all but five of the remaining survivors of the Santa Margarita.
The consort of the Santa Margarita, the San Gerdnimo
(Fernando de Castro), had almost as unfortunate an experience.
She encountered the same storms in latitude thirty-eight which
drove the other out of her course and finally threw her onto the
Ladrones. Despairing of making headway through them, she
finally turned back towards the Philippines and after nine months
at sea was also wrecked on the Catanduanes. Of all who had left
Manila, only eight persons, including one woman, were alive.
These are three of the more than thirty galleons that were
lost in the history of the line. During the 250 years thousands
of lives were lost, and, with arribadas, probably 60,000,000 pesos
of property. Whatever preparations might be made for con
tingencies, the chance of shipwreck was unavoidable in such a
navigation. And too often the galleons left Manila in a condi
tion unfit to cope with the weather that was inevitable. More
over, by construction they were seldom well adapted to riding a
northern gale or weathering a baguio. The galleon type of ship
was too high and topheavy for smashing seas. Governor Obando
said in 1748: "Most of these losses result from faulty design in
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257
the construction of the ships. The Rosario, before leaving
Acapulco last year, had the after-piece of her rudder increased
until it was so wide that it required eight men to handle it, work
ing with two wheels and a pair of hawsers. The distribution of
storage space in the hold is no less to be condemned, particularly
the location of the powder magazine in the fore part of the ship.
There is similar disorder in the storage of cargo. All this is
responsible for the slowness with which the galleons travel, their
inability to sail to windward, and to keep clear of the land or
run away from storms, and accounts for the fact that so many of
them require seven months for the crossing."
They were often inadequately careened and repaired for the
voyage, nor did they usually carry extra tackle enough for
emergencies. The San Antonio, which was lost in 1603, had
rotten timbers throughout when she left Manila—an index to
methods of inspection at Manila. Later the Magdalena was
found to be in the same condition, and, although heavy planks
were put in on each side to strengthen her, she turned over on
her side at her moorings before Cavite just as she was ready to
clear from port. However, in this case the accident may have
been due as much to the ill arrangement of the cargo as to the
vessel's general unseaworthiness. Governor Obando complained
of the careless loading of the ships, and, indeed, the fault was
generally as much a matter of overloading as of improper plac
ing of the cargo. A law of 1604 expressly provided against this
excess, but space was in such demand that this very salutary
regulation was little heeded. Galleons still sailed with their decks
piled high with bales and chests. In hurricane weather these
were either swept overboard, ruined by high seas, or sacrificed
to lighten the vessel, which wallowed about under the weight
of this extra burden on her decks. In 1752 the king declared that
on many occasions passengers and crew alike had been "innocent
victims of the barbarous greed of those who wish to use all the
space on the ship for their cargo."
The incompetence of officers and seamen played its part,
too, in the disasters of the line. Pilots were sometimes ignorant
of the very essentials of their craft and all too little acquainted
with the difficult course which the galleons had to follow. Vice
roy Enriquez reported to Philip II in 1576 that the five best pilots
of the line had died and that it was difficult to find competent
258
THE MANILA GALLEON
navigating officers to take their places. One pilot of an Acapulco
galleon ran his ship onto the eastern coast of the islands because
he mistook a depression in the land for the Embocadero. In
1620 another, who placed the Nuestra Senora de la Vida athwart
a reef, where she had to be abandoned to the waves, was promptly
hanged on the nearby shore by the infuriated passengers. He
had only taken the galleon as far as Isla Verde between Luzon
and Mindoro and about ninety miles from Manila.
Other causes, less pertinent, were represented as responsible
for the loss of ships, especially by some of the clerical historians.
The royal officials at Acapulco declared that the San Felipe in
1596 was lost because of "rough weather and our sins." Con
ception says that the loss of the San Francisco was due to divine
anger at a passenger who had struck an inferior, this in spite
of the fact that, after the injured plebeian had leaped into the
sea, the offending aristocrat was swept overboard by a wave and
drowned. Casimiro Diaz ascribes as the reason for the wrecking
of the great San ]os6 the fact that the workmen who had built
her worked on feast days, whereas, if they had observed these
festivals properly the galleon would have been completed after
the fatal hurricane had passed.
Particularly disastrous periods were the years from 1600 to
1609—six galleons in those ten years; the decade from 1649 to
1659; and the five years 1690-94. Before the end of the sixteenth
century several had been lost. The historic San Pablo was
wrecked on the Ladrones four years after Legaspi's conquest. In
1576 the Acapulco galleon Espiritu Santo went to pieces on the
Catanduanes and all on board were either drowned or killed
by the natives. She was carrying a large company of soldiers
and many friars out to the islands. Two years later the San
Juanillo left Manila and was never heard of again.
One of the greatest calamities in the history of the islands
was the dual disaster of the two galleons of 1603, the dire annus
mirabilis of Manila, the year of the sanguinary rising of the
Chinese and of the burning of a large part of the city. The
capitana, Nuestra Senora de los Remedios, after encountering
severe storms near the thirty-fourth parallel, was driven back to
Manila mastless and lightened of much of her cargo. Her con
sort, the "almiranta riquisima," San Antonio, not only carried
the greatest wealth of any galleon up to that time, but there had
THE VOYAGE
259
sailed on her many of the first citizens of the city, who with their
families were "fleeing from the troubles of that city." In some
unknown spot the galleon was swallowed up by the sea. On
her way out of the islands the San Nicolas was lost in 1621 with
330 persons. The Concepcidn was wrecked on Saipan of the
Ladrones in 1638. Most of those who reached shore were killed
by the natives. The twenty-eight survivors went from island to
island until they came to Guam at the southern end of the group.
From here six of them, accompanied by two friendly natives, set
out in a couple of the open boats in use among the Ladrones
and finally reached the Philippines where they arrived "almost"
dead from hunger, thirst and lack of sleep. The Acapulco gal
leon, San Ambrosio, was wrecked on the east coast of Luzon in
1639 with a loss of 150 persons. In 1649 the Encarnacidn, late
from Acapulco, crashed on the Sorsogon coast of Luzon near
Bulan.
In 1693 the Santo Cristo de Burgos left Manila, and for over
two years the Spanish coasts of the Pacific kept up a watch for
her. She suffered that most terrible of fates—burning in the open
sea—for pieces of charred wood, such as was used in the construc
tion of the galleons, were later picked up on the beaches of the
Ladrones.
Her fate was eventually learned from two men picked up
long after near the town of Binangonan de Lampon. In the boat
in which they had managed to reach the Philippines was the
corpse of a dead companion. One of the two survivors had gone
stark mad from his sufferings. Before the burning galleon had
foundered six men put off from her sides in an open boat and
headed westward. After three weeks their food gave out and
two of the starving men slid over the gunwales into the sea.
Those who were left then ate their jackboots and their belts to
stave off starvation. At last it was decided to draw lots as to
which of the four should be eaten by the rest. One of the three
preferred to starve rather than to turn cannibal. It was only
the last two who survived these horrible experiences, one with
out his reason, the other broken by his sufferings and long
under the shadow of the Church for having partaken of human
flesh.
The next year after the loss of the Santo Cristo the huge
San José was struck by a storm on the night of July 3, while
260
THE MANILA GALLEON
going out through the boca of Mariveles, and was broken to
pieces on the island of Lubang almost opposite the entrance of
Manila Bay. She was the largest galleon yet built. Over 400
persons were drowned, and a cargo of more than 12,000 piezas
or packages was destroyed. "No larger or richer galleon had
ploughed the sea," wrote Padre Casimiro Diaz, "for the wealth
that she carried was incredible." The San Francisco Xavier
(Santiago Zabalburu), which cleared from Manila in 1705, dis
appeared at sea and no trace was ever found of her. When the
Pilar (Ignacio Martinez), left Cavite in 1750 she was already
in a leaking condition. However, to the petitions of her pas
sengers that she turn back before it were too late to avert a
tragedy the captain retorted heatedly: "To Acapulco or Purga
tory!" Wreckage that evidently proceeded from the Pilar was
later washed up along the eastern coast of Luzon.
In these cases the loss of life was total or very large, but
sometimes those on board were able to abandon the ship when
she had run aground and before she was broken up. Sometimes,
too, the cargo could be removed in time to prevent its total loss,
as happened with the Acapulco galleon, San Cristdbal, which
ran onto the Calantas shoals near Bulusan in 1735. When the
outward-bound galleon, Santo Cristo de Burgos, was beached at
night on Ticao in 1726 her crew and passengers escaped, but the
cargo was mysteriously burned. Charges were made that it was
set fire to by merchants who were indebted to the obras pias for
loans to cover their investments on the galleon. As the obras
only accepted the risk in case of a total loss of cargo, this ques
tionable expedient was probably resorted to in order to evade
their liability for the partial loss. When the San Andris was
wrecked on the Naranjos reefs between Ticao and Capul in
1798, her people were landed safely, but her cargo was losL
Arribadas, or returns to port, were very frequent in the gal
leon navigation. "Many Galleons are lost," said Gemelli Careri,
"and others, having spent their Masts, or drove by contrary
Winds, return, when they are half way over, after losing many
Men at Sea, and the best but ill condition'd." Storms sometimes
swept a ship clear of masts and rigging, opened great leaks in
her, or snapped her rudder. A galleon which turned back in
1630 traveled nearly two thousand miles without a rudder. If
she survived her battering and was not engulfed, she crept back
THE VOYAGE
261
in great distress to port. Often, when she did not carry extra
equipment enough, crude substitutes were improvised for the
lost or broken parts, and some determined captain might force
his ship, thus refitted, across to the American coast, though the
pressure of the junta and the general clamor of the passengers
usually compelled a return.
Though the circumstances are generally quite similar, a few
cases of arribadas may be cited. Both galleons of 1593, the San
Felipe and the San Francisco, put back in a badly wrecked con
dition. This same San Felipe was so crippled in her voyage of
three years later that she finally made for a port of Japan, where
she was sacked by the natives. In 1602 both galleons, the
Espiritu Santo and the Jestis Maria, returned to the Philippines
after a series of harrowing experiences lasting over five months.
The former had entered a Japanese port, but was saved from the
San Felipe's fate by the resolution of her captain, Lope de Ulloa.
The other ship had risen to above forty degrees before she re
traced her course. Nearly all on board both galleons had suc
cumbed to the hardships of the voyage. All four galleons of
1616-17 returned to port, and in the years 1655 and 1666 both
galleons failed to make the voyage. The San Sabiniano reached
Manila again in 1663 after seven months of wanderings. The
San Telmo put back in 1672 and the Santa Rosa ten years later.
In 1687 the Santo Nino returned to the islands with her cargo half
rotten and wintered at Bagatao. During the Seven Years' War
the Santisima Trinidad fell into the hands of the British while
retiring to Manila from storms through which she had been un
able to ride. The two most famous of the later galleons had to
retreat to Manila on different occasions, the San Andres in 1795,
and the Magallanes in 1806.
An arribada was financially nearly as disastrous to the com
merce as was a shipwreck. Even if the goods could be kept
unimpaired till the next year's crossing, a double lading was not
permitted, or sometimes, for lack of ships, was not possible.
Usually, however, the cargo had greatly deteriorated or was
totally ruined if much water had entered the hold. It was also
customary to throw overboard part of the merchandise in order
to lighten the ship.
"It is these losses which are most deeply felt," wrote Casimiro
Diaz, "since all are interested in the prosperous voyages of the
262
THE MANILA GALLEON
galleons, and it is one of the greatest troubles of these islands,
if not the worst, that all are dependent on two bits of wood, and
those entrusted to the fickleness of the sea. The sad news of the
return of the Santa Rosa came late in December, about Christmas,
and caused general sorrow." Such a story of woe is told again
and again in the annals of the islands. Sometimes the record of
the catastrophe reads: "sin salvorse persona 0 cargamento,"—a
total loss. On such occasions the death of so many citizens and
the loss of so much wealth paralyzed for a time the life of the
colony. All who had remained behind were stricken with sorrow
and every branch of the islands' commerce quickly stagnated.
Fewer junks came from China the next year, since the return of
Mexican pesos had failed. "The loss of the San Felipe has utterly
ruined this land," said Governor Tello in 1597. And when a
few years later the San Antonio foundered in the open sea Gov
ernor Pedro de Acuna wrote: "This has been a very great loss,
and one which has thrown this commonwealth into almost in
credible misery." In 1639, after the two galleons of the previous
year had been given up for lost, some unknown writer said:
"There is a universal sorrow and gloom over all the country,
such as it has never known before. May God in His mercy
console the islands!" Finally, in the general lamentation that
followed the loss of the second Santo Cristo de Burgos, an
Augustinian friar joined in the chorus of woe that went over
the two seas to the king. "These islands are made a theater of
tears," he says, "and a spectacle of misfortunes. All is wailing
and sighing and mourning. There is no relief, and the only
prospect is one of utter ruin." In the tragic last decade of the
seventeenth century the city of Manila thus described its fallen
state: "The resources of our citizens are exhausted, their daugh
ters are without dowries, their families without their ancient
splendor, the wives of those who went down at sea are in miser
able widowhood and their children in helpless orphanage.
Priests, soldiers, maidens and widows, whose sustenance was
secured by the charitable foundations, are perishing."
The voyage of the Manila Galleon was the longest con
tinuous navigation in the world. The more familiar camino de
Indias, the route of the trading fleets across the Atlantic, was
a comparatively safe and well beaten path, that could be traveled
in a few weeks. "The Fleet of the South Sea," the so-called
THE VOYAGE
263
"silver fleet," sailed from Peru to Panama through some of the
most placid waters in the world. The only course comparable
with that of the Manila Galleon—the way around the Cape of
Good Hope to the East Indies—was broken by way-stations or
islands, where the Portuguese carracks or the Dutch and English
Indiamen could refit and take on fresh provisions and water.
Except in the stage across the Indian Ocean, the latter were
seldom far from possible succor. On the other hand, the Manila
Galleons, after entering the "gulf," as the Spaniards called the
open Pacific, saw no land between the region of the Ladrones
and the coast of the Californias.
The average duration of the voyage from Manila to Acapulco
was probably close to six months. The audiencia informed
Philip III in 1606 that most of the voyages were from five to
seven months long. English navigators, struck by the excessive
length of the eastward crossing as against the comparatively easy
and rapid passage in the other direction, blamed it to the timidity
and unskillfulness of the Spanish sailors. The writer of Lord
Anson's Voyage Round the World declared that the Spaniards
were afraid to let the ship run at night, furling nearly all sail,
even with a favorable wind. "The length of time employed in
this passage," he said, "so much beyond what usually occurs in
any other known navigation, is perhaps in part to be imputed
to the indolence and unskillfulness of the Spanish sailors, and
to an unnecessary degree of caution, on pretence of the great
riches of the vessel. . . . The instructions given to their captains
(which I have seen) seem to have been drawn up by such as were
more apprehensive of too strong a gale, though favorable, than
of the inconveniences and mortality attending a lingering and
tedious voyage. Indeed the whole conduct of this navigation
seems liable to very great censure." However, this apparent
timorousness was largely due to the influence of the landsmen
who represented the interests of the shippers, and who seldom
conceded the absolute direction of the vessel to the seafaring
element. When the safety of the galleon and of her cargo was
in jeopardy a junta was called to consider the proper course of
action. Together with the ship's officers, the consignors' agents
were present, and in this council proposals of extreme caution
were likely to prevail over the reasoned daring of the pilots. Ac
cordingly the ship may have been forced to drag along through
THE MANILA GALLEON
weary weeks and even months when she should long before
have been in her port of destination.
The voyage of the Rosctrio in 1706 was probably typical of
that of the average galleon. She left Manila on July 6, cleared
from the Embocadero on August 3, crossed the meridian of the
Ladrones on September 29, discovered the first senas on Novem
ber 16, passed Cape San Lucas on December 4, and entered
Acapulco harbor on December 20, after a voyage of five months
and fourteen days. Two voyages of the Sacra Familia, made in
respectively 1722 and 1727, show the following schedules:
1722
1727 I
Manila Embocadero
Senas
Cape San Lucas
June 30 July 27
November 17
November 30
July 7
July 19
November 17
December 2
Acapulco
December 25
December 24
The total time in the one case was five months and twenty-five
days, and in the other, five months and seventeen days.
Humboldt said that the time was formerly five or six months,
but with improvements in navigation it had been reduced by
his day to only three or four months. In spite of the assertion of
the German scientist the galleons made little better time in the
later eighteenth and early nineteenth century than they had
made in the sixteenth. If the Tama reached Acapulco in 1798
after three months and twenty-one days out from Manila, the
San Gerdnimo made the voyage in exactly the same time two
centuries earlier. By a coincidence, their consorts, the Santa
Margarita in 1598 and the Magallanes in 1798, both made the
passage in exactly four months.
Four months was a rapid crossing at any period. Such a
voyage required the concurrence of an unusually speedy galleon,
skillful navigation, and less than the normal experiences of storms
and contrary winds. For many galleons it required six months
to make the passage, and for some seven, and even eight, months.
The San ]os6 in 1662 did not reach port until more than eight
months after she had cleared from Cavite, while the voyage of
the Sacra Familia in 1724 lengthened well into the ninth month.
As late as 1755 the Santtsima Trinidad, after leaving Manila on
July 23, did not sail into Acapulco harbor until the last day of
February of the following year.
The terrors of such an experience are vividly recounted in
the narrative of Gemelli Careri and in the logs of the pilots.
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265
As the voyage passed beyond the half-year—the normal and
extreme limit of safety—those on board saw themselves facing
starvation and the ravages of ghastly diseases. When at last
the weakened survivors sighted the coasts of Lower California,
with their promise of freedom and rest and fresh water, and the
longed-for acidulous fruits that were so powerful against the
scurvy, they "embraced one another with tears of joy" and
chanted a Te Deum in thanksgiving.
Padre Cubero Sebastian said that at Navidad they brought
out lemons and fresh meat to his ship, and during the existence
of the mission station near Cape San Lucas the same provision
was made for the health of the crew and passengers at that point
on the coast. The lines of Bret Harte's poem, "The Lost Gal
leon," suggest the importance to the galleons of the first citrus
fruits grown in the Californias:
"The limes were ripening in the sun
For the sick of the coming galleon."
In an especially virulent form scurvy was the most terrible
scourge that menaced those who sailed on the galleons. As
usual in long voyages in early times, it was caused by the de
terioration of the provisions and by the lack of fresh vegetable
food with its vitamins, while the close confinement on board
lowered the resisting power of the organism. "When it returns
from that climate," remarked Raveneau de Lussan, the French
buccaneer, "all the crew are so sick and moribund, that of four
hundred man who may compose it, not a quarter are in condi
tion to defend her, for the malady known as scurvy never fails
on the way from the Philippines." Sometimes nearly all on
board were stricken and the mortality became frightful. Eighty
died on the almiranta of 1606 and many more after she reached
Acapulco. A galleon of 1620 lost ninety-nine and the remainder,
unable to continue on to Acapulco, were taken ashore at Val de
Banderas on the Guadalajara coast. The capitana of 1629 lost
105, and two galleons a few years later threw overboard 140
persons, while the survivors nearly perished of hunger; 114 died
on the two galleons of 1643.
The most extreme case was that of a galleon of the same
century, which was picked up off Guatulco below Acapulco, past
which port she had drifted helplessly. All on board were dead,
266
THE MANILA GALLEON
as in the derelict ships of the Black Death. The sad record the
judge, Calderon Enriquez, found long afterwards in the archives
at Acapulco. This was probably the San Jos6, first of her name,
of whose dolorous voyage Viceroy Albuquerque informed the
king on the day in 1657 when a courier had just reached Mexico
with news of the galleon's belated arrival at Acapulco. She had
left Manila more than a year before. All her provisions were
gone and there was no one on board who could lift a hand to
rope or wheel. Everyone had perished of pestilence or starvation,
and when sighted the silent galleon with her freight of silks and
cadavers was driving southward into the tropics.
When Padre Cubero Sebastian crossed later in that same
century only 192 survived at Acapulco of 400 who had left Manila.
In fifteen fatal days off the coast of California he performed the
last rites for ninety-two persons.
Few voyages were more disastrous than that of the Santisima
Trinidad in 1755. This greatest of the galleons, later to be cap
tured by the British, could muster but twenty-seven who were
able to stand when she reached Acapulco. The log of her French
pilot, Antoine Limarie Boucourt, tells the sorrowful story from
day to day. She cleared from Manila on the 23rd day of
July. By the first of October there were twenty sick. By Novem
ber 30 this had increased to sixty. On December 9 ex-Governor
Obando died. All the processes of life and death went on within
the narrow confines of this little world as it moved across the
wide space of the sea. On July 27, four days after the galleon
sailed from Manila, the Marqueza de Obando gave birth
to a son. On the 4th of October, Dona Mariana de Norza,
wife of the chief steward, was delivered of a daughter. On
December 21 over eighty were sick; some were delirious with
raging fever. One man, mad with suffering, threw himself
overboard and a few days later another cut his throat. At this
stage of the voyage the rate of sickness increased with a dreadful
progression. While on January 4 there were 102 ill, by the
thirteenth the number had leaped to 150. "May the Divine
Majesty mitigate this terrible plague!" the pilot ends his entry
for the day. On the 1st of February over 200 sick are put ashore
at Cape San Lucas to be restored to health by the Jesuit fathers
at the mission of San Josef del Cabo. Eighty-two of the San
tisima's 435 people had died before land was sighted.
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267
As late as 1806 the San Andrés lost thirty-six by the scurvy.
The Jesuits had been expelled, and the galleon, having violated
the order to put in at San Francisco or Monterey, now several
years founded, left her forty-five sick at San Blas.
It was not only scurvy which decimated the passenger-list
and the muster-roll of the galleon. "There are two dangerous
Diseases in this Voyage," said Gemelli, "Berben which swells the
Body and makes the Patient die talking. The other is call'd the
Dutch disease, which makes all the Mouth sore, putrefies the
Gums, and makes the Teeth drop out." After this diagnosis of
symptons he observes: "This is no other than the sea-scurvy."
The other disease, which was apparently beri-beri, baffled the
pathological knowledge of the Italian apothecary. The ship,
which was a "floating garden with such abundance of Fruits
and Greens" when she left the Embocadero in the summer, in the
latter stages of the voyage carried but a low supply of putrescent
provisions and foul water. Gemelli Careri realistically describes
the usual extremities of a protracted passage, among which he
pictures the eating of repulsive food, in which vermin swarmed,
as they infested the foul ship and the bodies of those on board;
and he describes the resulting affections which ranged from a
"universal raging itch," to the dread scurvy.
"The Ship swarms with little Vermine," he wrote, "the
Spaniards call Gorgojos, bred in the Biskit; so swift that they in
a short time not only run over Cabbins, beds, and the very dishes
the Men eat on, but insensibly fasten upon the Body. There are
several other sorts of Vermin of sundry Colours, that suck the
Blood. Abundance of Flies fall into the Dishes of Broth, in
which there also swim Worms of several sorts.—I had a good
share in these Misfortunes; for the Boatswain, with whom I had
agreed for my Diet, as he had Fowls at his Table the first Days,
so when we were out at Sea he made me fast after the Armenian
manner, having Banish'd from his Table all Wine, Oyl and
Vinegar; dressing his Fish with fair Water and Salt. Upon
Flesh Days he gave me Tassajos Fritos, that is, Steaks of Beef,
or Buffalo, dry'd in the Sun, or Wind, which are so hard that it
is impossible to Eat them, without they are first well beaten.—
At Dinner another piece of that same sticky Flesh was boil'd,
without any other Sauce but its own hardness, and fair Water.
At last he depriv'd me of the Satisfaction of gnawing a good
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Biskit, because he would spend no more of his own, but laid the
King's Allowance on the Table; in every Mouthful whereof
there went down abundance of Maggots, and Gorgojos chew'd
and bruis'd. On Fish Days the common Diet was old rank Fish
boil'd in fair Water and Salt; at noon we had Mongos, some
thing like Kidney Beans, in which there were so many Maggots,
that they swam at the top of the Broth, and the quantity was so
great, that besides the Loathing they caus'd, I doubted whether
the Dinner was Fish or Flesh. This bitter Fare was sweetened
after Dinner with a little Water and Sugar; yet the Allowance
was but a small Coco Shell full, which rather increas'd than
quench'd Drought."
At Cavite and on the way out of the islands the galleon took
on foodstores deemed sufficient for a voyage of six months, with
a reserve supply for an emergency. Large quantities of biscuit,
salted fish and meat were laden, and constituted the bulk of the
stores. The Santiago in 1590 carried 40,000 pounds of biscuit,
2,388 pounds of fish and 4418 pounds of salt meat, besides
garbanzos, beans, 50 bacons, 900 cheeses, a large quality of oil
and vinegar, and 405 pounds of onions and garlic. The
Covadonga in 1742 carried 42,700 pounds of biscuit, 12,925
pounds of salt beef, 4,275 pounds of salt pork, 358 bushels of rice,
286 pounds of sugar and lesser amounts of other items. Her
fish supply consisted of shark and dog-fish. Fresh shark's meat
often contributed to the ship's larder during the voyage. The
alcalde-mayor of Albay brought out to Gemelli's ship twenty
hogs, five hundred chickens and large quantities of fruits. The
fruits and vegetables were necessarily consumed early in the
voyage. For the sick and those of exalted rank there were
chickens, honey and fruit preserves, but these, too, were generally
eaten before the days of privation came with the lengthening of
the voyage. The most palatable food served to those above the
rank of common seamen was the chocolate, which Spaniards
have drunk with a peculiar gusto ever since the conquest of
Mexico. "In a short time," Gemelli wrote in his diary, "all the
Provisions grow Naught, except the Sweetmeats and Chocolate,
which are the only comfort of Passengers." However, when the
short supply of fuel had to be treasured, even this consolation
was denied the cold and hungry passengers, and on days when
the vessel was pitching about in stormy seas only cold food and
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269
drink were served. For the ovens could not be lighted in rough
weather, when a fire on shipboard would have brought about
the destruction of everything.
The passage rates for the easterly voyage by the galleon were
from two to four thousand pesos. Even then passengers were
sometimes forced to bribe the steward in order to obtain what
they had paid for, or actually to secure enough to eat. Those
who made the round trip sometimes had to lay out another
three or four thousand pesos for food. Those passengers who
could not pay the high prices demanded for food often suffered
the direst need. For them, as for the common seamen whose
ration was only half the ordinary proportion, retrenchment in
the critical period of an over-prolonged voyage meant the severest
privations.
The water supply for the voyage was derived from two
sources. The initial store was carried from the islands, the gal
leon replenishing her supply at the last stops which she made
before entering the Embocadero. "It is the Practice in this
Voyage," says Gemelli, "to carry the water in earthen Jars, to
the number of 2, 3 or 4,000, proportionately to the number of
people, and bigness of the Galleon." Many of these jars were
hung in the rigging, while the rest were stowed away above or
below decks. A few galleons were fitted with cisterns, and part
of the water was also carried in large sealed bamboos. At Ticao
Gemelli enters in his Diary: "500 Bombones of Cane full of
Water were brought Aboard, which the Alcade had caus'd to be
cut by the Captain's Order; they were eight Spans in length, and
as thick as a man's Thigh."
The allowance often had to be cut short before the galleon
had reached the region of the Ladrones, and after the exhaustion
of the initial supply dependence was had upon the apparently
precarious device of gathering water while passing through the
rain belt of the higher latitudes. "For this purpose," says Lord
Anson's chronicler, "they take to sea with them a great number
of mats, which, whenever the rain descends, they range slopingly
against the gunwale from one end of the ship to the other, their
lower edges resting on a large split bamboe; whence all the water
which falls on the mats drain into the bamboe, and by this, as
a trough, is conveyed into a jar." Heavy mats were also hung
in the upper works of the ship to gather the rain by saturation
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THE MANILA GALLEON
or to lead it into conduits placed for that purpose. This process,
as well as the guarding and dispensing of the water, was in
charge of a seaman designated as the alguacil de agua, or "waterconstable," or sometimes as the "master of the water rations."
The comparative certainty of the rainfall between thirty and
forty degrees latitude assured water enough for the average
voyage. However, this recourse now and then failed to produce
the requisite amount of water. Alonzo de Ovalle said that in
crossing in 1764, after much of the water had been lost because
of the bad condition of the casks which were than used, the
supply usually obtained from rains failed, so that during the last
three months of the voyage those on board were reduced to a
ration for all purposes of less than two pints a day.
One of the most severe trials of the galleon navigation was
the wearisome confinement for months in the most cramped of
quarters. Gemelli Careri called his diminutive cabin his "Prison,"
and as a passenger of importance and friend of the captain he
must have fared better than did the average voyager. Accord
ing to the regulations drawn up by Governor Valdes the baggage
that might be carried on the galleon by a passenger was limited
to the following: "Two leather-covered chests or trunks, three
and a half feet long, seventeen inches wide and fifteen inches
deep, a mattress, a pair of bottle-cases for wine, writing materials,
and ten China jars, in which to carry cholocate, caramels, sweets,
biscuits, or anything else, so long as they may be kept under
neath the bed." Two servants were allowed to each person.
The usual overcrowding of every part of the vessel pre
vented much moving about. This enforced inactivity and the
deadening tediousness of such a restricted existence for so many
months had to be relieved by amusements that would divert the
unoccupied mind from contemplation of the maddening mo
notony of the sight of green seas, the incessant splash and roar
of the water and the ceaseless buffeting of the great lumbering
hulk.
Diversions on shipboard were limited by the talents and
space and equipment available. Only sports of "pure amuse
ment" were permitted by the official regulations. Passengers
might play "The Renegade Caxcara" and other innocent games,
but dice, and alburcs, a card game, were forbidden, as were all
forms of gambling. Governor Arandia's orders provided that
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271
anyone who cheated in one of the permitted games, in case he
were a seaman, should be laid over a cannon and beaten "in pro
portion to the seriousness of his offense," and if he were a soldier,
he should be forced to run the gauntlet. Officers were not to
admit any complaints from gamblers or recognize any gambling
debts. However, when a captain could win 40,000 pesos from his
fellow-travelers in a single passage any sumptuary regulations
emanating from Manila or Madrid evidently had small effect.
There was betting on anything that had an element of chance
about it, as cards and cock-fights, the weather, or the prospects
of sighting land by a certain date. On a wager of this latter
sort Gemelli Careri lost a pair of gold cuff-buttons set with
emeralds.
Smoking was closely restricted by the rigid fire regulations
to certain quarters of the ship. Governor Arandia's orders on
this point are as follows: "The crew may smoke above the waist
or the forecastle on the lee side of the ship, either during the day
or at night, but it must be in the form of a well covered pipe or
a cigar with holder. When there is a strong wind smoking will
only be permitted under the forecastle, where there are jars of
water for any emergency. Smoking cigarettes is absolutely pro
hibited. The captains are to take particular care that there are
no disorders attending smoking in the cabins and berths; and
they are to give the necessary orders to the lower officers to look
out for and punish any violation. . . . Anyone who is found
smoking outside the permitted areas of the ship will be put in
the bilboes for fifteen days on bread and water. And if anyone
smoke a pipe or cigar without the prescribed precautions, he
will be condemned to serve a year without pay on the same ship
or in the galleys at Cavite. A like penalty will be executed on
those who have with them means of lighting a fire or who carry
aboard with them highly combustible articles." As part of the
same precautionary regulations fires were to be put out before
sunset. Only well covered lanterns were permitted below decks.
"The ordinary lights, which are to be kept burning all night,
are a lantern before the door of each cabin, one at the entrance
of the powder-magazine, but separated by the bulkhead, and
another fore between decks."
Quarreling and blasphemy were prohibited and any alter
cation which led to violence was rigorously punished. Blas
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THE MANILA GALLEON
phemy was punishable by fifteen days in the bilboes on bread
and water, with the added indignity of a gag. Repetition of the
offense was to be punished by having the tongue pierced with a
burning iron. The penalty of drunkenness was four days in the
bilboes on the same diet. The officer of the guard was required
to make frequent rounds of the ship to see that no disorders were
committed.
A law of 1608 aimed to prevent the custom of carrying slave
women as concubines on the galleon and provided for the con
fiscation of all such women by the royal officials at Acapulco.
The king, in banning these hetairae of the sea, declared that they
caused "great offence to God," and added that "it is not well that
in so long and perilous a navigation there should be occasion to
displease Him." One prominent official had carried fifteen of
these women with him on the voyage. Several were delivered
of children by him, while others left the ship at Acapulco in a
pregnant condition, "which made a great scandal."
In the earlier stages of the voyage, when the sea was smooth,
and there was space enough above decks or below, there was
sometimes dancing on the galleon. Sometimes, too, the evenings
were whiled away with dramatic entertainments—with plays,
and buffoon shows and "acting of parts made extempore." Those
on Gemelli's ship occasionally amused themselves with rough
horse-play at the expense of sharks which were taken out of the
water. "One great one was thrown into the Sea again with a
Board tied to his Tail, none of the Passengers caring to eat any
more of them, and it was Pleasant to see him Swim about without
being able to dive down. Two others were ty'd together by the
Tails, one of them being first blinded, and then being cast into
the sea, the blind one oppos'd the other that would have drawn
him down, thinking himself taken."
In the grim days when scurvy stalked about the galleon all
entertainment assumed a macabre aspect. Such was often the
case on the occasion of the fiesta de las senas. This was the cere
mony which was held on the discovery of the senas or "signs"
of the nearness of land. Then all restraint was broken down for
a brief and uproarious celebration, and "to the sound of drums
and trumpets" there began a veritable saturnalia of the sea, with
all the boisterous license which attends the modern "crossing of
the line." Cubero Sebastian and Gemelli Careri describe the
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273
rough hilarity of this day, when ranks were topsy-turvy and
gloom seemed driven from the ship. The instructions of Gover
nor Valdes required that these festivities be kept within the
bounds of "decency and modesty." The fiesta began with the
singing of a Te Deum "in gratefulness for the approaching end
of our so wearisome voyage," for the California coast was now
close ahead. The principal feature of the celebration was the
tribunal de las senas, or "court of the signs," where the common
seamen, "clad after a ridiculous manner," sat in mock judgment
on their superiors and on the passengers. The latter were hauled
before the canopied dais of the "President" and the two assistant
oidores or judges, and one after another made to account for his
conduct during the voyage. Indictments were read in each case
by the clerk of the court and jocular sentences of death imposed
by the judges. However, these sentences were commuted to full
pardon on payments of compensation in money, chocolate, sweet
meats, or wine, which were distributed among the half-famished
revelers. "The best of it was," said Gemelli, "that he who did
not Pay immediately or give good Security, was laid on with a
Rope's End, and at the least sign given by the President Tar
paulin. I was told a Passenger was once kill'd aboard a Galleon
by Keelhaling him; for no Words or Authority can check or
persuade a whole Ship's Crew." The general of Cubero's ship,
who might have been a marquis of the peerage of Castile, was
sentenced to death on the charge of keeping the hatches closed
during storms, so that those below nearly perished of thirst; but
he was pardoned on the usual condition of a largess of delicacies.
The sergeant-major, who also acted as doctor, and had bled more
than two hundred persons on the way across, was convicted of
having shed human blood. The pilot was accused of always
quarreling with the sun, while Cubero himself, the chaplain of
the galleon, was not exempted from the inquisition by "benefit
of clergy." They complained that he was always seated in his
chair, admonishing them. They called him "the guide of death"
{el lazarillo de la muerte) because, whenever he went below
decks to minister to anyone, the next day that person was thrown
into the sea. But the priest is indulgent towards their grim hu
mor and adds: "On this they burst out laughing,—and this was
a day of great rejoicing."
In spite of the low state of health which commonly prevailed
274
THE MANILA GALLEON
in the latter stages of the voyage the realization that the ship was
now within reach of her destination raised the spirits of all on
board. Gemelli Careri's entry in his diary for December 14th,
1698, the day when Santa Catalina Island was sighted off the
California coast, reads as follows: "Everybody began to take
heart with the Hopes of being speedily delivered from so many
Sufferings, and particularly from stinking Provisions which be
gan to breed diseases." They were soon to be in touch with
friendly populations who would send out fresh fruits and vege
tables to them, and from whom they might expect other succor
in case of need. When at last the galleon sailed into Acapulco
harbor and was tied up to a great tree by the shore the joy of
crew and passengers know no bounds. After the port officials
had made their initial visit of inspection, the image of the Virgin
was carried ashore to the parish church, while the galleon fired
all her guns and the Castle of San Diego responded with the
same number of cannon.
"Notwithstanding the dreadful Sufferings in this prodigious
voyage," said Gemelli, "yet the desire of gain prevails upon many
to venture through it 4, 6 or even 10 times. The very Sailors, tho
they foreswear the Voyage when out at sea, yet when they come
to Acapulco for the love of 275 Pesos never remember past Suf
ferings, like Women after their Labour." "But," he adds, "for
my own part, these nor greater hopes shall not prevail with me
to undertake that Voyage again, which is enough to destroy a
Man, or make him unfit for anything as long as he lives."
Meanwhile, a lookout well up the coast, usually on the high
land near Chametla, had raced away to the nearest town with
the news that the galleon had been sighted. A swift courier was
immediately dispatched to the capital, riding by relays of horses
until he drew up before the viceroy's palace. The news quickly
spread over the city and prayers were made in the churches for
the safe arrival of the great ship. When days later the first offi
cial dispatches arrived from Acapulco all the bells in the city's
churches were rung and feverish preparations begun among the
merchants and muleteers who were soon to go southward to the
galleon fair at the port.
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275
Westbound
After the nao had been summarily overhauled and put into
a state for sailing the work of embarking her return cargo began.
The loading of the Acapulco galleon was a much simpler process
than the same operation at Manila, for the cargo consisted of far
fewer commodities and these occupied much less of the hold
than did the lading in the other direction. The most important
single item was the silver which had proceeded from the sales
at the feria or fair. This was given into the hands of the maestre
de plata, or "master of the silver," whose sole function was the
custody of the chests in which were generally stored two or three
million pesos and of the papers showing the amount due to each
shipper at Manila. This officer received a half of one percent
on all the silver in his charge, but was accustomed to pay three
thousand pesos for his place. The nature of the remainder of
the return cargo varied considerably during the history of the
commerce. Many of the articles of luxury imported into Manila
by the first naos, and even some of the necessities of existence,
were later brought from China or Japan or produced in Manila.
The staple American exports to Manila generally consisted of
cacao from Guayaquil, some cochineal from Oaxaca in Mexico,
oil from Spain, wines and other peculiarly national goods.
Though the return cargo was of so little bulk that the gal
leon virtually sailed in ballast, her human freight was always
larger than on her eastward passage. There were nearly always
royal officials going out to their posts in the insular government.
On such occasions the new governor usually took out with him
an official retinue, as well as his private family. Thus the Santo
Nino in 1671 carried out as the new governor, Don Fausto de
Cruzat y Gongora, a Navarrese, with his wife, Dona Beatriz de
Arostegui y Aguirre, of Cadiz—"a matron of great beauty and
greater virtue"—their three sons, two daughters, and the gobernadora's sister, Teresa, who later married Juan de Garaycoechea,
the commander of the galleon. One of the passengers on this
ship was an Irish captain, Patrick Eagle, whose name Casimiro
Diaz hispanicizes as Don Patricio de Aguila; Don Patricio was
the brother of Don Guillermo, the chief pilot of the galleon.
Governor Gabriel de Curuzelaegui, who had served before as
admiral of the trading fleet that went to Porto Bello, and crossed
THE MANILA GALLEON
to Manila in 1684 as general of the Santa Rosa, led out to the
islands a fine company of fellow Basques. A considerable num
ber of merchants usually took passage, some with intent to throw
in their lot with the colony, others traders of Mexico or Peru,
bound for Manila on a transient business mission in defiance of
the law. Mingled with them were companies of friars, going
out to swell the ranks of their orders. Fifteen Dominicans crossed
on the Acapulco galleon of 1587. Fire broke out on board dur
ing the voyage and destroyed part of the provisions. Quarrels
between two factions broke out in open war, one group barri
cading itself in the bow of the ship and the other in the stern,
from which they fired on one another across the waist of the
galleon. After the two parties had been reconciled by the friars,
who had tired of remaining below decks in order to keep out of
the line of fire, the galleon narrowly escaped destruction on the
shores of an island inhabited by cannibals. When Governor
Pedro de Acuna went out to Manila in 1602 eighty-three ecclesi
astics took passage with him. The San Telmo in 1679 carried
thirty-one Augustinians and a number of Jesuits. One hundred
and five priests went out to the Philippines on the Begona in
1718. On the voyage elaborate ceremonies were held in honor
of the day of Saint Francis, to enliven which several casks of
beer were contributed by Francisco de Echeveste, commander of
the galleon. The galleon of 1804 had on board seventy-five friars,
so that it was remarked in Mexico that the return nao was
freighted with plata y frayles.
Not all the passengers were voluntary travelers. The Philip
pines were far enough from either Mexico or Spain to serve as a
place of exile for those who would not fit into the existing
scheme of things at home. The most famous of such exiles was
Fernando de Valenzuela, who had been, among other things,
"Captain-General of the Coasts of the Mediterranean," favorite
of the king, and, "what is more," head-equerry of the queen, and
first minister of the kingdom. Wild youth of good families were
also sent thither to reform or die. Neither could many of the
soldiers sent out to serve in the islands be called volunteers, espe
cially after the expeditions of veteran infantry who followed the
Dasmarinas and Acuna to fight the Dutch. Each outgoing gal
leon carried at least a company, while four companies, or nearly
400 men, sailed on one voyage of the Santisima Trinidad. The
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277
two Acapulco galleons of 1605 carried 800 soldiers. A desperate
mutiny of a body of conscripts from Mexico nearly gained pos
session of the Concepcidn in 1667. The galleons were forbidden
to carry foreigners as passengers, but the few who made the
voyage were generally enrolled among the ship's officers, though
without the corresponding salary. Thus, when the Italian mer
chant, Antonio Carletti, and his son, Francesco, sailed on a
Manila Galleon in 1596, the elder Carletti was signed on as a
constable and his son as a guard, both positions of only nominal
authority. For a liberal percentage the commander of the gal
leon kept their money in his cabin during the voyage.
A mutiny that was still more serious and dramatic in its
consequences took place on the San Gerdnimo, one of the first
of the galleons. When she left Acapulco for Cebu early in 1567
she carried as her chief pilot the aging Lope Martin, who had
navigated Arellano's renegade ship on its eastward dash across
the Pacific and had accompanied Loaysa on his earlier voyage
into the South Sea. Fearful of punishment at the hands of
Legaspi for his desertion, Martin fomented dissension among
the crew with the idea of stirring up a mutiny. Once in control
of the ship it was his plan to go to the Chinese coast, where he
expected to enrich himself by piracy and then leave the Pacific
by the Straits of Magellan.
There were nearly one hundred and fifty men on board, all
hardened sailors of the Spanish coasts or veterans of the bloody
civil wars among the conquerors of Peru and Chile. They had
fought and suffered much and there seemed no earthly experi
ence left that could daunt them. The commander of the ship
was Pedro Sanchez Pericon, captain of infantry. The sergeantmajor and second in command was Ortiz de Mosquera, a rough
old soldier from Peru and companion-at-arms of the Pizarros.
Early in the voyage serious differences arose between the two
officers and from day to day the grudge between them grew in
bitterness, fanned by the malevolent Martin. Mosquera, artless
and blustering, joined the pilot's conspiracy and confided their
joint designs to some of his friends on board. When the plot
against the captain was fully hatched Mosquera and two of his
followers fell on Sanchez and his son and killed them in their
sleep. To the loud beating of drums all hands were called on
deck, where in the flickering light of lanterns Mosquera
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THE MANILA GALLEON
harangued them and commanded them to recognize his author
ity. Then the blood-stained bodies of the captain and his son
were exhibited to the ship's company before being unceremoni
ously tossed into the sea, as Lope Martin looked on and plotted
his next move.
Terror of their new and ruthless master and suspicion of one
another quickly spread through the crew and among the force
of soldiers on board. In this bedeviled atmosphere Martin and
Ortiz quarrelled in accordance with the pilot's plan. The ser
geant-major was arrested and put in chains and all his friends
were disarmed. Lope then set a feast on deck and commanded
Ortiz to be brought shackled before him. When Ortiz, realiz
ing that he had been tricked into having the irons put on him,
begged for his life, Lope ordered him hanged and promptly had
him swung from the yardarm and dropped into the sea. Then
he went on with his carouse to the sound of the ship's music.
The mutineers then decided to maroon those of their com
panions whose loyalty to their plot was uncertain and to carry
out Lope's original design of a piratical cruise in China waters.
At this juncture the priest, Juan de Vivero, began to make cau
tious inquiries among his shipmates and to urge those whom he
suspected of complicity in the mutiny or of wavering to desist
from their plans. "There was a melancholy silence" over all on
board and "no one trusted another." Men slept restlessly with
their hands clenched on their daggers.
When the ship reached the group of the Carolines that were
henceforth to be known as the Barbudos, or Isles of Bearded
Men, Lope determined to carry out his intentions of marooning
all whom he suspected of hostility or lukewarmness. The ship
was run in through the pass of a coral-fringed lagoon which the
pilot chose for the final purging of the crew. On the pretext of
careening the galleon he got most of his enemies ashore on the
atoll. The plan was then suddenly to raise anchor and put to
sea before those who were to be marooned could be aware of their
fate. The priest acted quickly and quietly as soon as he perceived
the pilot's intentions. He first enlisted the support of a brave
youth from the mountains of Asturias, named Miguel de Loarca,
whom he had found brooding over the possibility of a countermutiny. He was then joined by the boatswain, Rodrigo del
Angel, and two of the latter's friends. Del Angel then called on
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279
all loyal men on board to rise against the mutineers, who were
overwhelmed by the suddenness of the move and the resolute
action of the priest and his companions. The loyalists quickly
took possession of the ship, seizing Martin, Ocampo, his captain,
and others of the original ringleaders. Manacled and gagged,
they were hastily bundled ashore and abandoned on the narrow
ring of land around the lagoon. At the same time those who
were to have been marooned were called back to the ship.
When the San Gerdnimo cleared out to sea again she left
behind her Lope Martin and twenty-five of his associates. They
were never seen again, but many years later a passing galleon
heard from natives of the Carolines of bearded white men living
among the distant islands.
Even yet the galleon's troubles were not ended, for still
aboard her were two of the original murderers, Lara and Morales.
Though they had broken with Martin, they were not disposed to
accept the new regime on the ship. Both were now put in irons
and a final accounting of their crimes was made. As a storm
loomed on the horizon they were sentenced to death. Lara, blas
pheming and unrepentant, was swung out over the main-yard
and dropped into the sea. Morales broke his bonds and climbed
out to the end of the bowsprit, to which he lashed himself. When
the storm broke and the ship pitched in the rising sea he was
immersed one moment by the waves and pitched high in the air
the next, until at last he slipped off and disappeared beneath the
black waters. On October 15th the galleon of the five captains
put into the harbor of Cebu, five months out from Acapulco.
The galleons usually left Acapulco for Manila in the latter
part of February or the first weeks in March. At first they were
ordered to leave port before the end of March, but a law of 1633
required that they should set sail by the end of December in order
to enter the Philippines in March or earlier. It was the royal will
that this order be "executed inviolably" and the viceroys were
to be called to account in their residencia for its fulfillment.
However, as the galleons usually reached Acapulco in December
or January, their dispatch before the end of the year was impos
sible. The original rule was, in fact, not only more practicable,
but just as salutary, since it enabled a ship to reach Manila before
the season of monsoons and typhoons had set it. Little pretense
seems to have been made of enforcing the regulation of 1633, for
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THE MANILA GALLEON
the instructions drawn up for the commanders of the galleons
by Governor Valdes order them to clear their ships from Acapulco before April, as the original regulation had provided. This
latter date was the limit of safety, and Governor Basco y Vargas
expatiates on the danger of leaving in April, when "gusty southwesters," the unfavorable vendavals or monsoons, would be met
in the islands and the naos would have to put in at Ticao or
Sorsogon to await a change of wind. Basco recommends, on
the other hand, that they leave by the end of January or first of
February.
If undertaken in proper season, the westward voyage of the
galleons was as safe and easy as that in the other direction was
wearisome and dangerous. Musing on the contrariety of the
word "Pacific" as applied to this ocean, Gemelli said: "In truth
the Spaniards gave it this fine Name in sailing from Acapulco
to the Philippines, which is performed very easily in three months
without any boisterous Motion in the Sea and always before the
Wind." "Cette navigation est tres douce" wrote Pere Taillandier, a French Jesuit who crossed by this way to China in 1709,
with twenty-two others of the Society; "one does not have to
fear contrary winds, and since the winds that blow are always
fresh they temper the heat." "Nothing interrupts the serenity of
the sky in these regions," wrote Humboldt. Because of its placidness it was often called Mar de Damas, or "Ladies' Sea."
Whatever misfortunes befell ships in this passage were due
to late departure or to the blunders of incompetent pilots. A
ship leaving Acapulco too late was liable to run into bad weather
from the Ladrones onward. Under such conditions she was de
layed in reaching the Philippines, and epidemics sometimes broke
out on board in the latter stages of the voyage. Thus, forty died
on the Espiritu Santo in 1606 and eighty on the San Luis in 1642.
If the galleons reached the neighborhood of the islands even in
late June they might find the monsoon blowing across the en
trance of the Embocadero. At such times to try to enter that
labyrinth of islands and shoals with its swirling, shifting tides
and currents, was to court destruction. The only recourse was
to put into the harbor of Palapag or Lampon or some other place
in the vicinity and wait for a change in the winds, or to tie up
there for the winter. The later the season the greater was the
possibility of encountering contrary winds and storms from the
THE VOYAGE
281
region of the Ladrones to Cavite, until in September the peril
from baguios or typhoons was at its height. It was in such
circumstances that the Concepcidn, which had left Acapulco on
April 19th, was wrecked at the Ladrones in 1775.
The ordinary time for the westward voyage was approxi
mately three months. Of this about two months should be con
sumed in the passage to the Ladrones, about fifteen days thence
to the Embocadero, and as much more to Cavite. However,
even with favorable weather conditions there could have been
none of the regularity of a schedule on this route. The Santiago
in 1595 left Acapulco on March 22 and reached Manila on June
11. The San Francisco crossed in only two months and twelve
days in 1610. The galleon of 1709 made the crossing in three
months and eighteen days, and the Nuestra Senora de Guia, in
1729 in five days less. The Begona spent four months and
twenty-four days on the way in 1718. The Santtsima Trinidad,
which cleared from Acapulco on April 29, 1756, did not cast
anchor before Cavite until the fifth of October,—a voyage of five
months and six days.
As we have seen, the route to the islands lay far south of the
eastward track of the naos. At some points they were separated
by thirty degrees of latitude, and the only place where the course
was identical was on the final stage through the islands. From
Acapulco in about sixteen and a half degrees the ship dropped to
about the tenth or eleventh parallel or even nearer the equator,
in order to escape the calms that were sometimes encountered far
ther to the north. In this latitude she fell in with the steady
easterlies that carried her with little deviation for thousands of
miles. She then gradually rose to about the thirteenth or four
teenth parallel, until in sixty to seventy days out she entered the
Ladrones, where she left mail and supplies and took on fresh
provisions.
From the Ladrones it was generally but a short sail of two
or three weeks to the Philippines, where the first land sighted
was Cape Espiritu Santo on Samar. In times of war the vessel
determined its further course according to signals received from
land. Sentinels were placed on such outlying points as the Catanduanes, Biri, Bulusan, Borongan and Batan, who were to inform
the galleon by fire signals if the route were safe from enemies.
In 1745 the Santo Domingo reached Manila around northern
282
THE MANILA GALLEON
Luzon. In other events the vessel steered straight for the Embocadero, and thence made the rest of her way through the straits
to Cavite, which stage of the voyage might last from five days to
five weeks. In case the monsoon had set in and prevented further
progress, the galleon put in at some port near the Embocadero
and wintered there, as the San Antonio did at Sorsogon in 1681.
Many galleons put in at Lampon, or at Palapag on Samar, while
Governor Arandia, on the advice of the galleon pilots, ordered
the naos to winter at Sisiran on the Camarines coast in case they
were unable to make their way to Cavite.
Every phase of the navigation is illustrated by the experience
of the Santisima Trinidad in 1756. After a most distressful
voyage from Manila, the great galleon cleared from Acapulco
for the Orient on April 29, 1756, too advanced a season to expect
propitious conditions for the crossing. On that day she dropped
to seaward with the tide, after saluting the Castle of San Diego
with fifteen guns, and soon falling in with the northeast trades
sped westward in her long straight path. For weeks the pilot
records each day "tiempo claro y hermoso,"—the halcyon weather
of June seas in the tropics. One day the galleon covered fifty-one
leagues.
The sixteenth of July the Ladrones are sighted. Some Jesuit
fathers and the governor visit the ship, which takes on water and
some provisions before continuing its voyage on the twenty-first.
Winds are already contrary, and a month later, when the ship
should long since have been in Manila Bay, the water supply is
dangerously low, for there are about eight hundred persons on
board. In the junta that is called to consider the situation the
pilot offers to give up his extra allowance of water and receive
an equal portion with the rest. All the night of the twentieth of
August the weather is "detestable," writes Boucourt, the French
pilot, "the sea is high, and the vendaval is blowing, with gusts of
rain." A week later Cape Espiritu Santo is made out in the dis
tance and the voyage up the straits begins. Scarcely has the gal
leon entered the Embocadero when fourteen boats come out
with rice, chickens, pigs, and "other fruits." But they bring no
water, which is most needed. However, the fresh food gives
them great comfort, and for days the ship is surrounded by a
fleet of small boats from Bulusan and Capul and the other islands
roundabout. Inside the entrance she is becalmed, with the tides
THE VOYAGE
283
running like a millrace and with the channel lying among whirl
pools and eddies that make the pilot's task more difficult. Farther
up the straits on September 18 the galleon comes upon two boats
from Romblon, bound for Manila with oil and cacao and heav
ily armed against a Moro attack. More calms among swirling
currents, then furious cutting squalls, and finally, at half after
five on the afternoon of October 10, the galleon casts anchor
before Cavite. "I praised the mercy of God," says the sore-tried
pilot, "and gave thanks for the patronage of Maria Santisima,
our Lady of Solitude, for having freed us from so many perils
and enabled us to survive one of the roughest voyages of this
navigation."
There was always great jubilation at Manila when the re
turning galleon finally came to anchor in the bay. Families were
reunited after the anxious separation of a year or more, and the
safe arrival of the ship on which depended the material fortunes
of the colony lifted the heavy burden of fear for her safety that
always weighed on the community during her long absence.
Bells were rung and the churches were filled with a grateful
people. But the first pious impulses of thanksgiving quickly
gave way to more worldly demonstrations. For, as soon as the
proceeds from the galleon's sales had been distributed among the
citizens a round of balls and other festivities began, only to end
when the money or the enthusiasm were spent.
PART III
THE FOREIGNERS
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ®<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
CHAPTER 8
THE SPANISH LAKE
THE monarch of all the Spains was addressed by his sub
jects as "Senor," or "Lord." He signed himself with
laconic arrogance "Yo el Rey"—"I, the King." Yet his full title
read: "King of Castile, Leon, Aragon, the Two Sicilies, Jerusa
lem, Navarre, Granada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, Mallorca,
Seville, Sardinia, Corsica, Murcia, Jaen, the Algarves, Algeciras,
Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, the Eastern and Western Indies,
and the Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea; Archduke of
Austria; Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, and Milan; Count of
Hapsburg, Flanders, Tyrol and Barcelona; Lord of Biscay and
Molina, etc." At the height of the Spanish tide it included king
ship over Portugal and the whole Lusitanian empire in Brazil
and the Golden East, as well as over the Low Countries. The
"et cetera" was a flexible word, which provided for the inclusion
of any chance conquests of Spanish arms not specifically listed.
The South Sea, with its nearly 70,000,000 square miles of
water and its thousands of islands, was the most spacious domain
claimed by the Spanish king. From the early sixteenth century
Spain attempted to comprehend within her vast circle of "closed
seas" the entire area of the Pacific. The extension of the papal
line of demarcation to the antipodes gave a certain sanction to the
grandiose pretension from its very inception. Whatever force
this ban might have had in practice was nullified by the apostasy
of England and Holland, the maritime powers most likely to
challenge such an assumption. Moreover, France refused to
accept its principle as binding on her overseas ambitions. "The
authority of the Pope," wrote Hugo Grotius, the great Dutch
jurisconsult, in 1608, "has absolutely no force against the eternal
law of nature and of nations." Nearly a century later Pontchartrain, minister of Louis XIV, wrote to the Comte de Marcin:
"The French contested the validity of this act. The Ambassador
of France was instructed to make it clear that neither the King
187
288
THE MANILA GALLEON
of France nor any other European prince has ever pretended to
be restrained by consideration of the line of demarcation, which
the Spaniards cite as an incontestable title. The Pope's decision
in this regard was only between the King of Spain and the King
of Portugal."
To bolster up her inordinate assertion of ownership Spain
also invoked the old theory of the mare clausum, which was here
applied to an unprecedented area of water. The Pacific was to
be hers—"the Spanish Sea," Padre Medina called it—just as to
Rome the Mediterranean had been mare nostrum. However,
her appeal to this dogma of international jurisprudence was to
be as completely ignored in practice by other nations as had been
the pretentious bull of Alexander VI. It was not until a more
realistic generation of Spaniards recognized its fallacy in the en
lightened eighteenth century that Spain abandoned her claim to
proprietorship of the Pacific.
Meanwhile, the Dutch had invoked the same theory on
behalf of their operations in the East Indies. Francisco Leandro
de Viana, in contesting the force of the Dutch claim to exclusive
navigation in the waters to the southwest of the Philippines and
thence as far as the Cape of Good Hope, declared the mare clau
sum theory only a valid authorization of monopoly in such re
stricted areas as in the case of the Venetian control of the Adri
atic. The seas, the recognition of whose ownership was coveted
by the Dutch, he declared, "by reason of their immensity are not
subject to the particular use of any one power, against the rights
of the rest." Grotius had, in fact, written his famous Liberum
Mare to combat the very claims which the Dutch themselves
made after they had broken down the Portuguese monopoly of
the Cape route. Grotius had then quoted against the pretensions
of Spain the words of the Spanish scholar, Fernando Vasquez, to
the effect that "places public and common to all by the law of
nations cannot become objects of prescription."
These lofty claims Spain fortified with the more substantial
right of discovery. In 1513 Vasco Nunez de Balboa declared the
sea, and its islands and contiguous territories, the property of the
Castilian crown. Then, before another decade was gone the
epic voyage of Magellan gave heroic substance to the sweeping
claim so lightly made by the conquistador on the shores of
Darien. Within a few more years the work of the conquerors
THE SPANISH LAKE
289
of Mexico and Peru further strengthened the hold of Spain
upon the South Sea, as their ships felt their way along its eastern
coasts. By the middle of the century Spaniards were familiar
with the whole eastern shore of the Pacific from the region of
Cape Mendocino to that of Cape Horn. Four Spanish expedi
tions had already crossed the ocean from east to west, though
none had yet returned and few of the island groups had so far
been sighted. No foreign navigator had yet sailed on its waters.
The half century between 1560 and 1610 was to be even more
fruitful in actual occupancy of the Pacific. For the voyages of
Legaspi and Urdaneta, Mendana and Quiros, Sarmiento and
Vizcaino, fell in those fifty years. And the Manila Galleons had
begun the regular crossings which were to continue for two hun
dred and fifty years as the one vital link in the whole Spanish
scheme.
The great semi-circle of islands that stretches around from
Kamchatka until it disappears south of the equator among the
myriad sporades of Polynesia, spread like a Milky Way of coral
atolls on the edge of the world, was to form the western barrier
of the Spanish Pacific. As for Japan, militant and proud under
Hideyoshi and the Tokugawa shoguns, nothing more than a
spiritual conquest could be hoped for. However, the aggressive
racial spirit, embodied in the samurai's ideal of bushido, might
be neutralized by the missionaries' astute propaganda of pacifism,
the very issue which the Japanese foresaw and so ruthlessly fore
stalled by expulsion and massacre. The Spaniards also feared
the Japanese ambitions for maritime expansion, and accordingly
schemed to keep them a strictly insular people. It was with this
purpose that they refused to further the desire of the Japanese to
develop ship-building in the time of Iyeyasu. China, too, came
within the scope of the Spanish plan, and several projects were
entertained for its conquest. On the other hand, in view of the
habitually pacific and inoffensive attitude of the Chinese, cher
ishing their traditional isolation, there was at least little positive
danger from that quarter, except from isolated adventurers like
Limahon and Koxinga. Formosa was for a time a possession of
Spain, while Indo-China was the object of the designs of Gomez
Perez Dasmarinas and his son, Luis. The Philippines themselves
constituted the very key to the whole Asiatic line of Pacific
defense. The Moluccas were Spanish for a few decades, and
290
THE MANILA GALLEON
Spain maintained her hold on Ternate of this group until 1662.
The "King" of Borneo gave his dominions in a vague vassalage
to Governor Sande, and New Guinea had been claimed for Spain
from very early by right of discovery.
Finally, at the lower rim of the long arc the discoveries of
Mendana and Quiros secured for Spain a strong title to some of
the island groups which extend southeastward from New
Guinea. Inca myths of land to the west of the South American
coasts inflamed the imagination of Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
with the vision of another great continent. The tantalizing hy
pothesis was to torment the minds of men until the scientific
expeditions of the eighteenth century dispelled the last mysteries
of the South Sea. Sarmiento was not only familiar with old
Peruvian lore, but was a highly competent navigator and a man
of restless energies. Yet, when he had won the support of the
viceroy at Lima to his plans for an expedition in the southern
Pacific, it was the young and inexperienced Alvaro de Mendana
who was put in charge. Sarmiento was second in command of
the two ill-equipped ships which left Callao, the port of Lima, in
1567. No discoveries of importance were made until eighty days
out, when the first of the islands which Mendana named the
Solomons was sighted. Other islands of the same group were
visited and efforts made to establish a settlement on San Cristobal.
Inability of the gentle Mendana to control his men, who were
interested only in gold and who provoked the black-skinned
Melanesian islanders to reprisals, led to the failure of the ven
ture. After nine months among the Solomons the expedition,
in great distress from storms, hunger and scurvy, reached the
coast of Lower California, from which it eventually returned to
Peru.
In spite of the disastrous outcome of his first attempt Men
dana cherished the idea of returning to the scene of his discov
eries. It was another six years before he obtained the king's
sanction to his plans for a colony on the islands he had found.
Meanwhile, with the passing of time fancy endowed the Solo
mons with fabulous wealth. Changes in the viceregal palace at
Lima delayed his plans and it was April 1595, nearly 26 years
after his return from San Cristobal, before the persistent Men
dana was able to clear again for the west. The expedition con
sisted of four ships and 378 men and women. Its greatest asset
THE SPANISH LAKE
291
was the chief pilot, Pedro Fernandes de Quiros, a Portuguese
navigator of consummate skill. Though his seamanship was
beyond question, Quiros, like Columbus, was a visionary and
religious zealot whose phantasies often beclouded his excellent
judgment in practical affairs. Also, he shared his superior offi
cer's inability to manage his unruly crews, which quickly got out
of hand.
In July the Marquesas were discovered and named for the
viceroy's lady, a name which they still bear. They were the first
Europeans to make the acquaintance of the attractive Polynesian
peoples in the south Pacific. Quiros wrote of the natives that
they were "white and of a very agreeable appearance, tall and
strong, large-limbed, and so well made that they far surpassed us.
Indeed, for barbarians, naked, and of so little reason, one could
not restrain himself, at sight of them, from thanking God for
having created them." To the Spaniards the women seemed "as
beautiful as the women of Lima—and the women of Lima are
very beautiful." Yet a number of the trusting islanders were
wantonly massacred by Mendana's men.
From the Marquesas the expedition proceeded on to Santa
Cruz where the foundations of a settlement were made. Sickness
and bloody dissensions among the colonists and frequent clashes
with the islanders cursed the colony. In October Mendana died
and a month later the survivors abandoned the ill-fated site of
their sufferings and their lost hopes.
Though under the nominal leadership of Dona Isabel, Men
dana's strong-willed and selfish widow, it was the resourceful
Quiros who took the rotten ships, with their starving and dying
company, up through the Carolines and the Ladrones to Manila.
Here Quiros told Antonio de Morga: "It seems only right that
nothing be said about the first islands (the Marquesas) until his
Majesty be informed and order what is convenient to his service.
For, as the islands occupy a position midway between Peru, New
Spain and this land, the English, on learning of them, might
settle them and do much mischief in this sea." From Manila
those who wished to brave the sea again crossed to Acapulco by
the next galleon and ultimately reached Peru.
The great seaman who had saved the expedition from utter
disaster still cherished his belief in the existence of a southern
continent, which he called "Austrialia del Espiritu Santo." In
292
THE MANILA GALLEON
1600 he went to Spain to petition the king, and thence made his
way to Rome to lay before the pope the needs of Polynesian and
Melanesian souls sunk in paganism. It was another three years
before the necessary royal orders were issued to the viceroy at
Lima and late in 1605 when his three ships were ready to sail
from Callao.
Following closely to the twentieth parallel, he entered the
region of the Polynesian archipelagos, where he skirted the
Tuamotus and the northern rim of the Society Islands. Leaving
the vicinity of these elysian isles, he continued far to the west.
From the large island of Espiritu Santo of the New Hebrides,
which he mistook for part of a great continent, he turned north
almost to the fortieth parallel and crossed to Mexico. Then, a
beggar with a mighty vision, he hastened on to Spain, to an
nounce his discoveries to the king. For fourteen years he peti
tioned the incredulous court for a commission and funds to
colonize the continent whose eastern edge he believed he had
touched on Espiritu Santo. When at last the tireless old naviga
tor left Cadiz with the royal authorization for his voyage, he died
on his way out to Peru. With his indomitable, but misguided,
will there passed the dream of Spain's destiny in the southern
Pacific.
When Quir6s and Luiz Vaez de Torres, a fellow Portu
guese and second in command, had become separated on the
expedition of 1605, Torres had proceeded far to the northwest,
passing under New Guinea and through the strait that now bears
his name. To the south of this narrow passage he may well have
sighted the northern extremity of Australia about Cape York,
but could have had no inkling of the vast land mass that lay
behind it.
Such was the dream and the achievement of Spanish imper
ialism in the Pacific. That the whole conception of the Spanish
Lake was not the mere quixotic vagary of a people given to
grandiose visions its approximate realization in the early seven
teenth century abundantly proved. It only failed of reaching
its entirety because the seamen and the captains were greater than
the kings and councillors whom they served. As it was, in its
essentials it was for nearly two centuries a realized fact. Well
might Grotius exclaim: "Shall the people of Spain, forsooth,
assume a monopoly of all the world ?"
THE SPANISH LAKE
293
So far as her resources permitted Spain relied on actual
priority of occupation. However, after the magnificent achieve
ment of the sixteenth century, her population and wealth and the
initiative of her rulers during the hundred years which followed
were not commensurate with the work of exploration, settlement
and development required for the full realization and enforce
ment of her monopoly of the great ocean. The paralysis of the
decadencia had fallen over the kingdom at home. In the face of
realities her ineffectual rulers never relaxed their overweening
pretensions, but the mighty elan and force of the conquista were
burned out in the nation. The problem became one of holding
what a greater breed of men had won. Spain was tired and im
poverished, and her people, content with what the day might
bring them, had no stomach for more enterprises on the grand
scale. The strength of the empire was now largely negative, the
preoccupation of its enemies with their own internecine troubles
and with the wars of the continent.
Portugal was already a second-rate power when she became
a vassal of Philip II in 1580 and the recovery of her indepen
dence on the field of Villavicosa came too late to reestablish her
once proud position. It was rather a further indication of the
depths to which Spain had fallen. Although in the beginning
the Portuguese had strongly resented Spanish occupation of the
Philippines, they never showed any inclination to extend their
activities beyond into the area of the Pacific. Otherwise Brazil
was the limit of their ambitions on one side of the Pacific, as
was the line Macao-Malacca-Moluccas on the other side.
The Dutch early settled down to a business-like development
of the trade of the great archipelago which they still control.
Their East India Company was interested only in the state of its
ledgers and seldom risked its resources on ventures of doubtful
profit. Vanity of empire appealed little to the matter-of-fact
Hollanders. If for several decades they tried to oust the Span
iards from the Philippines it was because those islands appeared
to have a substantial value in themselves and as a base for trading
operations with the lands to the north. Such expeditions around
the southern end of South America as those of Noort and Speilbergen were isolated raids rather than part of any general design
against the Spaniards in the Pacific. Attempts made between
1594-96 to find a north passage into the Pacific around the Eura
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THE MANILA GALLEON
sian continent had even less significance, because less success. The
only exception to this general rule of Dutch policy was due to
the initiative of Anthony van Diemen, who was governor-gen
eral of the Dutch East Indies between 1636 and 1645. This
energetic official sponsored the epoch-making voyage of Abel
Tasman, in which that navigator sailed around under Australia
and discovered New Zealand, returning to Batavia by way of the
Fijis and above New Guinea. For the guidance of the expedi
tion Tasman's pilot, Franz Jacobszoon Visscher, had drawn up
a comprehensive plan for Dutch discoveries over the whole south
ern Pacific. In fact, his ambitious plans included the finding of
"the remaining unknown part of the terrestrial globe." But the
shareholders in Amsterdam refused to countenance further ex
penditures on what they considered visionary schemes worthy
only of a Spaniard. After that, despite Rogoveen's voyage in
1721, the Dutch never seriously threatened the Spaniards' pur
suit of their dream.
Englishmen early gave thought to the Pacific. The first
definite proposal for a venture in that direction was put before
Henry VIII in 1540. It was 1578 when Francis Drake rounded
South America with instructions to search for Marco Polo's badly
misplaced land of Beach 1 or the Terra Australis Incognita, as the
undiscovered continent variously appeared in the speculations of
that age. Storms interfered with Drake's plans to explore the
southern Pacific and diverted his attention to the settled coasts
of Peru. After his highly profitable forays on Spanish shipping
he reached the region of California, which he claimed for Eng
land as "New Albion." The material success of his daring raid
turned future English efforts to such substantial satisfactions
rather than to the quest for the unknown continent. Thus, Cav
endish in 1586 and Hawkins in 1593 were actuated by the same
very tangible motives.
For the two centuries between Drake and Cook the English
caused grave concern to the Spanish guardians of the Pacific.
This was in spite of the diversion of much of their national
energies into enterprises in other parts of the world—in India
and on the North American continent and in the West Indies, as
well as in Europe. Yet there were long intervals between the
1 This land, referred to as Beach, Boeach, Laach, or Lochac in various editions of
Marco Polo, was probably a part of the Malay peninsula.
THE SPANISH LAKE
various irruptions into the South Sea. After the Elizabethan
voyages of Drake, Cavendish and Hawkins the English did not
appear again until a century later, during the time of the buc
caneers. The only exception to their inaction was in their occa
sional attempts against the Spanish establishment in the Philip
pines in the early seventeenth century.
Then, by accepting a Bourbon king, with all its implications
of her subordination to French policy, Spain invited aggression
from the English against her all too unsubstantial empire of the
Pacific. Though Jonathan Swift's Gulliver brought the northern
Pacific into the realm of geographical fancy, the highly readable
writings of Dampier and Woodes Rogers and their fellows intro
duced the realities of the great ocean to Englishmen of the eight
eenth century. The report of Commodore Anson's voyage and
its demonstration of Spanish weakness only whetted their appe
tite for what the king of Spain guarded so inadequately. Their
easy capture of Manila in 1762 removed any remnant of illusion
which may have remained as to the power of the Spaniards to
hinder their designs.
After the Seven Years' War and the consolidation of her
position in India and North America at the expense of France,
England was free to make a serious effort in the Pacific. The
expedition of Commodore Byron cleared for the Pacific the year
after the Treaty of Paris. Wallis and Carteret followed two years
later, and after another two years Captain James Cook began the
series of three long voyages which bridged the period until 1780.
The French did not become a factor in the Pacific until late.
The legendary voyage of the Sieur de Gonneville, supposed to
have antedated that of Magellan by sixteen years, early aroused
speculation in learned circles, but had no practical results. The
surplus energies of France found ample occupation in other
quarters.
It was not until the reign of Louis XIV that France threat
ened the Spanish scheme of things in the Pacific. Then it was not
by violence against the Spaniards, but by the exercise of dynastic
politics. When a Bourbon prince ascended the Spanish throne
as Philip V in 1700, the neighboring kingdom and its overseas
dominions were brought within the scope of the ambitious hege
mony of France. For a time Spanish commercial interests were
subordinated to the designs of France and Spain's policy of com
296
THE MANILA GALLEON
mercial exclusion gravely compromised. She was only saved
from a total renunciation of her traditional system, to the advan
tage of France, by the ultimate triumph of the maritime powers
in the War of the Spanish Succession.
During this period French ships, like those of the able Malouine, Gouin de Beauchesne, traded at will and without hin
drance along the west coast of South America. "The French
have now begun to engross the Trade of Peru and Chile," wrote
Woodes Rogers, who passed that way in 1709. Though the
Spanish colonials found traffic with the French advantageous,
its competition cut deeply into the old trade from Spain by way
of Panama, and peninsular merchants protested bitterly against
this invasion of their monopoly.
The continued prosecution of the vigorous commercial policy
thus initiated by France was prevented by the issue of the War
of the Spanish Succession. Louis XIV had declared to Amelot
in 1709: "The principal object of the present war is the commerce
of the Indies and the riches which they produce." And, though
a Bourbon remained on the throne of Spain, the status quo ante
in the Pacific was restored and the national interest in the Coun
cil of the Indies reassumed control over the Spanish empire.
When the French reappeared in the Pacific a half century
later it was not in imperialistic guise, but as participants in the
movement for scientific exploration which they shared with a
famous group of English navigators. Meanwhile, the publica
tion in 1756 of Charles de Brasses' Histoire des Navigations aux
Terres Australes had prepared French minds for the work of
the new era. The noble Comte Louis Antoine de Bougainville,
he of the purple flower, visited the Pacific between 1767 and 1769
and brought back to France a brilliant account of the charms of
Tahiti and other islands of the Polynesian archipelagos. In 1785
Jean Francois Galaup de La Perouse was sent out to investigate
the prospects for whale fishing and fur trading about the Pacific.
Though his ships were lost two years later, his achievement as
navigator and observer reflected greatly to the credit of French
seamanship and science.
By the middle of the eighteenth century the regime of exclu
sion was fast drawing to a close. Not only did Englishmen and
Frenchmen sail about the Pacific in complete disregard of the
Spaniards—and their outworn anathemas. Ships of the new
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297
North American republic began to trade along the Spanish coasts
of the South Sea. The Russians were soon to begin their voy
ages from Alaska down the California shore. Maritime ethics
and customs were changing, and the great pretension of Spain to
monopoly of the Pacific had been unmasked. Whatever sub
stance remained of the old idea of the Spanish Lake was dis
pelled by Commodore Anson, and the Covadonga was Spain's
final sacrifice to the emptiness of a colossal presumption, which
could not survive the fire of a single British frigate. The perni
cious doctrine that one nation might dominate such an expanse
of sea gave way before the rise of more liberal principles of com
ity, as well as before a display of naval force. The annexation of
Easter Island, now a Chilean possession, the sending of mis
sionaries to the Society Islands, and the scientific expedition of
Malaspina (1789-94) came too late and were on too small a scale
to affect the changed status of affairs in the Pacific. The advance
up the coast to Alaska, attended with much of the old daring,
and the stand made at Nootka Sound were the final efforts of
Spain in the days of her belated revival to uphold what seemed
tenable of her long-cherished dream. But the Pacific was now
anyone's ocean and the real partition of its lands had only begun.
From early times Spain had laid a formal prohibition on
foreigners about her overseas empire. "No foreign ships shall
pass to the Indies, and such as do shall be seized," runs a law of
1540, reiterated in 1558, 1560, and 1563. On the Spanish Lake,
thus created by royal fiat, the Manila Galleons might sail back
and forth with as much security "as though they were on the
river of Seville." And Spain meant that the Pacific should be
shrouded in such secrecy that the rest of the world could know
nothing of these argosies and their tempting cargoes. The harry
ing of heretics by the Inquisition and a system of espionage in
London, Amsterdam, and other cities, to learn of the movements
of prospective expeditions to the West Indies or the Pacific were
intended to aid the fleets and forts in maintaining this policy of
exclusion. Thus, in a letter of November 1, 1582, Viceroy Suarez
de Mendoza advised the king of information received from Ber
nardino de Mendoza, Spanish Ambassador in London, regarding
two English ships fitting out for a voyage to the Moluccas by way
of the Pacific. In 1776 a resident of London, of Spanish ancestry,
named Juan de Guzman y Mendoza, voluntarily sent a warning
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THE MANILA GALLEON
to a certain high colonial official, apparently the governor of the
Philippines, advising him of the approaching departure for the
Pacific of Cook's two ships, the Resolution and the Discovery.
He declared that their intention, according to Cook's own confi
dential avowal to an intimate of both men, was the opening of
trade with the west coast of North America and the occupation
of California, to compensate England for the anticipated loss of
her colonies, then in rebellion.
For the protection of her domain in the Pacific, Spain de
pended as much on nature as on ships and forts and men. Par
ticularly was this true on the eastern side of the ocean, for access
from the west was greatly facilitated by the existence of secon
dary bases of operation in the East Indies and on the coasts of
India. However, in spite of this advantage and except for local
movements from Batavia or Madras against Manila, the more
serious threats to Spanish power came westward out of the
Atlantic.
The natural barriers against ingress into the Pacific from the
east constituted a defensive force of the first magnitude. Except
at the Isthmus of Panama and on either side of Tierra del Fuego
the land mass of the Americas effectually blocked all approach
from that direction.
Spaniards shared the belief, long current in Europe, that there
existed a practicable water route across the North American con
tinent or to the north of it. They also suspected the feasibility of
a way around northern Europe and Asia. They knew of the ef
forts of Cartier, Frobisher, and Hudson to find a strait which
would lead through to "China," and feared that the ships of some
rival power might penetrate thereby into the seclusion of the
Pacific. Yet the mystery of "Anian," as they called the problem
atical northwest passage, was never completely solved until 1905.
The guarding of the southern gateway around South
America presented a more tangible problem. Occasionally, when
intruders were expected from that quarter armed ships were
despatched down the coasts of Peru and Chile to patrol the neigh
borhood of Tierra del Fuego. For a time after the shock of
Drake's incursion reliance was placed on Sarmiento's colony in
the Straits. But this establishment, founded in 1581, was as illfated as it was short-lived, and irony would have it that the last
THE SPANISH LAKE
299
survivor was picked up by Cavendish when he passsed that way
in 1587. The Spaniards trusted more to the forbidding seas about
the lower end of the continent than they did to military safe
guards, either fixed or mobile. The winds and waves of those
savage waters were to account for more enemy ships and men
than did all the king's forts and all the king's cannon and mus
ketry about the Pacific. Yet, in their impartiality the storms
about Tierra del Fuego took as heavy toll of Spanish as of
English or Dutch ships, as when they shattered the fleet of Ad
miral Jose Pizarro, who was sent out to intercept Anson in 1742.
The Spaniards were favored by the very remoteness of the
forbidden sea. The hardships of an unbroken voyage into the
Pacific made it difficult to hold a crew together until the attain
ment of their objectives might compensate them for their suffer
ings. For the long-continued trials were a supreme test of disci
pline and self-restraint. Even the most masterly leaders had
often to face the ugly menace of mutiny. The buccaneers, who
entered the Pacific by the overland route across the Isthmus of
Panama, quickly fell into a state of anarchy, and were only
forced into successful cooperation by their common danger or
lust for booty, save when they were dominated by some more
ferocious will. Once they had penetrated into the Pacific hostile
armaments might find rest and succor in three groups of islands
which the Spaniards left without adequate defense. Those were,
in the order of their nearness to the eastern entrance to the sea:
Juan Fernandez, the turtle-breeding Galapagos, and the Ladrones, where passing ships could always obtain provisions by
one means or another from the small Spanish post on Guam.
Only with the utmost risk could a ship reach the Pacific
without a port available in its path, where it could take on pro
visions and refit in safety. The last place which best combined
these advantages was St. Catherine's Island off the southern coast
of Brazil, now the site of Florianopolis, capital of the State of
Santa Catharina. In this respect Anson's problem in 1740-44 was
as serious as Drake's in 1579. Scurvy, starvation, or turning-back
in distress were the alternatives that faced the ship without a con
venient port-of-call. Until after 1600 all such way-stations on
the road to the Pacific, whether on the route around the Cape of
Good Hope or on Magellan's old path around South America,
were in Spanish or Portuguese hands. Except for the period of
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THE MANILA GALLEON
Dutch occupation in Brazil and the short duration of Villegagnon's Huguenot settlements about Rio Bay, this condition re
mained true of the westward route into the South Sea until the
end of the colonial regime of Spain and Portugal in South
America. Gradually, the eastward route around Africa became
marked with the way-stations of other powers which little heeded
the remonstrances of Portugal at the violation of her monopoly
of the Cape route. Only the diversion of the attention of these
interlopers to the lucrative trade of India and the Javas probably
saved the Spaniards from a reckoning in the Pacific.
To the west the Portuguese possessions served for a time as
a secondary bulwark for Spanish control of the Pacific. The
absorption of Portugal in 1580 was evidently aimed to secure
ultimately the disposal of its East Indian resources, just as Louis
XIV's designs on Spain had in view the utilization of the wealth
of the Spanish Indies. Thus, until the separation in 1640 Portu
guese policy in its larger phases was subordinated to that of Spain.
Under this regime Macao became a part of the Spanish scheme of
defense, as did the vitally important Malacca, which the great
Albuquerque had occupied in 1511, and for a briefer period the
Javas as well. Behind these were Ceylon and the posts on the
Indian peninsula—Goa, Cochin, and the rest, the Cape of Good
Hope, and the Guinea way-stations—all links in the line of de
fense against possible aggressions 1 around Africa.
On the eastern side of the Americas a like function was
performed by the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean area and on
the River Plate, since a hostile force must pass these outworks
before it could enter the open Pacific. It was due to the weakness
of the precautions taken at the isthmus, which was one of the two
strategical points in the line, that the buccaneers were able to
break out upon the South Sea in the latter seventeenth century.
The Castle of Chagre, which Morgan's men stormed in 1680,
was part of the defenses of the Spanish empire of the Pacific.
The importance of the Malouines or Falklands, over which a
serious controversy arose in the latter eighteenth century, lay in
their position as commanding the entrance to the Straits of Ma
gellan and the route around Cape Horn. Brazil was also as
necessary to the consummation of the Spanish scheme on this
side as was Malacca on the other, a circumstance which explains
the anxiety of Spain at the Dutch occupation of the Pernambuco
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301
Bahia district of the Portuguese colony in the seventeenth century.
That the Spaniards were justified in their concern over the Dutch
position in northern Brazil was demonstrated by the expedition
of Hendrick Brouwer into the Pacific in 1642. Though
Brouwer's ships returned to Pernambuco without accomplishing
more than some futile depredations along the Chilean coast, the
ease with which he had made his incursion into the South Sea
seriously alarmed the Spanish government.
In the same way the Spaniards considered the Philippines as
a valuable outwork for the defense of the American coasts against
attacks from the west. Above all, their loss to an enemy power
might well imperil the route of the South Sea silver fleet between
Peru and Panama. Thus, after the short-lived British occupation
of Manila during the Seven Years War, Pedro Calderon Enriquez
called the Philippines "the wall which defends all America from
the west." Even after the restoration of Manila to Spain the
Spaniards were much concerned over rumored British plans for
the seizure of J0I6 or Zamboanga, "from where they would have
free access to New Spain."
The Spaniards also discouraged ordinary trading voyages
across the Pacific to New Spain or Peru. They held that such
ventures of foreigners would not only threaten their shipping
monopoly in trans-Pacific trade and compete with Spanish mer
chants in the colonial markets, but constitute a serious political
menace by the possible founding of establishments on the Ameri
can coasts.
Orientals as well as Europeans were included in the ban.
A memorial drawn up in 1586 by the leading citizens of Manila
declared among the advantages to be derived from the proposed
conquest of China the prohibition of Chinese voyages to New
Spain and Peru. Nor was a Japanese voyage to Acapulco in the
early part of the next century permitted to become a , precedent.
More serious in its possible consequences was the trading
voyage made by some Dutch and English ships to the Mexican
coast in 1746. This voyage had been preceded two years earlier
by an attempt of the Dutch authorities on Java to secure the
privilege of trading at Manila. Denied the concession, they de
termined to open a direct trade from the Orient with the Spanish
American coasts, a traffic which might have offered dangerous
competition to the Manila Galleons. In order to insure a profit
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THE MANILA GALLEON
able market for the expedition, by preventing the departure of
the year's nao from Manila, the Dutch governor at Batavia re
sorted to the ruse of warning the Spaniards of an intended at
tack by a British fleet under Admiral Barnet, then cruising in
the East Indies. Meanwhile four Dutch and two English ships
cleared for the American coast with rich cargoes of oriental
goods and ; an authorization to offer the viceroy of New Spain a
large bribe for the right to trade with that region. Two Dutch
ships, which continued across the Pacific after the fleet had been
dispersed by storms, disposed :of their goods on the Guadalajara
coast before the official prohibitions from Mexico could reach the
authorities of those districts. They penetrated the Gulf of Cali
fornia as far as Guaymas, and while reconnoitering the lower
coast one of them sighted two Philippine galleons in the harbor
of Acapulco. However, the Dutch do not seem to have repeated
this attempt to trade with the west coast of New Spain.
The French made a number of trading voyages across the
Pacific from the Asiatic coasts during the reign of Louis XIV.
French ships carried Chinese silks from Canton to Peru and New
Spain. However, this competition with French fabrics was not
in accordance with the plans of the interests which had sent out
these expeditions, and who accordingly soon prohibited these ir
regular ventures. It was, moreover, directly contrary to the socalled mercantilist policies upon which the development of
French industry was based.
A few French ships touched on the upper Mexican coast
with cargoes from the Orient. In 1709 the Stunt Antoine (Cap
tain Frondat) crossed the Pacific to the California coast at an
altitude higher than the usual course of the Manila Galleons.
Six years later the Comtesse de Pontchartrain (Captain Forgeais
de Langerie), the first ship to circumnavigate the globe from
west to east, put in at the Tres Marias Islands and later lay for
over a month in the harbor of Val de Banderas.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 9 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
CHAPTER 9
THE ENGLISH
DURING the two and a half centuries of the line the English
took four of the galleons. The Santa Ana, first of them,
fell to Thomas Cavendish in 1587. It was a century before
Woodes Rogers captured the Encarnacidn in 1709, both of these
off Lower California. Spain's alliance with Bourbon France was
to prove still more disastrous to the galleons in the same century.
For Commodore Anson took the Covadonga in Philippine waters
in 1743, and nineteen years later the great Santisima Trinidad
struck her colors to two English frigates of Admiral Cornish's
squadron. Two of the galleons that were attacked by English
ships, the Rosario in 1704 and the Begona in 1709, beat off their
assailants and reached port in safety.
Drake
Except for John Oxenham's short incursion at Panama in
1575, the first foreigner to break into the lonely immensity of
the Pacific was Francis Drake. When the Golden Hind entered
the South Sea in September 1578, it was only six years since the
Chinese had begun to bring their silks to Manila for the Ameri
can market. The cargoes of the galleons were not so rich as they
were shortly to become and the secret of their existence was still
guarded by Spain. Drake knew nothing of the Manila Galleon
and it was the riches of the mines of Peru poured into the treas
ury of Spain that excited his cupidity. Though he learned of the
galleon after leaving the Peruvian coast, he appeared little con
cerned with whatever wealth it might hold. By the time he
reached the field of the galleon he was sated with the plunder
that he had taken from the Cacafuego and other minor prizes,
and was more cautious to hold what he already had than to risk
its loss in new attempts.
303
3«4
THE MANILA GALLEON
Shortly after he had left Callao for the north he overhauled
a Spanish ship, on which he found "ropes and tackles for ships"
and "other things which was for the provision of the journey,
appointed to the Fylipinas." These ships' supplies may have
been destined for the Acapulco galleon, but were more probably
intended for the vessel that was to carry Gonzalo Ronquillo out
from Panama to Manila to be governor of the Philippines. Then,
after taking the Cacafuego between Paita and Panama early in
March, Drake steered northwest to the Central American coast,
where he spent some time at the island of Cano putting the
Golden Hind in condition to continue her voyage home.
On leaving the island of Cano on the 24th of March he cap
tured the Nuestra Senora de la Concepcidn, which was bound
from Acapulco for Panama. He took off the Spanish ship a pilot
of the galleons, named Alonso Gonzalez Colchero, who had been
sent by the viceroy of New Spain to guide Ronquillo's ship across
the Pacific. He also seized the "sea-cards" or sailing charts used
by the galleons and a number of official despatches addressed to
Ronquillo and the Spanish authorities at Manila. The state
ment in Hakluyt to the effect that he found in this ship "a Span
ish Governor going for the Islands of the Philippines" is errone
ous, as Ronquillo, the newly appointed Governor, came to
Panama direct from Spain. "At Panama," wrote Antonio de
Morga, "Ronquillo embarked his people in the South Sea, and
set sail for the Philippines, where he arrived and took over the
government, in the year one thousand five hundred and eighty."
After consulting with Colchero about the westerly route across
the Pacific, Drake released him, but kept the charts for his future
use.
On his way up the Guatemala coast Drake fell in with an
other Spanish ship, which had recently left Acapulco for Callao
with a cargo of merchandise from the last Manila Galleon. "We
met with a ship," says the narrative in Hakluyt, "laden with linen
cloth and fine China-dishes of white earth, and great store of
China-silks, of all which things we tooke as we listed." The
ship was in charge of her owner, Don Francisco de Zarate, a
"Spanish Gentleman" of wealth and refinement, from whom
Drake also took a "Fawlcon of golde, with a great Emeraud in
the breast thereof." Drake also pressed Zarate's pilot into his
service, but dropped him at Guatulco on the Oaxaca coast of New
THE ENGLISH
305
Spain, along with his old Portuguese pilot, Nuno da Silva, whom
he had brought from Europe.
While he lay in the harbor of Guatulco the local Spanish
authorities spread the alarm of his coming up the coast to Acapulco, where the galleon was still waiting to clear for Manila.
There was a great "hurlie burlie" in Mexico when the news of
Drake's incursion arrived. The viceroy, Enriquez, despatched
two hundred soldiers to Acapulco and gave orders to the shipping
in that port to go out against the Englishman. Miles Philips,
one of John Hawkins' men, who had been left on the Panuco
coast in 1568 and had since worked as a silk weaver in the coun
try, was sent along as interpreter. However, though Drake had
entertained the design of entering the harbor of Acapulco and
burning the ships at anchor there, he passed its entrance without
shortening sail and continued on to the upper California coast,
from where he was to sail southwestward on his passage to the
Carolines and the Moluccas. When the galleon and some smaller
ships finally left Acapulco in pursuit of him Drake was already
well on his way to the north. While on the Central American
coast, Drake "thinking himselfe both in respect of his private
injuries received from the Spaniards, as also of their contempts
and indignities offered to our countrey and Prince in generall,
sufficiently satisfied, and revenged; and supposing that her
Majestie at his returne would rest contented with this service,
purposed to continue no longer upon the Spanish coasts, but
began to consider and to consult of the best way for his countrey."
Cavendish
The first Englishman to take one of the Manila Galleons
was Thomas Cavendish, or Candish. A young squire of Trimley
in Suffolk, he had spent considerable time about the court of
Elizabeth, after the fashion of gentlemen of the country in his
time. In London the youthful courtier made the acquaintance
of Raleigh and some of the veteran seamen who had accompanied
Drake on his voyage round the world and was fired with the
desire to emulate their example. The failure of an initial under
taking in Virginia and the West Indies only spurred his ambi
tion for achievement further afield. Through the favor of Lord
Hunsdon, the lord high chamberlain, he was able to obtain a
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THE MANILA GALLEON
royal commission for his projected enterprises against the
Spaniards, and by mortgaging his ancestral estates he succeeded
in outfitting three small vessels. With this force he planned to
follow the course of Drake into the Pacific, there to prey on
Spanish towns and shipping after the approved formula of
Elizabethan navigators.
The three ships, manned by one hundred and twenty-three
men, cleared from Plymouth on the twenty-first of July 1586
and seven months later they emerged from the Straits of Magellan
into the open Pacific. In a letter written to Lord Hunsdon on
his return to England Cavendish thus summed up in Assyrian
terms the story of the next few months, during which he worked
his way up the west side of the American continent: "I navigated
alongst the coast of Chili, Peru and Nueva Espanna, where I
made great spoiles; I burnt and sunk 9 sailes of ships small and
great. All the villages and townes that ever I landed at, I burnt
and spoiled ; and had I not bene discovered upon the coast, I had
taken great quantities of treasure."
Of much greater value than the booty which he gathered
along the way was the treasure which he took from the Manila
Galleon off the tip of Lower California. As he continued in his
brief report to his patron at court: "The matter of most profit
unto me was a great ship of the kings which I tooke at Cali
fornia, which ship came from the Philippines, being one of the
richest of merchandise that ever passed those seas." Cavendish
first heard of the expected arrival of the galleon, Santa Ana,
from a Provencal pilot, whom he found on one of his prizes.
He was then in the waters of the northern viceroyalty and so
within a few weeks' sail of the path of the incoming galleon.
Coasting along the shores of New Spain and intent on the
capture of the rich Manila ship, he confined his operations on
land to occasional minor raids, which were intended rather to
procure water and fresh provisions than any more substantial
booty. On the fourteenth of October Cavendish's two remain
ing ships sighted Cape San Lucas at the tip of Lower California,
where the galleon was accustomed to make a landfall and check
her course before proceeding on to Acapulco. In the bay of
Aguada Segura or Puerto Seguro close under the cape, he found
a convenient base from which he could patrol the outside of the
headland in his search for the galleon.
THE ENGLISH
307
Early in the morning of November 4th, 1587, the lookout on
the Desire called out to his companions below that he had sighted
a ship bearing in towards the cape. The discovery was signaled
to the Content and both vessels promptly gave chase with all
sail. It was afternoon before they came up with the galleon,
which was "The great rich ship called the Santa Ana," under
the command of Tomas de Alzola. As the Desire came abreast
of the towering galleon she poured a broadside into her and
made ready to board. The Spaniard had no cannon and was
forced to rely for his defense on a varied assortment of antiquated
infantry weapons, which included "lances, javelins, rapiers &
targets, & an innumerable sort of great stones; which they
threw overboard upon our heads and into our ship." After being
driven over the sides of the galleon in an attempt to board, the
Englishmen fell back on their artillery, against which the
Spaniard had no adequate protection. "We now trimmed our
sailes," said Francis Pretty, master of the Desire, "and fitted
every man his furniture, and gave them a fresh encounter with
our great ordinance and also with our small shot, raking them
through and through, to the killing and maiming of many of
their men." After five or six hours of stubborn resistance the
Spaniard had suffered such heavy losses among his company and
his hull had been shot through at the waterline, so that he hung
out a flag of truce as a sign of surrender. The galleon then
lowered her sails and sent one of her passengers on board the
Desire to parley with Cavendish.
In spite of the disparity in the size of the ships—the Santa
Ana had a tonnage of 600, and the Desire and Content were of
respectively 120 and 60 tons—the odds in the battle had been
overwhelmingly in favor of the English. As Viceroy Villmanrique reported to the king, "since the Spaniards had neither
artillery nor arms, they were forced to surrender." On the other
hand, the Desire mounted eighteen guns and the Content ten.
Commenting on the helplessness of the galleon against a ship
armed with cannon, Governor Vera wrote to the king: "As no
other ships but ours have ever been sighted on this voyage they
have always sailed with as little fear from corsairs as if they were
on the river of Seville." Cavendish's crew consisted of tried and
seasoned sailors and fighters, while most of those on the galleon
were inexperienced in the use of even such arms as were available.
3o8
THE MANILA GALLEON
Many of her crew were Filipinos and among her passengers were
a number of women and children. Moreover, at this stage of the
galleon's voyage, already five months out from Manila, the vitality
of those on board must have been low, with the usual large list
of sick. As it was, Cavendish testified to the bravery with which
the Spanish commander sought to save his ship from capture,
and Francis Pretty wrote of his courage: "Their Captaine still
like a valiant man with his company stood very stoutly unto
his close fights." Moreover, the long duration of the combat,
which lasted throughout the afternoon, was evidence of the stub
bornness of the Spaniards' defense.
From the Spanish commander Cavendish received the register
of the Santa Ana's cargo, "To wit, an hundreth and 22 thousand
pezos of golde; and the rest of the riches that the ship was laden
with, was in silkes, sattens, damasks, with muske & divers other
merchandise, and great store of all manner of victuals with the
choyse of many conserves of all sorts for to eate, and of sundry
sorts of very good wines." When Cavendish opened the chests
containing the gold, he exclaimed : "Now we are rich, for in the
two years that we have been going we have found nothing like
this." According to Roman, the royal treasurer at Manila, the gal
leon carried 2,300 marks of gold, equivalent to 84.2 pounds avoir
dupois or 102.3 pounds troy. In addition, she was believed to carry
a large amount of gold that had not been registered. In the gal
leon's cargo there were also many fine pearls and the usual heavy
proportion of rich silks. The choicest of the silks were seized
by the crews of the English ships, but the cheaper grades of silks
and the cotton goods were either dumped overboard or left in
the hold to be burned. Another item of the cargo was a valuable
shipment of musk and civet destined for the perfume manu
facturers of Europe. Roman, the treasurer, and President Vera
of the audiencia, who was then acting as governor, declared that
the total sale value of the Santa Ana's cargo in Mexico would
have been over 2,000,000 pesos and represented an original in
vestment at Manila of more than 1,000,000 pesos. After Caven
dish and his men had taken all they desired from the Spanish
ship he signed the register of her merchandise and returned it to
her commander.
Before removing the valuable part of the cargo to his ships
Cavendish had set ashore the one hundred and ninety Spaniards
THE ENGLISH
309
on the galleon and provided them with food and with hand arms
for their defense against the Indians. However, he first hanged
Fray Juan de Almendariz, a priest returning from the Philippines.
After he had transferred such of the merchandise as he desired
he set fire to the galleon and turned her adrift.
One of those put ashore by Cavendish was Sebastian Vizcaino,
who was later to explore the California coast and to become the
most skilled Spanish navigator of his time. Vizcaino was return
ing from Manila with sixty thousand ducats invested in rich
merchandise, all of which had been seized by the Englishman.
It was his resourcefulness that now saved his companions, who
were marooned on the peninsula far from the Spanish settlements
on the mainland and with little hope of an early rescue. As an
off-shore wind blew the galleon in towards the beach, Vizcaino
called on the most able-bodied of his fellows and with them went
out through the surf to the burning hulk. They extinguished the
flames in the hold and then, after the most strenuous efforts,
succeeded in putting the ship in condition to cross the Gulf of
California and finally to reach Acapulco on the seventh of
January. Another survivor of the Santa Ana is said to have been
the mendacious Greek pilot, Juan de Fuca, who claimed to have
discovered the Pacific entrance of the mythical Straits of Anian
and whose name was later to be given to the entrance to Puget
Sound. It was the disaster to the Santa Ana and the Spaniards'
new realization of the defenselessness of the California coasts
that prompted the king a few years later to despatch Vizcaino
on the northerly voyage of exploration which resulted in the first
accurate knowledge of upper California.
As soon as Cavendish had stowed away his plunder below
decks and quelled a mutiny of the grumbling sailors on the
Content, his ships "set sail joyously homeward towards England
with a fayre wind." After the dusk of that November day the
Content was never seen again. In her passage across the Pacific,
the Desire was fortunate in having her course set by Alonso de
Valladolid, pilot of the Santa Ana, whom Francis Pretty in his
narrative of the voyage always refers to as "Tomas de Ersola,"
evidently confusing his name with that of Alzola, the Santa Ana's
commander. Cavendish had impressed the pilot into his service,
along with three Filipino boys and two Japanese. Under the
expert guidance of Valladolid, Cavendish reached Guam of the
310
THE MANILA GALLEON
Ladrones in forty-five days and in another eleven days he sighted
Cape Espiritu Santo at the entrance of the Philippines. After
he had entered the straits Cavendish found the Spanish pilot
guilty of attempting to inform his countrymen at Manila of the
depredations of the English and promptly had him hanged.
Cavendish spent several days at the island of Capul, where
he revictualed his ship, and then moved up the straits between
Luzon and Masbate. Rounding Masbate, he turned south and
passed between Panay and Negros out onto the open water of
the Sulu Sea. He was glutted with booty from his operations
along the American coast and showed no inclination to risk
what he already had by coming to blows with the superior
Spanish forces to the north. For at this time the Spaniards had
over four hundred soldiers at Manila and could send out three
ships of over three hundred tons each, besides several smaller
war craft.
The only aggression which he committed during his seven
teen or eighteen days among the Philippines was an unsuccessful
attempt to burn the galleon Santiago, which was nearing comple
tion in the yards at Arevalo on the south coast of Panay. How
ever, his landing party was beaten off by a company of Spaniards,
who appeared on the shore. When the Santiago sailed for
Acapulco in June of the next year she carried a letter to the
king from Manuel Lorenzo de Lemos, who had saved her from
the English. "Some time ago," he wrote, "the President [of the
audiencia] sent me to bring the ship which is now leaving for
New Spain. With much difficulty I saved it from the danger of
the shallows across which it was taken from the yards. While
I was serving your Majesty in this capacity the English corsair
who robbed the Santa Ana last year fell upon me and wished to
burn and destroy the new galleon which I was taking out. I
took my men down to the shore and resisted him and when he
left he wrote me a letter."
"Our Generall," wrote Francis Pretty in his narrative of the
voyage, "sent commendations to the Spanish captaine which wee
came from the evening before by the Spaniard which we tooke,
and willed him to provide good store of gold; for he meant for
to see him with his company at Manilla within few yeeres, and
that he did but want a bigger boate to have landed his men, or
else hee would have seene him then." In the letter which Caven
THE ENGLISH
3"
dish wrote to Lemos he said: "If I had had a good ship the
twenty caulkers would not have prevented me from burning the
galleon that was in the yards. Give my respects to the President
[Vera] and tell him I shall come again and destroy the rest of
the galleons, and that we return the hate of the Spaniards towards
the English nation."
Meanwhile the Spanish authorities at Manila were unaware
of Cavendish's presence among the islands. When Geronimo
de Mendizabal wrote to Governor Vera on February 14th from
Panay the Desire was already passing the Moluccas on her way
to Java. Nevertheless a council of war was held at Manila in
March, at which two seamen who had been held captive on the
Desire testified as to the strength of the English raider. One of
them, Francisco Mansalay, a Filipino, who had been taken off
the Santa Ana and later set ashore at Capul, gave the first ac
count of the capture of the galleon off Lower California. He
informed the astounded Spaniards that the Desire had a crew
of only forty-eight men, but that her eighteen guns had given
her a great advantage over the galleon. Pedro Fernandes, a
Portuguese seaman, who had been picked up by Cavendish while
passing through the Visayas, had made some interesting observa
tions during his short stay on the English ship. He described
Cavendish as "small of stature" and apparently about twenty-two
years old, but that he held his men under strict discipline. He
commented on the damask bed-clothing of the sailors and the
luxury of the fittings in Cavendish's cabin. He also gave a pic
ture of the "Lutheran" service held on the Desire. Before the
service a Flemish sailor, whose acquaintance he had made, said
to him: "Now you will see whether we are Christians or not."
"Then," the Portuguese said, "they began to pray and to sing
hymns. They prayed sitting down and those who did not want
to pray did not attend the service, nor did anyone force them
to do so." Once when he cried out to the "mother of God"
during the night, an English sailor who was passing by said to
him, "Mother of God—mother of the devil!"
When the Spaniards at Manila realized the extent of Caven
dish's depredations they were filled with a futile fury. Prac
tically every member of the community had suffered by the loot
ing of the Santa Ana. "The loss has caused great poverty and
distress in this city and among its inhabitants and soldiers," said
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THE MANILA GALLEON
the audiencia. Moreover, Spanish pride was deeply injured by
the impunity with which Cavendish had carried on his daring
raid in waters which they considered the exclusive domain of
their king. "The greatest damage and injury," the treasurer,
Juan Bautista Roman, wrote to Philip II, "that can be received
from the occurrence is that a robber should dare with so few
forces to pass among these islands so leisurely; since he was able
to pass without our forming his acquaintance, that he should
try to make so much outcry, to boast of his capture, and to utter
threats for the future." "The grief that afflicts me," wrote Bishop
Salazar, "is not because this barbarian infidel has robbed us of
the ship Santa Ana, and destroyed thereby the property of the
citizens; but because an English youth of about twenty-two years,
with a wretched little vessel of a hundred tons and forty or fifty
companions, should dare to come to my own place of residence,
defy us and boast of the damage that he had wrought. He went
from our midst laughing, without anyone molesting or troubling
him; neither has he felt that the Spaniards are in this land for
any purpose."
From the region of the Philippines Cavendish sailed down
through the Malay Archipelago, stopping awhile at Java, and
thence returned home by way of the Cape of Good Hope
and St. Helena. While off the Portuguese coast they heard from
a "Flemish hulke" bound out of Lisbon, of the defeat of the
Armada, "to the singular rejoycing and comfort" of all on board.
Six days later, the ninth of September, 1588, "after a terrible
tempest," wrote Francis Pretty, "which carried away most part
of our sailes, by the mercifull favor of the Almightie we recovered
our long wished port of Plymouth in England." It was two
years and fifty days since they had sailed out of the same harbor.
From Plymouth the Desire was brought around to the
Thames in November and paraded before the court at Green
wich. A foreigner writing from London a few days later thus
described the occasion: "Among other things the Queen said,
'We care nothing for the Spaniards. Their ships, loaded with
gold and silver from the Indies, come hither after all.' Every
sailor had a gold chain around his neck, and the sails of the ship
were of blue damask, the standard of cloth of gold and blue silk.
It was as though Cleopatra were born again. The only thing
wanting was that the rigging should have been of silken rope."
THE ENGLISH
3i3
On November 5th Cavendish gave a banquet to Elizabeth on
board his ship. All England was in an exultant mood after the
defeat of the Armada and the queen was reported to have boasted
much, as she was feted by her young captain in the ship's cabin
that was decorated with the rich spoils of the Spanish galleons.
The thrifty queen was probably as much impressed by the
gold and silver in Cavendish's booty as by the display of captured
silks. Bernardino de Mendoza, the former Spanish ambassador
in England, relayed to his royal master the varying rumors sent
to him by his agents in London as to the value of the plunder.
On November 26th he wrote: "Cavendish's booty shrinks in
value daily, but the English still estimate it at 500,000 crowns."
Whatever the true figure, it was sufficient to create a violent
disturbance in the money market of London. Wrote the foreign
observer quoted above: "Cavendish must have brought great
riches, for they are coining new broad-angels, and gold is cheaper
here than it ever was. Spanish pistolets, which four months ago
were worth 12 reales 11 maravedis, will not now pass for 11 reales
24 maravedis in consequence of the great abundance of them
here."
A series of attempts by other Elizabethan seamen to repeat
the exploits of Drake and Cavendish in the Pacific all failed,
either because of Spanish resistance or of the storms encountered
about the southern end of South America. Among these unsuc
cessful raiders were John Chidley and John Davis, the discoverer
of Davis Strait to the west of Greenland. More famous was the
voyage of Sir Richard Hawkins, who entered the Pacific by the
Straits of Magellan in 1593, only to be taken by the Spaniards
off the coast of Peru. "With the counsels, consent and helpe
of my father, Sir John Hawkins, knight," he had said, "I resolved
a voyage to be made for the Islands of Japan, of the Philippines,
and the Moluccas, the Kingdoms of China and East India by the
way of the Straits of Magellan and the South Sea." Then, the
only Englishman to pass around South America until the times
of the buccaneers was Sir John Narborough, who sailed through
the Straits of Magellan in 1670, only to return fruitlessly from
the coast of Chile.
THE MANILA GALLEON
Dampier
The era of the buccaneers was another period of danger for
the galleons. One of them was taken by the English; two beat
off their assailants; and another narrowly escaped attack. Most
of those who preyed on Spanish shipping in the Pacific between
1671 and 1720 were downright pirates, who cloaked their flagrant
robberies with a patriotic hatred of Spaniards. The more
squeamish covered their depredations with a dubious legality by
means of documents furnished them by complaisant colonial
officials in the West Indies, like the French commandant at Petit
Goave in Espanola. A few carried commissions from high au
thorities in their governments qualifying them to undertake
privateering operations against the commerce and coasts of
Spanish America without risk of the gallows if caught. Of such
was Woodes Rogers, and, on one of his voyages, the versatile
William Dampier.
Dampier not only ran the whole gamut of maritime lawful
ness from unlicensed buccaneer to duly authorized privateer, but
his extraordinary career as a sea-rover extended over virtually
the entire period which began with Henry Morgan and ended
with John Clipperton. Though he won more fame as a hydrographer and naturalist than at the business of "buckaneering,"
he gave a certain unity to the otherwise confused activities of
that disorderly time. In spite of his serious drawbacks as a prac
tical pirate, his recurrent visits to the Pacific made his name one
of terror to the Spaniards and at the news that he had rounded
the Horn or crossed the Isthmus they redoubled their vigilance
along the coasts of South America. Also, the fact that he was
a capital writer enormously enhanced his reputation in England—
a prestige which he never enjoyed among his rougher shipmates.
Dampier was associated with the three attempts that were
made on the Manila Galleons during this period. It was largely
his geographical curiosity to acquaint himself with the west coast
of Mexico that led the buccaneers to extend their field of activity
to the northward. For their normal sphere of operations was
the more frequented sea-lanes between Panama and Chile, where
not only were the chances for booty at sea much greater, but
numerous rich towns along the coast offered tempting prospects
THE ENGLISH
3i5
of loot or ransom. On the other hand, except for an occasional
ship between Lima and Acapulco, the Manila Galleon was the
only prize worthy of consideration to be encountered in the
waters to the north of Panama. Moreover, the towns on the
Pacific shores of Central America and Mexico were few and
poor, as they still are. But the lettered Dampier, unlike his
ignorant companions, had read in Hakluyt of Cavendish's rich
capture of a century before and dreamed of repeating the lucrative
foray of the Elizabethan raider into the region of the northern
viceroyalty.
Dampier served his apprenticeship in the Pacific in the ex
pedition of 1680, when a party of buccaneers crossed the Isthmus
after taking Porto Bello. Once in the South Sea the dissensions
which always asserted themselves in these loosely organized ag
gregations of plunderers soon led to the dissolution of the original
company. Separate bands set off to cruise on their own account
under whatever "captain" promised them the least discipline and
the most loot and without other plan or purpose than the oppor
tunity of the moment might suggest to them. When Dampier
returned into the Caribbean in May of the next year he had little
to show for his experience beyond the notes which contained
his first observations of the lands he had visited—and a little more
familiarity with the ways of his freebooting brethren.
Yet, when Captains Cooke and Crowley sailed from Accomac, Virginia, in 1683 for parts unknown to all save Cooke,
Dampier was on board. As it developed, their ship reached the
Pacific by way of the Guinea coast of Africa, Brazil and Cape
Horn, and put into Juan Fernandez for water and provisions.
Here they took off a Mosquito Indian named William, who had
been marooned there several years before, and who was later
to serve as the original of Defoe's man "Friday." On their way
to the neighborhood of Panama their forces were augmented by
the addition of several other companies of buccaneers. One of
the ships which joined the expedition was the Cygnet, bound
out of London with a cargo of goods for trading with the Spanish
towns in the Pacific. Since the Spaniards would have no peace
ful dealings with them, the crew had forced their corpulent and
easy-going commander, Captain Swan, to turn pirate with them.
The buccaneers' armament now consisted of seven sail, with
960 men, about a third of whom were Frenchmen. With this
THE MANILA GALLEON
strong force they fell upon the plate-fleet from Lima as it was
nearing Panama, but were outmanoeuvred and out-fought by
the Spaniards. "Thus ended this day's work," wrote the dis
heartened Dampier in his journal, "and with it all that we had
been projecting for 5 or 6 months; when instead of making our
selves Masters of the Spanish Fleet and Treasure, we were glad
to escape them."
Most of the prizes taken during these months yielded very
prosaic cargoes. Time and again Dampier's record tells of the
capture of such booty as "Corn, Hogs and Fowl," or "Wine, Oyl,
Flower, Sugar, Soap and Goat-skins." From another ship bound
from Callao to Panama they took "7 or 8 Tuns of quince Marma
lade, a stately Mule sent to the President, and a very large Image
of the Virgin Mary in Wood." But it was not for mules and
marmalade that the buccaneers had entered the Pacific and
risked their lives and health. After all, they were not engaged
in the wholesale produce business, and they bitterly resented the
stubbornness with which the Spaniards defended their gold and
silver. "The Spaniards have more than they can well manage,"
wrote Dampier; "I know yet they would be like the Dog in the
Manger, altho' not able to eat themselves, yet they would en
deavour to hinder others."
On August 25, 1685, the remnants of the pirate fleet went
their separate ways. Induced by the prospect of cruising up the
Mexican coast in search of the Manila Galleon, Dampier trans
ferred from the ship of Captain Davis to that of Captain Swan.
Captain Townley followed with two barks. On their way north
ward Townley with 140 men tried to take a ship from Lima
out of Acapulco harbor, but on finding the ship under the guns
of the fort of San Diego they "returned aboard again, being tired,
hungry and sorry for their Disappointment."
Both Captain Swan and Dampier resented this diversion
from their main purpose, "for," says Dampier, "the great design
we had then on hand, was to lie and wait for a rich Ship which
comes to Acapulco every year richly laden from the Philippine
Islands." Cape Corrientes was sighted on the nth of December
and as the galleons generally made this headland on their way
down the coast, the buccaneers planned to cruise about in its
vicinity until they sighted her. However, they shortly abandoned
their stations off the coast, to carry on raids inland in search of
THE ENGLISH
317
food supplies. "Our hopes of meeting the Philippine ship were
now over;" wrote Dampier for New Year's Day, 1686, "for we
did all conclude that while we were necessitated to hunt here for
Provisions she was past by to the Eastward, as indeed she was,
as we did understand afterwards by prisoners."
Townley then parted company with Swan, to try his fortunes
off the coast of Peru. The buccaneers were disheartened by their
failure to take the galleon, "which would have enriched us be
yond measure," says Dampier. The numbers of Swan's party
were also greatly reduced by the loss of fifty men in an ambush
set by the Spaniards, "which discouraged us from attempting any
thing more hereabouts." The English were baffled to find that
the commerce of Mexico was "almost wholly a Land-trade, and
managed more by Mules than by Ships." "So," concludes
Dampier, "instead of profit we met with little on this Coast,
besides fatigues, hardships and losses, and so were the more
easily induced to try what better fortune we might have in the
East Indies."
Holding out to his weary crews of 150 men the prospect of
cruising among the Philippines, Swan cleared from Cape Corrientes on the 31st of March and set his course for Guam of the
Ladrones. Opportunely for Swan, his two ships reached Guam
before his provisions were exhausted. "For," says Dampier, "the
men had contrived, first to kill Captain Swan and eat him when
the Victuals was gone, and after him all of us who were acces
sory in promoting the undertaking of this Voyage. This made
Captain Swan say to me after our arrival at Guam, Ah, Dampier,
you would have made them but a poor Meal; for I was as lean
as the Captain was lusty and fleshy."
As "Captain Swan was not for molesting the Spaniards
here," he quickly established friendly relations with the Spanish
governor, who aided him in replenishing his supply of provisions.
While they were at Guam the galleon from Acapulco hove to
in the offing on her way to Manila, but, being warned of the
presence of the buccaneer, immediately cleared again for the
westward. "This," says Dampier, "put our men in a great heat
to go out after her, but Captain Swan persuaded them out of
that humour, for he was now wholly averse to any Hostile ac
tion." After a final exchange of presents, the governor got rid
of his hungry visitors by telling them that "the West Monsoon
3i8
THE MANILA GALLEON
was at hand, that therefore it behooved us to be jogging from
hence, unless we were resolved to return back to America again."
From Guam the buccaneers steered for the island of Min
danao in the southern Philippines. Here they remained among
the Moros from June 22nd, 1686, until January 14th of the next
year. "Our Men," says Dampier, "who it should seem were very
squeamish of plundering without license, derived hopes from
thence of getting a Commission there from the Prince of the
Island, to plunder the Spanish Ships about Manila, and so to
make Mindanao their common rendezvous." However, amid the
allurements of this tropical island both Captain Swan and his
men quickly abandoned their original resolution. Dampier
finally concluded that Swan "did never intende to cruize about
Manila, as his crew designed; for I did once ask him, and he
told me, That what he had already done of that kind he was
forc'd to; but now being at Liberty, he would never more engage
in any such Design: For, said he, there is no Prince on Earth
is able to wipe off the Stain of such Actions."
While the months passed and his shipmates gave themselves
up to drinking and other "Divertisements," Dampier's restless
brain was speculating on the existence and extent of the "Terra
Australis" that was to be the object of his next voyage, and on
the possibilities of English trade and colonization in the Philip
pines and neighboring archipelagos. He was also storing up
the impressions and observations that he was later to organize
into the most graphic and reliable of the old accounts of Min
danao and its inhabitants. By November "the whole Crew were
under a general Disaffection, and full of very different Projects;
and all for want of Action. The main Division was between
those who had Money and those who had none. There was a
great Difference in the Humours of these; for they that had
Money lived ashore, and did not care for leaving Mindanao;
whilst those that were poor liv'd Aboard, and urg'd Capt. Swan
to go to Sea. These began to be Unruly as well as Dissatisfy'd,
and sent ashore the Merchants Iron to sell for Rock and Honey,
to make Punch, wherewith they grew Drunk and Quarrelsome:
Which disorderly Action deterr'd me from going Aboard; for
I did ever abhor Drunkenness, which now our Men that were
Aboard abandon'd themselves wholly to."
All discipline had ceased and on the 14th of January 1687,
THE ENGLISH
3i9
those who had not the means to live on shore sailed away from
Mindanao, "designing to cruise before Manila." Captain Swan,
who was now "commonly very cross," and thirty-six other lotuseating pirates were marooned on the island. The Cygnet with
her "mad crew" sailed north through the Visayas and up the west
side of Luzon. Near the entrance of Manila Bay they took two
Spanish barks laden with supplies for the next outgoing galleon.
Since there was no prospect of meeting either galleon at this
season, they decided then to draw off to Pulo Condore on the
Cambodian coast, "designing to return hither again by the latter
end of May, and wait for the Acapulco Ship that comes about
that time."
After clearing from Pulo Condore early in June they en
countered adverse winds and a series of terrible storms which
prevented them from carrying out their projected attempt on
the Acapulco galleon. Off the Chinese coast they ran into a
typhoon, whose description by Dampier is one of the classics
of the sea. At its conclusion he writes: "I was never in such a
violent storm in all my Life; so said all the Company." "This
storm had deadened the Hearts of our Men, so much," that they
abandoned all thought of further piratical ventures. They
drowned the memory of their terror by emptying "great Jars"
of "Sam Shu" and "Hoc Shu" at the Piscadores and of "Bashee"
at the group to the north of the Philippines, which still conserves
the name given to it by the roistering buccaneers of the Cygnet.
It was October when they left the Bashees and steered south for
the Dutch archipelagos. "Leaving the Island Luconia [Luzon],"
Dampier sorrowfully enters in his journal, "and with it our
Golden Projects, we sailed on to the Southward, passing on to
the East-side of the rest of the Philippine Islands."
Dampier reached England in September 1691, after a long
series of misfortunes. He had nothing to show for his eight-year
Odyssey but a fantastically tattooed "prince" whom he had found
in the East Indies and whom he exhibited about London for a
time as a common showman. For six years more he lived in
comparative obscurity, and then the appearance of the first volume
of his "New Voyage Round the World" suddenly raised him to
a fame that even the later demonstrations of his incompetence
as a commander at sea never lessened.
Though his expedition to Australian waters in 1699 was
THE MANILA GALLEON
largely a failure, owing to his inability to handle a crew, yet
his prestige as a navigator was so great that when a company
of merchants fitted out the St. George as a privateer in 1703,
Dampier was readily given the command. The War of the
Spanish Succession had begun, and Dampier received his com
mission to prey on the Spaniards directly from Prince George
of Denmark, Lord High Admiral of England and the bibulous
consort of Queen Anne. The St. George was a twenty-six gun
ship and carried a crew of one hundred and twenty men. She
was joined on the Irish coast by the galley Cinque Ports, a vessel
of ninety tons, carrying sixteen guns and an ill-assorted crew of
sixty-three men. The ultimate objective of their foray into the
Pacific was the Manila Galleon, "commonly reported to be worth
fourteen million dollars."
Early the next year the two ships beat around the Horn and
made the usual rendezvous at Juan Fernandez. Contention and
wrangling were already general on both ships and between their
commanders. Several months of cruising along the upper coast
of South America yielded little booty. Finally, while off Panama
Captain Stradling of the Cinque Ports, who was then in com
mand of a prize bark, broke with Dampier and returned to more
southerly waters. On putting into Juan Fernandez again Strad
ling quarreled with his mate, and the latter, a Scotchman named
Alexander Selkirk, chose to maroon himself on that island rather
than continue at sea with his superior officer.
Meanwhile, after Dampier had been chased by a larger
Spanish ship off Guayaquil and had separated from his mate,
John Clipperton, he proceeded northward with the remainder
of his force. His ship was now so rotten that they could thrust
their thumbs through her planking in places and most of the
crew were continually mutinous and drunken. With the unseaworthy St. George and a small prize bark, Dampier now
determined to retrieve his fortunes by capturing the Manila Gal
leon, "for the sight of which our people longed as earnestly as
if there was no difference between seeing and taking her. Their
vivid imaginations had visions of piles of gold ingots, stacks of
silver bars, bushels of gleaming pearls, bales of flowered silks,
wondrous satins and tapestries, massive church plate, glittering
heaps of jewels, rare wares from the Orient, and other treasure
trove of fabulous value, all to be theirs for the mere taking of
THE ENGLISH
the golden galleon, whose sea-trail they were now fast ap
proaching."
On the morning of December 4th, 1704, the privateers sighted
the galleon Rosario as she was passing the Colima coast on her
way to Acapulco. The galleon had not suspected the presence
of enemies in her track and received several ineffectual broadsides
from the five-pounders of the St. George before she could get
her heavy guns into place. The English had meanwhile lost their
opportunity to board, though, considering the strength of this
great galleon, one of the largest in the history of the line, it is
highly doubtful if the boarders could ever have reached her
decks. Meanwhile, Dampier's lack of resolution and the con
fusion on board the St. George gave the Spaniards time to run
out their eighteen and twenty-four pounders. The heavy shot
from the Rosario soon began to drive in the decayed planking
of the St. George and to threaten her with sinking, so that
Dampier was fortunate in being able to draw his ship out of
range of the heavy cannonading of the galleon.
The fiasco of their foolhardy attempt on the Rosario still
further dispirited the privateers, and soon led to the defection
of William Funnell with the prize bark and thirty-five men of
the crews. Dampier, with the remaining twenty-eight, then
turned about to the southward, where he committed some minor
depredations off the coast of Peru. From thence he struck across
the Pacific to the Dutch East Indies. When he returned to Eng
land in 1707 he learned that his reputation as a leader of maritime
ventures had suffered another blow from the publication of Funnell's narrative of the sorry expedition.
Rogers
Yet the fame of his skill as navigator and of his unexampled
knowledge of the Spanish dominions overseas was still so high
that when a company of Bristol merchants equipped another
privateering expedition, Dampier was appointed chief pilot. Also,
the terror which Dampier's presence inspired among Spaniards
in the South Seas made his name an asset to any hostile enter
prise in those waters. As commander, the Bristol merchants
employed Captain Woodes Rogers, an able and resourceful
officer. He was endowed with an unusual combination of tact
322
THE MANILA GALLEON
and firmness that enabled him to direct and control a particularly
trying body of men throughout a voyage of over three years.
Rogers wrote thus of his Gilbert-and-Sullivan crews : "Our Com
plement of Sailors in both ships was 333, of which above one
Third were Foreigners from most Nations; several of her
Majesty's Subjects on board were Tinkers, Taylors, Hay-makers,
Pedlers, Fidlers, etc., one Negro, and about ten Boys. With this
mix'd Gang we hop'd to be well mann'd, as soon as they had
learnt the Use of Arms and got their Sea-Legs, which we doubted
not soon to teach 'em, and bring them to Discipline." The com
plement of officers was uncommonly large for a privateering
voyage and the roster of Rogers' ship included, among others,
"Thomas Dover, a Doctor of Physick, second Captain, President
of our Council, and Captain of the Marines." Dr. Dover, who
was the inventer of a "Pill and Drop" famous among the remedies
of that age, owed his imposing rank in the flagship to his being
one of the shareholders in the venture. Also, "Samuel Hopkins,
being Dr. Dover's Kinsman and Apothecary, was both an As
sistant to him, and to act as his Lieutenant, if we landed a Party
anywhere under his Command during the Voyage." William
Hopkins was "Ship's Corporal, Capt. Dover's Sergeant, and Cook
to the Officers," and John Finch, "late wholesale Oilman of
London," was Chief Steward of Rogers' ship. During the voyage
all matters of importance were debated by a standing committee
made up of from twelve to sixteen officers out of both ships.
On each occasion formal resolutions were drawn up and signed
by all members present, either endorsing some action already
taken or recommending some future course of action. Though
the council circumscribed Rogers' authority and prevented the
rapidity of movement that a single command would have made
possible, Rogers submitted to its annoying restrictions for the
sake of the greater harmony which its discussions maintained
among his officers.
On the 2nd of August 1708, the Du\e, a thirty-gun frigate
of 320 tons, and the Dutchess, of twenty-six guns and 260 tons,
cleared from Kingroad near Bristol, "both well furnish'd with
all Necessaries on board for a distant Undertaking." On the
way south they called at Madeira in order to lay in a stock of
wine for the cold passage around Cape Horn, for, says Rogers,
"good liquor to Sailors is preferable to Clothing." On the 14th
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323
of November they sighted the Brazilian coast and five days later
anchored under the lee of Ilha Grande, a short distance below
the entrance of Rio Bay. Rogers spent some time in this vicinity,
watering and provisioning his ship for the long stage of their
voyage that lay ahead of them.
While at Ilha Grande Rogers and his officers established
friendly relations with the Portuguese and on one occasion were
invited by the local governor to participate in a religious proces
sion at Angra dos Reis on the nearby mainland. "We waited
on him in a Body," wrote Rogers, "being ten of us, with two
Trumpets and a Hautboy, which he desir'd might play us to
church where our Musick did the Office of an Organ, but separate
from the Singing, which was by the Fathers well perform'd.
Our Musick play'd Hey Boys up go we\ and all manner of noisy
paltry Tunes; and after Service our Musicians, who were by that
time more than half-drunk, march'd at the head of the Company,
next to them an old Father and two Fryars carrying Lamps of In
cense with the Host, next came the Virgin Mary on a Bier carry'd
on four Men's shoulders, and dress'd with Flowers and Waxcandles, etc. After her came the Padre Guardian of the Convent,
and then about forty Priests, Fryars, etc. Next was the Governor
of the Town, my self, and Capt. Courtney, with each of us a
long Wax-Candle lighted : Next follow'd the rest of our Officers,
the chief Inhabitants, and junior Priests, with every one a lighted
Wax-Candle. The Ceremony held about two hours, after which
we were splendidly entertained by the Fathers of the Convent,
and then by the Governor at the Guard-House."
The next day Rogers reciprocated with festivities on the
Duke in honor of his hosts. "We went with our Boat to the
Town," he wrote, "to get Liquors for the Voyage, and bring the
Gentlemen of the Town aboard our Ships, where we treated
'em the best we could. They were very merry, and in their Cups
propos'd the Pope's Health to us; but we were quits with 'em,
by toasting that of the Archbishop of Canterbury: To keep up
the Humour, we also propos'd William Pen's to them; and they
lik'd the Liquor so well, that they refus'd neither."
Early in January the ships rounded Cape Horn in heavy
weather and set their course for Juan Fernandez. On landing,
the first boat-load of privateers were greeted by "a Man cloth'd
in Goat-Skins, who look'd wilder than the first Owners of them."
324
THE MANILA GALLEON
This was Alexander Selkirk, the Scotch master of Captain Stradling's bark, who had been left on the island four years and four
months before. Selkirk was to be the original of "Robinson
Crusoe" and it was the publication of Woodes Rogers' "Cruising
Voyage Round the World" and probably Dampier's verbal ac
count on his return to London that furnished Defoe with the
basis for his classic tale. Rogers describes the manner of Sel
kirk's life on Juan Fernandez and says, among other things:
"After he had conquer'd his Melancholy, he diverted himself
sometimes by cutting his Name on the Trees, and the Time of
his being left and Continuence there. He was at first much
pester'd with Cats and Rats, that had bred in great numbers from
some of each Species which had got ashore from ships that put
in there to wood and water. The Rats gnaw'd his Feet and
Clothes while asleep, which oblig'd him to cherish the Cats with
his Goats flesh; by which some of them became so tame, that
they would lie about him in hundreds, and soon deliver'd him
from the Rats. He likewise tam'd some Kids, and to divert him
self would now and then sing and dance with them and his Cats:
so that by the Care of Providence and Vigour of his youth, being
now about 30 years old, he came at last to conquer all the Incon
veniences of his Solitude, and to be very easy." On Dampier's
recommendation Rogers made Selkirk a mate on the Duke and
later put him in command of a prize bark taken from the
Spaniards. Shortly afterward Rogers heard from a Spanish
prisoner that Captain Stradling's ship, the Cinque Ports, had
foundered off the Peruvian coast and that Stradling and his men
had been held in prison at Lima for four years, where "They
liv'd much worse than our Governor Selkirk, whom they left on
the Island Juan Fernandez."
In April Rogers took Guayaquil and held it for ransom for
the modest sum of 30,000 pesos. He takes occasion to compare
the restraint of his own men with the "Bruitishness and Murther" committed by the "FrcwcA-Buccaneers, alias Pirates" when
they sacked the same city several years before. The health of
his crews had suffered from fevers contracted in the lowlands
about Guayaquil, and at this time he writes in his journal: "Our
men being very much fatigued, many of them sick, and several
of our Good Sailors dead, we are so weak that should we meet
an Enemy in this Condition, we could make but a mean Defense.
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325
Everything looks dull and discouraging, but it's in vain to look
back or repine in these Parts."
However, the privateers took a number of prizes while cruis
ing in the lanes of the Spanish coastwise shipping. From one,
which he added to his own force, they took near "500 Bales of
Pope's Bulls, 16 Reams in a Bale." From another they took "a
great quantity of Bones in small Boxes, ticketed with the Names
of Romish Saints, some of which had been dead 7 or 800 years;
with an infinite Number of Brass Medals, Crosses, Beads, and
Crucifixes, religious Toys in Wax, Images of Saints made of all
sort of Wood, Stone, and other Materials, I believe in all near
30 Tun." Rogers always displayed an indulgence for the religious
faith of the Spaniards and always showed great consideration
for his clerical prisoners. "We allow'd," he says, "Liberty of
Conscience on board our floating Commonwealth to our Pris
oners, for there being a Priest in each Ship, they had the Great
Cabbin for their Mass, whilst we us'd the Church of England
Service over them on the Quarter-deck, so that the Papists here
were the Low Churchmen."
Except for the proceeds of the action against Guayaquil, the
entries in the "publick Plunder Book" kept on each ship were
still disappointing and in August it was "design'd to cruise for
the Manila Ship." Cape Corrientes was fixed for the rendezvous
in case the three ships should become separated on their way
north. On October 1st the Mexican coast was sighted, and
Rogers wrote in his journal: "Capt. Dampier, near this Place,
five years past, met the Manila Ship in the St. George, and had
a fight at a distance, but he says for want of men could not board
her, and after a short dispute, was forced to let her alone." On
the 24th a meeting of the Council was held while off the Islands
of Tres Marias and it was resolved "with the utmost Care and
Diligence to wait here for the Coming of the Manila Ship be
longing to the Spaniards, and bound for Acapulco, whose Wealth
on board her we hope will prompt every Man to use his utmost
Conduct and Bravery to conquer."
On the advice of Dampier it was decided to station the three
ships in the vicinity of Cape San Lucas, where the galleon would
be expected to pass. While riding off the tip of Lower Cali
fornia, Rogers observes in his chronicle: "Sir Thomas Cavendish,
in Queen Elizabeth's time, took the Manila Ship in this Place
326
THE MANILA GALLEON
on the 4th of November." Over a month's cruising about the
end of the peninsula proved fruitless and on December 9th, 1709,
Rogers' entry reads : "We were now something dubious of seeing
the Manila Ship, because it's near a Month after the time they
generally fall in with this Coast." On the 20th the members of
the Council drew up the following resolution for the purpose
of justifying the abandonment of their project: "We the officers
present in a Committee on board the Dutchess, having further
considered our short Store of Bread and Bread-kind, and finding
it too little to continue our Cruise longer here for the Manila
Ship, do therefore now agree to get a Harbour, and there to
recruit with the utmost dispatch, and sail for the Island of Guam,
or any other Place where we can revictual."
The same day the ships moved in towards Puerto Seguro,
where Cavendish had awaited the Santa Ana. The next morn
ing the lookout on the Duke, to their "great and joyful Surprise,"
called out that he saw a sail about seven leagues to the west
The English gave chase and early on the morning of the 22nd
found the galleon within range of the Du\e's guns. Says Rogers:
"I order'd a large Kettle of Chocolate to be made for our Ship's
Company (having no spiritous Liquors to give them) ; then we
went to Prayers, and before we had concluded were disturb'd
by the Enemy's firing at us." Thus rudely interrupted at their
orisons, the indignant privateers rushed to their posts of battle.
"The Enemy," reports Rogers, "fired her Stern Chase upon us
first, which we return'd with our Fore Chase several times, till
we came nearer, and when close aboard each other, we gave her
several Broadsides, plying our Small Arms very briskly, which
they return'd as thickly a while, but did not ply their great Guns
half so fast as we. After some time we shot a httle a-head of
them, lay thwart her Hause close aboard, and plyed them so
warmly that she soon struck her colours two-thirds down."
The prize so easily won single-handed by the Du\e was the
Nuestra Senora de la Encarnacidn y Desengano. Her com
mander was the Sieur Jean Presberty, formerly factor of the
French trading post at Canton. Nearly three years later the king
ordered the audiencia at Manila to investigate the conduct of
Presberty. "In him," read the royal order, "there concurred the
notorious nullity against which the laws are directed, as being
a foreigner, and so unqualified to hold such a post, and on ac
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327
count of his lack of skill and practice in navigation and military
affairs, which was the origin of the misfortune and loss of the
almiranta." She carried twenty guns, as many pedreros or stonemortars, and had 193 aboard. According to Rogers, they lost
nine men killed and ten wounded and had several badly burned
by powder explosion. "We engag'd 'em about 3 Glasses," says
Rogers, "in which time we had only my self and another Man
wounded. I was shot thru' the Left Cheek, the Bullet struck
away great part of my upper Jaw, and several of my Teeth, part
of which dropt down upon the Deck, where I fell; the other,
Will Powell, an Irish Landman, was slightly wounded in the
Buttock."
The English learned from their prisoners that the EncarnaciSn had left Manila in company with a larger galleon, which
being a better sailer, they assumed to have already reached
Acapulco. However, Rogers and the officers' committee im
mediately made preparations to meet the capitana, in case she
might be behind the captured almiranta. The officers of the
Dutchess and of the Marquiss, which had had no part in taking
the Encarnacidn, insisted on being given a free hand in any
attempt on the other galleon.
When the sentry whom Rogers had stationed on a hill top
signaled to him on Christmas Day that the two ships were clos
ing in on a strange sail, he prepared to join them with the Duke.
It was midnight before the Duke reached the scene of battle,
only to find that her two consorts had made no impression on
the galleon, which was, moreover, now putting her heavy guns
into position. The next morning Rogers quickly observed that
strong nets which the Spaniards had hung over the sides made
boarding impossible and that his small arms could do little
damage against enemies who kept out of sight. The masts and
rigging were "much damnified" by the fire of the galleon and
the mainmast of the Duke was ready to fall by the board. On
the other hand, the galleon had suffered practically no damage.
"If we engag'd her again," says Rogers, "we could propose to
do no more than we had already done, which was evident did
her no great Hurt, because we could perceive few of our Shot
enter'd her sides to any Purpose."
The English ships were in danger of being sunk or taken
by the galleon, and Rogers hastily called a meeting of the com
328
THE MANILA GALLEON
mittcc, at which " 'twas resolved to forbear attempting her fur
ther, since our battering her signify'd little, and we had not
Strength enough to board her." Among those who signed the
resolution on board the Du\e was Alexander Selkirk, first mate
of the Marquiss. "The Enemy," says Rogers, "lay braced to all
the time the Council held, and run out 4 Guns of her lower Teer,
expecting we would have the other Brush with her; but when we
made sail, she fil'd and made away." "Since Providence or Pate
will have it as it is, we must be content," philosophizes Rogers
on the occasion.
His redoubtable antagonist was "a brave lofty new Ship,
the Admiral of Manila, and this the first Voyage she had made;
she was called the Bigonia [Begona], of about 900 Tuns, and
could carry 60 Guns, about 40 of which were mounted, with as
many Patereroes, all Brass, her complement of Men on board,
as we were inform'd, was above 450, besides passengers. They
added, that 150 of the Men on board this great Ship were
Europeans, several of whom had been formerly Pirates, and hav
ing now got all their Wealth aboard, were resolved to defend it
to the last. The Gunner, who had a good Post in Manila, was
an expert Man, and had provided the Ship extraordinarily well
for Defence, which made them fight so desperately; they had
filled up all between the Guns with Bales to secure the Men. She
kept a Spanish Flag at her Main-top mast Head all the time she
fought me." Rogers later met a Spanish sailor in Holland, who
had fought against him on the Begona and who told him that
the chief gunner of the galleon had stationed himself in the
powder-room of the ship, which he threatened to blow up if
his shipmates should permit the English to board her. As for
the charge of piracy, those who traded by the galleons had no
need to turn pirates. Her commander was Fernando de Angulo.
The privateers planned to take the Encarnacidn, which they
had renamed the Batcheler, along with them, and for two days
they quarreled in committee as to who was to command her.
" 'Twas our great Unhappiness," added Rogers, "after taking a
rich Prize, to have a Paper-War amongst our selves." The up
shot of the arguments was that Dr. Dover was to be captain of
the prize and Alexander Selkirk first mate.
From the tip of Lower California the English ships made
a rapid crossing to Guam, that "Place of Plenty," in the western
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329
Pacific, where hungry buccaneers and privateers were now
familiar visitors. The Spanish governor, Juan Antonio Pimentel,
made a virtue of necessity and received Rogers and his sea-weary
men with "all imaginable Friendship and Respect," for which
enforced hospitality he was later to suffer many years of prison
in Manila. They were provided with a bountiful supply of cattle,
hogs, chickens, corn, rice, coconuts, and fruit, and on one oc
casion the officers were regaled with a sixty-course dinner at the
governor's house. In return the governor and his aides were
entertained on board the Batcheler, lately a galleon in the service
of their king. He was also presented with "2 Negro Boys dress'd
in Liveries, 20 Yards of Scarlet Cloth-Serge, and 2 Pieces of Cambrick." "Our decks are filled with Cattle and Provender," re
marked Rogers, as he cleared for the Dutch East Indies. The
last entry in Rogers' Journal—for the 14th of October, 171 1,—
reads: "This day at 11 of the Clock, we and our Consort and
Prize got up to Eriff [Erith], where we came to an Anchor,
which ends our long and fatiguing Voyage." The cost of equip
ping the expedition had been less than L. 14,000; the net profits
to the investors were variously announced as between L. 170,000
and L. 800,000. A Manila Galleon had been brought to England,
though it was not to be the last.
Clipperton and Shelvocke
The last privateering expedition to threaten the galleons
was that of Clipperton and Shelvocke. Influenced by the suc
cess of Woodes Rogers' voyage, a group of merchants formed
an association known as "The Gentlemen Adventurers," with
the usual object of preying on Spanish commerce in the South
Sea. Two ships were fitted out, the Success, of 36 guns, with
180 men, and the Speedwell, of 24 guns, with 160 men. The
former was in charge of John Clipperton, who had served as
mate with Dampier. The smaller ship was commanded by
George Shelvocke, who had been a lieutenant in the royal navy.
The ships carried specific instructions to search for the Manila
Galleon. Dissensions broke out between the two captains before
they left Plymouth on the 13th of February 1719, and shortly
after they had put to sea they separated, not to meet again until
nearly a year later off the west coast of Mexico. After entering
330
THE MANILA GALLEON
the Pacific, each had spent the interval in aimless and generally
fruitless cruising along the coast of South America. Shelvockc
had a particularly unfortunate experience. He had lost his ship
at Juan Fernandez and had many of his men taken by the
Spaniards. These included his morose and contentious first mate,
Simon Hately, who had killed a large albatross that hovered
over the ship in the south Pacific and thereby inspired the writ
ing of Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
When Clipperton and Shelvocke encountered one another
off the Mexican coast, Shelvocke was sailing a small Spanish
prize named the Jestis Maria. He had only forty of his original
crew of one hundred and sixty and these were desperate from
the privations which they had suffered. Clipperton mistook his
ship for an enemy and gave chase, only to be amazed when he
boarded her to find his former companion. They parted com
pany again and each continued on his way to the northwest, to
meet once more on March 13th. At this time they forgot their
differences sufficiently to plan a combined attack on the galleon
which was then due to sail from Acapulco. However, after a
bitter dispute as to the disposition of the prize-money to be taken,
Clipperton slipped away in the night and headed for the East
Indies. A few days after Shelvocke had also withdrawn from
before Acapulco, the galleon Santo Cristo de Burgos sailed out
of the harbor on her way to Manila. When Shelvocke later met
some of Clipperton's officers on the China coast, they informed
him that Clipperton had intended to waylay the Santo Cristo
off the Philippines on her return, in order to possess himself of
all her treasure.
Anson
As opposed to the earlier efforts against the galleons, which
were either privateering affairs or outright piracy, the expedition
of Commodore George Anson in 1740-44 was a national under
taking, conducted by the British navy. The foreign policy of
England had lately taken a commercial turn and her merchants
were eager to break down Spain's monopoly of trade with her
overseas dominions. It was believed at the time that an impres
sive display of naval strength would have the effect of forcing the
Spaniards to make the desired concessions to English commercial
interests. The entrance of the French into the commerce of Peru
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33i
and Chile during the time of Louis XIV had paved the way for
other competitors. The English government was aware of the
military weakness of the Spanish establishments in South Amer
ica during this period. It was also informed of the growing dis
content of the creole element with Spanish rule and counted on
their willingness to trade with any outsiders who would offer
them more advantageous terms than they could derive from their
traditional source of supply in the mother country. By means
of the Asiento provision in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 the Eng
lish had obtained a limited privilege for trading at Porto Bello
on the isthmus, which enabled them to tap the old trade route
between Spain and Peru at a vital spot. Though by resorting to
fraud they evaded the restrictions of a single ship yearly placed
on their operations at Porto Bello, they wished to deal directly
with the west coast markets without the intervention of Spanish
middlemen. Thus, when another general war in Europe ap
peared imminent over the question of the Austrian succession,
the English government planned a series of ambitious attempts
against the settlements and shipping of Spain in the Caribbean
and the Pacific. It was anticipated that not only would the
Spanish empire be very materially crippled by these attacks, but
that their success would place England in a position to demand
the opening of Spanish ports in the Americas to her trade.
The initial plans of the admiralty provided for two large
expeditions into the Pacific. One squadron was to proceed
around the Cape of Good Hope, with orders to touch at no
place until it should make Java Head in the East Indies. Thence
it would sail directly for the Philippines with the object of taking
Manila, which "in all probability would have surrendered only
on the appearance of our squadron before it." The other squad
ron was to enter the South Sea around South America and then
"to range along that coast." "After cruising upon the enemy in
those parts, and attempting their settlements," it was to cross the
Pacific and join its forces with the first squadron at Manila. It
was originally intended that the first of these armaments should
be placed under the command of Captain George Anson of the
frigate Centurion, one of the most competent officers in the royal
navy. However, after the project for a separate demonstration
against Manila had been abandoned Anson was commissioned to
lead the other squadron around Cape Horn.
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THE MANILA GALLEON
Due to the inefficiency of the admiralty several months were
needlessly lost in preparing and outfitting the squadron, so that
it became increasingly certain that Anson would have to round
South America in the worst season of the year. Instead of the
large force of regular infantry which he had been promised, he
was only allowed five hundred "invalids" from the Chelsea mili
tary home, who had been mustered out of active service because
of age, wounds or other physical infirmities. Most of these men
were over sixty years of age and some of them over seventy.
Moreover, the press-gang and borrowings from the rest of the
home fleet failed to bring his crews up to the complement that
was needed to man his ships.
When Anson's squadron finally cleared from St. Helens on
the 18th of September, 1740, it consisted of six men-of-war and
two supply ships. It had on board a total of 236 guns and over
1,500 men, of whom about a third were intended for landing
operations. At Madeira they heard that a superior Spanish force,
evidently sent out to pursue or intercept them, had recently
passed near the island on its way towards the South American
coast.
After passing Le Maire Strait without difficulty on the 7th
of March 1741, the squadron was shattered by a series of tem
pests which made impossible any major operation in the Pacific.
The weather struck terror into even "the oldest and most experi
enced mariners on board, and obliged them to confess that what
they had hitherto called storms were inconsiderable gales com
pared with the violence of these winds, which raised such short,
and at the same time such mountainous waves, as greatly sur
passed in danger all seas known in any other part of the globe."
These storms lasted until the 22nd of May, or for two and a half
months. Scurvy had also broken out and from four to six men a
day were dying on the Centurion.
"In this desponding condition," wrote Richard Walter, the
chronicler of the expedition, "with a crazy ship, a great scarcity
of fresh water, and a crew so universally diseased that there were
not above ten fore-mast men in a watch capable of doing duty,
and even some of these lame, and unable to go aloft; under these
disheartening circumstances, we stood to the westward; and, on
the 9th of June, at daybreak, we at last discovered the longwished-for island of Juan Fernandez." When Anson assembled
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333
the remnants of his scattered and broken squadron at Juan
Fernandez, only three of his ships had reached the rendezvous.
Of 961 men who had left England on these three ships, only 335
were alive. Anson landed his sick and battered crews on the
island, where he remained until the 19th of September, when he
considered his ships and men in condition to proceed towards the
mainland.
Several prizes were taken along the coast and the town of
Paita was captured and pillaged. It was already the middle of
November when Anson decided to head northward, intending
to lie off either Cape Corrientes or Cape San Lucas in wait for
the Manila Galleon. On his way up to the Mexican coast he
planned to open communications across the isthmus with Ad
miral Vernon, whom he assumed to have taken Porto Bello. In
that case, it was his purpose to make a combined attack on
Panama, "whereby we should have been in effect masters of all
the treasures of Peru, and should have had in our hands an
equivalent for any demands, however extraordinary, which we
might have been induced to make on either of the branches of
the House of Bourbon." However, before reaching the vicinity
of Panama he learned of the repulse of Admiral Vernon before
Cartagena on the Spanish Main and thereupon abandoned his
project for the seizure of the isthmus.
It was the 12th of December when Anson left the island of
Quibo off Panama and stood to the westward, "having the great
est impatience to get into a proper station for intercepting the
Manila galleon." When he made the Mexican coast north of
Acapulco late in January the customary time for the arrival of
the galleon was already past and Anson realized that his only
chance of meeting her was in case her crossing had been delayed
more than usual. A few weeks later he learned from some fisher
men whom he picked up off Acapulco that the galleon had en
tered the harbor on January 9th and that the viceroy had fixed
her departure for the 3rd of March. Hopes were again raised of
taking the "celebrated galleon," "which, by the fame of its
wealth, we had been taught to consider as the most desirable
capture that was to be made on any part of the ocean."
While awaiting the appearance of the galleon, Anson sta
tioned his five ships at wide intervals to the west of Acapulco, but
well out of sight of land. However, when the English failed to
334
THE MANILA GALLEON
sight the galleon by the 22nd of March, their "eagerness was
greatly abated, and a general dejection and despondency took
place in its room." For meanwhile the Spaniards at Acapulco
had learned of their presence off the coast and the viceroy had
decided to hold the galleon in port until the following year.
Anson then drew off from before Acapulco, and, after watering
and provisioning his ships at the nearby harbor of Chequetan,
he left the coast of Mexico on the 6th of May and headed west
ward across the Pacific.
It was near the end of August when the Centurion sighted
one of the Ladrones, "dreading that it was the last land that we
should ever fix our eyes on." Anson landed his sick on the
island of Tinian, where he found a bountiful supply of provisions
and restored his men to health. From Tinian he crossed to
Macao, which he reached in November. He spent nearly five
months on the China coast, during which time he had the
Centurion thoroughly overhauled.
When he cleared from Macao in April 1743, it was with the
secret object of cruising off the eastern side of the Philippines dur
ing the season when the Acapulco galleon would be expected to
arrive. Since the Pilar, which he had planned to take the year
before, had been held in port, he assumed that there would be
two ships this year. He now had only 237 hands on board his
ship, of whom thirty were boys and twenty-three were Lascars
and Dutchmen, whom he had taken on at Macao. "But this
disproportion of strength did not deter him, as he knew his ship
to be much better fitted for a sea engagement than theirs, and
as he had reason to expect that his men would exert themselves
after a most extraordinary manner when they had in view the
immense wealth of these Manila galleons."
Arriving off Cape Espiritu Santo on the 20th of May, it was
just a month later when a sail was sighted to the southeast beating
in towards the Embocadero. The ship proved to be the galleon,
Covadonga, which had left Acapulco on the 15th of April. The
galleon, evidently mistaking the Centurion for her consort, the
Pilar, which had already reached Manila, continued on her course
until it was too late for her to run into Palapag harbor, where she
might have found refuge. Anson quickly laid the Centurion
across the Covadonga's bow, so that he could make use of all his
guns to rake her. Even when he had swung around abreast of
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335
her, the greater width of the Centurion's portholes enabled him
to bring nearly all his guns to bear on the galleon, a feature of
her construction which the Spaniards later commented on in
explaining their defeat. The fact that the English fired their
guns in succession, instead of in broadsides, disconcerted the
Spaniards, who were accustomed to throw themselves flat on the
deck when a broadside was expected. Moreover, Anson had
placed thirty of his best marksmen in the Centurion's tops, from
where they picked off many on the enemy's decks, including all
but one of the galleon's officers on the quarter-deck. Anson also
swept the Covadongds deck with grape-shot with such effect that
after about two hours of fighting the galleon struck the royal
standard at her main top-gallant mast-head in sign of surrender.
According to Richard Walter, Anson's chronicler, the Span
ish losses were sixty-seven killed and eighty-four wounded. The
Spaniards reported their own losses at seventy killed and sixtyone wounded. Among the latter was Geronimo Monteiro, the
Portuguese commander of the galleon. Monteiro, whom the
English called "the life of the action," was an officer of long
experience, having made eight round trips between Manila and
Acapulco as pilot and general of the galleons. The Centurion
had only one man killed and seventeen wounded. Anson took
from the Covadonga 1,313,843 pesos in coined silver and 35,862
ounces of silver bullion. He sailed the galleon to Macao, where
he sold her to a private merchant for six thousand pesos.
The English reported the crew of the galleon as five hundred
and fifty men, as against their own force of two hundred and
thirty-seven. However, the Centurion's crew were picked men,
who were trained in the handling of their ship and guns. Only
the hardiest had been able to survive the trials of their long voy
age from England and after their rest on the China coast they
were in excellent condition for any effort. Though the English
declared that the galleon was "much larger than the Centurion,"
the Spaniards complained that, due to the higher freeboard of the
English frigate, they were unable to reach her deck with their
guns or to see the English sailors as they manned their deck tier
of guns. Whereas the Centurion had sixty guns, the Covadonga
had only thirty-two in place at the time of the battle. Five of
the Spaniard's guns were twelve-pounders and the remainder
only six and eight-pounders, as against the eighteen and twenty
336
THE MANILA GALLEON
four pounders of the Centurion. Thus, the advantage of arma
ment was overwhelmingly on the side of the English ship.
Governor La Torre had been informed of Anson's first ar
rival at Macao by a letter sent from Canton on December 22,
1742. His informant pictured the English crew as being in a
direful state and incapable for the time being of undertaking any
aggressive action. Another letter from the same source, written
in March of the following year, declared that the state of Anson's
force had improved greatly and that he was shortly expected to
leave for Batavia. However, the governor was warned against
a possible attack on Manila and on any of the galleons which
might be in the vicinity of the Philippines.
A council of war was called at Manila, at which the governor
seems to have belittled the danger from Anson. In the junta
Joseph Gonzalez de Leaegui, a member of the audiencia, de
clared that he took no stock in the reports of Anson's weakness,
but that he feared the "constancy and tenacity with which Anson
had borne his misfortunes ever since his disasters off Cape Horn."
He called for active and immediate measures against Anson, but
the dilatoriness of the governor operated to the benefit of the
English. Though La Torre ordered the Pilar, which had just
arrived from Acapulco, to be armed and sent out, it was the 3rd
of June before the Pilar and the smaller ships left Cavite for the
Strait of San Bernardino. They were also to act as a convoy as
far as the Embocadero for the Rosario, which was being des
patched to Acapulco. They only reached Ticao inside the Embo
cadero on the 7th of June, or eighteen days after Anson had
taken the Covadonga off Cape Espiritu Santo, about one hundred
miles to the eastward. Ignorant of the Covadonga's fate, they
cruised off Samar until December. They were recalled to Ma
nila on the arrival of Anson's prisoners from China with the
news that the English had returned to Macao with the Cova
donga at the end of July. On March 20th of the next year they
were sent out again towards the coast of China in pursuit of
Anson—who had cleared from Macao for the East Indies on the
15th of December.
After all fears of further incursions by Anson had passed,
an official investigation was held at Manila into the conduct of
Monteiro and the other officials of the Covadonga. Monteiro
stoutly contended that he had done everything within his re
THE ENGLISH
337
sources for the proper defense of the galleon. After leaving
Acapulco on April 4, 1743, he had reached Guam on the 17th of
June, when he heard that Anson had been among the Ladrones
in September of the year before. Though he believed that the
Centurion must then be on her way home from China, he de
clared that he had taken every precaution to put his ship in a
state of defense. When he first sighted the Centurion, he be
lieved her to be the Pilar or another ship sent out from Manila
to convoy him into the islands, and after he had discovered his
mistake the Englishmen had got the wind of the galleon and
were in a position to out-manoeuvre her.
Monteiro and his officers laid their defeat to the superior
strength of the enemy as a man-of-war, whereas the galleon was
a trading ship but imperfectly equipped for fighting purposes.
Monteiro said that he had only given the order to surrender when
the upper works of his ship had been so badly damaged by
the English fire that she was entirely at the mercy of the Cen
turion. At the time his decks were "sown with dead and gravely
wounded," and his men were so "dismayed by their losses that
many had abandoned their posts."
All testified to the terrifying effectiveness of the Centurion's
attack. The Spaniards were amazed by the "continuous fire" of
the English, which never slackened during the two hours of the
combat, and by the deadly marksmanship of their gunners. They
declared that the enemy crew were "all picked men, and each
one perfectly capable of performing the task to which he was
appointed." The Spanish officers also marveled at the disci
pline and order on the Centurion, and at the good treatment
which was shown to them while prisoners.
The investigation was closed in February 1754, nearly twelve
years after the loss of the Covadonga, when the king declared her
officers guiltless of cowardice and of failure to perform their
duty. Meanwhile, five years before the Council for the Indies
had placed the responsibility for the disaster on the head of
Governor La Torre, whom it charged with gross negligence in
having failed to provide for the protection of the galleon after it
had reached the vicinity of the Philippines. His failure to act
on the warning from China in sufficient time weighed heavily
against him in the final decision of the supreme government.
338
THE MANILA GALLEON
Cornish
The Seven Years' War formed the occasion for the capture
of the last of the galleons to be taken by the English. In 1762
Spain entered the war as the ally of France and thereby exposed
her ill-protected colonies to the attacks of the superior naval
power of England. On the 22nd of September the Spaniards,
looking out from the ramparts of Manila through the mist that
hung over the bay, dimly made out a number of strange vessels,
which they took for a fleet of trading junks from China. Instead
it was a powerful expedition that had been fitted out in Madras
for the express purpose of adding the Philippines to the British
Empire, recently swollen by conquests in India and North Amer
ica. It consisted of thirteen men-of-war under Admiral Cornish
and on board the fleet were five thousand British and Indian
soldiers under the command of General Draper. To oppose such
an overwhelming force the Spaniards had in Manila only 550
soldiers of the "King's Regiment," largely made up of recruits
from Mexico, and a small company of Filipino artillerymen.
During the subsequent fighting a few thousand troops were
raised among the fighting population of Pampanga, Bulacan and
Laguna, and hurled against the British lines about the city.
However, resistance proved ineffectual and on the 5th of Octo
ber Rojo, the archbishop-governor, surrendered the city. Then,
for forty hours Manila was given over to looting by the victorious
army, many of the local Chinese cooperating heartily on their
own account. "The King's goodness," wrote General Draper to
the Earl of Egremont, "has granted them one of the richest cities
and islands in the World, in fertility and every other blessing of
Nature, not inferior to any belonging to the British crown; if the
turn of affairs in Europe can perpetuate possession, it may prove
a source of wealth not to be equalled in any other part of the
globe."
Meanwhile, the night before the surrender Simon de Anda
y Salazar, a member of the audiencia, who had been named lieu
tenant-governor of the islands by the insular authorities, stole out
of the city and made for the interior of Luzon. Using the town
of Bulacan as a base, he organized a provisional government in
the name of the king and rallied all the patriotic elements in the
islands to the defense of the colony. By his vigor and resource
THE ENGLISH
339
fulness he succeeded in confirming the British sphere of control
to a narrow zone about Manila until the city was returned to
Spain by the Treaty of Paris.
At the time of the English occupation of Manila two gal
leons were at sea. The Filipino was shortly due from Acapulco
and the Santisima Trinidad had left Manila Bay on the 3rd of
September. Serious fears were felt for the safety of the former,
but the outbound galleon was believed to be already well beyond
the grasp of the British. On entering Philippine waters the
Filipino sent a galley up to Manila with a request for a special
pilot to take her in through the Embocadero. As she entered Ma
nila Bay the vessel was seized by the British, who thereby learned
of the arrival of the galleon off the eastern coast of Samar, where
she lay to awaiting a pilot and instructions. Meantime, Anda had
sent orders to the commander of the galleon to run her into
Palapag harbor where she was hurriedly beached and her cargo
landed. Her silver, to the amount of 2,309,111 pesos and an un
known quantity of unregistered money, was then transported to
a secret hiding place in the rough country well inland from
Manila. Anda used the silver as the sinews of war in his opera
tions against the British, who attempted to force ArchbishopGovernor Rojo to embargo the money and turn it over to them
in payment of the city's ransom of two million pesos.
When Admiral Cornish was apprized of the presence of the
Acapulco galleon off the islands, he hastily despatched two ships
of his fleet to capture her and bring in her cargo of silver. These
ships were the Argo, a sixty-gun frigate, and the Panther, of
thirty-two guns. For twenty-six days they cruised about the
waters between Luzon and Samar. Then, on the moonlit night
of October 29th, as the Argo was rounding the island of Capul
just inside the Embocadero, she sighted a large ship beating in
through the strait and evidently in distress. The stranger proved
to be not the Filipino, as was anticipated, but the great Santisima
Trinidad, limping back crippled in search of a port of refuge
and unaware of the presence of enemies in her path.
The Argo drew alongside the towering galleon and began
firing at one o'clock in the morning. At the time the galleon
had only six guns in place to the frigate's sixty, but in spite of
the disparity in armament the Spaniard handled the Argo so
roughly that she was forced to draw off and await her consort.
34°
THE MANILA GALLEON
By daybreak, when the Panther had come up, seven more guns
had been dragged out of the galleon's hold and mounted. With
these she held off the British ships for over two hours longer
before she struck her colors. The British had fired over a thou
sand eighteen and twenty-four pound shot against her sides with
out damaging her hull. The English had lost seventy-two men
killed to twenty-eight on the galleon. However, the Spaniard's
crew had evidently been dispirited by the harrowing experiences
which had forced the galleon to turn back on her way to Acapulco. When the second pilot, who had been the heart of the
action, was severely wounded, panic seized many of the crew,
demoralizing a defense that had at least equal chances of success,
so long as their short supply of ammunition should hold out.
"She was a large vessel," said the English report in "The Annual
Register"; "she lay like a mountain in the water, and the, Span
iards trusted entirely to the excessive thickness of her sides, not
altogether without reason; for the shot made no impression upon
any part, except her upper works."
The Santtsima Trinidad had raised her anchor before Cavite
on the first of August. It was already long past the usual time
for sailing and contrary winds held her in Manila Bay for an
other month. When she at last cleared through the Boca of
Mariveles she caught a northwest wind that carried her down the
straits to San Jacinto in the record time of three days. It was nine
more days before she could work her way out of the Embocadero
into the open sea. She then ran northwest into the stormy area
about Japan and the Ladrones. On the 24th of September, while
in latitude nineteen, a storm broke her masts, but with great
efforts they were again lashed into place. Eight days later a
new and more violent tempest struck her and swept her masts
overboard. On the third day of the storm the pounding of the
sea opened her planking so that she was expected to founder and
"all the people prepared to die." However, all pumps were put
to work, the leaks repaired by the ship's caulkers and carpenters,
and emergency masts were rigged up. She was then headed
back towards the islands and on the 28th of October sighted Cape
Espiritu Santo. A junta of officers on board decided to run her
into the nearby harbor of Palapag, where the Filipino had been
grounded and since burned by the British, but the pilot refused
to take her in at night. It was then resolved to head for the port
THE ENGLISH
34i
of Bagatao on the Albay coast of Luzon as a more suitable place
of refuge. It was the next day, as she was beating in through
the Embocadero, that she was surprised by the British frigate.
After her capture the galleon was towed up to Manila, where
her cargo, estimated to be worth two million pesos, was taken
out of her hold. On the 9th of June of the next year she entered
Plymouth Road, the harbor that had been associated with so
much misfortune for the galleons. Shortly afterwards, the Scofs
Magazine announced: "The Santisima Trinidad is now adver
tised for sale at Plymouth. This ship is one of the largest ever
seen in Britain. She is upwards of 2,000 tons burden; the gundeck measures 167 feet, 6 inches; the breadth 50 feet, 6 inches; the
depth of the hold from the poop-deck, 30 feet, 6 inches; her
draught of water at Plymouth 28 feet." People came from all
over southern England to gaze upon the mightiest of the gal
leons, who ended her long Odyssey of troubles in the ignominy
of alien captivity. By an irony of fate she was also called
Nuestra Senora del Buen Fin—Our Lady of the Good Ending.
>>>>>>>>>>))>)>>>®<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
CHAPTER 10
THE DUTCH
DURING the first half of the seventeenth century the Dutch
threatened to harry the galleon commerce out of existence
and to drive the Spaniards from the Philippines. "The Dutch are
the most terrible enemies that we have," wrote Banuelos y Carrillo in 1638, "and they will become absolute masters of the Ma
nilas, if they can attain their ends." Yet, in spite of all their
efforts they were never able to take a galleon or to reach the
walls of Manila.
As distributors they had shared indirectly for several decades
in the profits of the East Indian trade, when Dutch ships carried
the spices from Lisbon to the northern countries. Then two
events coming in close succession changed entirely the course of
the trade. In 158 1 the seven United Provinces declared their
independence from Spain after several years of bitter fighting.
The year before a Spanish army under the Duke of Alba con
quered Portugal, and the government of Philip II promptly for
bade the coming of Dutch ships to Lisbon. This blow at the
Dutch rebels and heretics was as great an economic blunder as
had been the expulsion of the Moriscoes from the peninsula.
It virtually sealed the doom of the Asiatic empire of Portugal,
now an appanage of the Spanish crown. It furthermore ensured
the failure of Spanish political and commercial ambitions in the
Orient. For the Dutch now went out to the East to "make tryal
of the Indies" and to tap the spice trade at its very source. "Being
opprest and thrown out of all Business in Europe," said Harris,
the English geographer, "they resolved to find something to do
in remoter countries. What a plague did the Spaniards bring
upon themselves by sending the Dutch to look abroad for trade!"
The publication in 1595 of Jan Huyghen van Linschoten's
account of his travels in the East was a powerful influence in
diverting the attention of his countrymen to direct trade with
those regions. After familiarizing himself with the mercantile
341
THE DUTCH
343
operations of the Portuguese and Spaniards in Lisbon and Seville,
Linschoten had traded in India and the lands beyond. His stay
in Asia impressed on him the growing incompetence and weak
ness of the Portuguese, as well as the vast possibilities of the trade
for a commercial people like his own.
Between 1594 and 1596 the Dutch made three attempts to
reach the Pacific around northern Europe and Asia. During the
same three years Cornelis Houtman defied the old Portuguese
monopoly of the Cape route by sailing around Africa to the East
Indies. With four ships he left Amsterdam in 1595 and in June
of the next year reached Bantam on Java, then in the hands of
the Portuguese. He missed the coveted Moluccas, but later
landed on Bali. Though the venture was commercially a failure,
the familiarity gained with the Malay archipelagos was to prove
valuable in future endeavors. In 1598 a fleet of eight sail under
Jacob van Neck left the Texel for Java. It brought back a large
cargo of spices, which paid the shareholders in the expedition
a profit of more than one hundred percent. Four years later the
trade was established on a firm basis by the founding of the
Dutch East India Company, which was granted a monopoly of
the oriental business by the States-General. Their factory at
Bantam on Java dates from the same year, 1602.
The Dutch aimed at control of the spice trade, and by 1605
they were on Ternate, Tidore, and Amboina of the Moluccas,
the center of the clove production. Their designs involved not
only the elimination of the Portuguese in that area, but an in
evitable conflict with the hated Spaniards, now more than ever
interested in keeping intact the chain of Portuguese trading posts
from Goa around by Malacca to Macao.
A rivalry that might have benefited the Iberians developed
on the entrance of the English into the field. In 1618 Sir Thomas
Roe wrote from the court of the Great Mogul to the directors
of the English East India Company: "They [the Dutch] wrong
you in all Parts and grow to insufferable insolencies. ... If they
keep you out of the Moluccoes by force, I would beat them from
Surat to requite it." However, in 1619 Dutch and English com
promised their differences, the latter agreeing to withdraw to
more westerly waters to carry on their trading operations. This
proved to be one of the most momentous decisions in the history
of the Far East, since it delimited the fields of activity of the two
344
THE MANILA GALLEON
foremost maritime powers of that period. Harmony seemed so
far restored by the settlement that English ships took part in the
blockade of Manila in 1621. Yet, the old animosity broke out
two years later in the sanguinary incident of Amboina, when
several English traders were wantonly killed by the Dutch as
interlopers in the field of their monopoly. After that the English
ceased to be serious competitors in the great archipelago. For
two peoples to be friends for long in the Indies was impossible.
Meanwhile the Dutch had broken into the Pacific around
South America and reached the Spice Islands from the east. It
was these expeditions which first brought them into conflict with
the Spaniards. The first of the Dutch circumnavigators was
Olivier van Noort, a tavern keeper and retired seaman, who or
ganized a joint stock company in his home town for trading with
the East Indies. He sailed from Holland for the Straits of Ma
gellan in 1597 with four ships and crews of 248 men. By the
time he cleared from the west coast of South America, where he
had committed many depredations against the Spaniards, includ
ing an attack on the shipping at Valparaiso, only two of his
original ships remained. With these he crossed the Pacific to
the Ladrones and thence to the Philippines, which were sighted
in October, 1600. For several days the Dutch ships lay off Capul
in the Straits, in the hope of waylaying the galleon Santo Tomds,
which was shortly due from Acapulco with the proceeds of two
years' sales in Mexico. Leaving their anchorage off Capul, they
then moved up the Straits towards Manila, where they counted
on taking some Chinese junks and other booty. On the way
they captured several small vessels engaged in inter-insular trade
and laden with "Hennes, Hogges, and Rice," and plundered a
few settlements among the Visayas.
At the time most of the armed forces in the Philippines were
engaged in a punitive expedition against the Moros. On news
of the irruption of the Dutch hurried efforts were made at Manila
to improvise means of defense. Governor Tello entrusted the
measures against the intruders to Antonio de Morga, senior
member of the audiencia. The militant judge mustered every
available man of fighting age and fitted out two small ships.
With this force he sailed out of Manila Bay and on the 14th of
December engaged the two Dutch ships. Noort's flagship, after
being boarded awhile by Morga and his men on the San Antonio,
THE DUTCH
345
withdrew from the scene of the action in a badly crippled condi
tion and set its course for Borneo. At the end of the stubborn
six hours' battle the San Antonio sank, but Morga and some of
his soldiers succeeded in swimming ashore to an island about six
miles away. Meanwhile, the other Spanish vessel captured Noort's
second ship and took it as a prize to Manila, where its com
mander and twenty-five other Dutchmen aboard were garroted
as rebels against Spain.
In July 1598, a fleet of five ships, fitted out by two rich
burghers of Rotterdam, cleared for the East Indies by the South
American route. The admiral, Jacques Mahu, died off Guinea,
and only one ship reached its destination, where its crew were
killed by the Portuguese. Another ship eventually made Japan
in great distress and left there the Englishman, Will Adams, who
was to become unofficial adviser to the Japanese government on
many matters and go-between for many foreigners in their con
tacts with the natives.
As we have seen,1 the Dutch received a setback to their am
bitions for a monopoly of the spice trade in 1606, when Pedro de
Acuna, governor of the Philippines, drove them from Tidore and
stormed their fortifications on Ternate. To remove this obstacle
from their way they purposed either to drive the Spaniards alto
gether from the region of spice production or at least to render
them a negligible element in the trade. To gain their ends they
followed various tactics. They made direct assaults on the Span
ish posts in the Moluccas. They tried to cut off the yearly subsidy
from Manila. Joris van Speilbergen, the Dutch navigator, ad
vised the conquest of the Philippines as the best means of taking
the Moluccas. "The best and only means," he said, "of re-estab
lishing our affairs in the Indies and of making ourselves entirely
masters of the Moluccas is, in my opinion, to despatch a fleet
and armada direct to the Philippines, in order to attack the
Spaniards there, and to overpower all the places and strongholds
it may be possible to conquer." The Dutch stirred up the natives,
particularly the Moros of the neighboring seas, against the Span
ish and they attacked the latter in the Philippines themselves,
but all to no avail.
Though a truce was declared to the long struggle between
Spain and the Protestant Netherlands in 1609, the respite was
*p. 139.
346
THE MANILA GALLEON
ignored in the East. In 1607 the Dutch East India Company
despatched a strong fleet of thirteen ships from the Texel under
Pieter Willemsz and Francois de Wittert, with the object of
preying on the Portuguese possessions in Africa and the East
Indies. While the fleet was still on its way to the Orient there
arrived at Manila as governor Juan de Silva, a redoubtable cap
tain, with several companies of the mighty infantry, whose pres
tige was yet unbroken. To aid in a supreme effort against the
Dutch, Ruy Gonzalez Sequeira was sent around the Cape of Good
Hope with more reinforcements. However, before the arrival of
the force under Gonzalez Sequeira the Dutch fleet, now under the
sole command of Admiral Wittert, appeared in the Philippines.
Spaniard and Dutchman met off Mariveles at the entrance of
Manila Bay on April 25, 1610, in a bitterly fought six-hour battle.
Wittert was killed and only one of his ships survived the over
whelming defeat of the Dutch. Two hundred and fifty prisoners
and large booty were taken by the Spaniards. David Middleton,
the Englishman, in Java at the time, wrote in his diary several
weeks later: "That same day came a Ship from Tarnata [Tcrnate] with news, that the Hollanders had lost their Admirall,
which went to Manila, for his head was shot off, and the ship
taken and two more, and another (that would not yeeld) set
himselfe a fire; so they lost three ships by fight and one burned,
being all great Shippes of one thousand Tunnes apiece." Long
afterwards Legentil, the French navigator, wrote: "The Dutch
several times raised the fame of this city by the defeats which
their navies suffered in the Bay of Manila and elsewhere in the
Archipelago and among the Moluccas."
For years hostilities continued intermittently. In 1614 a large
Dutch fleet lay off Manila for several weeks, paralyzing her trade.
Will Adams wrote that year from Japan: "Now heer is news come
that thear is 20 ssaylles of hoolanders about manillia with 2 or 3
Inglish ship which yf it be trew will do no good at manillia
before thear departeur."
In 1616 Governor Silva led from Manila a powerful fleet
that was intended to deal a decisive blow to the Dutch through
out the whole East. In the fleet of sixteen large ships was a gal
leon of over 2,000 tons and there were seven others of from 600 to
1,600 tons. It carried 300 bronze cannon, and was manned with
2,000 Spaniards and 3,000 Malays. Spain never mustered before
THE DUTCH
347
or after such a force in the Orient. The great armada accom
plished nothing more than the relief of beleaguered Malacca,
which large Spanish reinforcements had saved from the Dutch
several years before. There, while it waited for the Portuguese
naval division from Goa, Silva suddenly died. That event, to
gether with the failure of the Portuguese reinforcements to arrive
from India, led to the abandonment of the plan for a general
attack on all the Dutch positions in the East. The debacle of
this expedition is as important in the history of the East Indies as
was the failure of the "Invincible" in 1588, for it definitely settled
the question as to who should dominate that region. The rem
nants of the fleet returned to Manila in June in a "deplorable
state."
While the forces of the colony were absent with Silva, Joris
van Speilbergen appeared before Manila. Speilbergen had ar
rived off the coast of New Spain late in 1615 with a fleet which
had left Holland over a year before. He entered the harbor of
Acapulco, where the Spaniards had strengthened the defenses on
news of his approach, but finding none of the Philippine galleons
in port, withdrew after exchanging some Spanish prisoners for
much-needed provisions. Speilbergen remained, however, for a
couple of months along the Guadalajara coast, where his presence
caused great anxiety to the Spanish population and to the vicere
gal authorities. Viceroy Guadalcazar sent orders to lower Cali
fornia to warn the Manila Galleons of the danger, and despatched
the veteran navigator, Sebastian Vizcaino, to Navidad to take
measures for the expulsion of the "pichilingues," as the Dutch
rovers were locally known. The Spaniards believed that the
Dutch intended to make an establishment on the upper coast,
from which they could more advantageously prey on the Philip
pine commerce, and also use such a post as the basis for the ex
tension of their power in that region. However, when he finally
despaired of meeting the Manila ships, Speilbergen cleared for
the East Indies about the last of November. Reaching the Philip
pines early in the following year, he lay in wait for a time at the
Embocadero, with the expectation of seizing the returning Aca
pulco galleons. These had entered Acapulco harbor after the
departure of the Dutch from the coast of New Spain, and on their
return to the islands carried instructions from the viceroy to fol
low a course several degrees higher than the usual prescribed
348
THE MANILA GALLEON
track, so as to reach Manila by rounding Luzon from the
north.
On the way among the Visayas the Dutch bombarded Iloilo,
but in an attempt to take the town by storm were driven off with
heavy losses by Diego de Quinones. On their appearance at
Manila the non-combatant population—priests, merchants and
the like—made feverish efforts to improvise means of defense.
But Speilbergen suddenly drew off towards the Moluccas, in the
vicinity of which he believed Silva then to be.
The next year he returned to Philippine waters and met the
Spanish fleet under Juan Ronquillo off Playa Honda in the vicin
ity of Corregidor. Seven Spanish galleons and two galleys took
part in the two days' battle, which began on April 13, 1617.
Fighting at close quarters on the second day, the Spaniards
boarded several of the Dutch ships and overwhelmed their de
fenders with the sword. Three Dutch ships were destroyed, in
cluding the large 47-gun flagship, Sun of Holland, and two were
captured. The rest withdrew to the Moluccas in a badly crippled
condition.
The Dutch came again in 1619, 1620, and 1621. "It was
their intention," said the unhappy governor, Alsonso Fajardo,
"to conclude and finish once for all with everything." In 1619
John Derickson Lamb lost three ships to the Spaniards in the
Philippines. In the winter of the same year a powerful relief
fleet, despatched from Spain under the command of Lorenzo de
Zuazola, was wrecked by storms when it had scarcely cleared
from the Spanish coast. The Dutch strongly suspected that the
Philippines could expect no more aid from that quarter. In 1620
three Dutch ships, while cruising in the region of the Embocadero,
fell in with the Acapulco galleon, San Nicolas, under the com
mand of Fernando de Ayala. All day and part of the night the
Spaniard stood off her enemies, and then in the darkness ran into
the harbor of Borongan on Samar, where she was grounded and
her cargo removed before the Dutch could come up. A few days
later a patache, consort of the San Nicolas, encountered the same
Dutch ships and, after a running fight, was beached at Palapag,
from where her silver was conveyed to a place of safety.
1621 was as dire a time for Manila as the year of Ruyter's
blockade later was for London. For nearly a year and a half a
combined Dutch and English fleet effectually prevented the
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movement of ships into or out of Manila Bay. Most of the strong
naval force built up by Acuna and Silva had been crippled in
battle, dismantled, or lost in storms—seven in one typhoon near
Marinduque—and Governor Fajardo was unable to do more than
hold the walled city against the chance of an attack, which never
came. Meanwhile, all connection with the outside world was
overland through other ports on the coast of Luzon.
Entries from the diary of Arnold Browne, an Englishman,
who participated in these movements against the Spaniards, tell
the story of the long blockade: "May u, 1620. Capt. Adams by
a Councell was made Admirall for the English over five ships, &
five Dutch Ships in company were to goe for Japan, & so for the
Manillas. . . . Jan. 3, 1621, we departed from the road of Coochy
bound for the Manillas. The 24 we plied to and fro off the Bay
of Manillas. The 26 the Dutch Hope met with a China Champan, and tooke her being come from the Bay of Tundo from a
China Junke bound for the Bay of Manillas, which the said Hope
tooke on the 26. . . . From the first of Feb. to the sixt we were
turning up from the He Marvels [Mariveles], & the Cavetta [Cavite]where the Sp. Ships ride; the Bay a very faire one from 24
to six fathom. ... At Cavetta we found riding six or seven ships,
and two of them great Galleions, but all unrigged. The eight we
passed by the Towne of Cavetta with our ships. . . . We all
anchored in the Rode halfe way betwixt Cavetta, and the towne
of Manillas
After some time spent in watering, careening,
discovering and other affaires, March 28, 1621, by order of a
Councell the Fleet was dispersed for better looking out for Junkes
comming from China with the Coast. . . . The thirtieth No
vember, 1621, wee went into the Bay [of Manila] where the
Spaniards had four great Ships, three small and three Gallies,
besides other small Frigots. . . . The Fleet observed their op
portunities, but little was done." The blockade was raised on
May 9, 1622.
Two years later another Dutch fleet of seven ships arrived
outside Manila Bay. Five Spanish galleons and two galleys under
the old battler, Geronimo de Silva, sallied out to meet them in
the same waters off Playa Honda where Juan Ronquillo had de
feated Speilbergen in 1617. Again the Spaniards had the best
of the fighting, though not so decisively as seven years before.
Silva was accused for not following up his advantage and was
35»
THE MANILA GALLEON
imprisoned for a time in the fortress of Santiago on the charge of
cowardice.
The same year of 1624, the Dutch threatened the galleon
commerce on the other side of the Pacific. A fleet under Jacques
L'Hermite, which had come around South America, suddenly
abandoned its projected operations against the Chilean coast
towns, to cruise to the northward for the Manila Galleon. On
October 28, 1624, the Dutch ships entered Acapulco harbor, but
finding no vessels there Hugo Schapenham, then in command,
distributed his ships along the coast to the best advantage for
intercepting the incoming galleon. However, the growing scar
city of their water supply, which it was difficult to replenish along
that section of coast, forced Schapenham after a month's waiting,
to abandon his design and hasten to the Dutch posts in the East
Indies.
During the fourth decade of the century there was a lull in
the hostilities between Dutchman and Spaniard. But in 1640 war
came again to the East. That year the Dutch began a furious
offensive against the Iberian possessions throughout the Orient.
The Portuguese line of ports on the Asiatic mainland bore the
brunt of the first attack. Malacca fell, after 130 years in Portu
guese hands. Goa was cut off from Manila, thus isolating Span
ish and Portuguese, disunited in Europe by the successful revolt
of the latter in the same year. Then, in 1642 the Dutch took the
Spanish post which had been founded sixteen years before on
Formosa, and thus ended their brief rivalry for the control of the
island.
Once in control of the spice trade, the Dutch aimed at a
monopoly of the other great oriental staple, Chinese silks. "After
the Dutch had established themselves in the East Indies," wrote
Churchill, the English geographer, "they made it their chiefest
Care to settle a good Correspondence in China, both to carry on
their Traffick in those parts, and to annoy the Spaniards their
Enemies, who carried on a considerable Commerce with the Chineses from the Philippine Islands." Here again the Spaniards in
the Philippines were the chief obstacle, while the Portuguese at
Macao were but a minor impediment to their schemes. In this
field the Dutch relied on practically the same tactics which they
had used in their fight for the Moluccas: the cutting of the two
trade-routes vital to the interests of the colony, that to China and
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35i
the galleon line to New Spain. Of the Dutch plan of campaign
in 1615, Richard Cocks, factor of the English trading post in
Japan, said: "Their plot is great and yf it take effect, will utterly
overthrow the Spanish and Portingalle dissignes in these parts
of the world." The cessation of either or both branches of the
Spanish trade for even a few consecutive years would bring the
commercial life of the colony to complete stagnation and prob
ably lead to the withdrawal of the Spaniards, thus deprived of
their necessary resources from the entire East. To this effect
wrote Peter Nuyts, the Dutch factor on Formosa, to the council
of the East India Company, in 1629: "We must do our utmost
to destroy the trade between China and Manila, for, as soon as
this is done, we firmly believe that your Excellencies will see the
Spaniards leave the Moluccas, and even Manila of their own
accord."
The Dutch desired possession of the Philippines, not only
for the purpose of removing a barrier to their commercial ambi
tions in the Orient, but also for the sake of controlling the positive
commercial advantages of the islands themselves. Though they
probably overestimated the possibilities of spice culture in the
southern islands, they were clearly aware of the superiority of
Manila as the center for the trade of the entire Farther East. In
entertaining the belief that the Spaniards would voluntarily re
linquish the Philippines after two or three years of the interrup
tion of their trade, the Dutch must have known of the existence
of such sentiments in Spain as were expressed in a resolution of
the Cortes in 1621, when withdrawal from the islands was pro
posed. However, they did not reckon with the strength of the
religious motive, which during the seventeenth century was
probably the predominant reason of the Spaniards for the reten
tion of the colony, or with the national pride that was so little
perturbed by adverse fortune.
On the other hand, the objective of the Dutch was not alto
gether an immediately commercial one. They were satisfying
religious hatreds, for the memory of the persecutions of the Span
ish Inquisition had not yet died out in the Dutch states, while
Dutch prisoners of war were sometimes turned over at Manila
to be punished as heretics by the Philippine branch of the Holy
Office. Moreover, until Spain acknowledged in 1648 the inde
pendence of the United Provinces, the struggle against the
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THE MANILA GALLEON
Spaniard was a war of liberation, although independence was
actually attained long before the Spanish government would
recognize the accomplished fact. As it was, the Dutch owed the
final attainment and maintenance of their independence to their
command of the resources of the East. Governor Acuna wrote
to Philip III in 1605: "I think that to drive the enemy from the
Moluccas and from the islands of Banda will be of great advan
tage to our affairs in Flanders, since the rebels of Holland and
Zeeland harvest the products of these islands, and draw from
them great wealth, by means of which they carry on war and
become rich."
The first phase of the Dutch program, as it concerned the
Chinese trade, was the commercial isolation of the Philippines.
To cut off the commercial connections of the Spanish colony with
China and Japan they stationed ships along the coast of Ilocos
or Pangasinan, or sent them toward the Chinese mainland. In
some years they waylaid and plundered nearly all the junks
bound for Manila. Valerio de Ledesma, the Jesuit provincial,
informed Philip III in 1616 that there had been a great fallingoff in the trade with China, due to the depredations of the Dutch.
In that year but seven junks reached Manila, instead of the fifty
or sixty of former times. An entry in Richard Cocks' Japanese
diary for June 8, 1617 reads: "The 2 Holland ships and prize
came into the roads at Cochy. It is said that they have taken
and spoiled all the junckes which went this yeare for the Manillias. They took 14 or 15 sayle, but thought to be much more."
Later he writes: "Jno. Derickson Lamb sent two ships abootehawling on the coast of China, and from thence to the Manillas,
where they had the rifling of XVI seale of China junckes, and
filled them with such as they liked and set the rest on fire, and
brought the China junckes along with them."
In their attacks on neutral shipping, which amounted to
virtual piracy, the Dutch seized Japanese as well as Chinese
ships. An anonymous writer said in 1619: "The Japanese mer
chants complained that, because of the robberies which the Dutch
had committed the last two years on the coast of Manila, they
had lost the profit which they had usually drawn from the trade
with the Philippines. It may be hoped that this will result in the
expulsion of the Dutch from Japan." The Chinese and Japanese
began to prefer the voluntary suspension of their trading voyages
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353
to the high risk of loss, one of the very aims of the Dutch pro
gram. Another unnamed chronicler had written the year before
from Manila: "The Chinese will not dare to come to this city
with their ships, and commerce will cease. Everything will then
be lost, because the prosperity of these islands depends solely
upon trade with China."
In their efforts to gain the Chinese silk trade the Dutch had
needed a more convenient local center of operations than they
possessed in the southern islands. Such a place must serve both
as factory and as point of attack against the Spaniards, and also
against any Chinese ships that might venture out toward Luzon
in defiance of the Dutch assertions of maritime and trading
monopoly. It was in this role that the island of Formosa played
a very important part in the struggle between Dutch and Spanish
for the Chinese trade. Besides the strategical importance of its
position—directly north of the Philippines,—for whose conquest
it would offer an excellent base of operations, its tenure by a for
eigner would vitally affect the economic life of the Spaniards in
the Philippines. It lay in the path of the junks from Amoy and
was dangerously near that of the Canton fleet and of the craft
engaged in the Philippine-Japanese trade. The control of these
subsidiary trade routes by a hostile power would be a menacing
circumstance for the commercial interests of Manila, and so for
the very maintenance of the colonial establishment in the
islands. "The Authorities at Manila know only too well that
they have no other way of retrieving their lost position than by
obtaining possession of Formosa," wrote Peter Nuyts to the heads
of the Dutch East India Company in 1629.
Spanish interest in Formosa began in the days when some of
the early governors of the Philippines planned the conquest of
China. When the great Hideyoshi designed its occupation from
Japan, Juan Zamudio was sent from Manila in 1597 with orders
to take initial steps for forestalling the Japanese and to warn the
Chinese authorities of the dangers that would arise from the
presence of the Japanese on Formosa. Though nothing substan
tial was accomplished by either Japanese or Spaniards at this
time, a force sent out in 1598 by Iyeyasu actually invaded the
island, but was successfully withstood by the ever-truculent na
tives. So far the danger was from the north.
However, it was the Dutch who anticipated the Spaniards on
354
THE MANILA GALLEON
Formosa. Between 1604 and 1607 persistent attempts were made
to secure from the Chinese a grant of land for a factory and for
mal consent to trade, but the Chinese authorities refused the con
cession. Engrossed in other fields, the Dutch did not press their
requests with the Chinese until about 1622, at which time they
were at open war with the Spaniards, whom they intended to
strike indirectly through the Chinese trade. Accordingly, they
began the establishment of a post near Macao, which they be
sieged for a time. From here they could cut off this traffic at
its source, and, moreover, use the port as the site of a factory for
their own projected commercial dealings with the Chinese. How
ever, this aggression in violation of their sovereignty aroused the
Chinese, who prepared to destroy the Dutch settlement. Upon
this the latter agreed to abandon their plans for a Dutch Macao
and to retire to Formosa. In 1625 they laid the foundations of
their settlement at Taiwan on the southern side of the island.
"The Dutch then planned the capture of Formosa," wrote Padre
Zuniga, "with a view to interrupt the commerce to China, and
as a ladder for the conquest of the Philippines."
The same year Governor Fernando de Silva advised Philip IV
of the importance of its position, while he predicted that the
Dutch would seize it in case the Spaniards should not forestall
them. Silva declared that the proximity of Formosa made it
vital to the defensive scheme of the islands. Juan de Medina
said: "The Governor thought that from there the Dutch were
depriving us of the trade; this would mean the destruction of
Manila, which only a lucrative trade could sustain. To remedy
all this he thought to capture Formosa." Silva followed up his
design with the despatch of a force under Antonio Carreno de
Valdes, who laid the foundations of a Spanish base on the
northern side of the island. But this was in 1626 and the Dutch
had already made their settlement at Taiwan. The Spaniards
made one unsuccessful attempt to drive them away, after which
the two co-existed on the island until the reopening of hostilities
in Europe.
Meanwhile, the Spaniards were gradually transferring to
Formosa some of the trading that ordinarily took place at Manila,
so that the factory at Kelung thus became a way-station between
the Chinese coast and the Philippines. Also, after a period of
hesitation the Chinese began to bring their merchandise in large
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355
quantities to the rival Dutch entrepot. Peter Nuyts wrote in
1629: "Chinese vessels gradually began to visit us, so that during
the last five years, very little trade has been carried on at Manila."
Not only was this shifting of trade highly prejudicial to the in
terests of Manila, but the situation was potentially full of menace
the moment war should break out again. "We in the islands
were very anxious because of the nearness of the Dutch on
Formosa, a suitable way-station for any purpose," wrote Padre
Casimiro Diaz at the time. And war came soon.
On the withdrawal of the small Spanish garrison from
Formosa in 1642 the anomalous condition of two hostile powers
holding establishments in the same island was ended. The Dutch
could now utilize their advantage to further their ambitious
schemes about the China Sea at the expense of the Spaniards.
For another twenty years the Dutch held their posts on Formosa.
From there their ships operated to cut off the Chinese junks
bound for Manila. The menace from the side of Formosa was
not only greatly minimized by the peace which followed the
Treaties of Westphalia in 1648, but so far as it came from the
Dutch it ceased entirely with the occupation of the island in 1662
by Koxinga, the Chinese pirate chieftain.
By 1643 the Dutch offensive had swept on to the Philippines,
but here, as always, the Spaniards held firm. For another four
years they kept the islands in a turmoil with their raids and
maraudings. Their fleets blockaded Manila Bay, as in 1621, or
cruised among the Visayas, so that the colony's lines of com
munication with the outside world were severed for months at
a time.
During these years of stress the Manila Galleons had several
encounters with Dutch ships which were patrolling the straits.
This was in spite of precautions taken to warn the incoming gal
leons as they first approached the Luzon coast from Acapulco.
When one Dutch fo/ce, which had recently attacked Zamboanga,
was defeated by the Spaniards off the Punta de Baliguasan in
1646, Governor Diego Fajardo then fitted out the famous gal
leons, Rosario and Encarnacidn, with heavy guns from Cavite
and 250 picked men under Lorenzo de Ugalde, Master of the
Camp. Off Bolinao at the entrance of the Gulf of Lingayen
they met the Dutch on March 15th of the same year. So heavy
was the cannonading that a heavy pall of smoke soon hung over
356
THE MANILA GALLEON
the combatants. Firing stopped at dusk and during the night
the Dutch ships withdrew from the scene of the day's battle.
On the evening of July 29th the galleons came upon the same
Dutch force off Marinduque. After battling all through the
night both drew off in the morning. In the afternoon the Dutch
attacked with fire ships but did no damage. On the third day the
battle was renewed in the waters off Mindoro, but at the end of
six hours of severe fighting the Dutch sailed off to Java.
During the same summer three Dutch ships attacked the
galleon San Diego near Mindoro, as she was on her way to
Acapulco. The galleon retreated, fighting, into Manila Bay,
where she was joined by the Rosario and the Encarnacidn. The
three ships then put to sea in company and in a ten-hour fight
in the waters between Lubang and Ambil put the Dutch to flight.
Two years before the San Diego had put back to Manila on find
ing her way out the Embocadero blocked by the Dutch.
In June of the next year, 1647, twelve Dutch ships entered
Manila Bay and violently assailed the fortified works at Cavite.
With the aid of the galleon San Diego and other shipping in
the harbor the Spaniards drove off the Dutch. The enemy's
flagship was sunk and his admiral killed in the battle. The
same year the Dutch watched in vain in the Embocadero for
the galleon from Acapulco. "This was the last exploit of the
Dutch enemy in these islands, which they had infested for many
years with extraordinary pertinacity," wrote Padre Casimiro
Diaz. The Dutch remained in the vicinity of Luzon for several
months and even held a position on the coast for a while, from
which they raided several towns in the neighboring provinces.
It was not until news of the Peace of Westphalia, which ended
the Thirty Years' War in Europe, arrived in the East, that the
Dutch finally withdrew to their bases on Java.
When the long series of Dutch aggressions ended in 1648,
the Spaniards still held the Philippines and the Acapulco line
was yet to continue for over a century and al!alf. But the traffic's
splendid possibilities of expansion had been checked. Of course,
the restrictive policy of the Spanish government played its part
in this result, but the cost of the Dutch attacks was irreparable.
Not a galleon was taken by the enemy, though a few were driven
ashore to be broken up by the waves, or scuttled to prevent their
capture. However, to the comparatively slight loss of cargo that
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357
accompanied this sacrifice of the ships themselves, there must be
counted in the cost of the Dutch wars: the capture of many
Chinese and Japanese vessels with lading for the galleons; the
drain of men from a small population; the diversion into defense
against the Dutch of money and energies that should have gone
into commerce; the complete cessation in some years of the
traffic, and so, the temporary disruption of the whole economic
life of the colony; the entrance of vigorous competition into the
Chinese field, which the Spaniards had hitherto enjoyed largely
to themselves; and the almost complete loss of all Spain's pos
sibilities in the coveted spice trade.
PART IV
THE AMERICAS AND SPAIN
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>®<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
CHAPTER I I
MEXICO AND PERU
THE viceroyalty of New Spain, or more exactly, that part of
it which lay within the jurisdiction of the Audiencia, or high
administrative court, of Mexico, was the principal market for
the cargoes of the Manila Galleons. Until the period of adminis
trative reforms in the eighteenth century the Spanish Empire in
the New World was divided between the two viceroyalties of
New Spain and Peru. The nucleus of the one was the conquests
of Cortes; of the other, those of the Pizarros. In fact, the vice
regal governments were set up in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and in Lima before the conquerors were removed from
the scenes of their prodigious exploits. Antonio de Mendoza,
the first viceroy of New Spain, arrived in 1535; Blasco Nunez
Vela succeeded the king's agent, Cristobal Vaca de Castro, as
first viceroy of Peru in 1544.
The viceroyalties were in turn subdivided into districts gov
erned by an audiencia, or a captain-general, or by a dual regime
of the two. Many of the present.day republics are direct descen
dants of these districts. In 1717 the northern provinces of the
southern viceroyalty were cut off and incorporated into the new
viceroyalty of New Granada, with its seat of government at
Santa Fe de Bogata, the present capital of the Republic of Colom
bia. In 1776 the lands to the east of the southern Andes, includ
ing the territory subject to the Audiencia of Charcas, which
comprised most of the present area of Bolivia, were organized
into the Viceroyalty of La Plata, with its capital at Buenos Aires.
During the same period some of the old captaincies-general, such
as those of Cuba, Venezula, and Central America, were made
independent of the respective viceroyalties and given an autono
mous government under the crown and the Council of the Indies.
Also, the outlying districts of the viceroyalty of New Spain on
the north, including upper California and New Mexico, were
set apart in 1776 as the Provincias Internets, or Interior Provinces,
361
THE MANILA GALLEON
under the authority of a commandant-general, who was in turn
subject to the orders of the viceroy at Mexico City.
Save for a brief period, sale and consumption of the galleon's
cargoes were limited by law to the northern viceroyalty, and
trade in oriental goods with other provinces of the Spanish Em
pire was contraband. The interest of the Mexican Spaniards in
the commerce was second only to that of the Manilehos, and
within Mexico itself the arrival of the galleon was as eagerly
looked for as that of the flota, or trading fleet, from Spain. "The
failure of the Philippine Galleon to arrive causes a scarcity of
many things in this country," said the Marques de Croix in 1769.
And the viceroy adds significantly that it promises a more bril
liant fair at Jalapa, the town in the tierra templada above Vera
Cruz, where the cargoes of the flota were sold.
All classes, from the Indians of the towns in the torrid low
lands, whom Spanish-made conventions and laws compelled to
wear clothing, to the pampered creoles of the capital, went
dressed in the fabrics of the Far East, the cottons of Luzon or
India and the silks of China. "The Chinese goods form the
ordinary dress of the natives of New Spain," declared the Regula
tions of 1720; and said Viceroy Revillagigedo: "The Philippine
commerce is acclaimed in this kingdom, because its merchandise
supplies the poor folk of the country." The bulk of the Chinese
silks were consumed by the peninsular and colonial Spaniards
and the better-to-do mestizos of Mexico City, though the larger
provincial towns like Guadalajara and Puebla also took a share
of them. Few of the Oriental goods found their way across to
Spain.
The proverbial wealth of the viceregal capital usually assured
a rich outlet for the imports from China. This wealth, founded
largely on mining and trade, was long a substantial fact, though
it was partly responsible for the exaggerated glamor which
the dazzled and inaccurate imagination of Europe had thrown
over the whole Spanish empire of the Indies. Foreigners like
Thomas Gage and Gemelli Careri, and in later times Alexander
von Humboldt, actually saw the luxury and display of the capital
of New Spain. "Both men and women," says the Irish friar,
who lived in Mexico in the early seventeenth century, "are exces
sive in their apparel, using more silks than stuffs and cloths;
precious stones and Pearls further much their vain ostentation;
MEXICO AND PERU
363
a hat-band and rose made of Diamonds in a Gentleman's hat is
common, and a hat-band of Pearls is ordinary in a Tradesman."
And writing of the 2,000 or more coaches that rolled back and
forth each afternoon in the Alameda, "full of Gallants, Ladies,
and Citizens, to see and to be seen, to court and to be courted,"
he observes that "they spare no Silver, nor precious stones, nor
Cloth of Gold, nor the best silks from China to enrich them."
It was in the "rich and comely" street of San Agustin that these
silks had been retailed, as La Platerta, now a part of Calle Madero,
was the center of the jewelry trade. There, says Gage, "a man's
eyes may behold in less than an hour many millions worth of
gold, silver, pearls, and jewels."
Not only did Mexican merchants make a large profit in the
sale of these goods, but they often increased their gains by making
their purchases at Manila instead of at Acapulco, and thereby
eliminating the Manileno as a middleman. This practice must
have begun early, since a protest from Manila in 1586 declared:
"One of the things which has ruined this land is the large con
signments of money that rich persons in Mexico send here." A
law granting the petition of the islanders was issued seven years
later. However, the continued complaints of the Manilenos are
evidence of the ineffectiveness of the decree. In 1602 they
threatened to abandon the colony if the Mexicans and Peruvians
did not limit their operations to the eastern side of the Pacific.
Some of the latter were men who had accumulated a fortune
during a few years' residence in the islands and still maintained
their trading connections in Manila by means of reliable agents,
who represented them for a commission. These agents were
registered citizens, and as such were legally qualified to draw
boletas or shipping licenses and consign goods on the galleon.
They were so well supplied with money that the bona-fide mer
chants could not compete with them, since prices to the Spaniards
were sometimes doubled when the Chinese learned that there was .
a large supply of Mexican and Peruvian silver in the city. Some
times the Spanish-American merchants would go to Manila in
person to make their purchases and then return on the next gal
leon. However, a law was issued in 1604 to prevent these busi
ness trips out to the islands. "The greater part of the people
who each year go from' New Spain to the Philippines," it says,
"do not remain there, but return presently after investing the
364
THE MANILA GALLEON
money which they have." The viceroy was not to permit anyone
to go to the Philippines without such person giving bond to
become an actual resident of the colony and agreeing to remain
there for eight years. Such legitimate emigrants might take out
with them whatever funds they possessed, regardless of the limita
tion of the permiso on the passage of silver to the islands.
After the procurador, Grau y Monfalcon, had declared that
most of the evils of the trade were due to the interference of the
Mexicans, whom the Manilenos always made the scapegoats for
their own excesses, the prohibitions were reissued in 1639. At
the same time the king refused the request of the City of Mexico
for permission to invest annually 250,000 pesos in the Philippine
trade. The Mexicans had alleged as the reason for their petition
the expense of maintaining the armada de Barlovento, or Wind
ward Fleet, whose function was the policing of the Gulf and
Caribbean regions against pirates. A few years later the Audiencia
of Manila excluded several Mexican merchants from trade in
the islands, confiscated their goods, and fined them 273,113 pesos.
However, in 1683, the City of Manila complained to the king that
citizens of Mexico had sent 400,000 pesos for investment. A few
years later the Andalusians charged that in 1686 Viceroy Galve
sent two ships to Manila with merchants from both viceroyalties,
and all well supplied with money. These men were said to have
gone on to China, where they established direct trading connec
tions and left samples of goods to serve as models for the Chinese
silk weavers. It is clear that even if any such enterprise was
undertaken at that time it was not prosecuted beyond the initial
stage. And though the Regulations of 1720 and 1734 ordered the
confiscation at Acapulco of all goods known to be consigned
to Mexicans, "of whatever rank, quality or condition they may
be," yet Revillagigedo informed his successor in 1754 that it was
morally impossible to keep the Mexicans from sending money
to Manila to invest in the galleon trade. Even the closest official
surveillance could not bring to light the frauds that were so
skillfully concealed by a resort to "dummies." In 1776 the fiscal
of the Council of the Indies, Tomas Ortiz de Landazuri, told
Charles III that the Mexicans were the real masters of this traffic,
"reputed to be the most fortunate and lucrative of all those that
are known in Europe and America."
Silk manufactures were long maintained in Mexico on the
MEXICO AND PERU
365
basis of raw materials from China and from domestic produc
tion. The Mexican silk industry was older than the galleon
commerce, and in fact dated from the very time of Cortes. The
area of production centered in the Misteca district, and the city
of Puebla gained considerable local fame for its looms and neigh
boring mulberry groves. Until the Peruvian market was closed
and the disastrous Chinese competition had begun to undermine
its prosperity the prospect for the native silks was bright. "The
policy of the Council of the Indies," wrote Humboldt, "constantly
unfavorable to the manufactures of Mexico on the one hand and,
on the other, the most active commerce with China, and the
interest which the Philippine Company has in selling the Asiatic
silks to the Mexicans, seem to be the principal causes of the
gradual annihilation of this branch of colonial industry." Of
the state of the industry at the time of his visit to New Spain
Humboldt says further: "With the exception of a few stuffs of
cotton mixed with silk, the manufacture of silks is at present
next to nothing in Mexico." In 161 1 Viceroy Montesclaros,
arguing for the suppression of the Acapulco trade, said that
Mexico could supply all her own demand for silk from the
Misteca and other sources within the country. However, the
decline had then already set in, and the local manufacturers were
henceforth dependent for their raw material upon the raw Chinese
silk. Grau y Monfalcon declared in 1637 that over 14,000 laborers
were engaged in this industry in Mexico City, Puebla and Antequera. He asserted that the Oriental silk was superior in quality
to that produced in the Misteca district, which was, moreover,
inadequate to supply the demand in Mexico. Woodes Rogers,
writing in 1712, said: "Abundance of raw Silk is brought from
China, and of later Years worked up into rich Brocades equal
to any made in Europe."
Peru early promised to be an even more lucrative market for
Oriental goods than was New Spain. Here was a population
wealthy, inordinately given to luxury and display, and recklessly
extravagant. In the Calle de Mercaderes, or Street of the Mer
chants, in Lima the luxuries of Europe and Asia could be found
in forty shops, some of whose owners possessed a capital of over
a million pesos. In 1602 Viceroy Monterey described to the king
the luxury of the capital of the great viceroyalty. "All these
people live most luxuriously," he says; "all wear silk, and of the
366
THE MANILA GALLEON
most fine and costly quality. The gala dresses and clothes of
the women are so many and so excessive that in no other king
dom of the world are found such." High in the Andes, Potosi,
"the Imperial City," and "heart of the Indies," was in her bonanza
times and leading a riotous career of indulgence, for which the
stream of silver from the Cerro furnished abundant means. This
city of feverish life a Portuguese Jew called, "by reason of its
riches the most fortunate and happiest of the world's cities." A
century later Woodes Rogers wrote of the Peruvians: "The
Spaniards here are very profuse in their Clothing and Equipage,
and affect to wear the most costly things that can be purchased ;
so that those who trade hither with such Commodities as they
want, may be sure to have the greatest Share of their Wealth."
Said Rogers: "The Ladies, who are extravagant in their Apparel,
impoverish the Country by purchasing the richest Silks." Frezier,
the French scientist, writing about the same time, said: "The
men and women of Lima are equally given to magnificence in
their dress."
Royal sanction was given for the Chinese-Philippine trade
with New Spain, Peru, Guatemala, and Tierra Firme or the
"Spanish Main" by a decree of April 14, 1579, fourteen years after
the beginning of the galleon commerce. Governor Sande early
planned a direct trade from Manila to Peru, but it was his suc
cessor, Gonzalo Ronquillo, who sent the first ships to Callao,
the port of Lima. One crossed in 1581 and another followed
the next year. Both were highly profitable ventures, and
Peruvians and Manilenos hoped for an indefinite continuance of
the voyages. However, a royal order of 1582 interdicted the
traffic at its very beginning, and caused the cessation of the direct
voyages. For this new line threatened serious competition with
the Porto Bello galleons, which had hitherto supplied this field
from Spain. A whole series of prohibitory legislation followed.
A law of 1591 forbade trading between Peru, Tierra Firme,
Guatemala, "or any other parts of the Indies, and China or the
Philippines." An order of the next year, successively re-issued
in 1593, 1595, and 1604, merely stated the same principle in an
other form, in restricting the trans-Pacific trade to New Spain.
The reiteration of these prohibitions and the severe penalties
always fixed for their violation—a ruinous fine, or the confisca
tion of the property of all implicated in the offense, or even exile
MEXICO AND PERU
367
or the galleys—show the anxiety with which the central govern
ment attempted to maintain the peninsular monopoly in that
region. The attempt of Governor Luis Perez Dasmarinas in 1596
and the project of Governor Fajardo in 1620 for sending a yearly
ship to Panama, there to make connections with the Peruvian
merchants, failed to shake this resolution, as did the petition of
Governor Arandia in the middle of the eighteenth century. It
was not until 1779 that the Manilenos were permitted to trade
directly with Peru. This was during the War of American In
dependence, and the concession, which was intended to alleviate
the straits of both the Philippines and the American colonies of
Spain, was limited to two years.
The only other avenue for the entrance of Asiatic goods into
Peru was by way of Acapulco, through transhipment from the
Manila Galleons to the vessels locally known as the "Lima ships."
From very early a flourishing trade was carried on at Acapulco
between merchants from Peru and the Manila representatives.
The islanders welcomed the coming of the Peruvians to the fair,
for they always came well supplied with silver, and their competi
tion with the Mexicans for the galleon's cargo raised prices.
From 1585 Viceroy Villamanrique levied duties on the exports
to Peru, but in 1589 he temporarily suspended the traffic, on the
grounds that it was contrary to royal orders and that it would,
moreover, cause a scarcity in New Spain, since the arrival of the
flota for that year was uncertain. Philip II had issued the in
evitable ban on the trade in 1587, two years before the viceroy's
act of suspension. This order, reiterated in 1593, and twice in
1599, was one of the most momentous decrees in the history of
the commerce, for it closed, at least legally, a field for oriental
imports that would in all probability have been a richer market
than even New Spain could be.
However, permission was conceded for two ships to carry
to Peru the investments of 200,000 ducats in exclusively Mexican
products. The latter limitation could not be enforced, and in
1604 all trade between the two viceroyalties was ordered to cease.
"Inasmuch as the trade in Chinese stuffs has increased to exces
sive proportions in Peru," runs the law, "notwithstanding so
many prohibitions expedient to our royal service, the welfare
and utility of the public cause, and the commerce of this king
dom, I command the viceroys of Peru and New Spain to pro
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THE MANILA GALLEON
hibit and suppress, without fail, this commerce and trade between
both kingdoms, by all the ways and means possible." "This pro
hibition shall be kept strictly and shall continue to be so kept,"
was the mandate that closed the edict. And the decree was re
issued in 1609, 1620, 1634, 1636, and finally in 1706!
Several auxiliary laws were intended to aid in the enforce
ment of the main prohibition. Thus, ships plying between
Callao, Guayaquil, Panama, and Nicaragua ports, and which
were accustomed to proceed on to Acapulco from the latter to
take on goods from Manila, were ordered in 1621 to discontinue
the final and illegal stage of their voyage. Three decrees, all of
which apparently dated from 1604, were directly complementary
to the central law. One prohibits the carrying of Chinese goods
from Acapulco to Peru on a non-commercial vessel under any
pretext, such as that they were a gift to church or charity. For
prodigious donations of this kind often furnished a sacrosanct
cover to large smuggling operations. A second decree fixed
severe penalties for port or ship's officials, whose negligence or
criminal connivance was responsible for the passage of any
Chinese goods into Peru. The third was a general order to the
viceroy of Peru, enjoining the "exact execution and fulfillment"
of the aforesaid ordinances. The immediate charge of the ad
ministration of these laws was to be entrusted to a member of the
Audiencia of Lima, in whom "entire confidence" could be placed.
Seldom was the execution of any group of laws in the colonial
code of the empire insisted on with equal persistence or rigor.
The king charged the "conscience and care of his servants," and
trusted to their "complete faithfulness." And, indeed, an in
exorable visitador or viceroy might make the laws a reality for
a short period, as did Viceroy Gelves and Pedro de Quiroga at
Acapulco and Viceroy Monclova at Lima, while the removal
of a lax viceroy of Peru in 1678 showed that they were not
entirely a dead letter. However, these violent and temporary
efforts by unusually zealous officials, while they had a certain
deterrent effect for a time, only caused the habitual inobservance
of these laws to be the more evident. There were few men whose
resolve, even when fortified by the king's express commission
and armed with the dire penalties provided by the laws, could
long face the almost unanimous hostility of citizens and fellow
officials to these irksome prohibitions.
MEXICO AND PERU
369
The venality and corruption in every rank of the viceregal
government in Peru seems to have been almost universal. "From
viceroy to archbishop everyone trades, although secretly and by
the agency of another," wrote the Portuguese Jew, quoted be
fore. These precautions were made necessary by various con
siderations. The viceroys usually came of noble families, and
the traditions of their class, as well as the viceregal instructions,
forbade participation in trade, while the clergy were expressly
forbidden by law to engage in commercial transactions. Officials
were also suspicious of one another and the long arm of the
residencia might reach them, in spite of the usual power of their
accumulations to negative that ordeal. "The Corregidores make
vast Advantages," said Woodes Rogers, "by their seizures, and
trading privately themselves. . . . The Spaniards say, and I be
lieve, not without Reason, that a Viceroy, after purchasing his
Place with all that he has, quits Old Spain like a hungry Lion,
to devour all that he can, and that every officer under him in
all the Provinces (who are ten times more than are necessary)
are his Jackals to procure Prey for him, that they may have a
share of it themselves." Private traders, he says, who refused
to compound with the officials, were treated with great severity
and, though seized "in the King's name," the goods confiscated
from these men were divided among the customs officers. The
most serious revelations of conditions in Peru were made by the
royal commissioners, Jorge Juan y Santacilla and Antonio de
Ulloa, who visited South America in 1735. "Neither honor, con
science, fear, nor recognition of the fact that they are paid high
salaries by the King can keep these officials faithful to their
charge," they declared in their confidential report. Customs
officials offered inducements to contraband traders to frequent
their ports, for the opportunity it gave them to share in the profits
of smuggling, and the very guards of the revenue service aided
in convoying inland to Lima or up to Cuzco or Potosi goods
whose introduction had been notoriously illegal. The same lax
state of affairs was found to exist at Guayaquil, the port of entry
for the Quito country.
Juan and Ulloa saw Chinese porcelain for sale in the shops
of Lima, and Chinese silks were sold and worn quite openly from
Chile to Panama, where the Oriental stuffs predominated in the
garb of the Spanish population, from the vestments of the priests
370
THE MANILA GALLEON
to the mantos and silk stockings of the Limenas. The trade in
goods from Manila was so much more profitable than that in
imports from the peninsula that the traffic with Acapulco con
tinued in spite of all the repeated legal precautions which have
been enumerated, and by means of the almost universal suborna
tion of compliant officials. The Lima ship continued its voyages
with more or less regularity after the decree of 1604 and its accom
panying and subsequent fulminations. Its operations even sur
vived the investigation of the relentless Quiroga, who was de
termined to suppress once for all this defiant traffic, and who at
least effected a temporary suspension of its activities. However,
at the end of the seventeenth century Peruvian ships came every
year to Puerto del Marques, a few miles north of Acapulco. In
the early part of the next century English privateers tried to take
the Lima ship out of Acapulco harbor. "She arrives a little be
fore Christmas," says Dampier, "and brings Quicksilver, Cacao
and Pieces of Eight. She takes in a cargo of Spices, Silks, Calicoes
and Muslins and other East Indian commodities for the use of
Peru." The order of 1706, which revived the old prohibitions,
comments on "the lack of observance of the laws, and the very
serious damage that results from it to the commerce of these
kingdoms." "The relaxation of the laws," it continues, "has
reached the point where the exportation of Oriental goods to
Peru has become a frequent and customary traffic." This trade
was carried on by ordinary merchant vessels which left Callao
or some other Peruvian port, with Acapulco or Puerto del
Marques as their express destination, or by coasting ships that
ran up above the prescribed limits on the west coast to invest
in a cargo of the forbidden merchandise. The transfer of digni
taries between the two viceroyalties was a frequent occasion for
a voyage, and these ships, southward-bound out of Acapulco,
seldom went in ballast. Below the hatches were rich bales and
chests, of whose presence the viceroy or archbishop on board was
either not cognizant, or conveniently ignored, unless he were
more directly interested in their ownership.
On the other side of the continent ships carried on a similar,
though lesser trade, with other parts of the Spanish colonies.
In 1748 representatives of Andalusian commercial interests in
Mexico charged that the cargo of the Manila Galleon was dis
tributed very widely throughout Spanish America, in contraven
MEXICO AND PERU
37i
tion of the law which limited its sale and final consumption to
New Spain. Imports from this source reached not only Peru,
but Guatemala, Tierra Firme, Campeche, Caracas and the Wind
ward Islands, as well as the Greater Antilles, either by way of
Vera Cruz or Panama-Porto Bello.
When Andres de Urdaneta selected Acapulco as the Amer
ican terminal of the Philippine-American navigation, he chose
the best harbor on the west coast of America, with the possible
exception of San Francisco. Legaspi's expedition for the occupa
tion of the Philippines sailed from Navidad, but Acapulco soon
took the place of the more northerly port. In 1572 Viceroy
Enriquez wrote to Philip II: "Acapulco is coming to be the first
port for the trade with the Philippines, because of its nearness
to the City of Mexico." Frequent proposals were made during
the history of the galleon trade to change the terminal from
Acapulco to some other port, for which there was claimed greater
accessibility to Mexico, a superior climate, or other advantages.
The most serious schemes of this sort were for the transfer to
San Blas or to Val de Banderas on the Guadalajara coast. As
the northwest provinces of the viceroyalty became more thickly
settled in the eighteenth century, the movement to have the gal
leons put in at a northern harbor gained strength. Particularly
was this so after the establishment of the Department of San
Blas. The latter port had become increasingly important, be
cause of its position as the starting-point for the new activities
along the coast of California and farther to the northward. In
his instructions to his successor, Viceroy Revillagigedo contended
for the retention of the terminal at Acapulco, but Branciforte
favored San Blas, while he proposed that the fair be held at
Tepic. However, by that time the Philippine commerce was
notoriously on the decline, and Acapulco was permitted to hold
the position which she had occupied for over two centuries by
right of official inertia and her incomparable harbor.
The harbor is nearly surrounded by precipitous mountains,
whose abrupt descent on their southern side leaves but a small
shelf of land for habitation. This circumstance also accounts
for its unusual depth, which is so great that the galleon was
sometimes made fast to a tree on the shore, instead of anchoring
out in the bay. In the cove immediately in front of the town
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THE MANILA GALLEON
depths range from five to ten fathoms; over most of the bay
there is from sixteen to thirty fathoms of water. The entrance
which opens towards the southwest, is broken by the Isla de la
Roqueta into two mouths of unequal width. The easterly pass
known as the Boca Grande, or "Big Mouth," has a breadth of
about a mile and a half, while the other, or Boca Chica, is only
about 260 yards wide. Though the breadth of the former admits
seas and winds that would interfere with the security of vessels
lying opposite this mouth, ships find entire safety when moored
in front of the town in the sheltered inner bay which projects
to the northwest from the main body of the harbor. Thus, the
port has the advantages of being both safe and deep.
Domingo Fernandez de Navarrete, a much-traveled friar,
called it "the best and safest harbor in the world, as was duly
asserted by those who have seen many others." Of the size of
the harbor Dampier remarks: "The Port of Acapulco is very
commodious for the reception of Ships, and so large, that some
hundreds may safely Ride there without damnifying each other."
Lord Anson considered it "the securest and finest in all the
northern parts of the Pacific Ocean." Malaspina, one of the most
skilled of Spanish navigators of the later eighteenth century, a
scientific seaman of the type of Cook and Bougainville, favored
the further development of Acapulco as the Spanish naval base
for the northern Pacific and as a great commercial port. For
these purposes he held it much superior to San Blas. "No one
can deny," he said, "that Acapulco has great advantages which
are found together in very few ports of the globe."
Humboldt, who saw the place in 1803, thus describes the
harbor, which he called "the finest of all those on the coast of
the great ocean," and again, "one of the finest ports in the known
world:" "The port of Acapulco forms an immense basin cut in
granite rocks. ... I have seen few situations in either hemisphere
of a more savage aspect. I would say at the same time, more
dismal and more romantic. The masses of rocks bear in their
form a strong resemblance to the dentillated crest of Montserral
in Catalonia. . . . This rocky coast is so steep that a vessel of
the line may almost touch it without running the smallest danger,
because there is everywhere from 10 to 12 fathoms of water."
The Frenchman, Gabriel Lafond de Lurcy, said of the port
and its surroundings: "This bay forms the finest and safest port
MEXICO AND PERU
373
along the entire Mexican coast. It is immense, and extends over
three leagues inland, with a width of about one league. The
anchorage is everywhere excellent, and a ship is everywhere
sheltered from all winds, for it is surrounded in all directions
by mountains, that close it almost hermetically, and even shut
out the view of the sea. The whole aspect is sombre and wild
and inspires a profound melancholy. The shore that rims the
bay offers the very image of chaos." Another French navigator
of the same period, Abel du Petit-Thouars, writes of the location
of Acapulco: "Some lofty mountains serve it as ramparts to west
and north. To the south it is protected from the sea by a wooded
peninsula of moderate height, which shelters the anchorage.
Towards the east the view extends over the harbor and the
peninsula which separates it from Puerto del Marques and the
open sea."
Acapulco itself was of no importance except as the terminal
of the Asiatic galleon line and of a southerly coastwise trade of
lesser consequence. "As for the city of Acapulco," says Gemelli
Careri, "I think it might more properly be call'd a poor Village
of Fishermen, than the chief Mart of the South Sea, and Port
for the Voyage to China; so mean and wretched are the Houses,
being made of nothing but Wood, Mud and Straw." By 1598
there were 250 houses of various kinds in the town, the majority
of which could scarcely have been more than huts or cabins.
Among the public or religious buildings were the Contaduria,
or headquarters of the treasury officials, a "cathedral," or parish
church, a Franciscan Convent, and the Hospital of San Juan de
Dios. However, none of these were imposing edifices, though
the religious establishments were bountifully supported by the
piety of those who had survived the galleon voyage or the in
clemencies and risks of the journey from Mexico. To the north
east of the town was situated the Castle of San Diego, which
protected the town and the anchorage ground of the galleons
from the incursions of foreigners. During most of its history
there were mounted on its bastions between forty and eighty
brass cannon of large bore. But whatever its actual strength,
it had almost as forbidding a reputation among the enemies of
Spain as did the more formidable works of Cartagena and of
San Juan de Ulua at Vera Cruz, and it at least fulfilled its func
tion more effectively than did either of those great fortresses.
374
THE MANILA GALLEON
The ordinary population of Acapulco consisted of Indians
and Orientals, and of mestizos and mulattoes of every possible
degree of mixture. This nondescript lot were generically classed
outside of Acapulco as "Chinese." Few Spaniards remained in
the town beyond the term of the galleon fair, at which time the
permanent population of the place was swelled by the influx of
thousands from Mexico, Peru and the Philippines. Humboldt
gives the stable population at the beginning of the nineteenth
century as about 4,000, which was increased to over 9,000 at the
time of the fair.
The natural environment of the place was not favorable to
the growth of a flourishing population of whites. Not only was
the country to the immediate rear of the town so sterile and
waterless that provisions had to be brought from a distance, but
the climate was forbidding to any but the mongrel inhabitants
who had become inured to its intemperate heat and immune to
its "Distempers." "The ill Temper of the Air," said Gemelli,
"and the Mountainous Soil, are the cause that Acapulco must be
supplied with Provisions from other Parts, and therefore it is
dear living there, besides a Man cannot eat well under a piece of
Eight a day; the place, besides being dear, is dirty, and incon
venient. For these reasons it is inhabited by none but Blacks
and Mulattoes." The extreme heat of the tierra caliente was little
mitigated by the circumstances which sometimes favorably modi
fied the weather in other places in the same climatic zone. In
stead it was aggravated by peculiar local conditions. Thus, the
rock walls behind the town not only reflected the heat into the
basin, until the air was stifling, but this very enclosure kept out
the sea-breezes and prevented the circulation of air within the
harbor. However, in the latter part of the eighteenth century
Josef Barrero, warden of the port, had a gap cut through the
hill which intervenes between the town and the sea in order to
admit the cooling breezes from off the ocean. Humboldt declares
that he experienced the salutary effects of this "bold undertak
ing." "Acapulco is one of the most unhealthy places of the New
Continent," he said. "The unfortunate inhabitants breathe a
burning air, full of insects, and vitiated by putrid emanations.
For a great part of the year they perceive the sun only through
a bed of vapours of an olive hue. . . . The heat must be still
more oppressive, the air more stagnant, and the existence of man
more painful at Acapulco than at Vera Cruz."
MEXICO AND PERU
375
Simon de Anda said that Vera Cruz, which was never famed
for salubrity, was a paradise in comparison with the "abbreviated
inferno" of Acapulco, with its "heat and its venemous serpents,
and the constant trembling of the earth." He calls it the
"sepulchre of Mexicans and Filipinos." "All the treasures of this
world," he declared, "could not compensate for the necessity of
living there or of traveling the road between Acapulco and
Mexico." Anda preferred Val de Banderas or Chacala to
Acapulco. Of the former region he said: "It is a country abound
ing in everything. It has good climate, good water, and plenty
of wood, while the road thence to Mexico for 150 leagues can
be traveled in a carriage, and through the thickest populated
and most flourishing part of New Spain." In 1598 the royal
treasury officials wrote to the moribund old king of the hard
ships of existence in a "hot and sickly land, where one lives with
great risk to his health," and eight years later Juan Rodriguez
de Salamanca petitioned to be "freed from the captivity" of serv
ing as royal factor in "this unwholesome port."
Lafond de Lurcy writes of Acapulco, "this city so famed in
the annals of commerce: It is quite probable that this place, when
it was the entrepot of the treasures of Mexico and of the Indies,
saw as much wealth pass through it as did Genoa or Venice.
However, not the least vestige of all this remains. Now one
sees only the most paltry village. ... In the time of its greatest
prosperity it counted 4,000 inhabitants, and this figure reached
12,000 at the season of the arrival of the galleons.
"The climate is frightful; a sky of bronze, a stifling heat,
and no motion of the air. There is nothing to compensate for
this desolate picture. The land, except for some trees about the
houses, is stricken with sterility. There are neither streams, nor
grass, nor flowers, nor shade, but everywhere extraordinary land
scapes, a surface that has been unheaved, and burned-up valleys
that betray an earth tormented by subterranean fires."
When Duflot de Mofras visited Acapulco in 1840 he said:
"The town of Acapulco is considerably fallen from her ancient
splendor." But Acapulco was never "splendid," even during
the heyday of her fairs. Her habitual squalidness was then only
the better set off by the contrast of the motley and picturesque
concourse that gathered to the feria and of the rich merchandise
then piled high in her warehouses. When all this heterogeneous
crowd went northward into the interior with its laden caravans
376
THE MANILA GALLEON
of mules, or westward by the galleon to the Philippines, Acapulco
relapsed into its wonted insignificance.
The head of the administrative machinery at the port of
Acapulco was the castellan, so called from the fact that his duties
included those of warden of the Castle, or Fort, of San Diego.
In later times he also acted as "Deputy Governor of the Coast
of the South Sea," and the Supplementary Regulations of 1769
designated him as gobernador or governor. Though his jurisdic
tion over local affairs was very wide, his principal functions con
sisted of the receipt and despatch of the galleon, and of the
conduct of the fair. In accordance with the official venality prev
alent at Acapulco he gained , annually from his various irregular
perquisites as high as 25,000 pesos, though his salary was but a
fraction of that sum.
On rare occasions a special commissioner, known as a
visitador, or visitor, was sent down to Acapulco by the viceroy.
This officer then held precedence over the ordinary body of port
officials for the duration of his commission. In 1704 Viceroy
Albuquerque appointed to this place Joseph de Veitia Linage,
author of the Norte de la Contratacidn, the classical work on the
trade between Spain and America, and an official of wide ex
perience in the commercial service of the government. The
viceroy characterized him as an official of "unusual honor, in
tegrity, and zeal," while the king declared himself and the vice
roy well satisfied with Veitia's work at Acapulco.
Sometimes Acapulco came within the scope of a more gen
eral investigation. As we have seen, in 1636 Pedro de Quiroga y
Moya threw the trade into confusion by his rigorous exercise of
this office, but the old easy-going regime at the port was in a
measure restored by his successor in the same office, Palafox y
Mendoza. Other examples of the visitors-general who held
charge at Acapulco were Pedro de Galvez, who followed shortly
after Palafox in 1650, the Marques de Rubi in 1764, and Jose de
Galvez in 1766.
The essentially fiscal side of the administration at Acapulco
was in the hands of the two treasury officials. In the beginning
of the Philippine trade there was no separate customs service at
Acapulco, but that port was under the immediate jurisdiction
of the treasury officials at the capital. However, with the grow
ing importance of that traffic a separate fiscal management was
MEXICO AND PERU
377
introduced, though it continued responsible to the superior finan
cial authority of the capital. In 1593 a factor was commissioned
by Viceroy Velasco with "jurisdiction over everything pertaining
to the royal treasury." The establishment of a special financial
arrangement for the port dated from 1597, when a royal order
created separate accounting and procurement offices. The heads
of these departments constituted the local bureau of accounts,
with charge of the double-locked chest, in which the moneys
and financial records of the port were kept. They were primarily
customs officers in the modern sense of the word, that is, they
collected the duties levied on the cargoes of the galleons. They
also had general supervision over all other transactions at the
port which might affect the financial interests of the crown.
They were required to remain at Acapulco until the middle of
April, and might then leave for Mexico only with the consent
of the viceroy. In order to prepare for the arrival of the next
galleon they must leave the capital for their post on the day fol
lowing the Feast of the Conception. In some of their functions
they were associated with the castellan, or warder of the port,
with whom, however, their relations were not always entirely
amicable.
In his individual capacity each of the treasury officials had
a separate set of duties. The proveedor or procurement officer
was the purchasing agent of the port. As such his most impor
tant task was to supply the galleon with arms, provisions, and
other ships' supplies for the return voyage. The contador or
accountant was directly responsible for the auditing or certifica
tion of the register and other papers pertaining to the cargo of
the galleon, whether that of the incoming nao or silver for the
return voyage.
Among other functionaries at the port were the guardamayor,
who acted as chief of the customs guards, the chief clerk of the
treasury board, and the commissioner of licenses, who issued the
permits for the transport of the silks and other goods to points
inland.
Ecclesiastical authority at Acapulco was wielded by a parish
priest, "The Curate," says Gemelli, "Tho' the King's allowance
to him be but 180 pieces of Eight, makes 14,000 a Year, exacting
a great rate for burying of strangers, not only those that die at
Acapulco, but at Sea aboard the Ships from China and Peru; as
378
THE MANILA GALLEON
for instance he will expect iooo pieces of Eight for a rich mer
chant."
The proceedings which attended the reception of the Manila
Galleon, the disposal of her cargo, and the preparations for her
return were regulated with the same minuteness of detail as
accompanied the operations at Manila. The early rules for gov
erning the transactions at Acapulco were contained in a body
of viceregal instructions and ordinances. These were supple
mented on the one hand by occasional royal decrees and on the
other by local orders issued by the port officials on their own
responsibility. It was not till the eighteenth century that any
effort was made to organize or codify this often conflicting mass
of regulations, whose very confusion fostered their frequent in
observance. The principal objects of these regulations were to
see that the volume of the trade was kept within the bounds pre
scribed by law and that the duties on the cargo were properly
collected and deposited in the viceregal treasury. Though an
elaborate system of precautions was built-up to this end, their
purpose was largely defeated by the temptations of the premium
placed on their violation.
On the first sight of the approaching nao by the lookout
stationed on the high Mira to the rear of the town a launch was
sent out to meet her and escort her into the harbor. This boat
was to see that no one approached the galleon before she was
moored and turned over to the custody of the port officials. In
case the galleon reached the vicinity of the entrance during the
night she had to lie to outside, until daylight and the veering
of the breeze to landward enabled her to work her way in
through the narrow channel of the Boca Chica. At such a time
contraband goods were often lowered over the sides into boats
under cover of darkness and carried to a place of concealment
on shore. Once inside the harbor and the formal salute ex
changed with the guns of the castle, an additional guard was
placed upon her, with orders to prevent any unauthorized com
munication between vessel and shore. Any craft which ap
proached without permission from the guardamayor or his su
periors was to be promptly turned away.
As soon as the galleon was moored at her place in front of
the town, the castellan and treasury officials went on board to
make their first visit of inspection. The latter received the ship's
MEXICO AND PERU
379
register and book of manifests from the hands of the purser or
accountant. The register was then sent off to the capital by
special courier and delivered over to the superior bureau of ac
counts, which assessed the duties for the cargo on the basis of
its contents and then returned it to the coast. The regulations
designed the first visit of inspection to be a zealous search for
contraband lading, but it usually amounted in reality to a very
perfunctory scrutiny of the hold. When the letter of the law
had been complied with in this fashion and healths drunk all
around, both parties proceeded to the real business of the oc
casion—the making of arrangements for the landing of the
illegal merchandise.
After these preliminary formalities were concluded the work
of disembarcation began. The passengers were first allowed to
leave the ship, and those who were in health walked in proces
sion to church, preceded by the image of the Virgin, while the
sick were taken to the hospital. The first goods carried ashore
were the personal baggage of the passengers, and the unloading
of the main body of the cargo did not begin until these effects
were on shore. In fact, the hatches over that part of the hold
remained sealed meantime. The laws required that, when once
commenced, the landing of the commercial cargo be carried out
as expeditiously as possible and that the proper official surveil
lance be exercised to see that nothing was sent off which was
not duly marked and registered. Each lighterful of bales or
chests must proceed as directly to the landingplace as the oars
men could row it, and on the way no speech must be held with
any suspicious looking craft that might be lurking in its path.
As each lot of goods was landed, the second royal official, or his
deputy, compared its distinguishing marks with the correspond
ing invoices in the book of manifests.
Throughout most of the history of the commerce the ship
per's own sworn statement—the factum jurada—was accepted
without question as a declaration of the contents of the respective
packages. The only alternative was, of course, the actual ex
amination of the bale or chest. However, the aversion to this
procedure was so great on the part of the Manila interest that
few officials were daring—or disinterested—enough to defy
opinion in both communities by resorting to such a measure,
logical and just as it was. The most hated name in the history
38o
THE MANILA GALLEON
of the commerce was that of Pedro de Quiroga, who opened
packages indiscriminately in 1636, thereby violating tradition and
the gentleman's understanding that were the guiding principles
of the commerce after the early traders had established the rule
of illegality. Quiroga's revolutionary activities were not allowed
to become a precedent for the future guidance of the port officials,
for not only did a decree of two years later prohibit the opening
of packages without first notifying the consignor, or his agent,
of such intention, but an order of 1640 to the visitor, Palafox,
forbade him to make "any innovations in the opening of
packages." During the few years when the decree of 1720 was
in operation the physical examination of goods was again insisted
upon. However, the Regulations of 1734 restored the old custom
to a status of legality and the Adiciones of 1769, while granting
the power to open packages which appeared particularly sus
picious, did not prescribe such procedure as the ordinary rule of
action, but only an expedient to be resorted to in unusual cases.
Finally, it must be remembered that, in view of the size of the
cargo and the methods of packing employed at Manila, the open
ing of all the bales and boxes was out of the question, on account
of the sheer physical labor that would have been involved, as
well as on account of the derangement of the goods which it
would have entailed.
After the registered cargo had been accounted for in ac
cordance with the certified invoices the goods found to be con
sistent with their bills of lading were removed to the warehouses,
where they were stored, in bond as it were, until the opening
of the fair. In case any lot of goods was confiscated such mer
chandise was deposited in the royal warehouse until it could be
sold on the king's account. Meanwhile, on the return of the
courier from Mexico with the statement of the duties which the
central bureau of accounts had levied on the cargo, the agents
of the Manila shippers arranged with the treasury officials for
the lump payment of the tax, which was assessed pro rata on the
consignment of each merchant. When all the goods entered on
the register and presumably comprehended within the limits of
the permiso had been landed, the second inspection was made
for the purpose of discovering if anything remained concealed
on board. This ceremony completed, the galleon was turned
over to the officers of the local shipyard, for the careening
MEXICO AND PERU
38i
and repairs which were necessary to fit her for her return
voyage.
The Acapulco feria, which was opened after the termination
of these preliminary proceedings, Humboldt called "the most
renowned fair of the world." Its general characteristics were
similar to those of the fairs long held at Jalapa on the other side
of Mexico and at Porto Bello on the isthmus. There were the
same regulated transactions between two groups of merchants—
three in the case of Acapulco—proceeding from widely separated
regions of the same empire, and the same ephemeral transforma
tion of an otherwise unimportant place into a city of feverish
and picturesque activity.
Although the approach of the galleon was known as soon
as a courier reached the capital from some point on the north
west coast with news of its having been sighted or with its first
papers, the official proclamation for the opening of the fair was
not issued in Mexico and the other cities of the viceroyalty until
the nao had reached her destination and the duplicate papers had
arrived from Acapulco. However, before the day set by the
viceroy thousands were pouring southward over the "China
Road" to the coast of the Pacific. There were traders of every
category—from Indian hawkers and hucksters to great merchants
of Mexico; soldiers and king's officials; begging friars and curs
ing muleteers and porters; and the fringe of followers who went
to minister to the pleasures of the rest. In Acapulco they mingled
with those who had come from Peru and with those whom the
galleon had brought from the Orient. For the greater picturesqueness of the throng the latter added the Filipino and
Lascar seamen, often some Chinese, and perhaps a few Kaffirs
that had been carried to Manila from the Mozambique country
by way of Goa. Gemelli Careri thus describes the metamorphosis
which he saw come over the town in two days of January 1697:
"Most of the Officers and Merchants that came aboard the Peru
Ships, went to lie ashore, bringing with them two Millions of
pieces of Eight to lay out in Commodities of China; so that
Friday 25 Acapulco was converted from a rustick Village into
a populous City; and the Huts before inhabitated by dark
Mulattos were all fill'd with gay Spaniards; to which was added
on Saturday 26th a great concourse of Merchants from Mexico,
with abundance of pieces of Eight and Commodities of the Coun
382
THE MANILA GALLEON
try and of Europe. Sunday 27th there continu'd to come in
abundance of Commodities and Provisions to serve so great a
multitude of Strangers."
For the direction of the actual commercial transactions at
the fair, as distinguished from the supervisory authority of the
regular port officials, the viceroy named two representatives of
the trading interests of the capital. These men, with an agent
from Puebla, were to treat with the deputies of Manila for the
terms of exchange, such as the price at which each class of goods
was to be sold. The settlement of the sale value of the cargo in
this fashion and the rigid observance of the limitation of the
permiso would have precluded the possibility of any subsequent
bargaining between the merchants of the two parties. However,
as between the official theory and the actual practice of the traders
there was the usual inconsistence. There was always much
haggling and sharp dealing. Though a conspiracy by either side
to force a scale of prices on the other was not permitted by the
law, the trading agents and supercargoes from Manila often
found themselves the victims of an agreement among the united
Mexican interests. Sometimes a combination of the richer trad
ing houses of the capital attempted to dictate prices to the
Manilenos, or they might delay making their purchases as long
as possible, in order to force the latter to sell at low figures for
the sake of returning to Manila with the proceeds by the galleon
of the year.
The islanders' chance for a favorable market depended
largely at such times on the strength of the competition of the
Peruvians. As the latter were usually better supplied with silver,
they did all possible to bargain independently with them. Gemelli
thus describes his experience with a Peruvian: "Tuesday 5th, I
was much annoy'd with the Heat and Gnats; but much more on
Wednesday 6th, by the babling of a Merchant of Peru, for he
according to the Custom of that Nation, endeavouring to talk
me into a Bargain, gave me a violent Headache, and yet we con
cluded upon nothing. The Spaniards of New Spain are of an
other Temper, for they deal Generously and Gentilely as becomes
them." In case the Lima ship failed to come, or in the rather
unusual eventuality of a union of the Mexican and Peruvian
buyers, the Manilenos were liable to be driven to hard straits
to dispose of their cargo at any advantage. Their position was
MEXICO AND PERU
383
often made more difficult by the interested collusion of the port
officials with their rivals, as well as by the vexations and extor
tions to which those officials subjected them. Thus, the officials
sometimes delayed the publication of the viceroy's proclamation
for the opening of the fair until a few days before the date set
for the clearing of the galleon for Manila, a manoeuvre which
had the same effect as the decision of the Mexican buyers to
withhold their purchases until the last moment. But neither
were the Manilenos without guilt. The trampas de la China,
or "Chinese frauds," by which they strove to defeat the purpose
of the permiso restriction, and to introduce their excess lading
into New Spain without paying either duty to the crown or com
position money to the crown's officials, certainly gave them little
ground for complaining of the tricks and devices of their rivals,
and in fact emulated them by their own conduct. Or again, it
might be the small Mexican buyers who suffered, when the more
powerful merchants arranged with the Philippine committee to
take over the larger part, or all, of the cargo. Sometimes the
latter bought the mass of the cargo before the galleon had reached
Acapulco, by sending an agent to the ship as she proceeded down
the northwest coast. Finally, these Mexican and Peruvian traders
merely claimed consignments made to them by their agent in
the islands under a fictitious entry in the galleon's register. Thus,
the fair, which was designed to proceed with "all formality and
quietude," was only too often a hurly-burly of questionable deal
ings and violent contentions, mitigated only by the restraint of
Spanish hidalguia and the occasional vigilance of loyal officials.
All sales made in the ordinary course of the fair had to be
registered in detail at the local bureau of accounts. These cer
tificates of sale not only served as basis for the issuing of the
licenses which had to accompany every consignment destined for
the interior, but such records were essential in computing the
aggregate returns of silver to Manila. All the silver which en
tered Acapulco was, moreover, required to be accompanied by
a license issued at the place from which it had come. In fact,
so great was the anxiety of the official regulations to keep the
trade within bounds that scarcely a peso was permitted to cir
culate about Acapulco without being registered somewhere. No
buyer was allowed to remove his purchases from Acapulco until
the fair was officially proclaimed to be closed, nor could one of
384
THE MANILA GALLEON
the Manilenos anticipate the arrival at Mexico of the authorized
mule-trains by forwarding goods ahead to be sold before that
date.
When that time came the long caravans of mules laden with
merchandise trailed out of Acapulco and up the mountain road
into the interior. The more affluent merchants and passengers
off the galleon went north in festive cavalcades, though some,
like Gemelli, preferred the hardier and more sure-footed mules
for their journey. With them went all those who, in one way
or another, had shared in the harvest that attended the feria.
The Peruvians, who may have carried on their operations quite
openly at Acapulco, or more clandestinely at the nearby haven
of Puerto del Marques, boarded their ship and cleared her for
the south. "Thursday, 7th," reads an entry in Gemelli's journal,
"the Porters of Acapulco made a sort of Funeral, carrying one
of their number on a Beer, and bewailing him as if he were dead,
because their harvest was at an end; for some of them had got
three pieces of Eight a day, and the worst of them one." There
only remained the permanent inhabitants of the place, and those
who were engaged in the preparation of the galleon for her
return voyage.
In New Spain the "China Road" ranked in importance with
the eastward camino by Puebla and Orizaba to Vera Cruz. About
no leagues, by the computation of the muleteers, it stretched
north from Acapulco to Mexico through the modern states of
Guerrero and Morelos. Its course followed approximately the
route of the 282 mile automobile highway opened a few years
ago between the two places. As the road led out of Acapulco
it entered the rugged defiles of the Sierra Madre del Sur; "vast
high Mountains," Gemelli called them. Through this wild
region the only signs of habitation were the inns located every
three or four leagues and an occasional Indian village. The
road led through dense forests over steep mountains, like that
of the Papagayo, and across the river of the same name, and
thence by the pleasant town of Chilpancingo, lying among corn
fields. This was the most considerable place between Cuernavaca
and Acapulco, and had several Spanish inhabitants. Above
Zumpango there followed nine leagues of travel through a barren
plain, which Gemelli likened to "that of Tirol." This brought
the road to the Rio Mexicala, or Rio de las Balsas, as it was called
AO/.
Road from Acapulco to Mexico City. From copy of an Eighteenth
Century map in the Library of Congress.
385
3«6
THE MANILA GALLEON
from the rafts on which travelers crossed, propelled by swim
ming Indians. The next stop was at Tuspa, or Pueblo Nuevo,
as Gemelli knew it in 1698, a village situated by a small lake.
Thence the way led through a mountainous country for some
twelve leagues to another river at Puente de Ixtla, and beyond
through a district of wooded hills and Indian villages to the rich
valley of Cuernavaca. This favored region contained a large
number of Spanish inhabitants and in it were situated the wide
domains of the Marques del Valle, head of the Cortes family.
After the capital, this was one of the best markets in all the
viceroyalty for the goods which the mule caravans brought that
way from Acapulco. From the brim of the ardent tierra caliente
the road climbed onto the great central plateau, over the encir
cling fringe of mountains and through a large pine forest, from
which it descended by the Subida del Arencd into the Valley of
Mexico. Thence it was a frequented route across a cultivated
plain by the village of San Agustin de las Cuevas and the customs
stations to the causeway that led over the lake to the gates of
the capital.
Travel over the "China Road" was mostly by mule-back,
and little was done to make it usable for wheeled traffic until the
last years of the galleon trade. After the discontinuance of the
latter great blocks of stone lay alongside the highway that was
to have been. Conditions of travel were always very primitive.
Accommodations were few and discomforts were manifold.
The arrieros, who conducted the long trains of mules, camped in
the fields or woods with their charges. The ordinary traveler
also spent the nights on the way lying "under the Canopy of
Heaven," unless he were able to make the widely scattered inns
at nightfall. These inns were very rude hostelries, except at
Chilpancingo and Cuernavaca, and were usually conducted by
Indian mesoneros, who though obliging, like the one Gemelli
encountered at Amacusac, knew little of the fine art of tavernkeeping. The Italian globe-trotter passed the night in a posada
at Atlaxo, which consisted of five cabins "Thatch'd and Palisado'd about." "Here a legion of Gnats sucked my Blood all
Night," he complains, while the Tarascan inn-keeper forced him
to pay a "Piece-of-Eight for a Pullet, and about a Penny a piece
for Eggs." On the edibility of tortillas Gemelli remarked: "Hot
they are tolerable; but when cold I could scarce get them down."
MEXICO AND PERU
387
However, he was compensated for the fare at the inns by the
game which he was able to kill along the way. The Jesuit, Pere
Taillandier, who went down from Mexico to Acapulco in 171 1,
says of the facilities for travelers : "The poor hostelries of Mexico
had accustomed us to do without a bed and all the other douceurs
which the traveller enjoys in France." When Teodoro de Croix
journeyed over the road in 1767 to take up his duties as castellan
at Acapulco he described the roads as "impracticable," and had
to carry all his provisions from Mexico and sleep beneath the
stars.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>®<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
CHAPTER 12
FLEETS AND GALLEONS
IT was a proverbially unmercantile people who for two and a
half centuries carried on the trade between the Philippines
and Mexico. Foreign observers have been disposed to accuse
the Spaniards of a lack of economic sense and application, while
many national writers have frankly admitted and lamented their
countrymen's lack of interest and understanding and initiative
in commercial enterprise. Lafuente, the historian, explains the
shortcomings of his people in this respect in these words: "Agri
culture, industry and the arts could not prosper or flourish in a
people who had lived fighting for eight centuries. Their hands
had always been busy wielding a lance instead of a plow, a
sword instead of a brush, and an arquebus instead of an ox-goad.
Spaniards had spent their lives building and tearing down cas
tles and fortifications in the mountains and on the hilltops in
stead of toiling in the factories and workshops of the towns and
cities." In 1619 Sancho de Moncada had said: "Since the for
eigners are more diligent than the Spaniards, they fill almost all
the trades in Spain. Thus, they perform what little work has
remained to be done, and with their natural quickness they have
excluded the Spaniards from everything, until they occupy all
the gainful occupations that were once monopolized by the
Moriscoes. Meanwhile the Spaniards go idle and poor." Fran
cisco Leandro de Viana condemned his people's "pernicious
vanity, inaction and sloth." In 1814 the Duque de Montemar
wrote to Ferdinand II: "We must acknowledge in good faith
that the foreigners excel us in activity and industry, although we
are superior to them in other respects."
Spanish society was long dominated by an aristocratic senti
ment which discriminated against those who trafficked, and in a
people so sensitive to personal dignity this prejudice barred a
mercantile career to the ambitious or the socially aspiring. The
388
FLEETS AND GALLEONS
389
caste of grandees, with their vast landed territories, were pre
vented by the traditions of their order from commercial activity,
while their very riches placed them beyond the need for such
enterprises. Below these, however, there was a very plague of
nobility of lower category, but with all the pride of the Velascos
or Guzmans, and with an equal disdain of profitable labor. The
populations of entire towns or provinces were sometimes granted
blanket patents of nobility, that were little more than general
privileges of exalted idleness. An example is the town of Simancas, in whose medieval castle are kept the historical archives of
the monarchy. For trade and hidalguia, in its literal sense as the
status of an hidalgo, were incompatible. Nobility itself assumed
the proportions of a profession, like arms and the service of
the Church, both of which also enjoyed an exaggerated prestige
and an exemption from profitable labor.1 The Spaniard had
also long associated trade and other gainful pursuits with the Jew
and the Morisco, who were racially and religiously antipathetic
to him, so that his penchant for material disinterestedness be
came, like the purity of his blood, a badge of national superiority.
Thus, slothfulness gained a dignified standing that was irrecon
cilable with the economic progress of the nation. Otium cum
dignitate was in a real sense a national creed. The natural
frugality of a people unused for centuries to luxury removed
much of the spur for continuous effort that a business career
would have enforced on them. Prejudices of caste and race, the
ingrained habits of centuries, the lack of internal order, that
increased the normal risks of trade—these were serious obstacles
to Spain in the development of a healthy national and imperial
economy. Finally, the intense individualism of the race, which
made cooperative action so difficult and which caused the san
guinary civil wars in Central America and Peru during the
conquista, militated against the conduct of large business
undertakings, at which the English and the Dutch were
so apt.
The judgment of commercial disinclination or ineptitude
cannot be applied unqualifiedly to the entire Spanish nation.
Among the different peoples of the Spains the Castilians, a
1 W. Somerset Maugham says of the Spain of the sixteenth century: "The times
were insecure and means of livelihood hard to come by. The cloister promised safety
and at least bed and board. Trade was disastrous and those engaged in it were
despised." Don Fernando, p. 269.
39«
THE MANILA GALLEON
plateau race, without the instinct of coast folk for trade, were
peculiarly unsuited for the conduct of business on a large scale.
And the favored position of Castile in the imperial scheme
scarcely tended to promote the economic welfare of the empire.
On the other hand, the Basques, the Valencians, the inhabitants
of the Andalusian port cities, and the Catalans must be excepted
in varying degrees from this general estimate. The latter had long
carried on a very considerable commerce the length of the Medi
terranean, while Barcelona had been the peer of the maritime
republics of Italy. Yet inhabitants of Catalonia were not con
ceded the right to trade in the Antilles until 1765, in South
America until 1775, and Mexico was not opened to them until
1789. In spite of this prohibition, it was a Catalan, Serra, who
established the purely Spanish trade between the Philippines and
India, and it was another, Grau y Monfalcon, one-time syndic
of Barcelona, whose wide acquaintance with affairs of commerce
so effectively served the interests of Manila as procurador-general
of the colony.
The conditions which operated against a healthy economic
life in the peninsula were considerably modified in the overseas
dominions of Spain, particularly in Peru and the Philippines.
In a new environment, far from the prejudices and conventions
of the homeland and with opportunities for enrichment all about,
Spaniards might turn to a career of systematic money-making
with unexpected initiative and energy. Juan and Ulloa, the royal
inspectors, who visited South America from 1735 to 1746, said of
the Peruvians: "Commerce is so far from being considered as a
disgrace at Lima, that the greatest fortunes have been raised by
it; those on the contrary, being rather despised, who not being
blessed with a sufficient estate, through indolence, neglect to have
recourse to it for improving their fortunes. This custom, or
resource, which was established there without any determinate
end, being introduced by a vain desire of the first Spaniards to
acquire wealth, is now the real support of that splendour in
which those families live; and whatever repugnance these mili
tary gentlemen might originally have to commerce, it was imme
diately removed by a royal proclamation, by which it was de
clared that commerce in the Indies should not exclude from no
bility or the military orders; a very wise measure, and of which
Spain would be still more sensible, were it extended to all its
FLEETS AND GALLEONS
39i
dependencies." 2 They pointed out that, in contrast to the Quito
country to the north, gain was "the universal passion" in Lima,
"interest here preponderating against any other consideration."
During the reign of the Catholic Kings there began within
Spain a growth that would appear to belie the national reputation
of commercial ineptitude. At that time several circumstances
combined to give a vigorous impulse to the industries of the
newly-united kingdom, especially to textile and metal manufac
tures and to internal and foreign trade. The nation had not
adopted the attitude of fierce intransigence toward foreigners
which came with the full menace of Protestant heresy and with
the bitter national antagonisms that grew up in the first half
of the sixteenth century. However, the seeds of that time
were already planted in the ambitious European policy of
Ferdinand.
Especially during the international regime of Charles V did
foreigners take a prominent part in the economic life of Spain.
Italians, Flemings and Germans were active in Spanish industry,
banking, and trade, while flourishing relations with the Dutch
and Genoese contributed to the new movement. To that extent
it was an exotic development, fostered by impulses that were
strange to the country.
However, the Spanish mind was more alert than ever before,
while the Inquisition had not yet discouraged secular thought.
There was also a surplus of energy in the people and widespread
confidence in the future. The rulers wisely encouraged the new
growth, while they gave the first rational government Spain had
known since the caliphs. After the feudal anarchy of the Trastamara period, royal tribunals of justice, inexorable corregidors,
and the trained forces of the hermandades of the cities insured
a measure of the order that was necessary to the prosecution of
trade. Under such auspices Spain bid fair to have a real bour
geoisie, rich and influential, and a population of skilled and in
dustrious artisans. Added to these circumstances, the discovery
and opening-up—the mise en vcdeur—of the New World gave to
Spanish industry wide outlets that no other nation, save the
Portuguese in India, were in a position to enjoy. Finally, the
* A royal decree of 1621 directed the viceroys and audiencias in the Indies tcf
urge all idle Spaniards to work. However, the king recommended that it be done
"with great adroitness and good humour."
392
THE MANILA GALLEON
possession of the gold and silver production of the American
mines offered a valuable national asset—if put into its proper
place in the economy of the country.
Yet, it was a serious question whether Spain would be equal
to the opportunities and responsibilities of her new situation.
Her physical resources at home were none too great and her
population was small, and further decimated by emigration to
the colonies. Large-scale manufacturing and world commerce
were strange adventures to the Castilians, unused to the sus
tained effort required by such enterprises and somewhat doubtful
of their propriety.
Before the end of the sixteenth century this flourishing pros
pect was cut off by a concurrence of disastrous influences which
left Spain economically and politically decadent. Altamira, the
Spanish historian, gives as the causes ,of the decline: "the igno
rance of the great mass of the population; the economic inequal
ity, which resulted from the concentration of property in entailed
estates and in mortmain; the lack of communications; the burden
of taxes; the disorder in the administration of the country; the
frequent wars; and the persistence in a considerable part of the
people of the repugnance for manual labor, and the survival of
the old ideas on charity and mendicancy."
Altamira writes with the perspective of centuries behind him,
but contemporary Spaniards understood only imperfectly the
national economy and the forces that determined its direction.
An example of the current confusion is seen in Sancho de Moncada, whose Restauracidn politica de Espana was an effort to
analyze the ills of the age. Along with many shrewd observa
tions and bold suggestions, he proposes such odd remedies for
the fallen state of the nation as the expulsion of the gypsies.
Much of the decline he ascribed to the startling depopulation
of the country. "We see Spain poor," he observed, "because she
lacks inhabitants." The people gave themselves up to bad living
and indulgence, he complained, frequenting "the places of vices,
such as gaming houses, the comedy theatres, the taverns, and the
places of vanity, like the tailors' shops." "Many are dying of
hunger," he continues, "and the birth-rate has fallen greatly
owing to the decline in the numbers of marriages by half."
Moncada also condemned the number of ecclesiastics, for, "with
the multitude of them, great relaxation of morals and evil ex
FLEETS AND GALLEONS
393
ample have been introduced." The colonies he held of doubt
ful value. "The poverty of Spain," he said, "has resulted from
the discovery of the Western Indies." Finally, he ascribes the
downfall of national industry to the entrance of foreigners and
their wares into the commerce of the Spains. "The radical
remedy for Spain," he concludes, "lies in prohibiting the entrance
of manufactured goods from abroad."
The change was at work before the abdication of the worldweary emperor in 1555, as Spain began to draw within herself
and frown upon the foreigner, on whose importations she became
more and more dependent in her own increasing industrial ster
ility. Under the rule of Philip II and of his Hapsburg successors,
the people went back to the old national habits, and the lately
aroused commercial energies subsided before the military and
missionary instincts of the old Castilian. Initiative was either
buried in the pious inertia of convents, or the superior idleness
of the impecunious caballero and the professional mendicant or
it found a place in the program of royal or ecclesiastical ambition,
—in the tercios or in the service of the Holy Office. However,
when Rocroi followed on Breda and Nordlingen even the repu
tation of the great infantry was gone. Fernandez Duro, the his
torian of the Spanish navy, thus pictures the decay of the nation:
"Her military reputation, her ascendency on the seas, her famed
political policies, and the riches that seemed inexhaustible, had
long since disappeared. There were left, for the remembrance
of so much greatness, an undisciplined army, a navy of rotting
ships, an incapable government, and an empty treasury." Yet,
to the mass of Castilians, Spain was still "the terror of the na
tions," and to them "the glory of the monarchy seemed almost
eternal."
The spirit of the cities, the one progressive element in the
country, had been broken by the royal army at Villalar. The
crown, absolute and unintelligent, remained ignorant or con
temptuous of the economic needs of the nation. "Spain is on
the verge of destruction," a commission, appointed to set aright
the ruined state, warned the king in 1618. The looms stopped
and the fields were deserted, but the Escorial had been built and
the marriage ceremonies at the Bidasoa in 1660 were of sur
passing magnificence. No line of modern kings has so ill served
a state as the Hapsburgs served Spain. Neither did the three
394
THE MANILA GALLEON
Philips nor Charles II, nor their favorites, the Lermas and
Olivares, pursue more than a fitful policy toward the national
resources. "The Castillian lawmakers," has written Lafuente,
"were ignorant of the laws of commerce, as they were ignorant
of the principles of a sound economic administration, and had
the most erroneous ideas on the public wealth."
The only approach to a guiding principle was a negative
one—the exclusion of foreigners from the trade of the empire.
The prohibitions against aliens fill thirty-seven laws in the Laws
of the Indies, one of which, issued from the Escorial by Philip III
in 1614, decrees the penalty of death and confiscation of all his
property against any Spaniard who should trade with the for
eigner. Spain's very expansion from a provincial state into a
world empire entailed upon her complications with aspiring
peoples who were more liberal and energetic and resourceful, if
not more brave and devoted. Their hostility on the sea and their
competition in the peninsular and colonial markets hastened the
decline inaugurated by internal causes. Spanish industry was
inadequately prepared to meet the great influx of foreign goods
which undersold the native product. In the face of the decreas
ing national capacity for production, and in spite of spasmodic
protective legislation, Spaniards were driven more and more to
dependence on the foreigners who were drawn to Spain by the
presence of American gold and silver. "Our navy declined,"
wrote Viana, "our great manufactures in Seville, Segovia and
other places retrograded, and our commerce deteriorated with
the continental wars, and as we did not repair this damage, we
were at the same time promoting the commerce of other nations.
They have made themselves rich through our negligence and
inactivity—selling to us all the more commodities the more we
abandoned manufactures, and with their gains increasing their
shipping the more that we gave up shipbuilding—until in these
latest reigns our shipping and commerce have been re-estab
lished."
The foreigners broke into the American trade as well.
There were two doors to this field,—the indirect gate through
Cadiz, and direct smuggling into the colonies. By the former the
foreign goods were brought to the Bay of Cadiz, and there loaded
onto the ships of the fleets bound for the Spanish Americas. If
the transfer at this point were too dangerous in view of the hos
FLEETS AND GALLEONS
395
tility of the port officials, it was carried on through the interme
diation of a Spanish agent, who lent his name to the transaction
for a liberal commission. There were large colonies of foreign
merchants in Seville and Cadiz from the sixteenth century. In
1712 there were over 5,000 Genoese in Cadiz, while at least
twenty English trading houses were established there. "In
Cadiz," wrote Viana, "the commerce of the foreigners is greater
than that of the Spaniards, the latter (with the exception of some
strong business houses, which have been built up in this century)
support themselves by being figureheads for the former."
The alternative was direct contraband operations to the
coasts of Spanish America. When Spanish sea-power had lost
its control over the trade routes, this illegitimate traffic reached
large proportions. Here was a rich field defended by august
threats and venal officials. In fact, the introductions of smug
gled goods and the importations of foreign-made merchandise by
the fleets came to exceed the sales of national commodities in the
colonies. Sancho de Moncada declared in 1619 that nine-tenths
of the trade with the Spanish Indies belonged to foreigners.
"Thus the Indies belong to them," he said, "and only the title to
them belongs to your Majesty." It was this trade for which
England fought the War of the Spanish Succession. For an ef
fective French monopoly then threatened to supersede a vulner
able Spanish policy of exclusiveness ; but whereas France under
Louis XIV enjoyed a specially favored status in Spanish com
merce, England won by the Peace of Utrecht the famous asiento
privilege. The concession of the Porto Bello ship, which was a
feature of this treaty and which was so grossly abused by the Eng
lish, only amounted to a legalization of long-standing contra
band practices. These she continued in other parts of the
Spanish Indies in spite of improved , measures of defense against
interlopers, and after Spain in 1750 had obtained the revocation
of the obnoxious asiento.
It 1 was not only the competition with her own industries to
which Spain objected, but the resultant loss of the precious
metals that went to pay for foreign merchandise. As owner of
the world's richest sources of gold and, silver, Spaniards had an
extreme and unsound faith in their value as the ultimate com
ponent of national riches, rather than as instruments for the fur
ther increase of productive wealth. Too many Spaniards believed
396
THE MANILA GALLEON
that the mere transfer of the silver of PorosLand Zacatecas to the
national hoard of Spain would enrich th~ country beyond those
prosaic peoples who toiled at looms and forges and pushed out
into strange seas for new markets. The very influx of so much
treasure into Spain led the Spaniards to | hold a false idea of the
national wealth and lulled them into a mistaken sense of eco
nomic security.
Yet, in spite of elaborate precautions against this diversion, a
large part of the gold and silver received from the Indies inevit
ably found its way to other nations. "The Spanish Treasure
cannot be kept from other kingdoms by any prohibition made in
Spain," wrote the Englishman, Mun, in 1664; and over a cen
tury later Adam Smith said: "All the sanguinary laws of Spain
and Portugal are not able to keep their gold and silver at home."
"All the silver that is coined in the 1 dominions of Spain," wrote
Viana, "comes to a halt in foreign kingdoms, among our greatest
enemies. The treasures of the Indies pass through the aqueduct
of Cadiz without leaving even a trace in the conduits of the
Spanish merchants, as can be demonstrated by comparing the
riches that the Indies have produced and the poverty of the
Spaniards." "It is well known," said the Marquis de Villars, who
represented Louis XIV at the court of Philip V, "that of these
great treasures of the Indies more than two-thirds go directly to
foreign countries, without ever entering Spain, either as the pro
ceeds of sales made in the Indies on their own account by dif
ferent companies and private individuals, or through the use of
Spanish agents." Colbert, Louis XIV's famous minister, re
marked: "The more trade a state has with the Spaniards, the
more money it has."
If the moribund Spain of Charles II saw the almost total
collapse of her economic order, the Bourbons who followed him
on the throne eventually brought in a more intelligent direction
of affairs and an economic policy that was more definite and
thoroughgoing, though still nationalistic. The new regime
reached its climax in the enlightened reign of Charles III (175988), though much of what was then gained was lost under his
reactionary successors. His government encouraged the revival
of manufacturing industry, introduced foreign workers to teach
the Spaniards the industrial processes of the day, and recon
structed the national marine. This was also the period of the
FLEETS AND GALLEONS
397
Sociedad Econdmica, with its movement for economic enlight
enment, of the Bank of San Carlos, the Royal Philippine Com
pany, and the edict of Libre comercio, with its radical loosening
of the old restrictions on colonial trade. "Only a free and pro
tected commerce between Spaniards in Europe and in the Amer
icas can reestablish agriculture, industry, and the people to their
ancient vigor in my dominions,"—with these words began this
famous law of 1778.
The illiberality of the traditional restrictions on trade within
the Spanish Empire is famed. Thomas Carlyle said of the com
merce of Spanish America after the Wars of Independence:
"Trade everywhere, in spite of multiplex confusions, has in
creased, is increasing; the days of somnolent monopoly and the
old Acapulco Ship are gone, quite over the horizon." Yet, it
must be admitted in extenuation of their irrational character
that other nations had not advanced far, if at all, beyond the
Spanish concept of the relation of dependencies to the mothercountry. The England of George III was as jealous of the pros
perity of its colonies as was the Spain of Charles III. "Other
countries of Europe," has said a German historian, "built up
their power via the same religious, political, and economic prin
ciples, and came to no special harm through them. . . . All
states were striving for nationalization of their economic life
and freedom from foreign economic dominion. . . . Spain failed
largely because of the lack of a cohesive government, able to hold
the empire together, and because of the financial burdens of her
international policy." Crawford, the Scotch historian of the
East Indies, said in 1820: "The Spanish government has never,
in the case of its Indian dominions, pursued, like other nations,
the visionary and pernicious principle of drawing a direct profit
from the commercial industry of the colonies, by appearing in
the character of the sole or chief merchant. On the contrary,
private industry, though injudiciously shackled, has been per
mitted some scope and the wholesome principles of competition
have had some operation." Over a century before it had been
affirmed by the Treaty of Utrecht, as the "fundamental law" of
colonial commerce, that no people might trade with the colonies
of another. However, said the Duque de Montemar in 1817:
"Even fundamental laws yield to the imperious law of necessity.
Fundamental laws cease to be such the moment they serve rather
398
THE MANILA GALLEON
for the destruction than for the conservation of a state, and the
old mercantile system of the Americas is in this situation."
For Spain the problem was the familiar one of colonizing
powers of the mercantilist era. She would prevent a lusty com
mercial growth in the colonies from competing with home in
dustry; hence her concern over the effects of the Manila Galleon
trade in Chinese silks on the colonial market for peninsula cloth.
The colonies should contribute a steady supply of bullion to her
store of the precious metals; hence her anxiety over the drain of
Mexican silver to China. She would keep the colonies economi
cally—and so, politically—dependent on herself; hence her dis
trust of the silk industry in Mexico. For Spanish statesmen real
ized that the consciousness of economic self-sufficiency might well
be the prelude to aspirations for independence. Revillagigedo, one
of the ablest of the later viceroys, said : "It should not be lost sight
of that New Spain is a colony which ought to be dependent on
the mother-country. For the benefits which it receives in the
way of protection it should reciprocate with certain contribu
tions. It requires great prudence to regulate this dependence and
to see that the interest in its maintenance is mutual and recipro
cal, for it would cease the moment that the necessity was no
longer felt here for European [i.e., Spanish] manufactures and
other products." Adam Smith, a contemporary of the viceroy,
said: "To prohibit a great people from making all that they can
of every part of their own produce, or from employing their stock
and industry in the way that they judge most advantageous to
themselves, is a manifest violation of the most sacred rights of
mankind." Yet, the views of the author of The Wealth of Na
tions had the support of only a small minority of British opinion.
They certainly did not represent the policy of the government
that lost the American colonies in his own time.
In spite of the basic theory of her colonial rule and of the
mass of restrictive laws that were designed for its application,
Spain often compromised in practice with her ruling principles,
in order to bring about a proper balance within the empire and,
in fact, to hold it together at all. Even if grudgingly, she made
many concessions from a policy that seemed inexorable, in order
to preserve "the proper co-ordination of the members of the
mystical body of the monarchy."
Spain employed various devices for holding her colonies in
FLEETS AND GALLEONS
399
economic dependence. She limited inter-colonial trade and
communication, as between Peru and New Spain. It was in
tended that migration from one part of the Indies to another
should be made as difficult as possible. Thus, she preferred to
colonize the Philippines with peninsular Spaniards rather than
with the creoles from Mexico, whose dual loyalty was feared.
Access to the colonies was limited to certain stipulated ports of
entry. Vera Cruz, Cartagena, and Porto Bello were long almost
the sole lawful gateways into Spanish America. The only per
mitted avenue to Buenos Aires and the River Plate country was
roundabout by way of the Isthmus of Panama and Peru. The
fleet system of trade facilitated the enforcement of these restric
tions, which also simplified the administration of colonial trade
by restricting the points of entry. The arrangement was finally
abolished in 1778, when the decree of Libre comercio opened
twenty ports in the Americas to direct trade with Spain. The
necessary complement of these restrictions was the monopoly
of the American trade by Seville or Cadiz, whereby the colonies
would only receive European goods through one of these ports.
For the colonists violation or evasion was the only escape
from the full effects of the restrictive system, unless tedious pe
titioning could, after long efforts, gain extension of privilege.
Consequently, official laxity and corruption prevailed everywhere.
"Neither honor, conscience, fear nor recognition of the fact that
they are paid high salaries by the king can keep the officials
faithful to their charge," wrote Juan and Ulloa, the royal investi
gators sent to Peru in the eighteenth century. "Charles V was
right," said the Marques de Croix, viceroy of New Spain, in 1767,
"when he said that it was less trouble to keep his Flemings from
drinking than his Spaniards from stealing." The royal agents
identified themselves with the creoles and aided in defeating the
purpose of regulations they were sworn to execute. At least a
passive resistance was offered to unwelcome decrees from Spain,
and laws were often indefinitely suspended or altered in their
interpretation from their expressed purpose. Such indirect diso
bedience to royal orders was considered a venal offense in the
official circles of the Indies. This prevailing attitude is well
shown by the casuistical phrase current in the colonies: se guarda
la orden, pero no se cumple. That is to say, royal orders were
scrupulously respected, but not complied with.
400
THE MANILA GALLEON
Except for the rather nominal legislative supremacy of the
king—the lofty fiction of the "yo el rey"—the superior authorityover the commerce, as well as over other matters of the empire,
was the Council of the Indies. "The Council shall have supreme
jurisdiction over the Indies, and make laws, and examine statutes,
and be obeyed in these and those kingdoms,"—so runs the old
law. As in reality the final authority over the colonies, it decided
the economic policies that were to govern the industry and trade
of the overseas empire, and drew up the ordinances for their
administration.
The usual process of legislation was as follows: the first im
pulse of a law generally originated in a memorial or petition
addressed to the crown—in the later eighteenth century to the
ministro-general, or "general minister." This request for legisla
tive action was referred from the royal despacho or secretaria to
the Council of the Indies. Here it was discussed, and the virtual
form of the legislation to be issued was decided upon in consul
tation with that most important official, the fiscal. The acuerdo,
or decision of the Council, was then referred to the "King,"
whence it was despatched to the proper colonial authorities as the
expression of the royal will. In its final form as a law the word
ing of the royal cédula or decree often differed but very little
from that of the memorial from the colonies which had pro
voked it.
The jurisdiction of the Council extended to the Philippine
trade, as well as to that between Spain and the Americas. How
ever, even in its period of highest efficiency and with the accumu
lated colonial experience of its members, it was unable to handle
adequately the enormous mass of business brought before it. On
extraordinary occasions a junta of persons especially qualified to
deal with the question at issue was convened for the purpose of
advising the Council. During the eighteenth century the Bour
bons, in line with their plans for greater administrative centrali
zation, transferred much of the authority of the Council to a
ministry of the Indies. The ministro-general, in the person of
such men as Julian de Arriaga, Jose de Galvez, and Antonio de
Valdez, then had the last word in overseas affairs.
The body which exercised administrative control over the
trade with the western Indies, and its subsidiary branches in
American waters, was the famous Casa de contratacidn. It had
FLEETS AND GALLEONS
401
little to do with the Manila-Acapulco line, beyond the prosecu
tion of foreigners who were found within the sphere of the latter
navigation. Its title can be translated literally as the "house of
trade," but English writers, drawing on home analogy, have
generally called it the "India House." It was founded at Seville
in 1503, and so antedated the full organization of the superior
Council of the Indies, to which it was forced to give up some of
its attributes, and to which it was subordinated. From 1555 the
Casa maintained a branch at Cadiz to take charge of such busi
ness in connection with the commerce as must be transacted
there. With the silting-up of the channel of the lower Guadal
quivir, it became impossible for the larger vessels of the naviga
tion to reach Seville. Cadiz thereby became the natural termi
nal for the line, and in 1717 the Casa was transferred to the coast
city, where it remained until its extinction in 1790. The removal
of the Casa "ended the prosperity of Seville." The Casa's posi
tion largely depended on the monopoly of the colonial trade by a
single city, and when in 1778 the edict of Libre comercio threw
the Indies open to nearly all the ports of Spain, the Casa thereby
automatically lost much of its justification for existence, though
the edict decreeing its suppression was not issued until 1790. Its
powers during the remainder of the colonial regime were largely
shared between the consulados of the newly privileged ports and
the Ministry of the Indies, although the Consulado of Cadiz pre
served a considerable residue of the declining prerogatives of the
Casa.
Like most such institutions, the Casa de contratación was at
its foundation not endowed with the full attributes of its prime,
but these were assigned to it gradually. It inherited some of the
character of the old admiralty of Castile, with many of the func
tions later exercised by Fonseca before the colonial service was
completely organized. It was at first charged with the prepara
tion of voyages of exploration to America. With the institution
of regular commerce with the new settlements it took on the
character of a trading factory, while it was also early endowed
with the status of a judicial tribunal. Veitia Linage, the leading
contemporary authority on its administration, wrote of the offi
cials of the full-fledged Casa: "They had cognizance of the ob
servance and execution of everything that was prescribed for the
navigation and traffic with the Indies, both in civil and criminal
402
THE MANILA GALLEON
matters." Its principal function was the preparation and despatch
of the trading fleets and their convoys to the Gulf-Caribbean
ports and their reception on their return from America. It had
to find ships, armaments, and supplies for the fleets, and officers,
crews, and soldiers to man them. On the return of the fleet the
proceeds of the voyage were distributed to the respective shippers.
The Casa was also charged with the collection of the duties on
the cargoes and of the royal share of the gold and silver imported.
It controlled emigration and passage to the Indies, and its cartog
raphers drew up charts for the navigation, while it also trained
the pilots of the line. In accordance with its status as a royal
audiencia, it had a wide jurisdiction over cases which arose in
connection with the trade and navigation.
The Consulado of Seville, styled in the Laws of the Indies,
Universidad de los cargadores a las Indias or "University of ship
pers to the Indies," were organized by royal decree of 1543, largely
on the models of the venerable bodies of Barcelona, Valencia and
Burgos. Whereas the Casa represented the crown, the Consulados represented the interests of the merchants. They were essen
tially judicial organizations, applying the commercial code to
disputes and suits between individuals or companies over such
business matters as sales, transactions in foreign exchange, com
missions, insurance, and contracts of partnership. During the
famous controversy between the interests in the carrera de Indias
and the Manila-Acapulco line the Consulados of Seville and
Cadiz acted as spokesmen for the former. In the course of time
these bodies came to overshadow the Casa in importance and
power.
The Consulado system was extended to the colonies in 1592,
when a royal cédula authorized their foundation in Lima and the
City of Mexico. The legal attributes of the consulados in the two
viceroyalties were largely analogous to those of the corresponding
tribunals in the peninsula. However, their prestige was restricted
by the viceroy and the audiencia, and, after the administrative
reforms of the Bourbons, by the intendant.
As we have seen,3 a consulado was not established in Manila
until 1769, when the galleon commerce was already two cen
turies old. Important decisions regarding the interests of the
trade had generally been made by the body of the citizen-mer3 Sec p. 156.
FLEETS AND GALLEONS
chants assembled in "open cabildo,"—a town meeting of "city
and commerce." Later four representative merchants, .increased
to eight in 1708, were named to act as compromisarios, whose
duty was to consult in regard to the general management of the
commerce. Their recommendations were discussed with the
rcgidores, or members of the city council, and on important mat
ters were referred to "open cabildo" for final determination of
the combined will of the galleon shippers. Strictly judicial cases
which could not be settled by an outside agreement between the
parties involved were referred to the audiencia or lower tribunals.
The Consulado of Manila superseded the old scheme for the
management of the galleon trade, with its loose and multifarious
responsibilities. A new body of seven men, representing the
purely mercantile interests of the colony, was henceforth to have
the actual supervision of the galleon trade, subject only to the
control of the governor.
The great authority of the governor always qualified the ex
tent to which the ordinary machinery for the management of the
galleon trade exercised its functions. After all, his membership
in the various boards which regulated the successive stages of the
trading operations,4 his large appointive and ordinance powers,
his often arbitrary intervention in the affairs of the commerce,
made him the final and determinant factor in the administration
of the trade. "No governor or, viceroy in Europe exercises such
authority," said Hernando de los Rios Coronel. "Were not the
Philippines so remote," wrote Gemelli Careri a century later,
"that Government would be coveted by the chief Grandees, be
cause his Government is unlimited, the Jurisdiction large, the
Prerogatives not to be paralleled, the Conveniences great, the
Profit unknown, and the Honour greater than that of Vice-Roy
of the Indies."
During most of its history the trade of the carrera de Indias
between Spain and her American colonies was carried on by
means of fleets. This plan was put into effect by royal decree of
156 1 as a means of safeguarding the trading ships from attack
by foreigners. There were two of these fleets, which, however,
generaly left the Spanish coast in company, to part later in the
Antilles, usually in the neighborhood of Dominica or of Guada
lupe. Thence the one proceeded westward along the chain of
* See Chapter 4.
404
THE MANILA GALLEON
the Greater Antilles to its destination in the port of San Juan de
Ulua before Vera Cruz. On the way ships were despatched from
the fleet to Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, Jamaica, Santiago de
Cuba, Havana, Honduras and Yucatan. The other directed its
course from about Dominica to the Tierra-Firme, or Spanish
Main, sending off vessels to various points on the coast—Rio de la
Hacha, Venezuela, Cabo de la Vela, and the island of Margarita.
The body of the fleet passed some time in the powerfully forti
fied harbor of Cartagena de Indias, and finaly ended its voyage
at Porto Bello on the isthmus. The general rendezvous on the
return passage was Havana, where the united fleets cleared for
Spain. The former of these two great sea-caravans, that which
supplied New Spain, was known as the flota, or fleet; the other,
which supplied South America, as the galeones, or galleons. It
was thus called from the armada, or armed convoy of galleons,
which guarded the trading-vessels on their passage through the
Caribbean.
At Jalapa, in the tierra templada above fever-plagued Vera
Cruz, the fair of the flota's cargo was held, whence the goods
were sent throughout the northern viceroyalty. The great fair of
the galeones was held at Porto Bello, where there gathered for
the occasion merchants from Peru and Chile, and even from
Buenos Aires. From Panama, on the other side of the isthmus,
the Armada del Mar del Sur, the so-called "Silver Fleet," carried
the merchandise down the Pacific Coast, as it had brought the
silver pesos and ingots for exchange at the fair and for shipment
to the royal treasury.
The galeones to the Spanish Main were discontinued in 1748,
and the last flota reached Vera Cruz in January 1778. In each
case navios de registro, or "registered ships," sailing singly or in
companies, as momentary conditions dictated, superseded the old
fleets on the same routes.
It was the fact that Spanish silks constituted a substantial
share of the cargoes of the trading-fleets which led to the bitter
rivalry between the two lines of colonial trade. The hostility
between the interests of Andalusia and Manila largely deter
mined the character of the restrictive regulations issued for the
Philippine-American trade. Agitation against the latter began
almost from its inception—as soon as the importation of Chinese
fabrics into Mexico and Peru was felt by the commerce of Seville.
FLEETS AND GALLEONS
405
In 1589 the Consulado of Seville complained to Philip II: "When
the fleets from Castille arrive they now have less sale for their
goods, since the market is supplied by cheaper merchandise from
China and the Philippines. This results in great damage and
prejudice to the royal revenues, and is a grave blow to the com
merce, since it is clear that the fleets do not go so heavily laden
as formerly, nor do they bring back so much gold and silver on
return." The Frenchman, Pyrard de Laval, who had traveled
in the East Indies, wrote in 1608 of the Manila Galleon's trade
in Chinese silks: "This renders these islands marvelously rich,
but at the same time it diminishes the commerce of Spain with
the Western Indies, for the cloth and silk fabrics of Spain are no
longer carried thither as they were wont to be before this trade
was established."
A series of laws which antedated the occupation of the
Philippines aimed to protect the silk industry of the peninsula
against the competition of foreign manufactures.
Thus,
Charles V decreed in 1523: "There may enter no silk from
Calabria, from the Kingdom of Naples, or from Calicut, Turkey,
or Barbary." In 1590, when the Manila-Acapulco trade was al
ready well established, Philip II enunciated the prohibition: "No
foreigner shall introduce manufactured silks." The ban was one
of the cardinal principles of Spanish commercial policy.
The crux of the system which was designed to hold the
galleon commerce within bounds was the permiso, limiting the
volume of the trade to a certain figure. Another device was the
prohibition of the subsidiary trade between Acapulco and the
southern viceroyalty of Peru, thereby cutting off one of the rich
est markets for Chinese silks. Finally, there was the elaborate
system of inspection at both ends of the line, intended to enforce
the provisions of the permiso, and reinforced at times by the
extraordinary recourse to the visita. Yet, all this restrictive ma
chinery failed of its purpose, except for brief intervals of un
usual rigor at some vital point in the trade, as the visitas of
Quiroga in 1635 and Galvez in 1766.
Baffled by the inability of the ordinary precautions to control
the rival trade, the peninsular interests proposed more radical ex
pedients to gain the same end. The most thoroughgoing of these
proposals was for the abandonment of the Philippines. Several
petitions called for the suppression of the galleon line, the first in
406
THE MANILA GALLEON
1586, when it was only twenty years old, and again in 1604.
Even more persistent was the clamor for the abolition of the trade
in silks. This was actually granted by royal decree of 1718, re
peated two years later, but the ban was raised by an order of
1724. When the important regulations of April 18, 1734, were
issued by the king, sealing the final victory of Manila in its long
and bitter struggle on behalf of the galleon trade, the royal cedula
enjoined "perpetual silence on the commerce of Andalusia and
the Consulado of Cadiz."
For 250 years the galleon line had survived, in spite of the
most difficult navigating conditions of any trade in the world, of
the repeated attacks of the enemies of Spain, of the persistent
opposition of the most powerful commercial interests in the
peninsula, and of a system of restrictive legislation designed to
prevent its natural expansion. It had outlived the incompetence
and fitful rigors of administration, a long chain of shipwrecks
and other disasters, the direct loss of five galleons at the hands
of foreigners, and the indirect loss of many millions in cargoes.
That it endured so long was due, not only to the courage and
faith of the men who shipped and sailed on the galleons, and
to the paradoxical wisdom of a government that winked at the
violations of its own laws in order to promote the larger good
of the whole empire,5 but to the vitality inherent in a trade, all
of whose natural foundations were so sound and so strong.
5 The historian, Robertson, wrote in 1777: "There is not in the commercial arrange
ments of Spain any circumstance more inexplicable than the permission of this trade or
more repugnant to its fundamental maxims of holding the colonies in perpetual depend
ence on the mother-country, by prohibiting any commercial intercourse that might
suggest to them the ideas of receiving a supply of their wants from any other quarter."
The History of America, II, 428.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ® <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
APPENDIX
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 9 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
APPENDIX I
THE ROYAL PHILIPPINE COMPANY
ONE of the most momentous events in the history of the
Philippines in the eighteenth century was the opening of
direct trade with Spain. Though such an innovation was con
sidered from very early times, nothing definitive was accom
plished until 1766. Various obstacles had prevented its consum
mation. The papal bull of demarcation had, by implication,
closed the Cape route to the Spaniards, and the latter had ob
served the restriction with singular scrupulousness. "Not any of
these voyages," said Antonio de Morga, "are practiced by the
Castillians, who are prohibited from making them." The ap
pearance of the Dutch in this field at the beginning of the seven
teenth century added greatly to the risks of such an undertaking,
and this element of hazard might have necessitated an expensive
armed convoy to insure the safety of the voyage. The route from
the other direction—around Cape Horn, or through the Straits
of Magellan—was even more impracticable. Moreover, the Andalusian interests opposed this course, because of the opportunity
it would offer to trade with the west coast of the American conti
nent, which was a market reserved to the Porto Bello galleons.
Burney says of the exploring expedition of the Nodales brothers
to the Straits of Magellan in 1619: "The expedition gave all the
encouragement which could have been expected to the plan for
establishing a direct trade from Spain to the coast of Peru and to
the Philippines; but every proposal to that effect met with so
much opposition from the administrators of the commerce to
Panama, and from other interested persons, that the project was
thrown aside."
Besides the natural obstacle of the inordinate distance from
Seville or Cadiz around South America to Manila, and the ob
structions placed in the way by the hostile peninsular interests,
the contrary winds in the lower Pacific made the return voyage
even more difficult than was the westward crossing. The only
409
410
THE MANILA GALLEON
alternative was the portage at Panama. This route was fre
quently proposed and was a feature of Viana's ambitious scheme
of 1765, which further involved the project of connecting the two
oceans. Here again the Andalusians interposed their opposition,
for Panama was a terminal of the Peruvian "fleet of the South
Sea," and so, within the area of their monopoly. Finally, what
ever goods reached Spain before the return voyage of the Buen
Consejo in 1767 arrived at Cadiz by way of Acapulco and Vera
Cruz. However, the cost of transport across New Spain nega
tived the practicability of this route for an extensive trade.
Proposals were made early in the seventeenth century to
divert the trade of the Philippines from Mexico to Spain. In
1610, Philip III sent a circular letter to the following officials to
sound their opinion on the subject: the viceroys of New Spain,
Peru and Portugal, the Audiencias of Mexico, Lima, and Manila,
and the governor of the Philippines. The Marques de Montesclaros, at that time viceroy of Peru, and formerly viceroy of New
Spain, warmly recommended the suggested change, but no fur
ther steps were taken to carry the project into execution. The
unfortunate expeditions of Ruy Gonzalez de Sequeira in 1613,
and of Zuazola in 1619 might have aided in the inception of
such a scheme, but Spanish powers of initiative had already
begun to decline, to revive for a season in the grandiose spurts of
Olivares. So, the conception of a direct connection between
Spain and the Philippines lay dormant during the decadencia,
until the coming of the Bourbons and the revival of the eight
eenth century.
With the more energetic and enlightened rule of that period
the idea gained new life. However, the first attempt to give it
concrete form resulted in failure. In 1733, largely through the
instrumentality of the minister, Jose Patino, a trading company
was actually formed, but it never undertook any operations.
The Manila interests opposed its foundation, as did the Dutch,
and the unfavorable state of foreign affairs did not make this a
very propitious time for launching a new commerce that would
compete with other nations long established in the field.
The agitation was continued by the ablest and most publicspirited officials in the islands, as well as in Spain. In 1748 Pedro
Calderon Enriquez recommended the erection of a company on
the pattern of the great Dutch and British companies, whose sue
THE ROYAL PHILIPPINE COMPANY
411
cess he, like most Spaniards, overrated. The Spaniards were, in
fact, obsessed with the utility of the company form of trading
organization, since they were ignorant of the financial and politi
cal difficulties of the companies which operated in India and
the archipelagos and only considered their plausible prosperity.
Governor Simon de Anda, who otherwise favored the idea of
direct trade between Manila and Cadiz, strongly opposed the
suggestion of a commercial company. The Hispanicized Briton,
Nicholas Norton Nichols, who resided in Manila for several years
heartily endorsed the connecting of the colony with the metropo
lis by means of such a company.
The most comprehensive scheme proposed was that pre
sented in 1765 by Francisco Leandro de Viana. In one of the
most remarkable documents in Philippine history he laid before
the central government a detailed exposition of the whole project.
He proclaimed the right of the Spaniards to sail the Cape route
to the East, in spite of the ancient ban of the papacy, of the
Treaties of Westphalia and Utrecht-Munster, or of the outworn
theory of the mare clausum. His project carried with it an elab
orate plan for the development of the resources of the islands
themselves, including the promotion of spice culture.
It was the next year after Viana presented his memorial that
direct communications were opened with the islands. In the
first days of October of that year there arrived at Manila a sixtyfour gun frigate of the royal navy, the Buen Consejo, under the
command of a French captain, Caseins. As a semi-state venture,
she had been dispatched around the Cape with a cargo of Euro
pean merchandise to be exchanged at Manila for Oriental goods.
However, the Manilenbs believed that this voyage was the signal
for the suppression of the Acapulco line, and accordingly gave
the ship a cold reception, dubbing her—with a play on her name
—the Mai Consejo. They refused the proffered invitation to
participate in the new undertaking, and with such an attitude
of passive resistance on the part of the creoles success for the new
line was almost impossible. Yet the voyages continued until
1783, when the Asuncidn made the fourteenth and last. The re
sults had not been such as to encourage further expeditions of the
kind.
With the single ship operations had necessarily been on a
restricted scale, but this tentative enterprise was shortly followed
THE MANILA GALLEON
by a far more ambitious effort. For, on March 10, 1785, the
Real Companta de Filipinos received its charter from the king.
"From the beginning of my reign," says the enlightened
Charles III, in the preamble of the document, "I have desired to
stimulate my beloved subjects to undertake direct commerce with
the Philippines, and accustom themselves to the navigation of
those seas." It was to arouse them to the value of this that he
had sent ships of the royal navy on various expeditions to the
East within the last few years. At this moment the dissolution
of the Royal Caracas Company offered an excellent opportunity
for the creation of a similar organization to operate in the Orient.
The Guipuzcoa Company (Real Compama Guipuzcoana de
Caracas) was refused a recharter, and its last junta had decided
to divert the resources and personnel of the company to trade
with the Philippines. It asked the royal permission for the
change, which was authorized after the proposal had been re
ported favorably by the council of ministers. The chief advocate
of the company was the Frenchman, Francois Cabarrus, then in
charge of the national finances, and sponsor of the royal Bank
of San Carlos. The charter provided for the liquidation of the
assets of the Caracas Company and the transfer of the proceeds
to the new company. In the central governing board, to have
its headquarters at Madrid, three directors of the dissolved com
pany were to sit, while the remainder of the junta was to be com
posed as follows: two directors of the Bank of San Carlos, two
of the Bank of Havana, two of the Bank of the Guilds, and one
of the Bank of Seville. A further concession to the old company
was the requirement that the ships of the Philippine Company
carry 2,000 tons of goods annually to Caracas, Cumana, and
Maracaybo, the former field of operations of the Basque com
pany on the Spanish Main.
The company was chartered for twenty-five years—that is,
until July 1, 18 10. The capital stock was set at 8,000,000 pesos, in
32,000 shares of 250 pesos each. This was purchasable by anyone,
ecclesiastics not excluded. A considerable part of this was as
sumed by the shareholders of the Caracas Company, who were
directed to surrender their paper at the equivalent in stock of the
new issue. Spanish-American creoles of means were also en
couraged to invest, while the king himself subscribed for a mil
lion of stock to express his confidence in the undertaking, and
THE ROYAL PHILIPPINE COMPANY
413
thereby set an example to moneyed individuals or organizations
in the peninsula, whose capital was idle or relatively unproduc
tive. Three thousand shares were also set aside for disposal in
the Philippines.
The company was to have a monopoly of trade between
Spain and the Philippines, whether direct or via the ports of
South America. The main business of the company was to be
the exchange at Manila of Spanish for Oriental goods, although
its ships might annually carry to the east 500,000 pesos of coin
to invest. Its field was to be wider than this, and there were to
be several minor subsidiary branches. European merchandise
might be carried to Spanish-American ports on the outward pas
sage and exchanged there for colonial products to be carried on
to the Far East for disposal, though it was prohibited to carry on
trade in the opposite direction between Asia and America. The
king thus suspended in favor of the company long-standing laws
that had prohibited trade between South America and the Orient.
However, this latter restriction was virtually nullified by the pro
vision that the company's ships might transship to those very
American ports Asiatic merchandise which had first been
brought to Cadiz around the Cape, with the sole limitation that
such goods, on being reexported, should pay the export duties
required by the general Reglamento of 1778. Moreover, the
company might deal directly with the Asiastic coast, or send its
ships thither from Manila. It was particularly desired to open
up intercourse with the Chinese ports, though trade might be
carried on along the southeastern coasts of Asia, wherever the
dominant European power did not refuse admittance. The com
pany was declared in the charter to be devoid of any political
character, as against the dual political-economic position occupied
by the Dutch and English companies. It was accordingly di
rected to maintain good relations with the native Asiatic peoples,
and to avoid any complications that might raise a military issue.
The route to the Orient might be either by the Cape or
around South America. In the latter case a stop at Buenos Aires
was obligatory, but the company was warned against excessive
extractions of silver and goods from that city, which might be
used for trading in the east with the French and Dutch—"an
abuse prejudicial to the national commerce, and to my royal
treasury." Stops at the west-coast ports were optional. How
414
THE MANILA GALLEON
ever, all ships were compelled to return to Cadiz by the Cape
route—largely a check on trading voyages from Asia across the
Pacific to the American colonies. Factors or agents of the com
pany were to be stationed in Mexico, Vera Cruz, Lima, Buenos
Aires, and several other important cities, to care for the local
business of the company.
The adjustment of the great undertaking to the traditional
economic interests of the colony—that is, to the galleon line—
was a very delicate problem. The promoters of the company
knew from the past experience of such attempts the irreconcilable
antipathy with which the insular creoles viewed the innovation
of direct trade. They were aware, too, how little chance of suc
cess the company would have in the face of this opposition.
Consequently, the prejudices of the Manilenos were humored,
and concessions were made to gain their cooperation in the new
enterprise. In the first place, as we have seen, 3,000 shares of
stock were reserved for distribution among them. "For," said
the king, "the prosperity of the Philippine Islands and of their
inhabitants has been the principal motive that has moved my
paternal love to protect and to share in this undertaking; and I
have desired that besides the advantages which will result to
them through the increase of their agriculture, industry, and
marine, they should have a direct share in the profits of this
commerce." So he hoped that the consulado and the obras pias
would take the proffered shares. The company was expressly
forbidden to interfere with the trade of the islanders with Asia
or with the inter-insular traffic. Apparently the most assuring
statement was that contained in clause 43 of the charter, which
was intended to quiet the fears of the Manilenos as to the pos
sible intentions of the company. "I permit," said the king, "the
inhabitants of the Philippines to continue for the present their
trade with New Spain." The particularly equivocal part of this
was the expression "por ahora," which should hardly have been
expected to ease the chronic and overwrought suspicions of the
islanders. Just what were the ultimate ideas of the peninsular
Spaniards at this time as regarded the disposition of the galleon
trade we cannot say. They might gradually encroach on the
field of that line until it died of inanition. Thus, the concession
to import into Vera Cruz 800 tons of goods a year may have been a
deliberate and none too skillfully planned move in this direction;
THE ROYAL PHILIPPINE COMPANY
415
for the Manilenos recognized the evident sinister probability for
their established interests contained in this permission, which was
granted to the company. The 800, or more, tons of Chinese and
Indian merchandise thus introduced into the front door of New
Spain could not but seriously affect the market for similar com
modities brought in from the rear. The company was, however,
prohibited from taking any pecuniary interest in the galleon
line. They might have goods brought from Acapulco which
they needed for their dealings in the east, but they must pay the
ordinary freight rates for the transportation of these consign
ments. In order to urge the creoles to take an active part in
the transactions of the company, they were conceded one-fifth
of the lading space of the company's homeward-bound bottoms
for their shipments. Moreover, the insular products thus sent
to Spain were to be exempt from the payment of export duties
at Manila and of import duties on entering a Spanish port.
Another part of the company's program which would affect
the galleon trade less immediately was its comprehensive project
for the development of the archipelago's resources as a comple
ment to its essentially commercial objects, a possibility consistently
neglected by the beneficiaries of the old commerce. In the first
place, four per cent of the profits of the company were to be
devoted to that kind of work so aptly described by the Spanish
term, fomento, or promotion of the internal development of the
islands. This meant above all the encouragement of new cul
tures, such as the growing of spices, and the promotion of manu
factures of cloth and other commodities. In this the company
would work in unison with the Sociedad Econdmica. Another
instance of the unusually high plane on which the Philippine
Company was to work was that in its scheme for the agricultural
and industrial development of the islands it made no provision
for the forced labor of the natives. It was this omission, accord
ing to the German traveler, Jagor, that caused the ultimate failure
of this part of the company's program, as he declared tropical
plantation culture on such a scale impossible without the im
pressing of the natives. On the other hand, the Spaniard,
Montero y Vidal, cites this feature as a distinct proof of the
superiority of the Spanish system to that adopted by other nations,
like the Dutch, in a similar situation. The charter required
the company to carry artisans, who desired to settle in the islands,
416
THE MANILA GALLEON
without charge for transportation, and likewise to provide free
passage for professors of mathematics, chemistry, or botany—a
concession to the scientific spirit that actuated the men who were
directing the revival of Spain. Finally, the local governing board
at Manila was to be composed, among others, of a deputy representing the insular interests. The governor was to preside over
this body, which was to consist further of the intendant, the
local directors of the company, a director of the Sociedad, and
the chief accountant and treasurer of the company. This board
was granted large discretionary powers in the local administra
tion of the company, and was allowed wide latitude in the execu
tion of the ordinances issued by the central junta.
During the first year of its operation the company sent out
three ships. One, which cleared from Cadiz in October 1785,
passed through the Straits of Magellan and called at Callao on
its way to Manila. Two others, which left later, followed the
Cape route to the East. The early voyages were successful
ventures, the cargoes of 1787 realizing fifty per cent profit at
Cadiz. By 1792 the value of the shares had risen to par, and
the prospects of the company appeared very bright. These flush
times were of short duration, though the returns continued fairly
satisfactory for a few years more. To January 1806, the com
pany's sales in Europe amounted to 384,778,000 reales. In 1803
the limit of the charter was extended fifteen years, or eight years
beyond the time set for its expiration by the original cedula. At
the same time the capital stock was increased to 12,500,000 pesos,
of which the king, Charles IV, held 3,943,000 pesos.
Not even this new lease of life could save the company from
the forces that militated against its success. It dragged along
through the period of the Napoleonic wars, but not even the
restoration of peace and more normal conditions could restore
the early prosperity, though the existence of the company was
not terminated legally until September 1834.
Its program had been too ambitious from the beginning for
the resources at its disposal. A combination of causes had op
erated to bring about its failure. Its promoters were not familiar
with the peculiar conditions of oriental trade, and had to pay
dearly for experience which had been the property of their rivals
for centuries. They were, in fact, driven to buy some of their
commodities from those very competitors, and there was scarcely
'
THE ROYAL PHILIPPINE COMPANY
417
any advantage in buying cinnamon from the Dutch at Batavia
over buying it from them at Cadiz. Moreover, they were never
able to establish such direct relations with the native peoples
as would have freed them from this fatal dependence. The com
pany was also hampered by its subordination to the government
and by the over-regulated rigidity of the form of organization.
On the other hand, it could not always control the acts of its
agents, who persisted in trading on their own account, in viola
tion of the regulations of the company. Undoubtedly this laxness of responsibility among its subordinates—an evil from which
all the great companies suffered—was partly due to the semipublic character of the organization and the consequent im
personal nature of its directive authority, as well as to the im
possibility of a minute supervision of its widely scattered opera
tions. Again, the voluntary labor of the native Filipinos was
not adequate to the gigantic task of developing the resources
of the islands, which was an important phase of the company's
program. Nor would the friars have permitted forced labor
on a sufficient scale to ensure the success of this part of the com
pany's program. The disruption of normal economic life in
the peninsula during the Napoleonic wars has already been men
tioned as an influence hostile to the progress of the company.
Finally, it was handicapped by the resistance of the insular
interests.
The reception of the company's overtures and ships at Manila
was what might have been expected, in view of the customary
attitude of the Manilenos toward the principle of direct trade.
They appeared to desire the indefinite perpetuation of their isola
tion from the metropolis and of the secular galleon traffic with
America. The latter was already noticeably on the wane, but its
accelerated decline in the second half of the eighteenth century
was laid to the competition of the company. The words of the
charter had expressly insured the galleon line against the more
evident and direct encroachments of the company. The northern
Pacific was still to be a field reserved for the naos. But the
market of New Spain was no longer the almost exclusive
monopoly of the Manilenos. Foreigners had long smuggled large
quantities of goods into Mexico, and the flota had introduced a
share of its silk imports, but now the peninsular Spaniards were
free to ship Oriental products into Vera Cruz. The immunity
4i8
THE MANILA GALLEON
from all but a slight export duty at Cadiz gave the company
a considerable advantage over its rival. The consulado declared
in 1786 that this discrepancy in costs amounted to a premium of
62% percent in favor of the company. Moreover, the company
did not adhere scrupulously to the prohibition against trading
eastward across the Pacific to the western coasts of South America,
but even sent ships to San Blas, just inside the entrance to the
Gulf of California, while in 1803 the company received a license
to send a ship to Peru. If the company's consignments to New
Spain reached Vera Cruz before the arrival of the galleon at
Acapulco the market for the latter's goods was spoiled for the
year.
Though the company eventually failed, the future was with
the idea of direct trade which it represented. The islands hence
forth looked toward Spain, and not toward Mexico, and this
reorientation of the colony was in large part the work of the
company. It marked the end of the long era which began with
the expedition of Villalobos, and the beginning of the final epoch
in the Spanish history of the islands.
>>>>>>
>>>>>» 9
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
BIBLIOGRAPHY
UNPUBLISHED SOURCES
Archivo de Indias, Seville, Spain.
(The three figures given with each title to designate the legajo
(bundle) or series of legajos refer consecutively to the number of
estante, or case, the cajón, or shelf, and the legajo. Thus, "67—6—
1 á 3" signifies estante 67, cajón 6, legajos 1 to 3 inclusive).
Audiencia de Filipinas.
I. Simancas: Audiencia de Filipinas.
67—6—1 á 3
67—6—4
Ramo secular y eclesiástico.
Consultas originales correspondientes á dicha
Audiencia, 1586-1700.
Decretos originales correspondientes á dicha
Audiencia, 1594-1698.
67—6—6 á 17
67—6—18 á 26
67—6—27, 28
67—6—29 á 33
67—6—34 á 42
6$—1—i, 2
68—1—22
68—1—25
68—1—26
Ramo secular.
Cartas y expedientes del gobernador de Fili
pinas, vistos en el Consejo, 1567-1699.
Cartas y expedientes del presidente y oidores
de Filipinas, vistos en el Consejo, 1583-1699.
Cartas y expedientes del cabildo secular de
Manila, vistos en el Consejo, 1570-1699.
Cartas y expedientes de los oficiales reales de
Filipinas, vistos en el Consejo, 1564-1698.
Cartas y expedientes de personas seculares de
dicha Audiencia, 1565-1650.
Idem de idem, 1650-1699.
Testimonio de visitas y registro de champanes
y pataches que llegaron al comercio de Fili
pinas, 1657-1686.
Testimonio de autos sobre la rebelión, con
versión y espulsión de los Sangleyes de China,
1687-1690.
Testimonio sobre la arribada del galeón Santo
Niño y Nuestra Señora de Guía, y sobre en
terar en la real caja los descaminos de dicho
buque, 1688-1701.
419
THE MANILA GALLEON
68—i—27
Testimonio de autos sobre sublevación de los
Sangleycs sustanciados y determinados por el
oidor Don Sebastian Bolívar y Mena, 16861690.
II. Secretaría de Nueva España: Audiencia de Filipinas.
Ramo secular y eclesiástico.
68—2—8 á 12
Consultas y decretos originales, 1630- 1769.
68—2—13
Traslados auténticos de reales cédulas, 17111725.
Ramo secular.
68—3—1 á 3
Cartas y expedientes del virrey de Nueva
España que tratan de asuntos de Filipinas,
1699-1760.
68—3—4 á 33
Cartas y expedientes del gobernador de Fili
pinas, 1675-1747.
68—4—1 á 11
Idem de idem, 1747-1765.
68—4—12 á 35 Autos y expedientes del presidente de oidores
de aquella Audiencia, 1608- 1762.
68—5—1 á 3
Cartas y expedientes del cabildo secular de
Manila, 1 700-1759.
68—5—4 á 6
Cartas y expedientes de los oficiales reales de
Manila, 1638-1735.
68—5—7 á 13
Cartas y expedientes de personas seculares,
1645-1761.
68—5—14
Espediente sobre el despacho de la armada
para aquellas islas á carga de Don Francisco
Tejada, 1613-1618.
68—5—16
Espediente sobre la espulsión de los Sangleycs,
1684-1744.
68—5—17 á 23 Espediente sobre el comercio de aquellas islas
con el reyno de Nueva España, cuyo espediente
consta de 7 legajos, 1684-1737.
68—5—24, 25
Espedientes sobre las medidas de cajones y
demás piezas que trajo el galeón de Filipinas
de Sacra Familia, 1685-1736.
68—5—27
Espediente de Sevilla, Cadiz y otros pueblos
de España que tratan de asuntos de aquel dis
trito, 1704-1 741.
68—5—28
Espediente sobre la manifestación de la plata
que llevó el galeón San Francisco Javier, 1708.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
68—6—11
68—6—13
68—6—14, 15
68—6—18
68—6—19
68—6—21
68—6—22
68—6—23
68—6—27
68—6—37
68—6—38, 39
68—6—48, 49
68—6—50, 51
421
Espediente sobre el registro del galeón de
Filipinas nombrado el Santo Cristo de Burgos
que hizo viaje el año de 1729 desde el puerto
de Cavite al de Acapulco.
Espediente sobre el aumento del situado de
aquellas islas, 1727- 1728.
Espediente sobre la pérdida del galeón capitana
nombrado Santo Cristo de Burgos al cargo del
general Don Francisco Sanchez de Tagle,
1727-1734.
Espediente sobre la llegada del navio Nuestra
Señora de Guía al puerto de Acapulco, 1730.
Espediente sobre la instancia del castellan y
oficiales reales de Acapulco en que declaran la
sesta parte de comisos hechos en naos de Fili
pinas, 1730-1733.
Espediente sobre el recibo del galeón capitana
Nuestra Señora de Guía á cargo del general
Don Francisco Antonio de Abarca y Valdés,
1734.
Espediente sobre el desfalco que hacian los
oficiales reales del puerto de Acapulco á la
gente de mar con el título de débitos, 1734.
Espediente sobre los 162,992 pesos que se
sacaron del comercio, 1735-1741.
Espediente sobre los dos navios holandeses que
desde Batavia fueron á comerciar á la Nueva
España, 1739-1753.
Espediente sobre comisos de géneros del navio
Nuestra Señora del Pilar construcción de un
nuevo galeón para Nueva España y carga que
salió de aquellas islas para Acapulco, 17431744.
Espediente sobre la presa que hicieron los
Ingleses del navio Cobadonga y libertad de los
oficiales que mandavan dicho navio, 1743-1753.
Testimonio de autos que tratan del comercio
establecido por el gobernador de Filipinas con
el rey de Sian cuya capitulación no fue valida
por no haver tenido real aprovación, 1752.
Espedientes sobre las alteraciones que ha
tenido aquel comercio por las novedades intro
ducidas por el gobernador Marqués de Obando,
1752-1755.
THE MANILA GALLEON
68—6—53
69—2—1
Espediente sobre los escesos que cometió el
gobernador Don Pedro Manuel de Arandía,
1756-1758.
Ramo eclesiástico.
Tres testimonios de autos que pertenecen á
un espediente del cabildo eclesiástico de Manila
sobre asignación de boletas, 1730-1731.
III. Audiencia de Filipinas.
105—1—1 á 10
105—2—11 á 18
105—2—25
105—2—27 á 31
105—3—25
105—3—26
105—4—1
105—4—2
105—4—3, 4
105—4—5
105—4—6
106—5—5
106—5—15 á 24
Ramo secular.
Registros de oñcio; reales órdenes dirigidas á
las autoridades del distrito de la Audiencia,
1597-1804.
Registros de oñcio y partes: reales órdenes
dirigidas á las autoridades y particulares del
distrito de la Audiencia, 1568-1808.
Registros, órdenes, instrucciones, títulos, etc.,
para la armada que llevaba el socorro á las
islas Filipinas, 1619-1621.
Inventario de cédulas y consultas, 1670-1831.
Consultas, decretos y órdenes originales, 1724!774Gobiernos de los capitanes generales Marqués
de Torre-Campo, Don Fernando Valdés
Tamón, Don Gaspar de la Torre e interino
del obispo de Nueva Segovia, 1729-1748.
Gobierno del capitán general Marqués de
Obando, 1746-1767.
Gobierno de los capitanes generales Don Pedro
Manuel de Arandía y Don José Crespo, 1762.
Correspondencia del gobernador Marqués de
Obando dando noticia del estado de aquellas
islas, 1753.
Correspondencia con gobernadores, 1759-1821.
Gobierno del capitán general Don Simón de
Anda, 1769-1780.
Gobierno de los capitanes generales Don José
Vasco y Vargas y Don Felix Berenger de
Marquina, 1776-1787.
Sección de fomento establecimiento de
dades económicas, 1779- 1798.
Cartas y expedientes, 1751-1765.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
106—6—i á 29
106—7—i á 25
107—1—11 it 20
107—2—1, 2
107—2—25
107—2—26
107—2—27 á 30
107—3—1, 2
107—3—3 á 6
107—3—7
107—3—12
107—3—17 á 29
107—4—i á 27
I07—5—14
107—7—22 á 24
107—7—25 á 32
108—i—i á 6
108—i—30
108—i—33
108—3—8
108—3—9
423
Cartas y expedientes, 1766-1777.
Cartas y expedientes, 1778-1800.
Espedientes é instancias de partes, 1719-1778.
Espedientes é instancias de partes, 1719-1849.
Espediente sobre que el virrey de Nueva
España revocó los nuevos establecimientos de
la caja de ahorros y plan de guerra para la
mejor navegación defensa de la nao y ahorro
de la real hacienda, 1753.
Espediente y autos sobre la conversión y re
ducción de los Indios infieles y sublevación de
los Sangleyes, 1747-1751.
Espediente sobre espedición de los Sangleyes
ó Chinos Católicos por delito de infidelidad y
otros delitos durante la ocupación de la plaza
de Manila por los Ingleses, 1755-1759.
Espediente de la reclamación por Inglatierra de
los millones de pesos capitulados en la toma
de la plaza de Manila, 1762-1766.
Espediente relativo al sitio y toma de Manila
por los Ingelses, 1762-1765.
Sección de fomento establecimiento del jardín
botánico cultivo de la canela por Don Fran
cisco Salgado y concesión á este de título de
Castilla, 1770-1792.
Ynforme de real hacienda, 1 682-1818.
Tribunal de cuentas, oficiales reales, y las de
pendencias, 1716-1741.
Ibid de ibid, 1742-1795.
Espediente sobre establecimiento de yntendencias y subintendencias, 1784- 1787.
Estados cortos y tanteos de real hacienda, 17541831.
Cuenta de real hacienda, 1759-1775.
Ibid de ibid, 1775-1831.
Reales cédulas, ynformes, y cuentas sobre
alcabalas y almojarifazgo, 1735-1816.
Espedientes de real hacienda, 1765-1789.
Espediente sobre licencia de embarco á
aquellas islas, 1787- 1823.
Reales cédulas, providencias é ynformes sobre
materias de comercio y naos de Acapulco, 17001824.
THE MANILA GALLEON
1 08—3—n
108—3—12, 13
108—3—14
108—3—15
108—3—17—18
108—3—19, 20
108—3—21
108—3—22 á 27
108—4—1, a
108—4—3 i 6
108—4—7 á 10
108—4—11
108—4—13, 14
108—4—15
108—4—17
108—4—25 á 29
108—5—i
108—5—2 á 4
Despachos del galeón Santíssima Trinidad para
Acapulco, 1753-1754.
Despachos del buque San Carlos para Aca
pulco y sus incidencias, 1764-1781.
Representaciones mandadas tener presente
sobre el incendio de la fragata San Carlos y
su carga á tiempo de salir para Acapulco, 1776.
Espediente en que se aprueba al gobernador
la sentencia que dió en la residencia tomada
al general y oficiales de la fragata San Carlos,
1768-1781.
Espediente sobre adelantamiento y mejora del
comercio con Nueva España, navegación á
Acapulco y otros particulares, 1769.
Registro de embarcaciones que arribaron á
estas islas procedentes de China, 1771-1777.
Registro para Acapulco de la fragata Nuestra
Señora de la Concepción, 1774.
Registro para Acapulco de la fragata San
José, 1775-1787.
Registro para Acapulco del navio San Pedro,
(á) el Caviteño, 1778-1782.
Registros para Acapulco de la fragata San
Andrés, 1787-1796.
Registros para Acapulco de la fragata San
Fernando (á) el Magallenes, 1793-1800.
Registros para Acapulco de la fragata San
Rafael (á) el Comercio, 1800.
Registros para Acapulco del navio Magallanes,
1809.
Reales cédulas, ynformes, proyectos, y regla
mento del consulado de Manila, 1734-1823.
Espediente del consulado erigido en 1779 sobre
el mal estado de aquel comercio y medio de
su restablecimiento, 1773 [sic].
Espedientes del consulado y comercio, 17601832.
Reales cédulas de erecciones, ynformes y
patentes de la Real Compañía de Filipinas,
1788-1821.
Acuerdos de la junta de gobierno de la Real
Compañía de Filipinas, 1789-1825.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
108—5—5
108—5—6 á 17
425
Espediente sobre la decadencia de la Real
Compañía de Filipinas y medio para su fo
mento según real cédula de 1790, 1789-1794.
Espedientes de la Real Compañía de Filipinas,
1785, 1836 y 1840.
IV. Real patronato.
1
1
X^23
t
t 3/25
2—5—1/18
2—5—2/21
Descubrimientos, descripciones, poblaciones, y
gobierno de las islas Filipinas, 1537- 1606.
Ordenanzas para el buen gobierno de esta
navegación, derrotero de algunos viajes y otros
papeles muy curiosos, 1567-1619.
Gobierno y navegación; corsario ynglés, Fran
cisco Drak,—Son papeles pertenecientes á las
invaciones y robos que hizo este corsario en las
costas del mar del Sur, 1575-1587.
V. Estado: Filipinas.
Estado—2, 3, 4. (Legajos 2, 3, 4.)
Audiencia de México.
I. Simancas: Audiencia de México.
Ramo secular del distrito de toda la Audiencia.
58—3—8 á 22
Cartas y expedientes del virrey vistos en el
Consejo, 1536-1637.
58—4—i á 28
Idem de idem, 1635-1693.
58—5—1 á 7
Idem de idem, 1694-1701.
58—6—9 á 37
Cartas y expedientes de personas seculares del
distrito de esta Audiencia, 1519-1604.
60—3—22
Cartas y expedientes del Consulado del Méjico
vistos en el Consejo, 1595-1697.
Ramo secular: Mechoacán y Acapulco.
60—4—36
60—4—37
Cartas y expedientes de los oficiales reales
Acapulco, Potosí y Guanajuato, vistos en
Consejo, 1598-1697.
Viaje y derrotero de las naos que fueron
descubrimiento del puerto de Acapulco
cargo del general Sebastián Vizcaino, 1602.
de
el
al
á
THE MANILA GALLEON
II. Secretaría de Nueva España.
Ramo secular del distrito de toda la Audiencia.
61—i—17 á 34 Cartas y expedientes del virrey, 1606-1718.
Idem de idem, 1719-1747.
Idem de idem, 1748-1763.
Cartas y expedientes pertenecientes á las Cajas
de Mégico, Guanajuato y Acapulco, 1 700-1 759.
62—1—15
Expediente sobre la dependencia de Dn. Mateo
de Morales y el Conde de Peñalva que enten
dieron en el despacho y recibo de la nao de
Filipinas nombrada Nra. Sra. de Begoña, 171 11718.
62—1—18
Testimonios de autos formados por Dn. Juan
José de Veitia Linage, juez privativo de arri
badas sobre lo que hizo el navio Nra. Sra. de
Guadalupe al puerto de Manzanillo, 1714.
62—1—19, 20
Testimonio de diligencias sobra la presa de
dos embarcaciones ingleses, que en el Valle
de Vanderas hizo Don Antonio del Real y
Quesada, 1714-1719.
Ramo secular: Puerto de Acapulco.
63—3—36
Cartas y expedientes del castellano y oficiales
reales del puerto de Acapulco, 1723-1735.
63—5—37
Expedientes sobre siete comisos de embarca
ciones egecutadas por Dn. Juan José de Veitia
Linage en el Puerto de Acapulco, 1712-1715.
Ramo secular del distrito de toda la Audiencia.
87—5—1 á 24
Registros de oficio: reales órdenes dirigidas á
las autoridades de Nueva España, 1579-1761.
87—6—1 á 24
Registros de oficio y partes: reales órdenes
dirigidas á las autoridades y particulares de
Nueva España, 1529-1746.
88—5—12
Correspondencia con los virreyes, 1572-1820.
88—5—13
Instrucciones que dejaban los virreyes á los
sucesores, 1 772-1 801.
88—5—14
Instrucciones dadas al virrey Bucareli, cédulas,
minutas de despacho y provisiones del virreynato, 1760-1819.
88—5—16, 17
Correspondencia oficial con los virreyes, 17661779.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
88—5—22, 23
88—6—3 i 25
90—2—17
90—2—18
90—2—19
90—2—20
90—2—21
90—3—2
92—2—i á 20
93—7—1 á 7
96—3—6
III. Estado: México.
Estado 1 á 23.
427
Expediente de visitas de las cajas reales de
Acapulco hecha por Dn. José Gálvez, 17711772.
Cartas y expedientes del virrey, 1539-1780.
Gobiernos de los virreyes Duque de Albu
querque, Marqués de Valero, de Casa-Fuerte,
y del Conde de Fuen-Clara, 1711-1752.
Gobierno del virrey Conde de Revillagigedo,
1745-1756.
Gobierno del virrey Marqués de Cruillas, 17601770.
Gobierno del virrey Marqués de Croix, 1766
I775;
Gobierno de los virreyes, Conde Antonio María
Bucareli y Don Manuel de Flores, 1771-1787.
Gobierno del virrey Conde de Gálvez, 17851787.
Expedientes é instancias de partes, 1529-1775.
Cuentas de real hacienda de Acapulco, 17611809.
Expediente sobre la permisión de comercio
entre los reinos del Perú y Nueva España,
1774.
Legajos 1-23.
Audiencia de Guadalajara.
I. Simancas: Audiencia de Guadalajara.
Ramo secular.
67—3—27 á 31 Expedientes sobre el descubrimiento y misiones
de provincia de California, 1602-1758.
104—3—3
Expedición hecha por tierra á Monterey en
California, 1768-1772.
136—6—12
Indiferente de Nueva España.
Expedientes y papeles sobre visitas y visitadores
de las provincias de Nueva España, 1605-1662.
Depósito Hidrográfico, Madrid.
Colección de Navarrete, tomos 2, 18, and 19.
428
THE MANILA GALLEON
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>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> • <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
INDEX
Bustamante y Rueda, Fernando Manuel de,
governor, 52.
Cabildo, 157, 403.
Cadiz, controversy with Manila, 45, 51,
404-405.
Calderon Enriquez, Pedro, 53, 93, 244,
266, 410.
California, 15, 232-234, 241-246.
Cambodia, 50, 144.
Cano, Sebastian del, 18, 19.
Cargoes of galleons, 32, 33, 50.
Caroline Islands, 250.
Carrion, Juan Pablo, 45, 69, 118.
Casa de contratacion, 131, 400-402.
Casafuerte, Juan de Acuna, Marques de,
viceroy, 51.
Cavendish, Thomas, 242, 299, 303, 305313Cavite, 183, 195, 198, 253.
Cermenho (Cermeno), 240.
Charles III, 53.
Charles V, 19-20.
Chinese, Chapter 1 ; trade with Philippines,
26, 69-79; Spanish voyages to China,
64, 67; in Philippines, 37, 79-83. 8598.
Church, 44, 51, 52.
Baguios (typhoons), 29, 217, 251.
Clipperton, John, 320, 329-330.
Basco y Vargas, Jos£, governor, 54-55.
Cocks, Richard, 103, 109, 125, 214, 351,
Beauchesne, Gouin de, 296.
352.
Belhoso, Diogo, 144-150.
Berenguer de Marquina, Felix, governor, Colin, Francisco, 50, 214.
Compromisarios, 156, 209, 403.
40.
Concepcidn, galleon, 225, 259, 277, 281.
Boletus, 158-167, 172-177, 363.
Consulado, Manila, 57, 156, 159. 164, 172,
Borneo, 31, 143-144.
402-403; in Spain, 402.
Boucourt, Antoine Limarie, 208, 266.
Cook, James, 229, 295, 298.
Brouwer, Hendrick, 301.
Bucarely e Ursua, Antonio Maria de, vice Corcuera, Sebastian Hurtado de, governor,
89, 157.
roy, 245.
Cornish, Admiral, 338-341.
Buccaneers, 299, 314.
Buen Consejo, voyage from Spain to Cortes, Hcrnan, 19, 21.
Cotton goods, 32, 46, 48, 49, 56.
Manila, 57, 410-41 1.
Council of the Indies, 400.
Buen Socorro, galleon, 196.
Abrcu, Antonio de, 16.
Acapulco, 60, 367; Mexican terminal of
galleon line, 24, 371; harbor, 371-373;
town, 373-376; port administration, 186,
376-380; fair, 170, 381-384.
Acuna, Pedro Bravo de, governor, 30, 85,
125, 139, 173, 345.
Adams, Will, 109, 124, 345, 346.
Aguilar y Ponce de Leon, Rafael Maria
de, governor, 53, 133.
Albuquerque, Affonso de, 16.
Albuquerque, Francisco Fernandez de la
Cueva, Duque de, viceroy, 266.
Almojarifazgo, 1 80-181.
Alvarado, Pedro de, 21.
Anda y Salazar, Simon de, governor, 40,
58, 94, 338, 339, 375.
Anian, 242, 298.
Anson, George, 303, 330-337.
Arandia y Santiesteban, Pedro Manuel de,
governor, 52, 154, 228, 271.
Arellano, Alonso de, 24, 219.
Arriaga, Julian de, 400.
Arribadas, 252, 260-261.
Audiencia, 78, 173.
450
INDEX
Covadonga, galleon, 38, 193, 268, 303,
334-337Cruillas, Joaquin de Monserat, Marques
de, viceroy, 32, 187.
Cruzat y G6ngora, Fausto, governor, 166,
248, 275.
Curuzealegui y Arriola, Gabriel de, gov
ernor, 275.
Dampier, William, 314-321, 325.
Dasmarinas, Gomez Perez, governor, 31,
34. 73. 84. 106-107, 131, 180.
Dasmarinas, Luis Perez, governor, 66, 84,
88, 144, 146, 168, 367.
Date Masamune, 101, 127-128.
Diaz, Casimiro, 74.
Drake, Francis, 294, 303-30;.
Draper, General, 41.
Dutch, 58, Chapter 10; early voyages to
East Indies, 343; attacks on Spaniards
in the Philippines, 31, 344, 346, 348353. 355-358; voyages in the Pacific,
344. 345El Pinal, 66, 67.
Embocadero, see San Bernardino, Straits of.
Encarnacion, galleon, 244, 259, 303, 326327. 356Encomiendas, 52.
English, Chapter 9; attacks on the gal
leons, 304-341; trade in East Indies, 58,
135. 343Enriquez de Almansa, Martin, viceroy,
305.
Espiritu Santo, galleon, 122-123, *", 24°.
254, 258, 261, 280.
Fajardo y Tenza, Alonso, governor, 39,
348, 367Varna, galleon, 264.
Filipino, galleon, 198, 339, 340.
Fiscal, 45, 157, 177, 178, 183.
Flotas, trading fleets between Spain and
Mexico, 403-404.
Formosa, 31, 350, 353-355French, 135-136, 302.
Fuenclara, Pedro Cebriin y Agusrin, Conde
de, viceroy, 187.
Gage, Thomas, 362.
Gali, Francisco, 231-232.
Galleons, Chapter 5; number, 193; size,
194-195; construction, 195-196; cost,
197-198; officers, 200-209, 257; crews,
209-212.
Gallinato, Juan Juarez, 87, 146.
Galvcz, GenSnimo, 206-208.
Gdlvez, Jose1 de, 178, 245, 376, 400.
Galvcz, Manuel, 237.
Gam a, Joao da, 131.
Gama, Vasco da, 16.
Gemelli Careri, Francesco, 29, 253, 267,
384.
Goa, 100, 129, 350.
Goiti, Martin, de, 25, 83.
Gold, Philippine production, 18, 23, 32,
44. 46. 47Gonzalez, Blas Ruys de Hernan, 144-150.
Governor and captain-general, office of,
403.
Grau y Monfalcon, Juan, 28, 364, 390.
Guam, see Ladrone Islands.
Guadalcizar, Diego Fernandez de Cordoba.
Marques de, viceroy, 249.
Guadalupe, galleon, 153, 196.
Guzman, Francisco Tello de, governor, 78,
344Hately, Simon, 330.
Hawaiian Islands, 228.
Hawkins, Richard, 313.
Hermann, Heinrich, 209, 237.
Hezcta, Bruno de, 303, 246.
Hidetada, 101, 103, in.
Hideyoshi, 99, 101, 105-108, 122.
India, trade with the Philippines, 32, 50,
134-138.
Isla, Juan de la, 24, 64, 200.
Iyeyasu, 99-100, 108-110, 119, 124, 125,
126, 353.
Jalapa, fair, 362, 404.
Japan, Chapter 2; relations with Spaniards
in Philippines, 31, 50, 87, 93; galleons
in Japanese ports, 102, 107, 120-125;
Japanese voyages to Mexico, no, 125,
127.
INDEX
lava, 143.
Jesus Maria, galleon, 240, 254, 261.
Juan Fernandez, island, 320, 323, 332.
Junta de evaluo, 177-179.
Junta de repartimiento, 156-158.
Kelly-Kelly, Raymond, 209.
Kendrick, John, 208.
Kino, Eusebio, 243.
Koxinga, 90-91.
Ladrone Islands, 247, 317, 328-329, 334.
La Fertilise, Jean Francois Galaup de, 29,
296.
Lavezaris, Guido de, governor, 26, 64, 70.
Legaspi, Miguel Lopez de, 22-25.
Legeni.il de la Galaisiere, Guillaume Jo
seph Hyacinthe Jean Baptiste, 42, 53,
205.
Leon, Manuel de, governor, 70, 134.
L'Hermite, Jacques, 350.
Lima, 365.
Limahon, 26, 82.
Line of demarcation, 16-17.
Loaysa, Juan Garcia Jofre de, 19.
Macao, 27, 66, 67, 100, 129-134, 300.
Magallanes, galleon, 261.
Magdalena, galleon, 257.
Magellan, Ferdinand, 17-18, 69.
Malacca, 16, 134, 300, 347, 350.
Manila, 25, 27-29, 34-39, 50, 58; bay, 29.
Manrique de Lara, Sabiniano, governor,
90.
Martin, Lope, 219, 277-279.
Martinez de Zuiiiga, Joaquin, 27, 39, 43.
Medina, Andres de, 20 1, 249.
Mendana, Alvaro de, 231, 290-291.
Mendocino, Cape, 226, 239.
Mendoza, Antonio de, viceroy, 21, 361.
Mexico, City of, 362-363, 365.
Misericordia, Hermandad de la, 167, 169.
Moluccas, 16, 19, 20, 30, 44, 49, 138-142,
343. 345.
Moncada, Sancho de, 388, 392.
Montciro, Geronimo, 206, 237, 243, 335.
Monterey, 225, 226, 232, 240, 242, 244246.
45i
Monterey, Gaspar de Zuniga y Acevedo,
Conde de, viceroy, 232, 365.
Montesclaros, Juan Manuel Hurtado de
Mendoza y Luna, Marques de, viceroy,
210, 232, 365, 410.
Morga, Antonio de, 31, 67, 73, 86, 116,
127, 149, 234, 254, 344-345.
Moros, 23, 25, 43.
Narborough, John, 313.
Navidad, 22, 220, 371.
Nichols, Nicholas Norton, 411.
Nobunaga, 99, 101.
Noort, Oliver van, 344, 345.
Nuestra Senora de Begoha, galleon, 276,
281, 303, 327, 328.
Nuestra Senora de Gula, galleon, 228, 251,
281.
Nuestra Senora de la Vida, galleon, 258.
Nuestra Senora de los Remedios, galleon,
258.
Nuyts, Pieter, 351.
Obando y Soils, José Francisco de, gov
ernor, 131, 154, 157, 173, 174, 254,
266.
Palafox y Mendoza, Juan de, 188, 376.
Palaos Islands, 250.
Panama, 300, 410.
Pancada, 77-78, 115, 133.
Parian, 72, 79.
Perez Dasmarinas, see Dasmarinas.
Permiso, 45, 155, 181, 405.
Peru, 365-371.
Philip II, 22, 393.
Philippines, occupation by Spaniards, 20,
22; products, 20, 23, 44-49; plans to
develop resources, 53, 55, 56, 415.
Piezas, 158.
Pigafetta, Antonio de, 46.
Pilar, galleon, 260, 334.
Playa Honda, battle of, 348, 349.
Portuguese, Chapter 3, 129-135, 139, 140142; Spanish conquest of Portugal, 293,
342.
Quiroga, Pedro de, 51, 187, 368, 376,
379-380.
452
INDEX
QuircSs, Pedro Fernandes de, 290-293.
Residcncia, 172, 173, 185, 202.
Revillagigcdo, Juan Vicente de Giiemes
Pacheco de Padilla, Conde de, viceroy,
226, 362.
Rica de Oro and Rica de Plata, 126, 231238.
Rios Coronel, Hernando de los, 67, 116,
173, 212, 224, 234.
Rogers, Woodes, 242, 303, 321-329.
Rojas, Pedro de, 39, 173.
Rojo del Rio y Vieyra, Manuel Antonio,
governor, 52, 339.
Ronquillo, Diego, governor, 47.
Ronquillo, Gonzalo, governor, 79, 139,
366.
Rosario, galleon, 227, 235, 241, 248, 257,
264. 3°3. 3". 356Route, Chapter 6; prevailing winds, 216217; discovery of eastern route, 217: 1; eastward route, 221-246; sehas, or
signs of land, 238-240; westward route,
224-250; plans for change of route, 224226.
Royal Philippine Company, 57, 60, 67,
Appendix 1.
Saavcdra, Alvaro de, 19, 69, 218.
Sacra Familia, galleon, 235, 264.
Salamanca, Juan Cerezo de, governor, 113.
Salazar, Domingo de, 166, 312.
Salcedo, Diego de, governor, 52, 173, 249.
Salcedo, Felipe de, 24, 220.
Salcedo, Juan de, 25, 26, 83.
Salinas, Luis de Velasco (II), Marques de,
viceroy, 121.
San Andres, galleon, 160, 251, 255, 260,
261, 267.
San Antonio, galleon, 257, 258, 262.
San Antonio de Padua, galleon, 241, 251.
San Bernardino, Strait of, 221-222, 280.
San Blas, 60, 371.
San Carlos, galleon, 198.
San Carlos Borromeo, galleon, 167, 221.
San CristSbal, galleon, 193, 235, 260.
Sande, Francisco de, governor, 45, 64, 68,
144, 366.
San Diego, galleon, 251, 356.
San Diego, port, 242, 243.
San Felipe, galleon, 102, 121-122, 246,
258, 261, 262.
San Francisco, 225, 226, 245.
San Francisco, galleon, 109, 124, 258, 261,
262.
San Francisco Xavier, galleon, 189, 248,
260.
San Cer6nimo, galleon, 24, 256, 264, 277279.
San ]osi, galleon, 158, 189, 198, 22;, 228,
246, 258, 259-260, 264, 266.
San Juan, galleon, 251.
San Juan de Letrin, galleon, 218.
San Juanillo, galleon, 24.
San Lucas, Cape, 239, 266.
San Lucas, galleon, 219-220.
San Martin, galleon, 132, 160, 251.
San Nicolas, galleon, 259, 348.
San Pablo, galleon, 24, 220.
San Pedro, galleon, 226.
San Sabiniano, galleon, 261.
Santa Ana, galleon, 38, 47, 124, 211, 303,
307-308.
Santa Barbara, 246.
Santa Margarita, galleon, 255.
Santa Rosa, galleon, 158, 167, 198, 206,
261, 262, 276.
San Telmo, galleon, 214, 261, 276.
Santiago, galleon, 268, 310.
Santisima Trinidad, galleon, 189, 196, 198,
210, 213, 221, 228, 251, 255, 261, 264,
266, 276, 281, 282-283, 303, 339-341.
Santo Crista de Burgos, galleon, 259, 260,
262, 330.
Santo Domingo, galleon, 255, 281.
Santo Nino, galleon, 214, 275.
Santo Tomis, galleon, 189, 255.
Sarmiento de Gamboa, Pedro, 290.
Schapenham, Hugo, 350.
Scurvy, on galleons, 265.
Sebastian, Cubero, 265, 274. 2T2('» j
Selkirk, Alexander, 320, 323-324, 328.
Senas, 238-240, 272.
Sequeira, Diogo Lopes de, 16, 18.
Serrab, Francisco, 16, 17, 18.
Shelvocke, George, 329-330.
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