Manila-Acapulco Galleon - Discovery of The Route

Discovery of The Route

In 1521 Magellan was blown west across the Pacific by the trade winds. The problem was to go east. The first ship to try this failed. In 1529 Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón also failed. In 1543 Bernardo de la Torre failed. The Manila-Acapulco galleon trade began when Andrés de Urdaneta, sailing in convoy under Miguel López de Legazpi, discovered a return route from Cavite City to Mexico in 1565. Attempting to return, the fleet split up, with part of it heading south. Urdaneta reasoned that the trade winds of the Pacific might move in a gyre as the Atlantic winds did. If in the Atlantic ships made a wide swing (the "volta") to the west to pick up winds that would bring them back from Madeira, then, he reasoned, by sailing far to the north before heading east he would pick up westerlies to bring him back to the west coast of North America.

Though he sailed to 38 degrees North before turning east, his hunch paid off, and he hit the coast near Cape Mendocino, California, then followed the coast south to San Blas and later to Acapulco. Most of his crew died on the long initial voyage, for which they had not sufficiently provisioned.

By the 18th century it was understood that a less northerly track was sufficient, but galleon navigators steered well clear of the forbidding and rugged fogbound California coast; According to historian William Lytle Schurz, "They generally made their landfall well down the coast, somewhere between Point Conception and Cape San Lucas...After all, these were preeminently merchant ships, and the business of exploration lay outside their field, though chance discoveries were welcomed".

The first motivation for exploration of Alta California was to scout out possible way-stations for the seaworn Manila galleons on the last leg of their journey. Early proposals came to little, but in the later 18th century several Manila galleons put in at Monterey.