Lope Martín

Lope Martín (fl. 1564–1566) was a Portuguese maritime pilot who successfully navigated across the Pacific Ocean east–west and then west–east, becoming the first to complete the return voyage from Asia to the Americas. Martín was from Lagos, Portugal, and became a licensed pilot in Spain. He was contracted for Miguel López de Legazpi's expedition from Mexico to the Philippines and was designated the sole pilot of a patache called the San Lucas. Martín and the San Lucas separated from the rest of the fleet after ten days and sailed through the Marshall Islands and the Caroline Islands before arriving at the Philippines in January 1565. Without the rest of the fleet, Martín then embarked upon the return voyage from Asia to the Americas, which had been attempted but never completed; the San Lucas arrived in Mexico in August 1565. In spite of Martín's accomplishments, the Real Audiencia of Mexico soon ordered him to return to the Philippines and appear before Legazpi, who was expected to execute him for having allegedly deserted the rest of his fleet. Martín's ship, the San Jerónimo, departed Mexico in May 1566; recognizing the danger that he faced, Martín led two successive mutinies and took command of the ship. He anchored the San Jerónimo at Ujelang Atoll in July 1566, intending to maroon any members of the crew who were not loyal to him; instead, Martín and 26 other men were left behind and never seen again.

Early life Martín was born in Lagos, Portugal. He was a free mulatto of Portuguese and African descent whose African ancestors were brought to Portugal as slaves. He was a skilled sailor and navigator; he was a licensed maritime pilot in Spain, a position that required much navigational and technical expertise. He was also one of the very few pilots of African descent in Spain in that era. Pilots were expected to be Spanish nationals; Martín probably claimed to be from the town of Ayamonte, near the Spanish and Portuguese border, since many of his contemporaries wrongly believed him to be from the town. Martín also stated that he had a wife living in the town.

Legazpi expedition In 1557, King Philip II of Spain ordered Luis de Velasco, the viceroy of New Spain, to send a fleet to the East Indies and establish a colony there. At the port of Navidad (now the town of Barra de Navidad, Mexico), four ships were constructed for the expedition and 380 men, including sailors, soldiers, scribes, and friars, were gathered to crew them. Martín was one of six pilots contracted for the expedition. He was to receive a payment of 700 ducats for the voyage, 300 fewer than the lead pilot Esteban Rodríguez; for reference, a laborer's yearly wage around that time was roughly 30 to 40 ducats. Martín was designated the sole pilot of one of the four ships, the San Lucas, a three-masted patache (a small ship with shallow sides). The smallest of the four, the San Lucas was 40 tons and around 29 feet (8.8 m) long. It had a crew of ten sailors and ten soldiers and carried just eight barrels containing around 1,000 gallons (3,600 L) of water, even though the vessel would need to travel roughly 8,000 miles (13,000 km) to its eventual destination, the Philippines. In comparison, the fleet's flagship, the San Pedro, was 550 tons (roughly five times larger than Ferdinand Magellan's ship, Trinidad) and carried 200 barrels of water, 100 soldiers, two pilots, three friars, and all of the expedition's leadership. When the San Lucas's original captain, Hernán Sánchez Muñón, refused to travel to Navidad, the fleet commander Miguel López de Legazpi appointed the nobleman Alonso de Arellano in his stead. Arellano did not have any nautical training.

Following years of preparation and multiple delays, the four ships departed Navidad in the early morning of 21 November 1564 with Legazpi as their commander and the experienced sailor Andrés de Urdaneta as his advisor. Four days into the voyage, Legazpi called for a meeting on the San Pedro. During the meeting, which was attended by the fleet's highest-ranking officers and pilots including Lope Martín, Legazpi revealed that although the fleet had previously received instructions to travel to New Guinea, the Real Audiencia of Mexico, Mexico's high court, covertly ordered Legazpi to instead direct the fleet to the Philippines and establish a colony on the islands. The Audiencia had also ordered him to keep these instructions secret until the fleet had already departed and sailed 100 leagues from the port, as Spanish colonization of the Philippines would be an open violation of the Treaty of Tordesillas and the Treaty of Zaragoza. According to the treaties, the Philippines belonged entirely to Portugal. Martín's navigational equipment during the voyage included a compass, a table showing the Sun's declination, and a now-lost chart of the North Pacific. He was also capable of calculating longitude by finding the difference between magnetic north and true north, called magnetic declination. At this time, such a skill was rare among pilots. For parts of the journey, Martín had sailed without any reference, and some of his estimates and measurements are known to be inaccurate; it is therefore impossible to plot the San Lucas's exact course.

Separation and voyage to the Philippines After the meeting, Legazpi ordered the San Lucas to take the San Pedro's position at the front of the fleet, where its crew would be responsible for scouting for hazards. They also established a signal system that used flags during the day and lanterns in the dark. As the San Lucas began to stray further from the fleet, at some points separating itself by two leagues, Legazpi ordered Martín to maintain his ship within half a league from the rest of the vessels. On 1 December 1564, a tempest formed, and Arellano ordered the crew to hang lanterns on the mainmast and stern. The flagship signaled to the rest of the ships to slow down, but Martín explained to Arellano that the San Lucas could not reduce its speed during the storm without its deck flooding due to the vessel's shallow sides. Thus, despite the signal and Legazpi's orders to remain within half a league, the San Lucas continued forward and disappeared from the view of the rest of the squadron.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.