Lope Martín

Lope Martín (born ; marooned 21 July 1566) was an Afro-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 a free mulatto from Lagos, Portugal, who 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. Martín then set out for 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 and was a native of Lagos, Portugal. He was a free mulatto of Portuguese and African descent; his African ancestors were brought to Portugal as slaves. He was evidently 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 Ayamonte, near the Spanish and Portuguese border. This is evidenced by the fact that many of his contemporaries believed him to be a native of Ayamonte. 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 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 a crew of 380 people, including sailors, soldiers, scribes, and monks, was gathered. 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.

Martín was designated the sole pilot of one of the four ships, a three-masted patache called the ''San Lucas''. The smallest of the four, the ''San Lucas'' weighed 40 tons and was around long. It had a crew of ten sailors and ten soldiers and carried just eight casks of water, even though the vessel would need to travel roughly to its eventual destination, the Philippines. 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.

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'', the fleet's flagship. 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 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.

Separation of the ''San Lucas''

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. 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. The flagship signaled to the rest of the ships to slow down; despite this 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. Martín justified his failure to slow down by explaining that the ''San Lucas'' could not reduce its speed during the storm without cross sea flooding the deck due to the vessel's shallow sides.

Separated, the ''San Lucas'' spent over a month on the open ocean before encountering the Marshall Islands. The islands, which comprise 29 atolls and 5 coral islands, pose a threat due to the fact that they are surrounded by coral that can breach a vessel's hull. They are also low-lying, making them difficult to detect during approach. On the night of 5 January 1565, crewmembers of the ''San Lucas'' recognized that the ship was headed directly towards one of the Marshall Islands' atolls (possibly Likiep Atoll) and was at risk of running aground. Martín quickly ordered the sails lowered as the ''San Lucas'''s helmsman turned the vessel hard to port. Pushed by a strong breeze, the ship narrowly avoided crashing into the atoll and instead entered a shallow body of water. While standing on the deck and searching for a way to reenter the open sea, Martín was swept off of the ship by a wave. He managed to cling onto a rope with a single hand and reboard the vessel.

Two days after avoiding that collision, the ''San Lucass crew spotted a canoe piloted by three inhabitants of the islands. The sailors helped the three natives, two grown men and one boy, board the ship and gave them beads, a knife, toy bells, and a shirt in exchange for fish, coconuts, and water. The natives then led ten of the crewmembers—among them Martín and Arellano—to their families and their homes, which they had built on the shoreline of an island amid the coral reefs (possibly Kwajalein Atoll). Martín called the island "the Island of the Two Neighbors", referring to the two families that resided there.

The following day, 8 January, the sailors of the ''San Lucas'' encountered a well-populated island (perhaps Lib) whose inhabitants swam out more than one league to meet the vessel; Arellano named it "the Island of the Swimmers" in reference to this. The ''San Lucas'' failed to stop at any point in the Marshall Islands because they could not find anchorage in the coral reefs; before the voyage, Legazpi had instructed any ship that became separated to stop at the nearest island and await the rest of the squadron for ten days.

Having successfully navigated through the Marshall Islands, the ''San Lucas'' proceeded to the Caroline Islands, barely avoiding a reef on 15 January and arriving on 17 January to most likely Chuuk Lagoon. After the inhabitants of Chuuk invited the ''San Lucas'' to sail into an inlet within the atoll, they launched an assault on the vessel with spears and clubs. The sailors attempted to withdraw as Arellano ordered a musket volley to frighten the natives away. Martín assessed that it would be impossible to exit from where they had entered in the dark; he instead marked the bearing of a nearby shoal for reference and had the leadsman search for anchorage. As the ship moved slowly along the shoal, the leadsman located a bottom at thirty fathoms and the ''San Lucas'' managed to anchor for the night. They departed Chuuk the following morning and although about a dozen canoes followed them, a sailor scared them off with a shot from a culverin.

The next day, the ''San Lucas'' anchored at Pulap Atoll, in desperate need of wood and water. After a sailor sailed to and from the atoll on one of the inhabitant's canoes, returning with jars of water, Martín and Arellano planned to row to the island with eight other men. They departed in their boat, but worried that the reef would tear a hole in the bottom and disconcerted by the sight of islanders hiding behind trees holding spears, Martín and Arellano reversed course and returned to the ''San Lucas''. Instead, three more sailors boarded canoes and went towards the island, where the natives beat the first two to death with clubs. The third managed to fight off the natives who were bringing him to the island and was rescued by his crewmates. The ''San Lucas'' departed with its crew reduced to just eight sailors and ten soldiers.

On 22 January, the ''San Lucas'' coasted near an atoll—probably Sorol—when two canoes met them out at sea. Martín threw a red jacket into the water for the natives and one of the canoes sailed over to take it. As they drew near, a soldier seized a boy from the canoe by the hair and dragged him onto the ship while the rest fired muskets and a culverin at both canoes. The wounded men abandoned their canoes and swam back to the island. The crew of the ''San Lucas'' captured the canoes and broke them down for firewood. As for the boy, the crew cut his hair, clothed him, and named him Vicente. They passed by another atoll, likely Ngulu, the following night.

Martín and the crew of the ''San Lucas'' were the first of the fleet to reach the Philippines, spotting the islands on 29 January, seventy days after departing from Mexico. That evening, the wind changed and began to push them towards the shore. Threatened with the ship's grounding, the crew lowered the rowboat, aiming to use it to tow the ship out of danger; instead, the wind hurtled the boat into the ship, damaging both craft. By 02:00 the next morning, the crew had accepted that the ''San Lucas'' would run aground, which it did, and began preparing to unload the ship. Then, the wind shifted once more, freeing the ship. Martín suggested to Arellano that like Ruy López de Villalobos, who had led an expedition to the Philippines two decades earlier, they would be unable to sail north along Mindanao due to a current; accordingly, it would be better to travel south to the Davao Gulf. Arellano agreed and the ''San Lucas'' cruised to the gulf, where its crew brought it to rest in a sheltered cove.

On the morning of 30 January, Martín and four sailors rowed to shore to meet with three Filipinos who had called out to them. The Filipinos left and returned that afternoon with thirty or forty warriors. Arellano and Martín rowed back to the island to reconvene with them; together, the groups embraced and drank alcohol. The ''San Lucas'' remained anchored in the cove for the entirety of February. A minor mutiny began there as four discontented men absconded with the ship's rowboat, a flint stone, and some arquebuses and made a camp on the island. Tied to the ship with rope, Martín swam as close as he could to the shore and appealed to the men, but still they refused to return. One night, Martín led Arellano and three men to the mutineers' camp, where he shot their lookout with an arquebus while the rest of the men apprehended the sleeping campers. Arellano brought all four mutineers to the ship and arranged their execution, but just before the men could be hanged, Martín intervened and claimed they would be unable to depart with such a diminished crew.

Return voyage

Repaired, the ''San Lucas'' left the cove on 4 March and continued west around Mindanao, their departure apparently motivated by an impending Filipino attack. Before they left, the men of the ''San Lucas'' had left crosses and a jar of letters detailing their path, hoping the rest of the fleet would find them. They cruised around the center of the Philippines and passed the islands of Mindanao, Cebu, Bohol, and Leyte with the intent of locating Legazpi and the fleet, but never sighted the other vessels. Martín deftly piloted the ship around a shoal and through the San Bernardino Strait, reentering the open ocean on 21 April. Advising Arellano, Martín recommended that they sail northeast back to Mexico, avoiding the Portuguese Spice Islands, and they set out to do so the following day. Before them, Magellan, Loaísa, Álvaro de Saavedra, and López de Villalobos had all attempted to sail the Pacific west to east to America; each had failed.

Martín intended to first navigate to Japan and stop for supplies before attempting the crossing, but the ''San Lucas'' never landed in Japan due to a misleading map. In fact, the only land the crew would see between the Philippines and North America was Lot's Wife, south of Tokyo. The ''San Lucas'' continued north until Martín, worried that they were close enough to China to run aground, directed the ship to the east. By that time, they were so far north that on 11 June, snow fell on the ship and their lamp oil froze; no European had traveled as far north in the Pacific before them. During the journey, the ship's men developed scurvy and were forced to use their own clothing to patch the sails. They also had to deal with rats gnawing into their casks of water and spilling their contents. At one point in the journey, to combat insubordination among the crew, Arellano and Martín had two men thrown overboard.

On 16 July, the crew of the ''San Lucas'' spotted North America for the first time; Martín surmised that they were seeing Cedros Island off the coast of Baja California. On 28 July, just a few hundred miles from the shore, two sizable waves struck the vessel, tipping it over, flooding it with water, and carrying away its helmsman. The sailors could hardly attend to Martín's orders to right the ship due to their fatigue, hunger, and the disorientation caused by the waves. Navigating with just their foresail, the crew experienced calmer weather thereafter and landed back at the port of Navidad on 9 August 1565, three months and twenty days after leaving the Philippines. Martín, Arellano, and their crew became the first men to make the west–east return voyage from Asia to the Americas.

Martín and the voyagers of the ''San Lucas'' were celebrated in Mexico for their accomplishment and made plans to travel to Spain for a meeting with King Philip II. This period of celebration was interrupted when on 8 October 1565, the fleet's flagship, the ''San Pedro'', returned to Mexico, having also completed the return voyage. Legazpi and his advisor Urdaneta were both highly suspicious of Arellano and Martín, believing they had deliberately separated the ''San Lucas'' from the rest of the fleet. Legazpi's legal representative worked quickly to prevent Arellano and Martín from sailing to Spain and ordered them to appear before Legazpi himself, who had remained in a newly established Philippine colony. The Real Audiencia of Mexico dismissed Legazpi's charges, as there were multiple pieces of evidence indicating their innocence: multiple pilots had noted a storm when the ''San Lucas'' separated; the crew of the ''San Lucas'' had sailed around the Philippines searching for the rest of the fleet and had left crosses and a jar of letters; and they had returned directly to Navidad instead of the Spice Islands or any other location.

Final expedition

The Real Audiencia of Mexico permitted Arellano to sail to Spain but ordered Martín to lead a voyage back to the Philippines to resupply Legazpi's colony. Martín understood that this was a punishment and that Legazpi would have him executed as soon as he arrived. To convince Martín to carry out the expedition, he was given 11,000 ducats to purchase a ship and contract a crew; Martín and his associates squandered the money and were imprisoned for embezzlement. The Audiencia thus selected a ship and captain for Martín and released him from prison; separately, they ordered Legazpi to hang Martín upon his arrival.

Martín's ship, the ''San Jerónimo'', departed Acapulco on 1 May 1566. Soon after setting sail, Martín informed his captain, Pero Sánchez Pericón, that he had no intention of sailing to the colony in Cebu and offered to navigate to Japan or Mindanao, where they could enrich themselves. Pericón refused, leading Martín to conspire against him. He began by encouraging the sailors of the ''San Jerónimo'' to kill Pericón's prized horse, which they did. Enraged, the captain offered a reward of 1,000 pesos for information on anyone conspiring against him and one for 400 pesos for information on whomever killed his horse. Nobody claimed these rewards and Pericón and his son were left with few allies aboard the ship.

On the night of 3 June, the sergeant Juan Ortiz de Mosquera and the sailor Bartolomé de Lara broke into the captain's quarters and stabbed Pericón and his son to death; Martín stood outside with a sword and shield to prevent anyone from intervening. Mosquera, popular among the men of the ship, was named the new captain and announced his plan to continue to Cebu. He was suspicious of Martín and watched him closely, even considering hanging him preemptively, but on 21 June, Martín successfully orchestrated Mosquera's murder. While Mosquera, Martín, and others were eating breakfast, sailors accosted Mosquera and bound his hands and feet. Martín informed Mosquera that he was to be executed for murdering Pericón and had him thrown into the ocean, still alive. Martín also justified the execution afterwards by labeling Mosquera a sodomite.

Marooning

The ''San Jerónimo'' arrived at the Marshall Islands on 29 June, with Martín establishing himself as the vessel's "dictator" by that point. After a week amidst the islands, the ''San Jerónimo'' nearly wrecked against a reef before the sailor Lara, contrary to Martín's orders, took control of the ship and led it into a channel, where the crew dropped anchor safely; they were inside Ujelang Atoll. Martín, intending to maroon those who were disloyal to him, ordered nearly everyone to exit the ship under the pretext that it needed to be repaired. He then spent days on Ujelang speaking to the ''San Jerónimo'''s men, testing their loyalty to him and trying to sway them to his side.

On 16 July, a group of dissenters rowed to the ''San Jerónimo'', wounded Martín's guards aboard the ship, and took command of it and its weapons. Martín, still ashore, was confident that his men on the vessel would retake control from the dissenters and doubted they would be able to travel far without any sails or navigational tools, which had all been removed. At this point, a growing number of men began abandoning Martín and swimming to the ''San Jerónimo'' to avoid being marooned. Martín ordered his followers to swim to the ship to retake it, causing the men aboard the vessel to attempt to depart; after the failed attempt, the ship was pushed back into the atoll. From there, Martín's followers and the men aboard the ship negotiated. In return for the sails and navigational tools, Martín's group was given food. The ''San Jerónimo'' then departed on 21 July, marooning Martín and 26 of his associates.

After the marooning, there was no confirmed sighting of Martín and his men. In 1568, Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira stopped at an island in the Marshall Islands. Based on the presence of a rope and chisel on the island, he believed that Martín and the marooners had been there. Later, the missionary Juan Antonio Cantova theorized that the fair skin of some inhabitants of the Caroline Islands was a trait passed by the marooners, thus suggesting that Martín and his associates left descendants there.

Legacy

Achievements

Martín and the crew aboard the ''San Lucas'' became the first men to sail across the Pacific and then make the west–east return voyage from Asia to the Americas. Before him, numerous explorers had sailed to Asia from the Americas, but none had managed to return. The historian Andrés Reséndez credits Martín with permanently linking Asia with the Americas and causing the emergence of a transpacific exchange of crops, animals, and precious metals. Martín and his men were also the first Europeans to spot a number of islands, among them Chuuk Lagoon, Pulap Atoll, and Sorol. Due to Arellano and Martín's alleged desertion, the importance of their accomplishments has been minimized by some historians; Pierre Chaunu even described their voyage as "merely anecdotal".

Character

Whether or not Martín deliberately separated the ''San Lucas'' from the Legazpi fleet is uncertain. Legazpi, Urdaneta, and others on the voyage believed that he had done so intentionally as part of a plot; the mid-20th century writers José de Arteche and Mairin Mitchell both concurred with this assessment. Conversely, Reséndez described the belief that Martín had intentionally separated the ''San Lucas'' from the other ships as "at least excessive and quite likely unfounded", basing this assessment on the evidence laid out in Martín's defense before the Real Audiencia of Mexico.

Regardless, the circumstances of both of Martín's expeditions have led to him generally being remembered as treacherous and conniving. The author Andrew Sharp referred to him as "notorious" and a "plotter", writing that he "was born to be in mischief". The writer William Lytle Schurz called him "faithless" and noted that "the character of artín... lent color to the suspicions of Legazpi". The Filipino historian Junald Dawa Ango, while discussing the ''San Jerónimo'' expedition, labeled Martín a "treacherous pilot".

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Spanish explorers of the Pacific
Portuguese people of African descent
16th-century Portuguese people
Exploration of the Pacific Ocean
History of Africa
Spanish explorers of North America
Explorers of Asia