Pacific Pathfinders

How the Galleons of Old Spain Came Into the Pacific

By Alan Hill

IN 1567, the court of the Viceroy of Peru was stirred from its usual somnolence. Sarmiento, a Spanish knight, and a student of old Peruvian manuscripts, claimed to have found detailed descriptions of certain islands, rich in gold and silver, lying far to the westward. He petitioned for the com mand of an expedition to seek them.

It is possible that Sarmiento desired to make a voyage of discoverv the ex cuse for leaving Peru. He had incurred the displeasure of the Inquisition: and the Civil Arm of the Holy Office had uncom fortable methods of dealing with those who fell foul of it.

Sarmiento was lucky: staying at the court at Lima was the Viceroy’s nephew, Alvaro de Mendana. This young man was a keen student of cosmographv, and had amassed considerable knowledge of the then-known physical features of the globe. He also held advanced theories on matters geographical, and anvthing relating to fresh discoveries intenselv interested him. Accordingly, Sarmiento’s Haims received Mendana’s support. The Viceroy’s nephew saw an onportunitv for a more ambitious voyage of exploration— a search for the Southern Continent which, he firmly believed, lay to the south-west of Peru.

With Mendana as a “friend at Court,”

Sarmiento was given a good hearing, and the Viceroy sanctioned the expedition.

First, the isles of gold and silver were to be sought; then Mendana’s theories of the Great South Land were to be investigated. Settlements were to be established in any lands discovered, and the territories annexed to Spain.

Two ships, of 250 and 107 tons respec tively were equipned and a personnel recruited, consisting of 150 sailors, soldiers and miners. Mendana was com mander-in-chief, assisted by Sarmiento, and Gallego, the chief pilot.

On November 19, 1567, the feast dav of Saint Isabel, the ships sailed from Callao, on a south-westerly course, which was held as far as latitude 16 deg. south.

No land had been sighted, and Mendana, on Gallego’s advice, ordered an altera tion of course to west. This was con trary to Sarmiento’s wishes; still, west it was. for some 1900 miles, then again altered to a shade north of west.

The decision'in latitude 16 deg south was fateful. If Sarmiento had been heeded, the additional westing made be fore altering course would surelv have brought the Spaniards to the Eastern Australian coast —and there would have been no need for a sesqui-centenary in 1938!

Fifty-seven days out from Peru, land was sighted; one of a group later to be known as the Ellice Islands. Heavy surf prevented a landing. The discovery was named the Island of Jesus, and the ex pedition sailed on toward the setting sun,

Twenty-three days later, more land was seen. Slowly it rose above the horizon; purple peaks and ranges, and a brilliant, verdant shoreline.

Gallego selected a sheltered cove. Down splashed the anchors, out swung the boats, and Mendana, with a large partv, disembarked on a pleasant, sandy beach.

Prayers were offered, a huge crucifix erected, and the banner of Spain un furled, to float lazily in the sweltering tropical heat over that advance-guard of civilization, the first whites in Oceania!

Mendana, certain that he had dis covered his continent, named the land Santa Ysabel, pious tribute to the patroness of the expedition.

The nucleus of a settlement was estab lished, and the miners set to work, to look for gold. The shipwrights were busy, too, and soon a keel wa§ laid down that speedily grew into a taut little brigantine.

Short vovages in this craft dispelled Mendana’s hope of being the discoverer

of the Great South Land. Santa Ysabel was proved to be an island. Continuing southwards, the sea party cruised through a large group of islands, thus destroying any lingering ideas that, even if not the Southern Continent, the newly-

found lands formed part of one of its northern promontories.

Every coastline was traced in an effort to prove Mendana’s theory. Along the shores of Guadalcanal and New Georgia the barquentine coasted, investigating native reports of great lands lying to the south. Always the “great lands” turned out to be islands, or fruits of the natives’ imaginations. And these natives—what of them ?

At the settlement, the Spaniards, with the queer mixture of piety and cruelty characteristic of the Dons of the times, had not endeared themselves to the original inhabitants. In justice, one must admit that the natives did little to in spire confidence; they were, as the re ports state, “treacherous, barbarous, and addicted to the eating of human flesh.”

They maintained a persistent hostility to the newcomers.

The Spaniards met barbarity with bar barity, specialising in the peculiar me thods of inhumanity that the Conquista dores usually dispensed to subject races.

Native attacks hampered the miners.

They found traces of gold, but, harassed by the islanders, were unable to work it.

After six months of hardship, toil and sickness, discontent ripened into incipient mutiny. The rank and file were heartily sick of the settlement. Hostile blacks prevented them from securing the wealth that apparently lay waiting to be dug from the ground. Supplies were low,

and wounds and tropical diseases under mined the general morale.

Influenced by the grumblings, and still more by the havoc wrought in the wooden hulls of his ships by the Teredo—the borer-worm infesting those waters— Mendana reluctantly decided to leave Santa Ysabel, and to return to the Americas while his ships would still float.

The settlement was abandoned on August 11, 1568.

To avoid head winds, the course was laid for Mexico. On the passage, the explorers sighted, and landed on one of the islands of what is now the Marshall Group. There they made a curious find— a chisel, fashioned from a shipwright’s iron clout, obviously of European origin.

How did it get there? That remains one of the Pacific’s unsolved mysteries.

Driven north, Mendana’s ships made California on December 19, 1568. The voyagers rested for some months, re conditioning and recuperating. They re turned to Callao in July, 1569, with noth ing of value save information, and the expedition was counted a failure.

But, later, rumours began to circulate about the fabulous wealth of the lands discovered. Then, as now, public memory was short, and, after twenty ' l7 ear<? elapsed, the expedition was viewed through ultra-rose tinted glasses. Instead of returning practically empty-handed, Mendana was credited with bavin 0brought back treasure to the value of 40,000 pesos of gold, and vast quantities of cloves and ginger! They were popul arly supposed to have discovered a land rich in precious stones, metals and spices.

Thus, the name we now have for that Pacific group, the Solomon Islands, came into, use.

Twenty-eight years after their dis covery, Mendana led another expedition to colonize the Solomons. His wife, Dona Isabella, accompanied him.

If the first expedition was a failure, the second ran only be classed as a disaster. Sickness, mutiny, the loss of the second-in-command, Lope de Vega and his ship, all tended to place the seal of defeat on a particularly ill-starred venture.

Mendana did not even reach the Solomons. He died at the island of Santa Cruz, a heart-broken man. His gallant widow took command, and after a fruit less search for the Solomons gave up the quest. The fleet —what was left of it—with rotten ringing and leaking hul 1 " - . limped across to the Philippines. The re treat was piloted by de Quiros, a man whose name was later to loom largely in the records of Pacific discovery.

In spite of the failure of both expedi tions to achieve anything of tangible and lasting value to his country, Mendana filled in quite a few of the blank spaces in the charts of his times. And so, when our trans-Pacific air tourists of the near future are scanning the route maps of the trip, their eyes will light on many names oahtying the stamp and ring of old Imperial Spain—the Spain whose galleons flaunted the red and gold of Castille across the oceans of the world, until they were harried from the seas by Elizabethan seadogs.