Featured Article Summary #195

Lope Martín was an Afro-Portuguese sailor who became the first person to successfully sail from Asia back to the Americas across the Pacific, completing the return voyage that others had tried but never finished. He was a free mulatto from Lagos, Portugal, and worked as a licensed pilot in Spain, joining Miguel López de Legazpi’s expedition from Mexico to the Philippines. Martín traveled with the patache San Lucas, separating from the main fleet and reaching the Philippines in January 1565. After that, he continued on his own across the Pacific west–east and arrived in Mexico in August 1565. However, the Real Audiencia of Mexico ordered him to return to the Philippines to face Legazpi, who was expected to execute him for allegedly abandoning his fleet. Martín left Mexico in May 1566, but after leading mutinies to keep control, he anchored at Ujelang Atoll in July 1566 and ended up being marooned with 26 others, who then disappeared. Martín was born in Lagos, Portugal, and was of Portuguese and African descent, with African ancestors who had been brought to Portugal as slaves. He became a highly skilled sailor and navigator, working as a licensed maritime pilot in Spain—rare for someone of African descent at the time. Because pilots were usually expected to be Spanish nationals, he likely claimed he was from Ayamonte near the Spanish-Portuguese border and said his wife lived there. In 1557, Spain’s King Philip II ordered the viceroy of New Spain to send a fleet to the East Indies and set up a colony. Lope Martín was one of the expedition’s pilots, assigned as sole pilot of the small ship San Lucas, which carried very little water and a small crew, despite the long voyage to the Philippines. After delays, the fleet departed Navidad on 21 November 1564, and Legazpi later revealed that secret orders from Mexico’s high court had changed the mission from New Guinea to the Philippines to avoid open conflict with Portuguese rights under existing treaties. Martín navigated using a compass and solar tables, and he could estimate longitude using magnetic declination, but because he sometimes sailed without references and his measurements were sometimes inaccurate, the San Lucas’s exact route cannot be reconstructed. After leaving the fleet, Legazpi had the San Lucas scout ahead and maintain a small distance from the other ships using day and night signals. A storm on 1 December 1564 forced Martín to keep sailing despite orders, and the ship was separated for over a month until it reached the Marshall Islands, where coral reefs, low visibility, and attacks from islanders repeatedly endangered the crew. The San Lucas eventually reached the Philippines in late January, grounded briefly, then anchored near Surigao, where Martín and Arellano formed alliances with local people and later put down a small mutiny by convincing the mutineers to return rather than being executed. After being repaired, the San Lucas left the Philippines in March and searched for the rest of the fleet but never found them, then sailed east across the Pacific as far north as the weather turned brutal, causing scurvy, frozen supplies, and constant damage from rats. The ship finally spotted North America in July and, near Navidad, it was badly struck by waves that nearly prevented the crew from saving it; they reached Navidad on 9 August 1565, becoming the first crew to return from Asia to the Americas by sailing west to east. Although Legazpi’s side accused Arellano and Martín of separating the ship and wrongdoing, the Real Audiencia dismissed the charges because there was strong evidence of their innocence, including reports of storms and clear signs they were searching and returning for the right reasons.