MANILA GALLEONS
Spain and the Philippines lay connected by only a couple of ships – the Manila Galleons – from 1573 until 1815. There was trade with Asia, mainly China, before then. Silver came to the Philippines to purchase silk, porcelain, tea and other items like beeswax. The galleon trade facilitated the exchange of culture, traditions, and culinary practices between the Philippines and Mexico.
The trading network opened after Chinese sailors were rescued from their sinking ships off the islands in 1571. After helping the survivors return to China, a trading vessel came the next year, sent by grateful Chinese. That ship became filled with silk, porcelain and other Chinese goods. The ship went eastward to Mexico in 1573 with the cargo eventually reaching Spain. The goods were well received, and a new trade network began.
Spanish trade routes during the Age of Exploration.
Drawn by Simeon Netchev for World History Encyclopedia.
Manila was the center for trade coming in from southeast Asia, Japan, India and China. Spanish hopes for the islands initially centered around spice. Soil and climate proved unsuitable for spice growing. The minerals of America were not present either. The trade became the main reason for the Spanish in the Philippines.
The transpacific route was monopolized by the Spanish. In a single year, two ships made the voyage across the ocean. From Cavite, the main port for Manila, the galleon would set out at the end of June or early July for North America. They would reach Acapulco in about six months – though that could vary from four to eight depending upon conditions – sailing on the Kuroshio Current through the north Pacific reaching as far north as the 40th parallel. This journey was very difficult.
EASTWARD JOURNEY
The first part of the journey eastward was the hardest. It could take two months just to reach the 20th parallel. The strong winds of the summer monsoon blew hard creating constant huge waves to plow through. More than once, galleons were forced to return to Manila because of the weather. Mortality on the eastward journey could reach up to 50% of the crew and passengers due to disease and starvation.
Once reaching the 40th parallel the sailing became easier though the winds remained strong. Finally reaching the North American coast made for the final difficulty with winds swirling. Also, off the Californian coast, privateers preyed on the galleons.
CHINA AND GALLEON CREWS
For westbound ships, silver was the main cargo. The monies provided the colony in the Philippines with administrative wherewithal though most of the silver went toward purchasing more goods from Chinese intermediaries who brought goods over from China to the islands in 30 to 40 junks laden with cargos each year.
Chinese dominated the trade as well as the shipbuilding industry – most of the Manila galleons became constructed in the Philippines. The ships built from Philippine hardwoods at Cavite were some of the largest European ships of the era averaging from 1,700 to 2,000 tons.
Crews were predominately Filipino or from Southeast Asia with less than a third Spaniards. High mortality rates – especially in the early years of the Manila Galleons – made it hard to find enough crewmen at times. Prisoners – criminal and deportees – made up some of the crew. Crew size ranged from about 100 men in the 16th century to 250 in the 18th century.
CAVITE
As the galleons grew in size, so did the draft of these ships. They were too large to come up the Pasig River to load and unload at the walled city of Manila, Intramuros. Goods gathered in Manila and barged over to the waiting galleons in Cavite where they loaded. Both in Acapulco and the Philippines, the galleons provided much needed seasonal work for shipbuilders (Philippines – constructed galleons built in Cavite), dockworkers, farmers, and others involved in the secondary trade routes.
Included among the crew were professional soldiers. Soon after the trade route began with galleons armed with up to 60 cannons. Elevated superstructures on the stern and bow offered marksmen good viewpoints with which to take on potential enemies from. The galleons were much larger and better armed than potential pirate vessels. The guns, large crew size and the fact that many of the passengers accompanying their valuable cargos were also armed made the galleons a tough nut even for many of the naval ships of the era, let alone the smaller pirate crafts.
AMERICAS
The ships would discharge their cargo in Acapulco taking on millions of silver pesos to refill the holds with Asian goods back in the Philippines. Cargos normally yielded profits of 100-300%. Leaving Acapulco in March or April, a faster return trip used trade winds. Some Old-World goods would make the eastbound voyages – olive oil, cacao, cochineal dye, wine, lace and Spanish cloth among other sundry items. Roughly 80% of the westbound cargo originated in the Americas with the other 20% transshipped across Mexico from Veracruz to Acapulco.
There was often much less bulk carried on the western leg. To take up some of the space, more passengers were carried with royal officials, their families, church friars and missionaries, soldiers and others – to include deportees, prisoners, undesirables from both Spain and the Americas. By the 18th century, up to 700-1,000 passengers joined the ships (up from 400 from the previous century). Many of those “Spaniards” going to the Philippines were actually from Peru and Mexico. The Manila galleons have left East Asian genetic imprints on the Mexican side, as well.
The sailing time was only three to four months in this direction with a stop in Guam to replenish supplies. From there, it was a quick two to three weeks back to Manila.
The time to leave Acapulco changed in 1620 when it was mandated the last day to leave Acapulco became 25 March. This was to avoid typhoons which could run anytime from May to November in the northern Pacific. The same mandate set eastward-bound ships to leave Manila by the last day of June, also the same month galleons arrived from Mexico.
QUICK INTERLUDE AT GUAM
A stop in Guam became mandated by the crown in 1688. The annual visit was Spain’s only contact with the colony there. Included in the ship’s cargo was the annual monies to support the colony and pay for the island’s governance – 34,000 pesos. Occasionally, the galleons would miss Guam. Weather and a lack of a safe port forced the government to levy a fine of 2,000 ducats for ships who were unable to leave the annual subsidy at Guam.
GALLEONS LOST
There were 108 ships operating on the circuit between 1565 and 1815. Of these, only four suffered capture by enemy vessels. Shipwrecks claimed many more. Between 1576 and 1798, twenty galleons wrecked within the Philippines themselves. The Santo Cristo de Burgos wrecked off the north coast of Oregon in 1693 with a large cargo of beeswax parts found in several locations. In total, at least thirty Manila galleons wrecked due to storms, reefs or accidental fires.
Up until 1593 three or more ships sailed from both Manila and Acapulco in a year. Due to lost vessels and complaints from Spanish merchants, a law restricted the number of ships to allow only two ships a year to sail from each port with one ship in reserve both in Acapulco and Manila. Tonnage and cargo were restricted though those restrictions were commonly ignored and not enforced. Ships heading back to Mexico often suffered from overcramming of goods. The Santa Maria Madalena left Cavite in 1734 capsizing a few hundred meters away from her anchorage so jammed with cargo. Ships normally left heading east or west in pairs for increased safety. A big problem was the ships were so crammed with goods; their draft was 40 feet when many of the reefs were only 30 feet.
ONWARD SHIPMENTS
Both Acapulco and Manila served as transshipment centers. Silver came from Mexico and Peru. A mule track ran across Mexico connecting Acapulco with Veracruz on the Atlantic side. The Manila galleon trade siphoned off most of the money sent east directly into buying Asian goods to the neglect of Spanish improvements to the Philippines.
Spain began having serious problems domestically as the 18th century progressed. The loss of Holland in the previous Reformation led to any possibility of extending trade routes further to the west from the Philippines around both India and South Africa shut down by the presence of Dutch who superseded the Portuguese in those regions. The Napoleonic Wars shut the mother country off from both the Americas and the Philippines. The last of the Manila galleons went out in 1811 returning to Manila in 1815. After this time, the trade monopoly was abandoned and trade opened to foreign merchants.
POST-NAPOLEON
Forced to pay for itself instead of relying on the Manila galleons, Filipinos began developing agriculture to gain cash crops for export. Sugar from Panay and Negros, as well as hemp, led the way. Exports began increasing especially after the 1869 opening of the Suez Canal effectively cutting the journey from Manila to Spain to a mere month.
OREGON CONNECTION
The Santo Cristo de Burgos came to grief on the Oregon coast in 1693. Lumps of beeswax of which the galleon was carrying a large cargo lay scattered along the northern Oregon coast for years. And wooden beams thought part of the ship were discovered in 2019 in sea caves beneath Neahkahnie Mountain.
To sail so far north as Oregon suggests something seriously amiss. Possibly, the ship suffered damage from a storm and drifted north afterwards. By the time ships had reached the North American continent, crew levels suffered losses from scurvy and disease. That left fewer able-bodied men to control the big, heavy ships. Also, the Pacific current off the Oregon coast shifts to a northward direction around December. The ship, already late in the year and possibly disabled, then drifted north at the mercy of the current.