Loaísa expedition
Country | Spanish Empire |
---|---|
Leader | García Jofre de Loaysa |
Start | July 24, 1525 |
End |
|
Goal | Colonize Spice Islands, rescue Trinidad |
Ships | 7 |
Crew | 450 |
Survivors | 79, including 50 aboard Santiago and 4 rescued from Sangir |
Route | |
The Loaísa expedition was an early 16th-century Spanish voyage of discovery to the Pacific Ocean, commanded by
Origins
De Loaísa's expedition was conceived both as a rescue mission and a voyage of discovery. The Victoria, a vessel from Magellan's expedition to the Pacific, had returned to Spain in 1522 with word that her sister ship the Trinidad had last been seen attempting to return home by sailing east from the Spice Islands to South America. De Loaísa was ordered to seek Trinidad, or news of her fate, by voyaging along her expected return route to Spain.
Atlantic voyage
The expedition set sail from Corunna on July 24, 1525. It consisted of seven ships, Santa María de la Victoria, Sancti Spiritus, Anunciada, San Gabriel, Santa María del Parral and San Lesmes and a patache, Santiago. De Loaísa was named captain along with Juan Sebastián Elcano, who had reached the Spice Islands in 1521 during the Magellan expedition.
The fleet headed southwest to the
The San Lesmes under the captaincy of Francisco de Hoces was driven south along the coast, possibly to a latitude of 57°, where the crew noted "an end of land" which could have been the first European sighting of Cape Horn.[4] After some difficulty Hoces was able to steer his galleon northward once more, rejoining the other three vessels that remained with the expedition. On 26 May 1526, this diminished fleet of four ships (three galleons and the patache), passed through the Strait and entered the Pacific.[4]
Pacific voyage
The bad weather which had originally scattered de Loaísa's fleet continued in the
The Santiago sailed north, and in a 10,000-kilometre voyage, reached the Pacific coast of Mexico in July 1526, achieving the first navigation from Europe to the western coast of North America. 50 people survived and some of them took part in the expedition commanded by Álvaro de Saavedra which would also cross the Pacific between 1527 and 1529.[5]
The San Lesmes disappeared entirely. Twentieth century speculation suggests she ran aground in the Tuamotus, either on the island of Anaa where a 1774 expedition found a cross erected on the beach, or off the Amanu atoll where an old Spanish cannon was later found.[4]
The third ship, Santa María del Parral, sailed the Pacific to Sangir off the northern coast of Sulawesi, where the ship was beached and its crew were variously killed or enslaved by the natives. Four survivors were rescued in 1528 by Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón's Spanish expedition coming from Mexico.
The last galleon, Santa Maria de la Victoria, was the only ship to reach the Spice Islands, landing in September 1526.[4]
Survivors
Loaísa himself died on July 30, 1526, Elcano a few days later, and
Theories of the wreck of the San Lesmes
Australian researcher Robert Adrian Langdon hypothesised that the San Lesmes, after being lost in a storm off the coast of South America, deviated through the Pacific Ocean, stopping in Tahiti, before being wrecked on the coast of New Zealand. French historian Roger Hervé claimed that the Spanish caravel was diverted to Tasmania also, until it went up the Australian eastern coast and was captured by the Portuguese near what is now Cape York.[6] New Zealand film maker Winston Cowie assesses the San Lesmes theory in his books Nueva Zelanda, un puzzle histórico: tras la pista de los conquistadores españoles [7] and Conquistador Puzzle Trail,[8] the Spanish version of which was completed with the support of the Embassy of Spain to New Zealand,[9] adding the oral tradition of the Pouto Peninsula to Langdon's work.[10] Cowie concludes that there is a possibility that the San Lesmes was wrecked on the Pouto Peninsula, with more research required to take the theory from possibility to probability.[11]
Greg Scowen's fiction conspiracy thriller The Spanish Helmet is based on Langdon's theory.
See also
Notes
References
- ^ a b Kelsey 1986, p.151
- ^ Nowell 1936, p. 328
- ^ a b Nowell 1936, p.329
- ^ a b c d Bergúno 1990, p. 25
- ISBN 9788499677354. Retrieved 16 March 2022.
- ^ "San Lesmes, el barco que cambiará la historia". Gaceta Náutica (in Spanish). 11 February 2022.
- ISBN 9788483471777.
- ^ "Conquistador trail from Portugal to Pouto".
- ^ "Kiwi author and Spanish embassy gifts books to schools". 4 July 2017.
- ^ New Zealand discovery puzzle could you help re-write history divenewzealand.co.nz [dead link]
- ^ Pontevedra, Silvia R. (4 April 2018). "Theory that New Zealand was discovered by Spain gains new traction". El Pais. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
Bibliography
- Blanco, Francisco Mellén. "García Jofre de Loaysa". Real Academia de la Historia (in Spanish).
- Berguno, Jorge (1990). "The South and Mid-Pacific Voyages". In Hardy, John; Frost, Alan (eds.). European Voyaging towards Australia. Australian Academy of the Humanities. ISBN 0909897190.
- Kelsey, Harry (April 1986). "Finding the Way Home: Spanish Exploration of the Round-Trip Route across the Pacific Ocean". The Western Historical Quarterly. 17 (2). United States: Utah State University: 145–164. JSTOR 969278.
- Nowell, Charles E. (December 1936). "The Loaisa Expedition and the Ownership of the Moluccas". Pacific Historical Review. 5 (4). United States: University of California Press: 325–336. JSTOR 3632888.
Further reading
- (in Spanish) Landín Carrasco, Amancio. España en el mar. Padrón de descubridores. Madrid: Editorial Naval ISBN 84-7341-078-5
- (in Spanish) Oyarzun, Javier. Expediciones españolas al Estrecho de Magallanes y Tierra de Fuego. Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica ISBN 84-7232-130-4.
- (in Spanish) "Expedición de Loaysa ó Loaisa 1524-1536" Historia Naval de España
- Snow, Philip & Waine, Stefanie. The people from the horizon. London: Mclaren Publishing ISBN 0-947889-05-1
- "Expedition of García de Loaisa 1525-26." In The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, edited and annotated by Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson. Cleveland, Ohio: A.H. Clark Company, 1903-9. Vol. 2, 1529-1561. pp. 25–35.