Chapter 19
Acapulco
California and New Spain
The San Pedro sighted an island off California on 18 September 1565, ran south along the coast of Baja California, and reached Acapulco on 8 October 1565, about four months after leaving Cebu. Sixteen people had died, including the chief pilot, and only ten to eighteen were fit to work.
18 September 1565
On 18 September the lookouts see an island off their starboard bow. It lies at about thirty-three degrees, off the coast of what is now California. They call it Deseada, the Longed-For.
They have crossed the Pacific from west to east, by the road Urdaneta promised. Now they must follow the coast south, a thousand miles and more, to Mexico.
22–23 September 1565
On 22 September they sight the mainland, and the next day name a point of land Santa Catalina, at twenty-seven degrees and twelve minutes. From there they coast southeast along Baja California, then a long, empty peninsula of desert and mountains, with sickness spreading through the ship.
26–27 September 1565
They reach the southern tip of the peninsula, which they call Cabo Blanco, the White Cape. There the master of the ship dies, “and we threw him into the sea at this point.” On 27 September, wrote Espinosa, the chief pilot, “Esteban Rodriguez died between nine and ten in the morning.”
Rodríguez had piloted the fleet across the Pacific and back. He did not live to see Mexico.
1–8 October 1565
On 1 October the *San Pedro* lies off Navidad, the port she sailed from more than ten months before, and her chart shows eighteen hundred and ninety-two leagues from Cebu. Espinosa asks Salcedo where to take her. To Acapulco, says the captain, farther south.
“Although at that time there were but from ten to eighteen men able to work,” Espinosa wrote, “for the rest were sick, and sixteen others of us had died, we reached this port of Acapulco on the eighth of this present month of October after all the crew had endured great hardships.”
The way back has been found. For the next two hundred and fifty years, until 1815, the Manila galleons will sail it every year: west from Acapulco with Mexican silver, east from Manila with Chinese silk and porcelain.