Loyasa and Saavedra

1525 to 1529

The second Pacific voyage was also made from Europe by the Spanish, shortly after Magellan's trip. A fleet of seven ships under the command of Garcia Jofre de Loyasa sailed from Corunna in July 1525. With him Sebastian del Cano, undaunted by his previous trials, sailed as second-in-command and chief navigator. Loyasa lost three ships in the Strait of Magellan and entered the south sea on May 26, 1526, with his four remaining vessels. Both Loyasa and del Cano died before the ships reached the Philippines. A pinnace named the Pataca, which was separated from the other ships in a storm, managed to reach the shores of New Spain. Loyasa';s other ships followed Magellan's course across the Pacific and thus encountered no Polynesian islands.

Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, was informed from Spain of Loyasa's voyage, and he received news of the expedition's entry into the Pacific through the Pataca. He thereupon fitted out an expedition of three ships under the command of Alvaro de Saavedra to reinforce his countrymen. Saavedra sailed on October 31, 1527, from Zacatula, Mexico, on the first expedition organized from the American coast. Two of his ships were lost during a storm, but Saavedra and his flagship, the Florida, reached Mindanao and then the Moluccas. On a southwest wind, he sailed from Tidore in June 1528 to return to New Spain, but the wind failed and he returned to the Moluccas. When he left Tidore for the second time, in May 1529, he followed the coast of Papua to four or five degrees south latitude, then turned northeast and north to 27° N. latitude, where he died. His successors followed Saavedra's command to sail to 31° N. latitude but encountered contrary winds and turned back, arriving at the Moluccas in October 1529. Thus, the first attempt to return to New Spain across the Pacific failed.

It was also in 1529 that Charles V sold Spain's claim to the Moluccas to Portugal for 350,000 ducats, to the great disgust of the Spaniards who had established a footing on those islands by out fighting the Portuguese. Spain, however, retained her claims to the Ladrones and the Philippines, basing her right to them on their prior discovery by Magellan.