There were exotic spices like cinnamon, clove, mace, and pepper, and perfumes like musk. The Manila galleons carried cargo like rolls of silk, Chinese porcelain, Persian carpets, jewellery, medicines, and rolls of Indian cotton cloth. When the galleons finally hit land in what is today Oregon or California, they then worked their way south following the coast, although not too closely since the indigenous peoples were extremely hostile to any interlopers in their territory. With a poor diet and disease rife, it was not uncommon for 50 to 150 souls to die at sea during the voyage. The galleons carried around 40 paying passengers as well as cargo, although no foreigners were permitted passage unless they acted as officers on the ship. The voyage to the American continent, which was the ships’ first sight of land, generally took six months, although it might take four or eight depending on wind and sea conditions. Map courtesy World History Encyclopedia, Creative Commons These letters represented the opening four words of the Hail Mary prayer: Ave Maria, gratia plena…Ī map illustrating the rise of Spain into a global colonial and trading power following the European Age of Exploration of the 15th Century. Not for nothing then did Spanish galleons have the letters AMGP painted on their sails. The voyage from the Philippine Islands to America may be called the longest and most dreadful of any in the world, as well because the vast ocean to be crossed being almost one half of the terraqueous globe, with the wind always ahead, as for the terrible tempests that happen there, one upon the back of another, and for the desperate diseases that seize people in 7 or 8 months, lying at sea sometimes near the line, sometimes temperate, and sometimes hot, which is enough to destroy a man of steel, much more flesh and blood, which at sea had but indifferent food. The long voyage to the Americas was memorably described by the Italian Gemelli Careri who made the crossing at the end of the 17th century:
#Galleon cargo capacity series
Despite these natural aids, it was not uncommon for a galleon to have to turn back to Manila if a series of storms was encountered or if the ship was too unwieldy because it had been overloaded with cargo. The Kuroshio Current, which originates in Taiwan, contributed another welcome push in the right direction. The journey was a perilous one, with galleons usually leaving in June or July and using the trade winds to sail in a high arc that often crossed the 40th parallel. They still earn revenue today from ventures such as online gambling Philippines. Almost all Spanish galleons operating in the Pacific were built in the Philippines, a requirement enforced by law from 1679, and they were funded and owned by the Spanish Crown. Setting off from Manila in the Philippines, these ships became known as the Manila galleons to the British, although the Spanish themselves called them the naos de China or ‘Chinese ships’. The one, or more rarely two, annual Manila galleons arrived at Acapulco on the Pacific coast of what is today Mexico and which was then part of the Spanish Empire in the Americas, the Spanish Main. Unlike other ships, such as those of the Portuguese Empire which used the Cape of Good Hope trade route around the tip of southern Africa, the Spanish preferred to send their ships eastwards to the Americas.
From 1565, galleon ships were used to transport trade goods, gold, and silver accumulated at Manila from across Asia to the Americas and then to Spain. The Zaragoça treaty confirmed Portugal’s claim over the Spice Islands while Spain was given the Philippines. The 1529 treaty of Zaragoça (Saragosa) between Portugal and Spain extended the astonishing division of the world these two nations had previously established in the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. In the 16th century, two European powers were colonising the globe. Manila galleons going in either direction were a floating Aladdin’s cave of treasures and so they tempted many a pirate and privateer but, such was their armament, only four were ever captured at sea. The Manila galleons, meanwhile, returned to the Philippines each year loaded with silver to buy more goods for the next trip. The Atlantic treasure fleets then shipped some of these goods – along with silver, gold, and other precious materials extracted from the Americas – on to Spain. The Manila galleons were Spanish treasure ships which transported precious goods like silk, spices, and porcelain from Manila in the Philippines to Acapulco, Mexico, between 15. The Spanish themselves called them the naos de China or ‘Chinese ships’. (From the Boxer Codex) / Image via Wikimedia Commons A 1590 illustration showing a Spanish Manila galleon in the Ladrones Islands (Mariana Islands) in the Pacific Ocean.
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