Fray Andres de Urdaneta was a Spanish sail-captain and explorer. He is most famous for discovering and plotting a path across the Pacific from the Philippines to Acapulco, Mexico, which came to be known as "Urdaneta's route." He set sail from San Miguel in the Philippines on June 1, 1565 and arrived in Acapulco on October 8, having traveled twelve thousand miles in 130 days. Upon arriving, he discovered that a member of his expedition, Alonso de Arellano , who had abandoned them just after leaving port had actually beaten them across the ocean, arriving at Navidad in August. However, Arellano's notes were far less precise and professional than Urdaneta's, and so the latter's route became the famous and trusted one.

For the remainder of the 16th and 17th centuries, Spanish ships, particularly the annual Manila-Acapulco trading Galleon, used Urdaneta's route. For a variety of reasons, they never explored much of the Pacific coast of North America, nor most (if any) of the Pacific Islands.

References

• McDougall, Walter (1993). "Let the Sea Make a Noise: Four Hundred Years of Cataclysm, Conquest, War and Folly in the North Pacific." New York: Avon Books.