EarlyPolynesian explorers reached nearly all Pacific islands by 1200 CE, followed by Asian navigation inSoutheast Asia and theWest Pacific. During the Middle Ages, Muslim traders linked theMiddle East andEast Africa to theAsian Pacific coasts, reaching southern China and much of theMalay Archipelago. Direct European contact with the Pacific began in 1512, with the Portuguese encountering its western edges, soon followed by the Spanish arriving from the American coast.
In 1513, Spanish explorerVasco Núñez de Balboa crossed theIsthmus of Panama and encountered the Pacific Ocean, calling it the South Sea. In 1521, a Spanish expedition led by the Portuguese navigatorFerdinand Magellan was the first recorded crossing of the Pacific Ocean, Magellan then naming it the "peaceful sea." Starting in 1565 with the voyage ofAndres de Urdaneta, the Spanish controlled transpacific trade for 250 years;Manila galleons would cross from Mexico to the Philippines, and vice versa, until 1815. Additional expeditions from Mexico and Peru encountered various archipelagos in theNorth andSouth Pacific. In the 17th and 18th centuries, other European powers sent expeditions to the Pacific, namely theDutch Republic, England, France, and Russia.
Humans reached Australia by at least 55,000 BC which implies some degree of water crossing. People were in the Americas before 10,000 BC.One theory holds that theIndigenous Americans travelled along the coast by canoe.
About 3000 BC, speakers of theAustronesian languages, probably on the island of Formosa (nowadaysTaiwan), mastered the art of long-distance canoe travel and spread themselves, or their languages, south to the Philippines andMalesia and east to the islands ofMicronesia andMelanesia. ThePolynesians branched off and occupiedPolynesian Triangle to the east. Dates and routes are uncertain, but they seem to have started from theBismarck Archipelago, went east pastFiji toSamoa andTonga about 1500 BC. By 100 AD they were in theMarquesas Islands and 300-800 AD inTahiti (Tahiti is west of the Marquesas.) 300-800 AD is also given for their arrival atEaster Island, their easternmost point and the same date range forHawaii, which is far to the north and distant from other islands. Far to the southwest, New Zealand was reached about 1250 AD. TheChatham Islands, about 500 miles east of New Zealand were reached about 1500. The fact that some Polynesians possessed the South Americansweet potato implies that they may have reached the Americas or, conversely, that people from the Americas may have reached Polynesia.Thor Heyerdahl'sKon-Tiki expedition successfully demonstrated that the trip from the Americas to Polynesia using only materials and technology available at the time was at least possible, even if highly improbable.[1][2]
On the Asian side long-distance trade developed all along the coast from Mozambique to Japan. Trade, and therefore knowledge, extended to Indonesia but apparently not Australia. By at the latest 878 when there was a significant Islamic settlement inCanton much of this trade was controlled by Arabs or Muslims. In 219 BCXu Fu sailed out into the Pacific searching for the elixir of immortality.Zheng He (1371–1433) was China's greatest explorer, mariner, and navigator.[3]
Japanese fishing boats, if blown out to sea, could be carried by the current all the way to North America. Japanese boats reached Acapulco in 1617, the Aleutians in 1782, Alaska in 1805, the mouth of the Columbia River in 1820, and Cape Flattery in 1833. Such trips may have taken place before Europeans were present in those areas to make detailed records of them.[4]
The first contact of European navigators with the western edge of the Pacific Ocean was made by the Portuguese expeditions ofAntónio de Abreu andFrancisco Serrão, via theLesser Sunda Islands, to theMaluku Islands, in 1512,[5][6] and withJorge Álvares's expedition to southern China in 1513,[7] both ordered byAfonso de Albuquerque fromMalacca.
The Spanish explorerBalboa was the first European to sight the Pacific from America in 1513 after his expedition crossed theIsthmus of Panama and reached a new ocean.[8] He named itMar del Sur (literally, "Sea of the South" or "South Sea") because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. Starting in 1519, Portuguese explorerFerdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Castilian (Spanish) expedition, which concluded later with the first world circumnavigation by theBasque sailorJuan Sebastián Elcano. Magellan called the oceanPacífico (or "Pacific" meaning, "peaceful") because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Patagonia, the expedition found calm waters. The ocean was often called theSea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century.[9]
From 1565 to 1815, a Spanish transpacific route known as theManila galleons regularly crossed from Mexico to the Philippines and back. On the Asian side the Portuguese and later the Dutch built a regular trade from the East Indies to Japan. On the American side Spanish power stretched thousands of miles from Mexico to Chile. The vast central Pacific was visited only by the Manila galleons and an occasional explorer. The south Pacific was first crossed by Spanish expeditions in the 16th century who discovered many islands includingTuvalu, theMarquesas, theCook Islands, theSolomon Islands, and theAdmiralty Islands, and later thePitcairn andVanuatu archipelagos.[10]
Europeans knew that there was a vast ocean to the west, and the Chinese knew that there was one to the east. Learned Europeans thought that the world was round and that the two oceans were one. In 1492, Columbus sailed west to what he thought was Asia. WhenPedro Álvares Cabral, en route to Asia via the Atlantic and the Indian oceans, reached Brazil, in 1500, the true extent of the Americas began to become known. TheMartin Waldseemüller map of 1507 was the first to show the Americas separating two distinct oceans. This guess was confirmed in 1513, when Balboa crossed Panama and found salt water. The Magellan expedition of 1519-22 proved that there was one continuous ocean from the Americas to Asia. TheDiogo Ribeiro map of 1529 was the first to show the Pacific at about its proper size.
The Portuguesereached India in 1498,conquered Malacca in 1511 and in 1512António de Abreu andFrancisco Serrão reached theSpice Islands. In May 1513Jorge Álvares reached southern China and in the same year Balboa crossed Panama. In 1525Diogo da Rocha andGomes de Sequeira reached theCaroline Islands, andJorge de Menezes in 1526-27 landed on theIslands of Don Jorge de Menezes, in the northwest coast ofNew Guinea (now part ofIndonesia), and named the regionIlhas dos Papuas and is thus credited with the Europeandiscovery ofPapua. In 1542Fernão Mendes Pinto reached Japan. From about 1543 until 1614, the Portuguese monopolize the trade between China and Japan, through thenanban trade. In 1589,João da Gama reachedHokkaido and possibly sighted theKuril Islands, crossing the Pacific further north of the routes usually taken until then. The land that he eventually discovered northeast of Japan, has since become a matter of legend and controversy.
One hundred years after the Spanish and Portuguese the Dutch Republic began its remarkable expansion. The Dutch reached the East Indies in 1596, the Spice Islands in 1602 and in 1619 foundedBatavia. In 1600a Dutch fleet reached Japan from the Strait of Magellan. The Dutch had little success in China but established themselves atHirado, Nagasaki in 1609 and monopolized the Japan trade from 1639. In 1639Matthijs Quast andAbel Tasman searched the empty ocean east of Japan looking for two islands called 'Rica de Oro' and 'Rica de Plata'. In 1643Maarten Gerritsz Vries reached and chartedSakhalin and theKuril Islands. In 1653Hendrick Hamel was shipwrecked in Korea. At about this time the Russians reached the Pacific overland via Siberia (see below). It is significant that the Russian and Dutch trades were never linked since Siberian furs might easily have been exported to China at great profit.
In 1519,Ferdinand Magellan sailed down the east coast of South America, found and sailed through thestrait that bears his name. On 28 November 1520, he entered the Pacific. Magellan then sailed north and caught thetrade winds which carried him across the Pacific to the Philippines where he was killed.One surviving ship returned west across the Indian Ocean andthe other went north in the hope of finding thewesterlies and reaching Mexico. Unable to find the right winds, it was forced to return to the East Indies. In 1565 (44 years later),Andrés de Urdaneta found a wind system that would reliably blow a ship eastward back to the Americas. From then until 1815 the annualManila Galleons crossed the Pacific from Mexico to the Philippines and back, exchanging Mexican silver for spices and porcelain. Until the time of CaptainJames Cook these were the only large ships to regularly cross the Pacific. The route was purely commercial and there was no exploration of the areas to the north and south. In 1668, the Spanish founded a colony onGuam as a resting place for west-bound galleons. For a long time this was the only non-coastal European settlement in the Pacific.
In 1513, six years before Magellan, Spanish explorerVasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and saw the Pacific Ocean. In 1517–18, two ships were built on the Pacific coast. In 1522,Pascual de Andagoya sailed the coast as far as Ecuador. In 1532,Francisco Pizarro conquered Peru. A regular trade developed that carried Peruvian silver up the coast to Panama where it was carried overland to the Caribbean and part to Spain. Spanish settlement extended as far south as central Chile. In 1557–8,Juan Fernández Ladrillero discovered theJuan Fernandez islands and explored the Chilean coast down to the Strait of Magellan.
Several Spanish expeditions were sent from South America across the Pacific Ocean in the 16th and early 17th centuries. They all used the southerntrade winds. In 1567/68,Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira sailed from Peru to theSolomon Islands. In 1595, he tried again and reached theSanta Cruz Islands (eastern Solomons toward Fiji). He died there and the survivors reached the Philippines. In 1606,Pedro Fernandes de Queirós reachedVanuatu south of the Solomons. He continued exploring and eventually sailed back to Mexico. One of his separated ships underLuis Vaz de Torres sailed west and discovered thestrait that bears his name sighting the northern tip ofAustralia. Other Spanish expeditions discoveredTuvalu, theMarquesas, theCook Islands, theAdmiralty Islands and thePitcairn. In 1722, the DutchmanJacob Roggeveen sailed from Cape Horn to Batavia and discovered Easter Island and Samoa.
Six years after Magellan, in 1526, one of the ships of theLoaísa expedition sailed through the Strait of Magellan and followed the coast north to Mexico. In 1578,Francis Drake passed through the Strait, sailed north raiding Spanish ships during hissuccessful circumnavigation. On 5 June 1579, the ship briefly made first landfall at South Cove, Cape Arago, just south of Coos Bay, Oregon, and then sailed south while searching for a suitable harbour to repair his ailing ship.[11][12][13][14][15] On 17 June, Drake and his crew found a protected cove when they landed on the Pacific coast of what is now Northern California.[16][17] While ashore, he claimed the area for Queen Elizabeth I as Nova Albion orNew Albion.[18] In 1580,Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, who was hunting for Drake, was the first to sail from the Strait to Europe. In 1587,Thomas Cavendish followed Drake,captured a Manila galleon and returned via the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. In 1599, the first Dutch ships passed through the Strait of Magellan (Will Adams, the first Englishman to reach Japan, was on board).Olivier van Noort followed and became the first Dutch circumnavigator.
In 1525,Francisco de Hoces, while trying to enter the Strait as part of the Loaisa expedition, was blown south by a storm and saw what he thought was land's end. In 1578, Drake was blown south on the west side and saw what he thought was open water. In 1616,Willem Schouten sought a more southerly passage and roundedCape Horn. In 1619, theGarcia de Nodal expedition followed the Dutch and proved that Tierra del Fuego was an island by circumnavigating it. Since the Strait of Magellan is narrow and hard to navigate Cape Horn became the standard route until the opening of thePanama Canal. It is a measure of the difficulty of these seas that it was not until 1820 that anyone went as far south asAntarctica.
When the Spanish conquered Mexico in 1521, they gained a stretch of Pacific coast. In 1533,Fortún Ximénez reachedBaja California and in 1539Francisco de Ulloa showed that it was a peninsula, but the myth of anIsland of California continued for many years. In 1542Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo reached a point north of San Francisco. In 1578 Drake landed somewhere on the coast. In 1587 Pedro de Unamuno, coming from the Philippines, stopped atMorro Bay, California. In 1592,Juan de Fuca may have reachedPuget Sound.
In 1595,Sebastian Rodriguez Cermeño (Sebastião Rodrigues Soromenho), commander of the Manila galleonSan Agustín, attempted an exploration of the California coast. He reached the continent between Point St. George andTrinidad Head in California, but the galleon was later wrecked in a storm offDrake's Bay and the survivors had to sail the rest of the way back to Mexico in a small launch. The smaller vessel, however, allowed Cermeño to sail closer to the coast and to make useful observations of coastal features. In 1602,Sebastián Vizcaíno re-explored the California coast, one of his ships reaching Oregon. His was the last northward exploration for the next 150 years.
ThePortolà expedition of 1769 began the land exploration ofAlta California, following the coast as far north asSan Francisco Bay and using the reports of Cermeño and Vizcaíno for guidance.
After conquering Mexico the Spanish occupied the southern two thirds of Mexico, all of Central America and the South American coast down to Chile. North of this the land was too dry to support a dense population that could be ruled and taxed. The only exception was thePueblo peoples far to the north in New Mexico. People likeFrancisco Vásquez de Coronado penetrated far into the interior and found nothing that the Spanish valued. TheChichimeca country of northern Mexico was slowly absorbed and Baja California began to be settled in 1687. The returning Manila galleons followed thewesterlies to the coast of California, but immediately turned south, making only a few attempts to explore the coast. For more seeHistory of the West Coast of North America andEarly knowledge of the Pacific Northwest.
Australia is remarkable for the number of explorers who missed it. Some think that the Portuguese reached Australia before 1600 butthese theories are difficult to prove. The 1567–1606 Spanish voyages from South America stopped at islands to the east before reaching Australia. The first European to definitely see Australia wasWillem Janszoon who in February 1606 reached the Cape York Peninsula and thought it was part of New Guinea. Also in 1606 (June to October)Luis Váez de Torres of the Quiros expedition from South America followed the south coast of New Guinea and passed through theTorres Strait without recognizing Australia. His voyage, and therefore the separation between Australia and New Guinea, was not generally known until 1765. From about 1611,the standard Dutch route to the East Indies was to follow theroaring forties as far east as possible and then turn sharply north toBatavia. Since it was difficult to know longitude some ships would reach the west coastor be wrecked on it. In 1616,Dirk Hartog bumped into the west coast and did some exploring.Frederick de Houtman did the same in 1619. In 1623Jan Carstenszoon followed the south coast of New Guinea, missed Torres Strait and went along the north coast of Australia. In 1643,Abel Tasman leftMauritius, missed Australia, foundTasmania, continued east and found New Zealand, missed the strait between the north and south islands, turned northwest, missed Australia again and sailed along the north coast of New Guinea. In 1644, he followed the south coast of New Guinea, missed the Torres Strait, turned south and mapped the north coast of Australia. In 1688, the English buccaneerWilliam Dampier beached a ship on the northwest coast. In 1696,Willem de Vlamingh explored the southwest coast. In 1699, Dampier was sent to find the east coast of Australia. He sailed along the west coast, went north to Timor, followed the north coast of New Guinea to theBismarck Archipelago and abandoned his search because his ship had become rotten. Until Captain Cook the east coast was completely unknown and New Zealand had only been seen once.
Europeans had long believed in aStrait of Anian somewhere near Bering Strait. A large and distortedHokkaido was called 'Ezo', 'Jesso' and many other spellings. One of theKuril Islands named "Companies Landt" by Vries grew into a large mass attached to North America. Joao-da-Gama-Land was thought to be east of Japan. There was an overgrown Puget Sound called "Grande Mer de l'Ouest" possibly connected toHudson Bay. In the far south was aTerra Australis. The map published inDiderot'sEncyclopédie in 1755 isfilled with nonsense. In 1875 no less than 123mythical islands were removed from theRoyal Navy chart of the North Pacific.
The modern period begins with Russian expeditions. Theycrossed Siberia and reached the Pacific in 1639 (Ivan Moskvitin). In 1644Vassili Poyarkov found theAmur River. In 1648Semyon Dezhnyov (probably) entered the Pacific from the Arctic Ocean. In 1652Mikhail Stadukhin followed the coast of theSea of Okhotsk. In 1697Vladimir Atlasov entered theKamchatka Peninsula overland from the north. In 1716 the first seagoing boats were built to reach Kamchatka from the mainland. In 1728Vitus Bering sailed from Kamchatka throughthe strait that bears his name without seeing America. In 1732Mikhail Gvozdev andIvan Fedorov saw the tip of Alaska from the Bering Strait. In 1741Vitus Bering andAlexei Chirikov sailed just south of the Aleutian Islands and reached the Alaska panhandle.Peter Kuzmich Krenitzin mapped the Aleutians before 1769. The myth of a land mass north of the Aleutians took a long time to dispel. Russians fur hunters island-hopped along the Aleutians and then along the south coast of Alaska looking mainly forsea otter (Attu at the west end of the Aleutians in 1745,Unalaska Island at the east end in 1759,Kodiak Island 1784,Kenai Peninsula 1785,Yakutat, 1795,Sitka 1799,Fort Ross 1812). North of the Aleutians posts appeared on the west coast after 1819. Spaniards from Mexico met the Russians in 1788. (see below).Russian America was sold to the United States in 1867.
On his first voyage (1768–1771)James Cook went to Tahiti from Cape Horn, circumnavigated New Zealand, followed the east coast of Australia for the first time and returned via the Torres Strait and the Cape of Good Hope. On his second voyage (1772–1775) he sailed from west to east keeping as far south as possible and showed that there was probably noTerra Australis. On his third voyage (1776–1780), he found theHawaiian Islands (possibly first seen by Spanish captain Ruy López de Villalobos in 1542. The Spanish named these islands "Isla de Mesa, de los Monjes y Desgraciada") and followed the North American coast from Oregon to the Bering Strait, mapping this coast for the first time and showing that there was probably noNorthwest Passage. Cook was killed in Hawaii in 1779. The expedition made a second attempt at the Bering Strait, stopped at Kamchatka and China and reached England in 1780. Cook set a high standard of scientific exploration, showed that there was no large land mass in the southern ocean, mapped the two largest island groups in the Pacific, and by following the east coast of Australia and the west coast of North America closed the last gaps in European knowledge of the Pacific coasts. On his second voyage, Cook was accompanied byJohann Reinhold Forster and Forster's sonGeorg, who influenced significantlyAlexander von Humboldt and his understanding of the Pacific, which Humboldt encountered in 1802–3. Several German-speaking navigators and explorers followed, most of them in the service of expeditions launched by Imperial Russia.[19] After Cook everything was detail.
Several governments sponsored Pacific expeditions, often in rivalry or emulation of Captain Cook. At the time of Cook's first voyage, in 1766–1769,Louis Antoine de Bougainville crossed the Pacific and publicized Tahiti, in 1767Samuel Wallis andPhilip Carteret separately crossed the Pacific, and in 1769Jean-François-Marie de Surville visited the Solomon Islands and New Zealand. In 1785–1788,Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse followed the American coast from Chile to Alaska, crossed to China, explored northern Japan and Kamchatka, went south to Australia and lost his life in theSanta Cruz Islands. The SpanishMalaspina Expedition (1789–1794) visited the American coast, Manila, New Zealand and Australia. In 1792–1793George Vancouver more thoroughly mapped the west coast of Canada. In 1803/6Adam Johann von Krusenstern led the first Russian circumnavigation and investigated both sides of the North Pacific. In 1820Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen sawAntarctica. A number of other voyages are listed in "European and American voyages of scientific exploration."
For Europeans in theAge of Exploration western North America was one of the most distant places on Earth (9 to 12 months of sailing). Spain had long claimed the entire west coast of the Americas. The area north of Mexico however was given little attention in the early years. This changed when the Russians appeared in Alaska. The Spanish moved north to California and built aseries of missions along the Pacific coast including:San Diego in 1767,Monterey, California in 1770 and San Francisco in 1776. San Francisco Bay was discovered in 1769 byGaspar de Portolà from the landward side because its mouth is not obvious from the sea. The Spanish settlement of San Francisco remained the northern limit of land occupation. By sea, from 1774 to 1793 theSpanish expeditions to the Pacific Northwest tried to assert Spanish claims against the Russians and British. In 1774Juan José Pérez Hernández reached what is now the south end of the Alaska panhandle. In 1778 Captain Cook sailed the west coast and spent a month atNootka Sound on Vancouver Island. An expedition led byJuan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra sailed north toNootka and reachedPrince William Sound. In 1788Esteban José Martínez went north and met the Russians for the first time (Unalaska and Kodiak Island) and heard that the Russians were planning to occupy Nootka Sound. In 1789 Martinez went north to build a fort at Nootka and found British and American merchant ships already there. He seized a British ship which led to theNootka Crisis and Spanish recognition of non-Spanish trade on the northwest coast. In 1791 theMalaspina expedition mapped the Alaska coast. In 1792Dionisio Alcalá Galiano circumnavigated Vancouver Island. In 1792-93George Vancouver also mapped the complex coast of British Columbia.Vancouver Island was originally named Quadra's and Vancouver's Island in commemoration of the friendly negotiations held by the Spanish commander of theNootka Sound settlement,Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra and British naval captainGeorge Vancouver in Nootka Sound in 1792. In 1793Alexander Mackenzie reached the Pacific overland from Canada. By this time Spain was becoming involved in the French wars and increasingly unable to assert its claims on the Pacific coast. In 1804 theLewis and Clark Expedition reached the Pacific overland from the Mississippi River. By theAdams–Onís Treaty of 1819 Spain gave up its claims north of California. Canadian fur traders, and later a smaller number of Americans, crossed the mountains and built posts on the coast. In 1846 theOregon Treaty divided theOregon country between Britain and the United States. The United States conquered California in 1848 and purchased Alaska in 1867.
The Russians moved south and the Japanese moved north and explored theKuril Islands andSakhalin. About 1805Adam Johann von Krusenstern was apparently the first Russian to reach eastern Siberia by sea from European Russia. In 1808Mamiya Rinzo explored the coast of Sakhalin. During the Crimean War a British fleet failed to capturePetropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. In 1860 Russiaannexed the southeast corner of Siberia from China.
After Captain Cook large numbers of European merchant vessels began to enter the Pacific. The reasons for this are not completely clear. On Cook's third voyage furs bought at Nootka were sold in China at a 1,800 percent profit - enough to pay for a trading voyage. The first to do this wasJames Hanna from Macao in 1785.Robert Gray in 1787 was the first American. ThisMaritime fur trade reached its peak about 1810, drew many ships into the Pacific and drew Canadians and Americans to the coast. The first Pacificwhaling ship left London in 1788 and by the nineteenth century there were hundreds of whaleships in the Pacific each year.Clipper ships cut the sailing time from Europe to the Pacific. England founded a colony in Australia in 1788 and New Zealand in 1840. After about 1800 England began to replace the Dutch Republic along the Asian coast.Hong Kong became a colony in 1839 during theFirst Opium War, which was also the first time that a large European military and naval force appeared in the Pacific. European ships and sailors disrupted life on the Pacific islands. Most of the Pacific islands were soon claimed by one European power or another.