{
  "id": "andres-de-urdaneta",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Andrés de Urdaneta and the tornaviaje",
  "summary": "The Augustinian friar and cosmographer who in 1565 sailed the San Pedro from Cebú to Acapulco by standing north into the westerlies and running east on the Kuroshio — the return passage, the tornaviaje, that turned a one-way crossing of the Pacific into a route and made the Manila-Acapulco galleon possible.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "navigation",
    "exploration",
    "pacific",
    "global-trade",
    "spanish-empire",
    "biography"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "spanish-navigation-manuals-in-england"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "manila-galleon"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "juan-sebastian-elcano"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "spanish-real-global-currency"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "garcia-de-palacio-instruccion-nautica-1587"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "spanish-voyages-to-the-northwest-coast"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "sweet-potato-and-the-manila-galleon"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "isabel-barreto"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "variacion-de-la-aguja-de-marear"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "piloto-mayor-y-cosmografos-de-la-casa-de-la-contratacion"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "corriente-del-golfo-y-el-canal-de-bahama"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "mendoza-historia-del-gran-reyno-de-la-china-1585"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "martin-de-rada"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What was the tornaviaje?",
    "How did Spanish ships sail back east across the Pacific?",
    "Who found the return route from the Philippines to America?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "Urdaneta's return voyage left Cebú on 1 June 1565 and reached Acapulco on 8 October 1565 aboard the San Pedro, a crossing of roughly four months.",
      "sources": [
        "jonnpr-urdaneta-2022"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The solution was latitudinal rather than direct: the ship stood northeast to approximately 39°N 170°E and then ran east on the Kuroshio current at Japanese latitudes until it raised the North American coast.",
      "sources": [
        "jonnpr-urdaneta-2022"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.75
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "Because the passage could now be sailed in both directions, it became a standing route: the Manila-Acapulco galleon ran on it for some two and a half centuries.",
      "sources": [
        "jonnpr-urdaneta-2022",
        "flynn-giraldez-1995"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "What that route carried is what makes it matter beyond navigation: in the economic-history account registered here, the Acapulco-Manila link founded in 1571 closed the first global trade circuit by connecting American silver to Chinese demand.",
      "sources": [
        "flynn-giraldez-1995"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "secondary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "The Manila galleon is told as a trade story with no navigator in it, and Urdaneta, when he appears, appears as a name attached to a date. This object states the actual manoeuvre — north out of the trade winds, east on the Kuroshio — which is the reason the route existed at all, and hands the economic significance to the economic-history source rather than inflating a navigation paper beyond its field. The single source for the voyage details is registered at reliability 0.7 and the claims are pitched accordingly.",
  "confidence": 0.8,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-09",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/andres-de-urdaneta",
  "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/andres-de-urdaneta.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "Andrés de Urdaneta and the tornaviaje",
    "description": "The Augustinian friar and cosmographer who in 1565 sailed the San Pedro from Cebú to Acapulco by standing north into the westerlies and running east on the Kuroshio — the return passage, the tornaviaje, that turned a one-way crossing of the Pacific into a route and made the Manila-Acapulco galleon possible.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/andres-de-urdaneta",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-09",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Born with a 'Silver Spoon': The Origin of World Trade in 1571",
        "url": "https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/3372215/4433_UBA003000263.pdf"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Navegación e historia de la ciencia: Fray Andrés de Urdaneta y el Tornaviaje",
        "url": "https://scielo.isciii.es/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2529-850X2022000400009"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Andrés de Urdaneta and the tornaviaje"
  }
}