--- title: How History Erased the Black Mariner Who Opened the Pacific description: Lope Martín, an Afro-Portuguese pilot, was the first navigator to sail from the Americas to Asia and back. canonical: https://time.com/6107501/pacific-exploration-lope-martin-history/ author: Andrés Reséndez article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2021-10-18T15:57:52.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:42:30.734Z article:section: History og:title: How History Erased the Black Mariner Who ‘Opened’ the Pacific og:description: Lope Martín, an Afro-Portuguese pilot, was the first navigator to sail from the Americas to Asia and back. og:url: https://time.com/6107501/pacific-exploration-lope-martin-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt139c18cba83d6056/698a1dcab21a9c0ff35053ed/Pacific-Ocean-Map-1602.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Map of the Pacific Ocean og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How History Erased the Black Mariner Who ‘Opened’ the Pacific twitter:description: Lope Martín, an Afro-Portuguese pilot, was the first navigator to sail from the Americas to Asia and back. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt139c18cba83d6056/698a1dcab21a9c0ff35053ed/Pacific-Ocean-Map-1602.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How History Erased the Black Mariner Who ‘Opened’ the Pacific > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=f346e40a-d332-4d02-829c-a266abbc18f8&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=f346e40a-d332-4d02-829c-a266abbc18f8&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The History You Didn't Learn: Black Wall Streets [Watch (HLS stream): The History You Didn't Learn: Black Wall Streets](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/W3Zny2Gh.m3u8) (10:26)  _Published 2021-05-28. It's been 100 years since the Tulsa race massacre, when an angry white mob destroyed a prosperous black neighborhood in Tulsa Oklahoma. But Tulsa's story is part of a larger history of Black Wall Streets that existed in many American cities._ by [Andrés Reséndez](https://time.com/author/andres-resendez/) ## Andrés Reséndez Oct 18, 2021 3:57 PM UTC  Map of the Pacific Ocean circa 1602. Map of the Pacific Ocean circa 1602. Buyenlarge/Getty Images by [Andrés Reséndez](https://time.com/author/andres-resendez/) ## Andrés Reséndez Oct 18, 2021 3:57 PM UTC In grade school and beyond, we learn about [Christopher Columbus](https://time.com/6104176/christopher-columbus-italian-american/) and his pioneering voyage of 1492\. Merely two decades after it, however, European explorers stumbled on the Pacific, an ocean roughly twice as large as the Atlantic and far more difficult to navigate. Polynesian navigators were the first to cross the Pacific from west to east by island-hopping from the coast of China to the Americas. Ferdinand Magellan was the [first European](https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/ferdinand-magellan) to go in the opposite direction in one swoop by sailing from the New World to Asia during his famous circumnavigation of 1519-1522\. Yet, the first navigator to sail from the Americas to Asia and back—the man who truly “opened” the Pacific and accomplished what Columbus had done for the Atlantic—was an extraordinary pilot almost entirely forgotten in the annals of exploration. It was Lope Martín, an Afro-Portuguese mariner, who in 1564-1565 finally transformed the Pacific into a vital space of contact and exchange, weaving all continents together and launching our global world. Martín’s ancestors had been taken as slaves to southern Portugal. Although he was a free man, his precarious circumstances forced him into the harsh life of the sea, carrying sacks of flour aboard vessels or climbing a ship’s ratlines to the top of the mast. In an era when the overwhelming majority of naval officers were white Europeans, Martín rose through the ranks to become a licensed pilot, the highest occupation he could aspire as a Black man. Indeed, his seamanship was so extraordinary that he was recruited for a secret, no-expenses-spared venture put together by the Spanish crown to open trade between Spain’s American colonies and the legendary “Orient,” as it was referred to at the time. --- ### More from TIME --- Martín’s story is particularly striking because his revolutionary passage had less to do with courage—although a good dose of it was also necessary—than with his mastery of the nautical technologies of his time. By the mid-16th century, the “art of navigation,” as it was called, had become less an art and more a science. Any person wishing to become a pilot had to take courses, pass examinations and demonstrate proficiency in mathematics, astronomy and cartography. Martín passed all the tests and showed a rare talent. Skilled pilots of that era could determine latitude (north-south distance) in the middle of the ocean by measuring the altitude of the sun with respect to the horizon, using “declination tables” and performing a few mathematical calculations. Establishing longitude (east-west distance) was far more difficult, and would not be fully possible until the 18th century. Nonetheless, the foremost pilots of the [Age of Exploration](https://www.britannica.com/topic/European-exploration/The-Age-of-Discovery) like Martín were able to approximate longitude through careful observation of the ocean and by measuring the difference between true north as shown by the North Star and magnetic north as indicated by the compass. This specialized knowledge made Martín one of the most accomplished and valuable pilots of his time anywhere in the world. As a historian, it is startling that only specialists of the early Pacific know about Martín’s existence at all. This likely has to do with the unusual circumstances of his voyage. The Spanish crown organized the 1564-1565 expedition in great secrecy. Instead of departing from Acapulco—by far the most established port on the western coast of the Americas at the time—the four vessels in the fleet cast off from Navidad, a dilapidated harbor far to the north of Acapulco that even today remains a minuscule Mexican tourist town. Moreover, barely 10 days after the fleet’s departure, the smallest and least equipped of the four ships, piloted by Martín, became separated from the others. The expedition commander and other expedition leaders who remained in the three largest ships immediately suspected and accused the Black man of deliberately “becoming absent when the sea was calm and the weather was good,” even though there had been a storm at the time of the separation. **Read more:** [_Ocean Explorers Made History Far Before Christopher Columbus_](https://time.com/5697768/ocean-exploration-beyond-columbus/) Unaware that his loyalty had been questioned, Martín proceeded with the mission. On what amounted to a souped-up boat, Martín and his mates reached the Philippines, made repairs and traded with the islanders for a month. After looking for the other vessels from their fleet, they finally made the fateful decision to return on their own across the mighty Pacific, a feat never accomplished before. In this epic passage, Martín and his mates had to battle a plague of rats that gnawed on the water barrels and spilled their contents. They were also forced to patch the sails with every last scrap of clothes and blankets, and survived a near shipwreck. When they finally arrived in Navidad on Aug. 9, 1565, virtually naked, carrying Asian goods, Martín and his crew were hailed and celebrated as heroes. But this sweet moment of victory lasted only two months, when the flagship of the fleet—14 times bigger than the vessel on which Martín and his companions had sailed—also accomplished the elusive _vuelta_, the return to America, guided by a no less remarkable navigator and friar named [Andrés de Urdaneta](https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andres-de-Urdaneta). The expedition commander had remained in the Philippines to establish a Spanish base in Asia, but his representatives aboard the flagship lost no time in accusing Martín of having absconded. The accounts of subsequent chroniclers and historians, tainted by this controversy, have portrayed the Afro-Portuguese pilot piratical and given the credit instead to Urdaneta. Both Martín and Urdaneta succeeded independently, yet only one basked in the glory while the other was secretly sentenced to be hanged to repay him for his considerable services. (Yet another remarkable chapter in the life of Martín has him outwitting, through an astonishing mutiny, the captain of the ship transporting the Black man to his death, and quite possibly spending his final years as head of a small European band in Micronesia.) Martín was indisputably the first to “open” the Pacific, allowing plants, animals, products and ideas to begin flowing across the great ocean. After his voyage, and for two and a half centuries, large Spanish galleons sailed every year across the Pacific, taking silver to Asia and returning with Chinese silk and ceramics, Southeast Asian spices and slaves from as far as the Indian subcontinent. By the end of the 18th century, American merchants began building on these earlier transpacific linkages to launch their own ventures. As the Spanish empire in the Americas crumbled in the early 19th century, American ships came to replace the old Spanish galleons. The United States would go on to take control of Guam and the Philippines (early Spanish hubs), open direct trade with Japan and China and forge a vast network of transpacific interests that has reshaped the world. The world’s gravity center is constantly moving toward the Pacific, so it is imperative that we understand how it all began, not with [Captain Cook’s legendary voyages](https://time.com/4315929/captain-cook-ship-endeavour-wreck/), as often assumed, but centuries earlier with a figure who has been completely erased from the historical record.  Andrés Reséndez is a history professor at the University of California at Davis and author of National Book Award finalist [_The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America._](https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/The-Other-Slavery/9780544947108) His latest book, [_Conquering the Pacific: An Unknown Mariner and the Final Great Voyage of the Age of Discovery_,](https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/Conquering-the-Pacific/9781328515971) was published in September 2021\. He is a currently a Carnegie fellow and an avid sailor. ## Transcript The legacies of black wall Street's, it's important for people to remember because there were so many people who have no idea that there were vital Dynamic places where African Americans were living out their vision of the American dream opportunity in Hope and progress of for their community. June 1st 2021 Marcel hundred years since the Tulsa Race Massacre, as many as 300, people were killed as an angry white mob, destroyed a prosperous black neighborhood in Tulsa. Oklahoma once known as that City's Black Wall Street story is part of a larger history of segregated prosperity in many American cities around the turn of the century. So ask Jim Crow begins to really take shape and African-Americans are forced into segregated parts of the city. These communities rise up in places like Durham North Carolina and Little Rock Arkansas, Jackson, Mississippi, and people began to notice that up there all kinds of businesses and services that grow there. And so they kind of take on the name Black Wall Street. One of the biggest and longest lasting black wall. Street's was in Richmond. Virginia. A neighborhood called Jackson Ward. So the factors that led to Richmond's being the cradle of black capitalism, lay in the diverse slave economy, that existed at that time. So you had African American who were involved and not just agricultural slavery but also an urban and Industrial slavery end after the Civil War II. Had this concentrated community of African Americans who have been working in the city in factories and it feels and rural areas around Richmond has continued to build the institutions and the community and the neighborhood that they had begun even before the war. And then you begin to have a lot of really important, but natural first, such as insurance companies and Banks, which really highlight Richmond as the first Black Wall Street. One of the most storied figures in Jackson Ward history was a banker and business woman named Maggie Lena Walker. You cannot study magazine Walker and not be fascinated you do with her, she was born in slaved in 1864 on, right? Towards the end of the Civil War, and really saw economic empowerment of African American women as the path forward Locker started, her banking career at a mutual Aid Society, called The Independent order of St, Luke 1867 St. Luke was established to help freed slaves. Gain economic independence in 1901 and she said, I'm specifically talking to the women here. Look, good women here. Whose money is in this organization and she was able to bring that Vision to fruition in 1903. When she became the first black woman Bank president. St. Luke Penny Savings Bank. Later named the Consolidated Bank and Trust was acquired in 2005, but Walker's home in Jackson. Ward is still standing. As you see around me, the homes have been restored on the outside while mrs. Walker's home. It's been restored to its full Glory as much as we could using artifacts that belong to Maggie Walker and her family, because we still get a lot of people who come in and do our chores, and they are still amazing. Why didn't I know about her before? Why have I not heard the story? And it is a story that has been preserved quite fully in Richmond itself, but not so much across the country. What is happening now in Jacksonville? Or is that those who remember, the stories are coming together to make sure that they are no longer for God neighborhood? We not look as it did when she walks these streets, but the memories are still there. In his Heyday, I imagine that it was a fabulous to live and Jackson board that you needed. You could get your in Jackson Ward, and I will just say walking into the st. Luke Bank on, I think had to be a treat. First of all, making me walk or made sure that he was beautifully appointed with mahogany and marble and I can just imagine a made of domestic. I'm working in a white person's home in another part of the city and she walks into the bank. And she's greeted probably didn't, but by not just her first name, but she's call miss or missus, and I just can't imagine that it is height Jackson, Ward was an incredible experience, but then there's also the dark side and that is that it is a segregated community. Magalina Walker accommodate segregation by real ending mostly in the segregated areas. Are so there I think in the midst of this in affluent and its dynamism. There's always that dark cloud of racism in Jim Crow that kind of just outside there is a a world that wants to continue to treat them as second-class Citizens. Jackson word with a Haven for black business for many years but like Tulsa was Black Wall Street. It to you came to an end, the difference between the end of Jackson, Ward, and the end of Tulsa, is really a difference in degree. And so for Jackson, Ward, it was more of a slow death. A wide range of factors caused Jackson Ward's, economic decline, including redlining, which kept Capital out of black neighborhoods, slum clearance, where City's raise old buildings without rebuilding in certain areas and a highway system that cut right through the neighborhood. But the final end to Jackson Ward's. Black Wall Street days, came on the heels of the civil rights movement and desegregation. So ironically at the very time that you begin to have opportunity at least legally for African Americans to have equal accommodation, to be able to get you no equal access to education is at the same time that these communities have been so undermined in the decades previous and so when they have choices to make, they in a move to the suburbs and the Really the most vulnerable and needy living in places like Jackson Ward. The occurrence of diminishing. Black wealth has a long history in our country. I mean really takes root in slavery. There you have hundreds and hundreds of years of unpaid black labor, and then be disenfranchised and their wealthy undermined and other ways. I think that we just really have to deal with this long-standing American exploitation of African Americans. You can go to your bank tomorrow and you can say until you as a corporation start to speak on our behalf. I want all my money in recent years, there has been a movement to reinvest funds into black Banks and businesses. One of the organizations advocating for this financial shift is Bank Black USA which helps people find and invest in Black banks for people to move their money from the larger institutions that had it. Maybe a history of discriminatory practices and predatory lending practices and move that money to in the eyes with their minority depository Institution. According to the FDIC mdi's are more likely to lend to lower and moderate-income communities and help promote economic viability in these areas, found out that black financial institutions are under supported in under capitalize, right? Black banks are in Decline. For example, there was like, Fifty of these institutions in 2001 and 2021 and very nearly 20, our solution was to create resources for people to be able to compare the banks and services, and financial help the community impact it. Because we do believe that these empty eyes. Can you play an integral role in closing that racial wealth Gap with the support? It if you don't learn about the origin and history of Blackwell, you'll fall into the Trap of thinking that there was no, Blackwell. The time to learn about Jackson would take time to learn about Durham a time to learn about Tulsa. Let's ring the stories for word, and remember those times of black Excellence, it can come again, if we follow the road now cuz they said before us, ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6107501/pacific-exploration-lope-martin-history/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6107501/pacific-exploration-lope-martin-history/"},"headline":"How History Erased the Black Mariner Who ‘Opened’ the Pacific","datePublished":"2021-10-18T15:57:52.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:42:30.734Z","description":"Lope Martín, an Afro-Portuguese pilot, was the first navigator to sail from the Americas to Asia and back.","url":"https://time.com/6107501/pacific-exploration-lope-martin-history/","keywords":["Books"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt139c18cba83d6056/698a1dcab21a9c0ff35053ed/Pacific-Ocean-Map-1602.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Andrés Reséndez","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/andres-resendez/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt139c18cba83d6056/698a1dcab21a9c0ff35053ed/Pacific-Ocean-Map-1602.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Map of the Pacific Ocean","caption":"Map of the Pacific Ocean","creditText":"Buyenlarge/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/books/","name":"Books"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6107501/pacific-exploration-lope-martin-history/","name":"How History Erased the Black Mariner Who ‘Opened’ the Pacific"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The History You Didn't Learn: Black Wall Streets","description":"It's been 100 years since the Tulsa race massacre, when an angry white mob destroyed a prosperous black neighborhood in Tulsa Oklahoma. 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