The Manila galleon (Nao de China)

node · earth · Pacific Ocean — Manila to Acapulco

The transpacific link that closed the circuit and made the trading world global rather than merely bi-oceanic. From 1565 until 1815, one or two heavily built galleons a year crossed between Manila and Acapulco. Westbound was straightforward — run south of the latitude of Guam on the north-east trades, roughly three months. Eastbound was one of the hardest regular passages ever sailed: ships had to climb north to about 35–40° N to find the westerlies, then run east across the whole width of the Pacific, four to six months out of sight of land, with scurvy killing a substantial part of the crew on bad crossings. The cargo ran silver west and Chinese silk, porcelain and Indian cottons east, which means the galleon was not a route between Spain and the Philippines at all: it was the Pacific leg of a settlement system that ran Potosí to Canton. Andrés de Urdaneta established the return track in 1565, and it stayed essentially unchanged for two and a half centuries — a route discovered once and then simply used.