<P> The coast of Asia: The first European to see the Pacific Ocean was probably Marco Polo about 1292 . The Portuguese reached India in 1498, conquered Malacca in 1511 and in 1512 António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão reached the Spice Islands . In May 1513 Jorge Álvares reached southern China and in the same year Balboa crossed Panama . In 1525 Diogo da Rocha and Gomes de Sequeira reached the Caroline Islands, and Jorge de Menezes in 1526 - 27 landed on the Islands of Don Jorge de Menezes, in the northwest coast of New Guinea (now part of Indonesia), and named the region Ilhas dos Papuas and is thus credited with the European discovery of Papua . In 1542 Fernão Mendes Pinto reached Japan . From about 1543 until 1614, the Portuguese monopolize the trade between China and Japan, through the nanban trade . In 1589, João da Gama reached Hokkaido and possibly sighted the Kuril 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 . </P> <P> 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 founded Batavia . In 1600 a Dutch fleet reached Japan from the Strait of Magellan . The Dutch had little success in China but established themselves at Hirado, Nagasaki in 1609 and monopolized the Japan trade from 1639 . In 1639 Matthijs Quast and Abel Tasman searched the empty ocean east of Japan looking for two islands called' Rica de Oro' and' Rica de Plata' . In 1643 Maarten Gerritsz Vries reached and charted Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands . In 1653 Hendrick 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 . </P> <P> Magellan and the Manila Galleons: In 1519 Ferdinand Magellan sailed down the east coast of South America, found and sailed through the strait that bears his name and on 28 November 1520 entered the Pacific . He then sailed north and caught the trade winds which carried him across the Pacific to the Philippines where he was killed . One surviving ship returned west across the Indian Ocean and the other went north in the hope of finding the westerlies 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 annual Manila Galleons crossed the Pacific from Mexico to the Philippines and back, exchanging Mexican silver for spices and porcelain . Until the time of Captain 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 on Guam as a resting place for west - bound galleons . For a long time this was the only non-coastal European settlement in the Pacific . </P> <P> South America: In 1513, six years before Magellan, Spanish explorer Vasco 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 the Juan Fernandez islands and explored the Chilean coast down to the Strait of Magellan . </P>

Which explorers traveled the indian and pacific ocean