Nagasaki to Lisbon via Spice Route by boat

[ketsudan]

I am writing a short story, and a small detail that I need is how long it took a ship (typically one of the larger ships during the 1600s) to travel from Nagasaki to Lisbon using this trade route.

Comments

[duckodeath]

Yes, I'm so cool replying to myself.

I just found this link http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~vaucher/Genealogy/Documents/Asia/EuropeanExploration.html with this specific information which is referenced from the book The Portuguese empire, 1415-1808:
a world on the move by A.J.R. Russell-Wood:

On the Goa-Japan run, captains would leave Goa in April or May to arrive in Macao in June or August where they would stay as little as a few weeks or as much as a year if they missed the south-west monsoon in the China Sea or the biannual (June & january) silk fair at Canton. Favorable winds to Japan blew in June-August and the trip took 2-4 weeks. In late October or November, the onset of the north-east monsoon permitted the return trip at any time until the following March. Under ideal conditions the Goa-Japan return trip was 6 months. All in all, a sailor leaving Lisbon for a round trip to Japan could be gone anywhere between 18 months to 5 years.

[ketsudan]

Oh, wow, that is a long trip! Thank you for finding that!

And thanks for being patient with my post and I'm sorry for confusing people... I'll go back and clarify, because rereading that, it is pretty confusing. Especially since I really didn't make sure to see when it was used. I assumed that after Japan reopened itself to foreigners after it's isolation period, the same routes the Portuguese used before that time were just used again.

[nuranar]

That would be a fair assumption, except that the Suez Canal was opened in I think the late 1860s. 1868, maybe? So the routes could funnel through the Mediterranean instead of taking the long way around Africa. And with the advent of steamships in the mid-1800s, trade was no longer dependent upon sailing ships. It really was a whole different ballgame. So I'm afraid the more modern trade examples really won't be a helpful comparison. :)

[ketsudan]

Oh! I should have realized that, with some of other maps of other trade routes I kind of looked at... Well, that might possibly shave off a month or so if they went that route instead?

Well, it looks like I'll have to decide whether to keep this story fully within the 1600s or the 1800s, whichever one might be better. Thanks for the information!

[duckodeath]

Yeah, as other comments have pointed out, there is absolutely no reason to look at the 19th century if you are actually talking about the 15th and 16th centuries. Between the changes in ship technology (sail to steam plus advances in navigation) and the Suez Canal shortening the trip by thousands of miles after 1869, the entire situation was different. In the 19th century it was still a long trip by today's standards, but unless something went terribly wrong you could count the time in weeks rather than months or years.

[ketsudan]

Yeah. I guess it was because I researched all of this late at night when I was tired that I didn't notice that blindingly HUGE IMPORTANT factor. :{ But yeah; I'll be redoing my searches and deciding in between 16-something or 18-something and hopefully, that will be a lot more historically accurate than whatever I was trying to figure out before.