He arrived in the Philippines as governor and captain general at Easter, 1609, bring with him five companies of reinforcements for the Spanish military in the colony.

The fleet fought with the Portuguese in Mozambique, Sumatra and Johore before building a fort at Near, in the Banda Islands (present-day Indonesia).

To this end in 1612 he dispatched the former governor of Ternate, Cristobal de Azcueta to Portuguese India to make plans with the viceroy there for a joint assault.

In order to obtain the artillery for this expedition de Silva had weakened the defenses of Manila, with grave risks in the event of an attack on the city by the Dutch.

There was no news of the arrival of the Portuguese galleons, but against the advice of many of his subordinates, Governor de Silva sailed for Malacca on February 9, 1616.

The fleet carried 5,000 men, both soldiers and sailors, including nearly 2,000 Spaniards and a unit of Japanese infantry, which numbered at 500.

From there Governor de Silva sent Juan Gutierrez Paramo with part of the fleet to reinforce Ternate (in the Moluccas).

Although they had not faced combat, many men had died of fevers and other illnesses that struck the fleet in Malacca and the Strait of Singapore.

Critics of the governor, both among his contemporaries and later historians, have claimed that had he sailed directly to the Moluccas rather than to Malacca, he very possibly could have dislodged the undermanned Dutch from the archipelago.