The first European colonizers to Enewetak, Spanish explorer Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón, arrived on 10 October 1529. He called the island ""Los Jardines"" (The Gardens). In 1794, sailors aboard the British merchant sloop "Walpole" called the islands "Brown's Range" (thus, the Japanese name "Brown Atoll"). It was visited by about a dozen ships before the establishment of the German colony of the Marshall Islands in 1885. With the rest of the Marshalls, Enewetak was captured by the Imperial Japanese Navy in 1914, during World War I and mandated to the Empire of Japan by the League of Nations in 1920. The Japanese administered the island under the South Seas Mandate, but mostly left affairs in hands of traditional local leaders until the start of World War II. The atoll, together with other parts of Marshall Islands located to the west of 164°E, was placed under the governance of Pohnpei district during the Japanese administration period, and is different from the rest of the Marshall Islands.