The common language aboard Magellan’s fleet was nautical Castilian, which contained specialized terms for every line, clew, and device to be found aboard the ships. In this idiom Magellan and his captains gave orders to the crew. “Izá el trinquete,” they cried, to raise the foresail; “Tirá de los escotines de gabia,” to haul in the topsail sheets. “Dad vuelta,” uttered with special vehemence, meant put your back into it. And there were many other orders, enough to cover every operation a sailor could be expected to perform. “Dejad las chafaldetas” . . . well the clew lines. Alzá aquel briol . . . heave on that buntline. Levá el papahigo . . . hoist the main course. Pon la mesana . . . set the mizzen. Tirá de los scotines de gabia . . . haul in the topsail sheets. The cry of “Suban dos á los penoles” dispatched two sailors, scampering in tandem up the mast, trying not to look down on the heaving deck as they hauled themselves toward the sky; and the order “Juegue el guimbalate para que la bomba achique” sent more hands below to perform the backbreaking labor of working the pumps until the blasted thing sucked water out of the hold. The bilgewater around the pumps was also the most noxious to be found anywhere on the ship, and sailors retched from the stench. Despite the various hardships involved with operating the pumps, they were an absolute necessity at sea; without them, ships slowly took on water till they sank, and operating them exhausted teams of ablebodied seamen. It was not unheard-of for mariners to collapse and die during the ordeal of working the pump to save a ship.
The sailors had their secular chants, or saloma, for the arduous routine tasks they performed. The men knew them all by heart. If they were hauling the anchor, the chanteyman would shout or perhaps sing the first half of the line, and the others, gripping the rope, would complete the second half. “O dio,” cried the chanteyman, “Ayuta noy,” the men replied in unison. “O que somo,” he sang out; “Servi soy” came the reply. “O voleamo . . . Ben servir.” And so on until the order came to make fast the line, and the men fell out to catch their breaths.
The men quickly left behind the identities they had maintained on land for those imposed on them at sea. No longer did it matter if they were Castilians, Greeks, Portuguese, or Genoese; life aboard ship was lived according to a rigid social structure segregating men who nonetheless lived in extremely close quarters and who depended on each other for their survival.
A strict division of labor ruled over all. At the bottom were the pages, assigned to the ships in pairs. Many pages were mere children, as young as eight years old; none were older than fifteen. They were commonly orphans. Not all pages were created equal. Some had been virtually kidnapped from the quays of Seville and pressed into service; if they had not been on ships, they would have been roaming the streets, learning to pick pockets and getting into minor scrapes. They were treated harshly, exploited shamelessly, deprived of adequate pay, and occasionally made the victims of sexual predators among older crew members. Their chores included scrubbing the decks with saltwater hauled from the sea in buckets, serving and cleaning after meals, and performing any menial task assigned to them.
Another class of page lived a very different life, privileged and relatively free of demand, under the protection of officers. These handpicked young men generally came from good, well-connected families, and worked as apprentices for their protectors; they were expected to learn their trade and to rise through the ranks. Their duties were far lighter than those of the unfortunate boys who had been pressed into service.
The privileged pages maintained the sixteen Venetian sand clocks—or ampolletas—carried by Magellan’s ships. Basically a large hourglass, the sand clock had been in use since Egyptian times; it was essential for both timekeeping and for navigation. The ampolletas consisted of a glass vessel divided into two compartments. The upper chamber contained a quantity of sand trickling into the lower over a precisely measured period of time, usually a half hour or an hour. Maintaining the ampolletas was simple enough—the pages turned them over every half hour, night and day—but the task was critical. Aboard a swaying ship, the ampolletas were the only reliable timepiece, and the captain depended on them for dead reckoning and changing the watches. A ship without a functioning ampolleta was effectively disabled.
Operating the ampolletas aboard the armada had religious overtones, and the pages, in their presumed innocence, doubled as the ships’ acolytes. When they turned over the sand clocks, they recited psalms or prayers invoking divine guidance for a safe voyage. Usually, the prayers required a chorus, and they had to chant loudly enough to demonstrate that they were on the job and fulfilling their duties promptly. At the end of the day, their high voices could be heard above the ship’s bawdy clamor, reciting prayers to the Virgin Mary, reminding all of their religious obligations, even here, thousands of miles from home.
Finished with their prayers, the boys called the new watch to their post. “Al cuarto!” they cried. Al cuarto! On deck! On deck! And the members of the day watch staggered to their accustomed places, where they could crouch comfortably against a sheltering plank or overhanging wooden ornament. They might carry a fistful of hardtack or salted fish, and they almost certainly regretted their chronic lack of sleep because night aboard ship was as noisy as day; the ocean never slept, and neither did they.
If the sailors had a moment before reporting for duty, they might relieve themselves, an unpleasant, even ridiculous chore aboard the ships. To urinate, they simply stood and faced the ocean wherever they could be sure that the wind would not send the stream back on them, or anyone else. Defecating was even more difficult, calling for a precarious balancing act as a sailor eased himself over the rail and lowered himself onto a crude seat suspended high above the waves. There were two such seats, fore and aft, known as jardines, a name ironically suggesting flowers. After he lowered his breeches and eased himself into the seat, the sailor had to void himself in full view of anyone who cared to watch—privacy did not exist aboard these ships—and if the sea happened to be rough, the frigid spray splattered his exposed bottom. (More than one sailor lost his life when he plunged from the jardines to the ocean.) When he was done, he wiped himself with a length of pitch-covered rope, and then climbed back on deck, where he no doubt breathed a sigh of relief.
Was it any wonder that the ship, with all its filth and noise and nauseating odor, was called pájaro puerco, a flying pig?
Once they had taken up their posts, the weary sailors studied the sea for buried shoals, examined the rigging, dried the dew from the lines, and checked the sails for damage. They scrubbed, repaired, overhauled, and polished every exposed surface of the ships. They applied pitch to fraying hemp, and repaired torn or stressed sails. They made their weapons gleam, and fought a constant, losing battle against protecting their food supply from vermin. After several months at sea, the five ships of the Armada de Molucca were in far better shape than they had been when they sailed from Seville.
Just above the pages in rank came the apprentices, or grumetes, the most expendable and vulnerable members of all the crew. Ranging in age from seventeen to twenty, they were the ones who sprang on the rigging the moment the captain ordered them to furl or unfurl the sail; to scamper to the dangerous lookout posts atop the masts, to pull on the oars in the longboats, and to operate the complex mechanical devices aboard ship, the pulleys and cranes, the cables and anchors, the fixed and movable rigging. They teamed up to operate the capstan, rotating its drum with levers to load (or unload) heavy supplies, weapons, and ballast. They even shaved the legs and manicured the toenails of their masters, perhaps setting the stage for sexual relations between the two, even though such behavior was strictly forbidden. Apprentices were the group most likely to be disciplined, to be whipped for disobedience, or to be confined to the stocks for as long as a week.
If an apprentice survived all the ordeals and hazards of life at sea, he could apply for certification as a “sailor,” receiving a document signed by the ship’s pilot, boatswain, and master. He was now a professional mariner, a
nd could look forward to a career lasting about twenty years, if he lived that long. Sailors advanced through the ranks by learning how to handle the helm, deploy the sounding line, splice cables, and, if they were mathematically inclined, marking charts and taking measurements of celestial objects to fix the ship’s position.
Most sailors were in their teens or twenties. Anyone who had reached his thirties was considered a veteran scalawag; by the time he had survived to that age, he had seen what life at sea held: brutality, loneliness, and disease; he had experienced flashes of camaraderie and heroism, as well as persistent dishonesty and callousness. He knew all about the avarice of shipowners, the uncomprehending indifference of kings under whose flags the expedition sailed, and the tyranny of captains. Men rarely went to sea beyond the age of forty. Magellan, nearly that age when he left Seville, was among the oldest, if not the oldest person aboard the Armada de Molucca.
No matter how high an ordinary sailor rose, he was outranked by specialists such as gunners, essential to expeditions exploring new lands but hard to come by. Skilled in the use of cannon, in the preparation of gunpowder, and the selection of projectiles, a gunner tended to his weapons throughout the voyage, keeping them secure, clean, free of rust, and ready for battle at all times. Although most gunners were Flemings, Germans, or Italians, the Casa de Contratación kept a gunnery instructor on its staff to train Castilians. The Casa provided the cannon, but the gunners-in-training had to pay the instructor’s fees, as well as the cost of gunpowder, which was enough to discourage many potential students. Less glamorous but equally necessary fields of specialization included carpenters, caulkers, and coopers. This last group repaired the hundreds of casks and buckets aboard the ships by replacing hoops or staves and sealing leaks. There was also a complement of divers aboard the fleet, whose job it was to swim under the ships and, when necessary, clear seaweed from the rudder and keel, and inspect the hull for signs of exterior damage and leaks.
The ship’s barber, another specialist, was deceptively named because trimming beards was the least of his responsibilities. He served as the onboard dentist, doctor, and surgeon, ministering to the crew out of his chest of nostrums, herbs, and folk remedies. The fleet’s barber was named Hernando Bustamente, who shipped out aboard Concepción. Records show that his medical supplies were purchased from an apothecary named Johan Vernal on July 19, 1519, shortly before departure. Included were distillations of various herbs, among them fennel, thistle, and chicory; a purgative known as diacatholicon; turpentine; lard; various unguents and oils; six pounds of chamomile; honey; incense; and quicksilver—all of them carefully stored in canisters. Bustamente also carried an assortment of tools with him. Medical chests of the era contained a brass mortar and pestle to grind compounds, and a selection of surgical instruments including scissors, a lancet, a tooth extractor, an enema syringe made from copper, and a scale. This slender store of medical supplies and equipment would have to serve the needs of 260 men of the fleet in all climates and conditions for several years. In practice, Bustamente’s most frequent duty at sea was extracting teeth, not treating disease.
No one answered to the description of cook aboard these ships because the job was considered too demeaning. One sailor telling another that his beard smelled of smoke was tantamount to provoking a fight. So the crew took turns cooking, or paid the apprentices to cook for them. And during foul weather, there was no cooking at all, and the sailors endured cold repasts of hardtack, salted meat, and wine.
In addition to these traditional roles, the armada’s roster included phantom crew members: saints who, by custom of the sea, found their way onto the ships’ rosters. Magellan’s fleet included Santo Adelmo, the patron saint of Burgos; Santo António de Lisboa, the popular patron saint of Lisbon, who was reputed to rescue shipwrecked sailors and provide favorable winds to their ships; Santa Bárbara, whom Spaniards invoked as a safeguard against violent storms; and Nuestra Señora de Montserrat, to whom a famous Benedictine shrine was dedicated. Even more remarkable, each of these ghostly personages was accorded a share of the fleet’s profits in return for divine protection; the arrangement was a clever way of donating a portion of the expedition’s profits to the Church.
Officers ranked just above the sailors and specialists in the fleet’s hierarchy. One tier consisted of the steward, charged with keeping an eye on the food supply; the boatswain, or contramaestre; the boatswain’s mate; and the alguacil. The alguacil. for which there is no exact translation, served as the king’s representative aboard the ship and served as a master-at-arms or military officer. If Magellan needed to arrest a crew member, he ordered the alguacil.to perform the deed. This was not a job designed to endear him to the other crew members, and the alguacil.stood apart from the rest of the crew. At the top of the pinnacle came the pilot, who plotted the ship’s route; the master, who supervised the precious cargo; and finally the captain. Each of the top three officers had his own page (as Captain General, Magellan had several, including his illegitimate son), and they lived a life as separate as possible from the rank-and-file sailors and apprentices. The officers had their own cabins, cramped, to be sure, but a mark of distinction, and they rarely ate with the crew. To most of the men aboard the fleet, even the flagship, Trinidad, Ferdinand Magellan seemed a remote, imperious figure, authoritarian and arbitrary, a man whose every word was law, and on whose skill, luck, and good judgment their lives depended.
Although sea captains, Magellan included, could be notoriously high-handed, the sailors’ lot was governed, at least in theory, by the Consulado del Mare, the Spanish maritime code that had been in existence—and in force—for several centuries before it was formally compiled in 1494. The code described approved methods for hiring and paying sailors, and spelled out the ordinary seaman’s exhausting chores (“to go to the forest and fetch wood, to saw and to make planks, to make spars and ropes, to bake, to man the boat with the boatswain, to stow goods and to unstow them; and at every hour when the mate shall order him to go and fetch spars and ropes, to carry planks, and to put on board all the victuals of the merchants, to heave the vessel over”), as well as the punishments they could expect to receive if they failed to follow orders (“A mariner ought not to undress himself if he is not in a port for wintering. And if he does so, for each time he ought to be plunged into the sea with a rope from the yard arm three times; and after three times offending, he ought to lose his salary and the goods which he has in the ship”). In addition, a sailor was bound to go wherever the captain ordered, even “to the end of the world.” So, under the Consulado, Magellan had the right to take his crew wherever he wished, all the way to the Spice Islands, and even beyond.
The provisions of the Consulado afforded some protection to sailors by specifying their diet. They were entitled to meat three days a week, “That is to say on Sundays, Tuesday, and Thursdays.” Other days, they were to be served “porridge, and every evening of every day accompaniment with bread, and also on the same three days in the morning he ought to give them wine, and also he ought to give them the same quantity of wine in the evening.” Accounts of exactly how much wine Magellan allowed his crew members vary, but it probably came to two liters per man each day. And on Feast Days, which were frequent, the Consulado specified that the captain was to double his crew’s rations. Magellan, from all accounts, followed these guidelines scrupulously, except when he had to cut back on rations to prevent starvation. As the voyage unfolded, it became apparent that he, like other captains of the day, had two obsessions: maintaining the seaworthiness of his fragile ships, and acquiring enough food for his unruly men.
Why did sailors put up with it all? Why did the ordinary seamen trained officers abandon hearth and home to live amid these grim circumstances for years on end? Why did they endure starvation rations, the indignity and agony of the lash and the stocks, torment by vermin, thirst, sunstroke, and the lack of women? They went to sea for a variety of reasons, for glory and greed, for escape, out of habit, out of despe
ration, and through pure chance. To Juan de Escalante de Mendoza, the veteran Spanish mariner, sailors came in two varieties. “The first sort includes all those who commence to sail as a livelihood, such as poor men. . . . Seafaring is the most suit- able occupation they can find to sustain themselves, especially for those born in ports and maritime areas. This sort is the most numerous among mariners,” he noted. “Although they might want to be schooled for some other occupation, they do not have the disposition or the means to be able to do it.” So they went to sea because it was their livelihood, and in all likelihood their fathers’before them; because they knew the sea better than they knew land; because they could throw off the concerns of ordinary life; because, if they stayed home, they knew the dreary routines life held in store for them, whereas at sea anything could happen; because, if they
survived the ordeal of an ocean voyage, they would have a fund of stories to draw on for the rest of their lives; and finally because if they successfully smuggled even a small amount of gold or spices, they would have a nest egg to sustain them and their families against the vicissitudes of life.
Many of the men went to sea simply to escape. Some were fleeing jail, hanging, or torture; others were abandoning their families and responsibilities. Others were avoiding debtors’ prison; once they obtained a berth on a ship, they would be immune from arrest, safe for as long as they were at sea. Many sailors planned to desert their ships once they reached the fabled Indies, with their gold and women and luxury. For them, the Indies served, in Cervantes’s words, as “the shelter and refuge of Spain’s desperadoes, the church of the lawless, the safe haven of murderers, the native land and cover for cardsharps, the general lure for loose women, and the common deception of the many and the remedy of the particular few.”
Over the Edge of the World: Magellen's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe Page 12