Over the Edge of the World: Magellen's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe

by Laurence Bergreen

  By confronting the intellectual and spiritual limitations of the ancient view of the world, by subjecting its assumptions to the ultimate reality check—traveling around the globe—Magellan looked ahead of his time to the Age of Reason and beyond, to the present. In their lust for power, their fascination with sexuality, their religious fervor, and their often tragic ignorance and vulnerability, Magellan and his men epitomized a turning point in history. Their deeds and character, for better or worse, still resonate powerfully.

  Notes on Sources

  Ferdinand Magellan remains controversial even today, considered a tyrant, a traitor, a visionary, and a hero by various chroniclers. As befits an explorer who led a multinational crew on a voyage around the world, accounts of his life and circumnavigation have been heavily influenced by divergent manuscript traditions arising from a rich store of primary and important secondary sources in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Latin, and Italian. In re-creating Magellan’s epic voyage, I have generally relied on these diverse primary sources—diaries, journals, contemporaneous accounts, royal warrants, and legal testimony. Some important early Magellan sources have been translated into English for the first time for use in this book. These include a lengthy memoir by Ginés de Mafra, who was one of the survivors; early histories by João de Barros, António de Herrera y Tordesillas, and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdez; and legal documents pertaining to the voyage now archived at Brandeis University, in Massachusetts.

  The most important (though not the only) source of primary information about the voyages of Magellan and other explorers is the Archive of the Indies in Seville. Martín Fernández de Navarrete edited a multivolume compilation of the archive’s chief holdings, published in Spanish in 1837, which advanced understanding of Magellan and his era; most of the archive’s records pertaining to Magellan’s voyage are in Volume 4.

  As a result of this wealth of primary sources, Spanish historians have tended to feed off earlier works in Spanish, but they are not the only important Magellan chroniclers. Portuguese historians have emphasized Portuguese sources and attitudes, often sharply critical of Magellan. More recently, Englishlanguage historians, who generally portray Magellan in a heroic light, have drawn on a wider variety of sources and languages; but as the decades have passed, they, too, have become another manuscript tradition. In particular, the naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote several heavily documented chapters on Magellan in his classic work, The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages (1974), to which I happily acknowledge my debt. Curiously, F.H.H. Guillemard’s Life of Ferdinand Magellan (1890) remains the standard biography more than one hundred years after its publication; since then, new sources and approaches to the era have emerged, making it possible to give a more three-dimensional account of the voyage, including graphic and intimate details that custom prevented Guillemard from mentioning, except, perhaps, in a Latin whisper. Also worthwhile is Tim Joyner’s Magellan (1992), a concise biography buttressed by a generous selection of primary sources. Martin Torodash’s “Magellan Historiography,” published in The Hispanic American Historical Review, surveys the entire field, offering reliable if occasionally heavy-handed assessments.

  The best and most affecting eyewitness account of Magellan’s circumnavigation was written by Antonio Pigafetta, the young Venetian scholar and diplomat who was among the handful of survivors. His chronicle remains one of the most significant documents of the Age of Discovery. The best and fullest English translation, by James A. Robertson, an American scholar, was published in three substantial volumes in 1906. Robertson worked from a Portuguese translation of the original, which meant the occasional blurring of Pigafetta’s distinctive humor and irony. In 1969, R. A. Skelton’s new translation managed to convey a sense of Pigafetta’s voice and sensibility, and includes a facsimile of the Pigafetta manuscript in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. I am indebted to both of these scholars for their diligent work, as is anyone who wants to learn more about Magellan and Pigafetta. My quotations from Pigafetta’s diary are drawn largely from Robertson’s translation, but where possible I have checked it against the original and other sources, and silently corrected a number of slips and euphemisms.

  Pigafetta was not a disinterested source. He was, touchingly, a Magellan loyalist, and as a result, made only the briefest mention of the various mutinies during the voyage and Magellan’s drastic efforts to quell them. To present a fuller account of these events, I have turned to the testimony of other sailors who witnessed or participated in them, including de Mafra and Vasquito Gallego. In addition to the diaries, Francisco Albo’s pilot’s log gives a day-by-day record of the voyage.

  C H A P T E R I: T H E Q U E S T

  Concerning the Treaty of Tordesillas, Samuel Eliot Morison’s The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages and Tim Joyner’s Magellan both contain valuable analyses of the treaty as it affected Magellan’s proposed expedition, as does Jean Denucé’s Magellan: La Question des Moluques et la Première Circumnavigation du Globe (pp. 46-47).

  Pedro de Medina’s A Navigator’s Universe, ed. Ursula Lamb, sheds light on the subject of Renaissance cosmology, as does Alison Sandman’s accomplished thesis, Cosmographers vs. Pilots. Pablo Pérez-Malláina’s Spain’s Men of the Sea mentions “coarse” pilots (p. 233).

  For more on spices and the spice trade throughout history, see notes to chapter 13. Maximilian of Transylvania’s remark about spices comes from Charles E. Nowell’s Magellan’s Voyage Around the World (p. 275), a convenient if not definitive anthology of several accounts.

  Prince Henry the Navigator’s remark about peril and reward can be found in John Noble Wilford’s The Mapmakers (pp. 67-69). And J. H. Parry’s The Discovery of the Sea contains a sweeping summary of Portuguese ocean exploration.

  For extended discussions of Magellan’s ancestry, see Manuel Villas-Boas, Os Magalhães; Joyner (p. 309); and Morison (pp. 327-329).

  The lives and influence of Spanish and Portuguese Jews have been written about by many scholars, including Jane Gerber, The Jews of Spain; Frederic David Mocatta, The Jews of Spain and Portugal and the Inquisition; and Ruth Pike, Linajudos and Conversos in Seville.

  Among the many accounts of Magellan’s early career are those by Morison; Charles Parr, So Noble a Captain; and F.H.H. Guillemard. Joyner’s Magellan (pp. 33-57) is especially robust.

  Leonard Y. Andaya’s The World of Maluku mentions the extreme sensitivity of Portuguese maps (p. 9). Magellan’s dealings with the Barbosa clan are described by Morison (p. 333) and Denucé (p. 168). Roger Craig Smith’s thesis, Vanguard of Empire, offers background about the Casa de Contratación (pp. 32-33), and Denucé (p. 175) quotes Peter Martyr, as well as describing Ruy Faleiro’s decline (pp. 169-171).

  Guillemard’s assessment of Adrian (p. 101) is quoted.

  Donald Brand’s articles in the The Pacific Basin and Mairin Mitchell’s Elcano (p. 69) discuss Serrão, whose correspondence with Magellan was lost in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755; all that survives is accounts of it in the records of early Portuguese historians.

  Las Casas’s account of Magellan’s plan can be found in Morison (p. 319), and the royal replies come from Martín Fernández de Navarrete, Colección de los viajes y descubrimientos que hicierón por mar los españoles desde fines del siglo XV (vol. 4, pp. 11-12, 113-116), which are available in an English translation in Rodrigue Lévesque’s History of Micronesia (vol. 1, pp. 119-121, 123-125).

  Denucé (pp. 172, 210, 214-218) describes Haro’s financial arrangements for Magellan’s voyage.

  Navarrete (vol. 4, pp. 121-122) contains the document formally authorizing Magellan. An English translation can be found in Blair and Robertson’s The Philippine Islands: 1493-1898 (vol. 1, pp. 271-275).

  C H A P T E R I I: T H E M A N W I T H O U T A C O U N T R Y

  Magellan’s distraught letter to King Charles can be found in Licuanan and Mira, The Philippines Under Spain (pp. 11–13). The original mentions
placing four flags on the capstan, but it was unlikely that piece of machinery would be used for that purpose. A mast was far more likely. For more, see Morison (pp. 340–341).

  King Charles’s correspondence about Magellan’s voyage is reproduced in Blair and Robertson (vol. 1, pp. 277–279 and 280–292). For Magellan’s sailing orders, see Navarrete (vol. 4, pp. 130–152), and Blair and Robertson (vol. 1, pp. 256–259).

  Documents pertaining to Ruy Faleiro’s role in the expedition are reproduced in Navarrete (vol. 4, p. 497) and in Ignacio Vial and Guadalupe Morente, La Primera Vuelta al Mundo: La Nao Victoria (pp. 44–45).

  The list of navigational supplies carried by the fleet comes from Vial and Morente (pp. 85–86).

  Morison (pp. 338–339) is particularly blunt on the subject of Fonseca, as is Joyner, passim. Documents concerning Fonseca’s dealings with the armada are contained in Navarette (vol. 2). Although it lacks source notes, Charles Parr’s biography, So Noble a Captain (p. 230), is strong on preparations for the voyage, including Fonseca’s machinations.

  Vial and Morente (pp. 95–96) discuss the Seville waterfront and the armada’s provisions (p. 128).

  The Casa de Contratacion’s efforts to reign in Magellan are detailed in Vial and Morente (p. 51) and documented in Navarrete (vol. 5). Denuce discusses Magellan’s packing the roster with his relatives (pp. 236–239) and the solemn mass at Santa Maria de la Victoria (pp. 241–246).

  Joyner (pp. 286–287) has the complete text of Magellan’s will, and Denuce (p. 255) tells of Sabrosa’s sad decline after Magellan fled Portugal.

  C H A P T E R I I I: N E V E R L A N D S

  The prayerful commands are recorded by Perez-Mallaina (p. 69).

  The literature of early cartography is vast. A good place for general readers to start is Lloyd A. Brown’s The Story of Maps, along with Rodney Shirley’s The Mapping of the World: Early Printed World Maps, 1472–1700. John Noble Wilford’s The Mapmakers, now in a revised edition (2000), is another valuable summation.

  Stephen Frimmer’s Neverlands offers a diverting introduction to the subject of mythical kingdoms. The quotations from Pliny the Elder are found in the Penguin edition of Natural History (pp. 76, 81). John Livingston Lowes’s The Road to Xanadu (pp. 117–118) catalogs some colorful monsters of the deep. Accounts of the Prester John phenomenon are drawn from Robert Silverberg’s The Realm of Prester John (pp. 41–45, 63). Marco Polo’s words come from the Penguin edition of The Travels (pp. 96, 106), and Mandeville’s fanciful descriptions can be found in the Penguin edition of Sir John Mandeville (pp. 117, 122, 129, 130). John Larner’s Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World (p. 166) has also been consulted. Finally, Rabelais’s satirical skewering of Hearsay can be found in the Penguin edition of Gargantua and Pantagruel (p. 679).

  C H A P T E R I V: “T H E C H U R C H O F T H E L A W L E S S”

  Details of the contretemps concerning the proper form of address to Magellan come from Morison (p. 358), and the incident involving Antonio Ginoves is told most persuasively by Vial and Morente (p. 111).

  For more on the social and political aspects of homosexuality in Spain, see Roger Bigelow Merriman, The Rise of the Spanish Empire (p. 53). It was common practice for homosexuals and even those suspected of homosexual practices to be denounced and punished in public. In August 1519, at the time of Magellan’s departure from Spain, a clergyman in Valencia used the public punishment of a number of homosexuals as the occasion for a hysterical sermon condemning the accused, and his listeners cried out for the death of those who had escaped with lesser punishments. The hysteria boiled along as the populace took up arms; the uprising appeared to end when the authorities confiscated the weapons and demanded that the protestors confine themselves to their homes, but even then the controversy continued as the protestors formed a fraternity and insisted on bearing arms.

  Albo’s account of the fleet’s arrival in Rio de Janeiro can be found in Lord Stanley, First Voyage (p. 212), and Morison (p. 299) discusses early Portuguese efforts to exploit the region’s natural resources. Joyner (p. 125) offers details of Carvalho’s past.

  Vespucci’s ripe description of Brazilian Indians is reproduced by Morison (pp. 285–286).

  Morison (p. 362) discusses Magellan’s efforts to calculate latitudes.

  Details of the sailor’s existence aboard ship are drawn from Perez-Mallaina (pp. 135–159) and Morison (pp. 165–171). Joyner (p. 250) has an interesting discussion of the ampolletas. And only Morison (p. 171), it seems, would trouble to explain the difficulties sailors faced when they had to relieve themselves at sea. Roger Craig Smith’s thesis (pp. 175–176) and the Colección General de Documentos Relativos a las Islas Filipinas Existentes en el Archivo de Indias de Sevilla (vol. 2, pp. 165–168) describe Bustamente’s limited store of medical supplies.

  Information about the saints in the ships’ rosters comes from Perez- Mallaina (p. 238) and from Louis Reau, Iconographie de l’Art Chrétien (vol. 3, pp. 115–122, 169–177, 804).

  For more on the Consulado, see Paul S. Taylor, “Spanish Seamen in the New World During the Colonial Period,” The Hispanic American Historical Review.

  Early conceptions of the strait are discussed by Guillemard (pp. 191–193), who quotes Galvao about the “Dragon’s taile”; by Justin Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America (p. 107); and by Morison (pp. 301–302). See also Mateo Martinic Beros, Historia del Estrecho de Magallanes (1977).

  C H A P T E R V: T H E C R U C I B L E O F L E A D E R S H I P

  The quotation from Albo’s diary is drawn from Stanley (p. 217). Morison (p. 365) provides details of Magellan’s reconnaissance during the waning days of February. Guillemard, normally scrupulous, mentions only one island discovered on February 27, but as Pigafetta makes clear, there were two. See Skelton’s translation of Pigafetta’s Magellan’s Voyage (p. 46).

  The actual animals that Magellan and his crew saw in this part of the world are open to debate because Pigafetta did not provide enough details for exact identification. Guillemard and his followers labeled the “sea wolves” that Magellan’s men saw as “fur seals,” but that is probably not correct. In general, fur seals do not live in this part of the world, but are found in Australia or more northerly waters, around the Bering Strait, for example. It is more likely that Pigafetta was describing the sea lion or sea elephant (sometimes called elephant seal), which is far more common in these latitudes.

  The case for Magellan’s deliberately obscuring the location of Port Saint Julian is made by Denuce, whose Portuguese sources might have imputed sinister motives to Magellan and his pilots where none existed. Nevertheless, there are a number of strong hints that as the voyage proceeded Magellan came to realize he had sailed into Portuguese waters, and it was too late for him to do anything about it except hope he was not caught.

  Accounts of Magellan’s motivational speech are found in Guillemard (p. 163) and Antonio Herrera, The General History (vol. 2, pp. 357ff, and vol. 3, p. 14).

  Since Pigafetta is silent on the subject of the mutiny out of loyalty to his Captain General, de Mafra’s recollections, found in his Relation, are particularly useful, but he was not writing about events at the time they occurred; rather, he was reminiscing—to a scribe—some years after the fact. Nevertheless, de Mafra, unlike Pigafetta, was able to speak freely about controversial matters. See Blazquez and Aguilera’s Descripción for the complete de Mafra account. The translation is by Victor Ubeda. Useful, if predictable, eyewitness accounts of the mutiny in Port Saint Julian can also be found in Navarrete (vol. 4); Elcano’s comment can be found on p. 288. See also Joyner (pp. 284, 291). Finally, Gaspar Correia’s brief but jumbled account of the voyage (found in Lord Stanley of Alderly, ed., The First Voyage Round the World and in Charles E. Nowell, ed., Magellan’s Voyage Around the World) supplies details of Magellan’s use of trickery in regaining control over his ships. Unfortunately, Correia, one of the earliest historians of the voyage, confuses Cartagena with Quesada and relates that M
agellan had Cartagena drawn and quartered, when it was Quesada who suffered that fate. Guillemard (pp. 165–170) makes sense of the chaotic set of events surrouding the mutiny.

  Descriptions of torture procedures are drawn from Henry Lea, Torture (p. 116); Philippus Limborch, The History of the Inquisition (vol. 1, pp. 217–220); and John Marchant et al., A Review of the Bloody Tribunal (pp. 357–358). The final stage of the strappado can be found on pp. 219–220 of Limborch. The punctuation has been modernized. Denuce names the victims of torture and declares Magellan’s deeds to be illegal (pp. 272–280).

  C H A P T E R V I: C A S T A W A Y S

  Morison (p. 374) quotes praise for Serrano’s industriousness. An account of Santiago’s ill-fated reconnaissance mission appears in Stanley (p. 250), presenting Correia, who appears to confuse Santiago’s final voyage with the crew’s subsequent journey over land. (Correia states that the ship returned “laden with the crew,” which was not the case.) For Charles Darwin’s description of the Santa Cruz region, plus many other detailed natural descriptions, see Voyage of the Beagle (p. 167).

  Pigafetta’s sketchy description of Santiago’s crew efforts to survive the trek back to Port Saint Julian is ably supplemented by Guillemard and especially Herrera (pp. 17–18), who writes about the frozen fingers.

  Concerning the first signs of Indians in Port Saint Julian, Pigafetta describes the unexpected appearance of a “giant” on the beach, but de Mafra more plausibly recalls the appearance of smoke prior to the giant’s arrival. Pigafetta’s account of these Indians and guanacos appear in Skelton’s translation (pp. 47–50), Guillemard (p. 183), and Herrera (p. 19).