A Brief History of Circumnavigators

by Derek Wilson

  Magellan did not win the hearts of his men nor had he put an end to disaffection. There would be further crises of command but the captain general had, for the time being, gained the grudging obedience of his crews. The handful of sailors who survived the voyage brought back conflicting opinions of their tough little commander and historians have been divided ever since in their assessment of Magellan’s devious and mercurial character.

  Before leaving the depressing haven of St Julian the fleet suffered another setback. The Santiago was shipwrecked while reconnoitring the coast to the south. Only after a group of men had made an appalling four month journey across the snow-covered terrain to bring Magellan news of the disaster could the crew be rescued.

  On 24 August, when the worst of the winter was past, the four remaining vessels resumed their voyage. Day after day the lookouts scanned the coastline for the entrance to a strait that their leader insisted, seemingly against all the evidence, was there. Not until 21 October, St Ursula’s day, was a significant cape of grey-brown cliffs observed with a channel beyond. Magellan marked it on the chart and gave it the name ‘Cape Virgins’ (St Ursula was supposed to have been martyred along with eleven thousand maidenly companions). He took his ships into the channel and seems to have been favoured with unusually calm weather. Thousands of sailing vessels later found great difficulty beating into the strait against the contra-currents set up by ocean swell and the tidal race around the cape, often made worse by offshore gales:

  I had only a moment to douse sail and lash all solid when it struck like a shot from a cannon, and for the first half hour it was something to be remembered by way of a gale. For thirty hours it kept on blowing hard. The sloop could carry no more than a three-reefed mainsail and forestaysail; with these she held on stoutly and was not blown out of the strait.6

  Magellan set two ships to explore the channel and after five days they returned with the triumphant news that the waterway broadened out and continued unchecked to westward. For the Portuguese commander this was the high point of the voyage. As the Concepcion and the San Antonio sailed back into view, cannon blazing and flags flying, he knew that he was vindicated.

  But if Magellan was delighted that the new route to the Indies lay open, others were not. The seaway before them was bordered by desolate lands. Along the shore rows of corpses could be seen impaled on poles. Beyond them the night sky was lit by the glow of a thousand fires (hence the name Magellan gave this place – Tierra del Fuego). Who could tell what horrors might lurk further within the strait? Fear played on jealousies and rivalries. At the first opportunity the captain of the San Antonio was overpowered and the largest ship in the fleet slipped past its companions and set course for Spain.

  Despite this setback, Magellan pressed on, probing inlets and channels in search of the real strait. His men endured cold, storms and hunger as they threaded their way past snow-topped peaks and scrub-covered rock along the 334-mile waterway which, for all they knew, had no outlet:

  On 27 November (Magellan] came out into the South Sea, blessing God, who had been pleased to permit him to find what he so much desired, being the first that ever went that way, which will perpetuate his memory for ever.7

  The passage of the straits had been entirely due to Magellan’s determination and fierce discipline. It was an achievement that changed the course of history. Thus, probably no place on earth is more fittingly named than the Straits of Magellan.

  Hardships passed were as nothing compared with what now lay ahead. Magellan’s fleet travelled over nine thousand miles in three months and eight days without making a landfall. Thanks to chance and the SE trade winds the voyagers missed Easter Island, Pitcairn, the Society Islands, the Marquesas, the Carolines, the Gilbert Islands and the thousand and one other atolls and volcanic ridges thrust up from the floor of the Pacific.

  It was a nightmare crossing. Men died from scurvy, malnutrition and sheer exhaustion. And they were the lucky ones. Their shipmates, driven by the primal urge to survive, forced stagnant water, sawdust and boiled-up bits of leather into their aching stomachs. And all for a purpose which rapidly lost the last vestiges of credibility. For, the further Magellan’s ships sailed towards the taunting emptiness of the horizon the more pointless the exercise became.* The only fact established beyond doubt by the crews’ appalling ordeal was that the European geographers’ calculations about the width of the Pacific were wildly inaccurate. The gap between ‘farthest East’ and ‘farthest West’ was vast. Moreover, it seemed to consist of nothing but empty ocean. What all this proved beyond doubt to Magellan’s dwindling band of mariners was that there was no practicable, alternative route to the Orient. The great ‘South Sea’ was a barrier to commerce; not a highway. It is hard to conceive the emotions which must have been unleashed on 6 March 1521 when the cry ‘Land ahead’ rang from the Concepcion’s masthead. It can only be compared with the last-minute reprieve received by a prisoner in the condemned cell.

  The long-awaited landfall was the island of Guam, the southernmost tip of the Mariana Ridge. Today a plaque marks the spot where Magellan stepped ashore. It is a valuable tourist attraction but the Micronesians do not remember their first European visitor with affection. They tell how he dubbed their ancestors ‘thieves’, murdered several of them and set fire to one of their villages before proceeding on his way. Mistakes are inevitable when different cultures meet for the first time. Magellan’s men were ravenous, desperate and fearful of strangers. The local people were curious and acquisitive. Iron they prized above all things – for weapons and fishing spears. Out they came in their canoes to welcome the strangers, who watched them anxiously. But the small, brown-skinned men brought coconuts and fruit. They seemed friendly and when they came aboard and saw iron spikes, sail needles and steel knives they were very excited. They began to help themselves – in exchange for the food. More canoes arrived, with more offerings and more demands for metal in exchange. Magellan was afraid of his men being outnumbered and overpowered on their own decks. He ordered the natives off. Next day he sent shore parties to fetch water and hunt for meat. No sooner had the sailors left the beach than a group of young men made off with one of the boats. That was the point at which Magellan’s brittle patience snapped. Conditioned by months of conflict with argumentative captains and surly crews to regard tolerance as weakness, he reacted swiftly and brutally. He ordered a group of islanders aboard the Trinidad to be shot down by crossbowmen. Then he gathered a force and went in search of his missing boat. Finding it, he punished the culprits with death, then fired their village. It was a savage act, even for that brutal age. It reveals a man whose judgement had been affected by the ordeal of command in impossible circumstances; a man at the end of his tether.

  Six weeks later the captain general’s inflexibility, magnified now to the point of paranoia, cost him his life. He saw himself as one of the great conquistadores. When his convoy reached the Philippines, he planted the Castilian flag at Massava, on Easter day (31 March) and claimed the islands for Spain. But Magellan was not another Cortes or Pizarro with an army at his back and time a-plenty to impose his will on an alien people. He led a raggle-taggle band of men, far from being in first class fighting trim, whose dreams were not of colonial adventure but of getting safe home. Perhaps he believed that the God who had brought him safely through such appalling hardships had a great work for him to accomplish; that nothing and no one could stand against him and the fulfilment of his destiny. Recklessly and heeding no advice, he set about imposing his will by force upon the islanders. For their part, the local rulers regarded the strange white men with their massive, fire-belching ‘canoes’ and their impregnable steel tunics as warriors sent by the gods to help them in their own local warfare. Eagerly the lords of Cebu and Mactan made alliance with Magellan, accepting a Spanish overlordship they had no intention of honouring and a baptism they did not understand. Then they enlisted his aid against the troublesome Lapulapu, a rebellious prince of Mactan. Magellan agreed to attack La
pulapu’s stronghold, brushing aside the united protest of all his officers. On 27 April he led a frontal assault through the shallow water of a wide bay out of range of any covering fire from his ships. In the brief battle Magellan, eight Europeans and four islanders were cut down. A subsequent appeal for the return of their bodies was rejected.

  This was not the end of the voyagers’ misfortunes. The two captains who now took over the leadership of the expedition succeeded in alienating their ally, the King of Cebu. At a royal banquet they and twenty-five of their men were murdered. The survivors lost no time in escaping. But once at sea they had to face another problem. None of their ships was in good shape after more than two years of open warfare with the sea and the fifth column attacks of teredo worms below the waterline. But the Concepcion was quite unfit for further service. She was stripped and burned and her crew transferred to the remaining two vessels.

  The next six months was a period of aimless wandering among the confusion of islands that make up the Sundas and Indonesia. The captains had no charts and no clear objective. More than one commander was voted into and, later, out of office. Indecision and divided counsels threatened to complete the disintegration of the expedition. The mariners’ route was decided more than anything else by the reception they experienced at their ports of call. After their previous experiences they were on their guard and were quick to weigh anchor at the slightest suspicion of hostility. But at Palawan the local ruler welcomed them warmly and made a blood pact to signify his friendship. The weary travellers found his land a veritable paradise. It was, in the words of Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian gentleman adventurer, who wrote an account of the voyage:

  a large island, where grow rice, ginger, swine, goats, poultry, figs half a cubit long and as thick as the arm [bananas], which are good, and some others much smaller, which are better than all the others. There are also coconuts, sweet potato, sugarcanes, roots like turnips, and rice cooked under the fire in bamboos or wood, which lasts longer than that cooked in pots. We could well call that land the Land of Promise, because before finding it we suffered very great hunger, so that many times we were ready perforce to abandon our ships and go ashore that we might not starve to death.8

  Amidst such plenty and fêted by the smiling, naked islanders, many of the voyagers must have felt, like Tennyson’s Lotos Eaters:

  Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil,

  the shore Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar;

  O rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

  Yet there could be no tarrying. They sailed on to Brunei and a welcome that set their eyes wide with its magnificence and generosity. This ancient sultanate, Islamised in the previous century, was at the height of its prosperity and power. By conquest and commerce Sultan Bulkiah and his predecessors had extended their influence over most of Borneo and many islands of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. The travellers had heard of Bulkiah’s legendary wealth but they were quite unprepared for the reality. Royal barges ornamented with gold came out to meet them, bearing gifts. Their envoys were conveyed on richly caparisoned elephants to the chief ministers’ residence, where they feasted off plates of gold and fine porcelain. When the captains were summoned to the sultan’s palace they found themselves surrounded by a gaudy display of luxury such as any European monarch might envy. The great audience hall was hung with silk and decorated with ornaments of precious metal set with gems. Bulkiah, himself, could only be glimpsed in an adjoining room screened by a scarlet curtain and the visitors’ messages had to be conveyed through a hierarchy of intermediaries. For the first time the Europeans were in the presence of a ‘savage’ ruler who rivalled their own king in power and magnificence. They admired the splendour and appreciated the sumptuous repast set before them but, when the time came to present their own tawdry gifts to this monarch, they could only feel embarrassed.

  Yet, once again, they had to make a hasty departure. The only aspect of western technology that impressed Bulkiah was shipbuilding. He tried to lure the Europeans into a trap so that he could seize the Victoria and the Trinidad. But the travellers were, by now, extremely cautious and they made good their escape. For several weeks they wandered among the islands behaving more like pirates than envoys of His Most Catholic Majesty. They took what they wanted by force, including pilots to guide them through the reefs and channels and detained prominent men as hostages to ensure the good behaviour of their subjects. At last, they reached the Spice Islands, the commercial goal of the whole enterprise. The ruler of Tidore received them enthusiastically, probably because he saw Spain as a counterbalance to the powerful Portuguese whose visits were becoming increasingly frequent. The two ships were very soon loaded with cargoes of cloves, bought very cheaply. For the first time captains and mariners could allow themselves to indulge the dream of returning home wealthy men, standing high in royal favour. They had made a trade treaty between their king and one of the rulers of the rich Moluccas. They could reasonably look forward to a rapturous reception in Spain.

  If they could reach Spain. This was now the problem that tormented their minds. There were two possible ways back to their own land, and both were dangerous. Eastward lay the horrors of the empty Pacific that they had already experienced. Westward lay an established trade route to Europe but one dominated by their Portuguese enemies. They decided on the Indian Ocean route but, when the time for departure came, the Trinidad was found to be taking in water. So there was a last minute change of plan. It was decided that, rather than lose the favourable trade winds, the Victoria should sail immediately. The Trinidad would be properly repaired and then essay the Pacific crossing to the Spanish settlement at Panama, whence crew and cargo could travel over land to the Atlantic coast and return to Spain in one of the regular convoys.

  Thus, on 21 December, the Victoria, with a crew of forty-four Europeans and thirteen Indonesians, sailed out of the anchorage, their sixty heavy-hearted comrades accompanying them as long as possible in Moluccan canoes and eventually waving their farewells as the tiny craft fell far astern. Not until 6 April 1522 did the Trinidad weigh anchor, under the command of Gonzalo Gomez de Espinosa. After three months, during which all the horrors of the outward voyage had repeated themselves and thirty-five men had died of scurvy, malnutrition and fever, she was forced to turn back. She reached the Moluccas again in November only to discover a large Portuguese fleet dominating the islands. Espinosa surrendered with his twenty-two surviving crewmen. They were eventually sent back to Spain but only four of them arrived in 1525 to become the second group of men to circumnavigate the globe.

  Meanwhile the Victoria was scarcely faring better. Her captain was now Juan Sebastian d’Elcano, a Basque mariner promoted by the vicissitudes of the voyage from relative obscurity to ship’s captain. He was different in character from Magellan and faced fewer difficulties but he showed that, like his dead leader, he too could be firm and single-minded in the pursuit of an objective. His task was simply to get his ship and his men home and to avoid a clash with the Portuguese. Thus, he steered a south-westerly course across the Indian Ocean to avoid the Portuguese bases along the coasts of India and Africa and the sea lanes between them. This meant another long journey through empty, uncharted seas which was almost as arduous as the trek across the Pacific. The Victoria left Timor on 11 February, sailed in a wide arc as far as 42° S and did not round the Cape of Good Hope till 19 May. During those three months their only landfall was on uninhabited Amsterdam Island. Hunger and scurvy were again the worst problems the crew had to face. Inevitably, the men came close to mutiny and insisted on making for Mozambique, a Portuguese colony on the African coast. Elcano refused to buy immediate relief at the cost of the success of the expedition. But when they neared the Cape and ran into unremitting westerly gales, the captain must have doubted whether he had made the right decision. For seven weeks the Victoria battled against contrary winds, fighting hard for every league of ocean. Her foremast was carried awa
y. She was leaking badly. Constant handling of sails and manning of pumps called for superhuman endurance from her emaciated crew. One by one they died and their bodies were committed to the deep by comrades who wondered whether they would be next. The Victoria at last entered the Atlantic and set a northerly course with half the complement which had left the Spice Islands.

  Now Elcano could not avoid the unwelcome reality that the ship must put in at some harbour where the men could rest and find fresh food. That meant facing the unknown dangers of African tribesmen, if they made a landfall on the mainland, or the all-too-easily-guessed reaction of a zealous Portuguese governor, if they stopped at the Cape Verde Islands. After discussing the matter with the senior mariners Elcano opted for the devil he knew. On 10 July the Victoria anchored off Santiago in the Cape Verde Islands. Elcano sent a boat ashore having rehearsed with the sailors the story they were to tell. They were to represent the Victoria as the damaged laggard of a convoy from the Americas, which had parted with its companions and taken so long to cross the Atlantic that its victuals were exhausted. The ruse worked – at first. Twice the skiff returned laden with sacks of rice. But on its third visit to the town someone became suspicious. The sailors in the boat were arrested and a message sent to Elcano demanding the surrender of his ship. The captain had no alternative but to cut and run, leaving thirteen invaluable crewmen behind.

  The leaking, undermanned vessel wallowed northwards along the African coast. Every league nearer home was bought with more death, more water shipped, more men collapsing with fatigue and sickness at their posts. It seemed that success would be denied just as it was becoming a possibility. The men urged Elcano to jettison some of the cargo to lighten the ship. He refused, and for a compelling reason: the spices on board the Victoria were valuable enough to pay the costs of the expedition and yield a handsome profit. The powerful courtiers and merchants who had backed Magellan would not look kindly on a captain who had deliberately wasted their investment. And it would avail Elcano nothing to insist that he had done so to save his ship and his men. So for two more months the Victoria pursued her uncertain course back to Spain.