Carrack (3m).
Tons:
85 tons. Hull:
wood. Comp.:
60. Built:
Spain(?); <1519.
By the 1490s, Spain and Portugal were the world's dominant sea powers, and it seemed reasonable for the Pope to be called upon to divide the world between the two competing kingdoms. In 1493, a papal bull drew a line 100 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, and the following year the Treaty of Tordesillas divided the world along a north-south line drawn 370 leagues (about 1,100 miles) west of the Cape Verde Islands. This gave Portugal a foothold in what is now Brazil, but it remained to be seen whether the Spice Islands, to which Portugal had established a claim, fell within Spanish territory. The enormous wealth to be made trading in pepper, cloves, and other spices was impetus enough for Magellan, but he was also determined to find a westward route to the Pacific and the Orient through the Americas—in essence, to continue the voyage upon which Christopher Columbus had embarked with
Niña,
Pinta, and
Santa María in 1492. Although such a route could easily have led to a circumnavigation of the globe, that was not Magellan's intent, as he believed that the westward route was shorter than the Portuguese route via the Cape of Good Hope.
Spurned by Manoel I, the king of his native Portugal, Magellan (his Portuguese name is Fernão de Magalhães) turned to the Spanish court, where his seven years' experience in the East Indies and well-conceived plan won him the support of Charles V, who consented to the voyage in March 1518. Despite royal backing, it was not until September 20, 1519, that Magellan sailed from Sanlúcar de Barrameda on the Guadalquivir River; he headed 237 men in a fleet of five ships provisioned for two years: San Antonio (120 tons), commanded by Juan de Cartagena; Trinidad (110 tons), in which Magellan himself sailed; Concepción (90 tons), under Gaspar de Quesada; Victoria (85 tons), under Luis de Mendoza; and Santiago (75 tons), under Juan Serrano.
Early on Magellan learned that some of the Spanish captains were plotting his overthrow, but he did not move against them at the time. Sailing from the Cape Verde Islands on October 3, the ships ran along the African coast as far as Sierra Leone, a route that his Spanish captains did not understand, and which Magellan did not explain. When Cartagena protested by refusing to show the evening signal, Magellan had him arrested and put San Antonio under command of Antonio de Coca. After crossing the equator, the ships stood south southwest until they reached the coast of Brazil on November 29, staying two weeks in the area of what is now Rio de Janeiro. They next explored the Plate River, and from there continued south, finally putting into Puerto San Julian for the winter. Here they encountered the people they called Patagonians (Spanish for "big feet"), two of whom were kidnapped, though both subsequently died at sea. It was here also that the Spanish conspiracy against Magellan came to a head. On April 1, Quesada, Juan de Cartagena, and Juan Sebastian del Cano, Concepción's master, seized San Antonio. Magellan moved quickly to take Victoria and, outnumbered three ships to two, the mutineers surrendered. Quesada was decapitated and then drawn and quartered, and when the fleet sailed, Cartagena and a priest were marooned.
On May 22, Santiago was wrecked near the mouth of the Santa Cruz River, about 70 miles south of San Julian, without loss of life, and shortly thereafter Magellan shifted winter quarters to Santa Cruz, where they remained until October 18. Three days later, the ships rounded the Cape of the Eleven Thousand Virgins—named in honor of the Feast of St. Ursula—and Concepción and San Antonio were sent ahead to explore. Concepción confirmed that the passage to the west was a strait and the remaining ships—San Antonio's disgruntled pilot Estevão Gómez had turned back for Spain—began the arduous five-week journey through the fickle winds and currents of the Strait of Magellan between Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. On November 28, the three surviving ships passed Cape Desire—that is, the thing they had so long desired—and entered the Pacific.
Magellan's route across the Pacific is unknown. The ships may have sailed north until about 20°N before turning west, or they may have sailed only to the latitude of Juan Fernández Island before heading roughly northwest. Whatever the case, it was not until March 6—after fourteen weeks at sea—that the surviving crews, wracked with scurvy and on the brink of starvation, reached the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific. These they called the Ladrones ("thieves") because the islanders stole from the ships. In return, the Spanish burned forty or fifty houses and killed seven islanders. A week later they reached Samar in what eventually became the Philippines. At the island of Limasawa, Magellan's Malay slave Enrique could make himself understood in his native language. At this point, Enrique and Magellan had effectively circled the globe, though not all in a single voyage.
On April 7, the ships landed at the island of Cebu, the Philippines. Here Magellan became a blood brother of the local ruler, who converted to Christianity together with several thousand of his kinsmen. To impress his new ally with Christian might, Magellan led a small Spanish expedition against one of the rajah's reluctant vassals. On April 27, 1521, Magellan waded ashore on the island of Mactan, where he was killed, together with seven of the forty or fifty men who accompanied him. To make matters worse, his wounded slave Enrique plotted with the rajah against the Spanish, and twenty-four more men were killed by Magellan's erstwhile blood brother. Retreating to the island of Bohol, the Spanish burned Concepción and distributed the crew between Trinidad and Victoria. Command of the expedition passed to the ineffectual pilot João Carvalho. After several months aimlessly cruising the Philippines, Juan Sebastian del Cano and Gonzalo Gómez de Espinosa took charge.
On November 8, Victoria and Trinidad arrived at Tadore in the Moluccas, or the Spice Islands. Here the Spanish were warmly received by the local ruler, and traded red cloth, hatchets, cups, linen, and other items for cloves, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, and sandalwood. Six weeks later, the ships were prepared to return to Spain, but Trinidad was detained for repairs. On December 21, Victoria sailed with forty-seven European crew and thirteen East Indians. Stopping at Timor towards the end of January, they ransomed a local chief's son for food before setting out southwest across the Indian Ocean on February 11. Their passage home was long and difficult. It took twelve weeks to double the Cape of Good Hope, and they did not reach the Cape Verde Islands until July 8. In their twenty-one weeks at sea, twenty-one crew died and they lost their foremast. Then, a watering party of thirteen men was arrested by the Portuguese at Santiago, and del Cano was forced to continue with his reduced and enfeebled crew. On September 6, 1522, eighteen Europeans limped ashore at Sanlúcar, accompanied by three East Indians, having completed the first single-voyage circumnavigation of the globe in two years, eleven months, and two weeks. (Espinosa attempted to sail Trinidad back across the Pacific but was forced to return to Tadore; only four of her crew returned to Spain, in August 1527.)
Despite the disastrous consequences for most of the participants, Magellan's voyage was a milestone in the history of navigation. In finding a water route from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Americas, he had proven that the American continent was not attached to a southern Terra Australis, and that the Pacific could be crossed, if as yet only by brute determination. Yet in key particulars he was wrong: the westward route to the Spice Islands was not shorter than by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and the Moluccas were eventually found to lie within the Portuguese sphere described by the Treaty of Tordesillas.
Victoria made two voyages to Hispaniola, but she foundered on the return from the second with the loss of all her crew. In 1524 del Cano led a fleet of seven ships for the Spice Islands by way of the Strait of Magellan. The expedition was a disaster, and del Cano died in mid-Pacific.
Pigafetta, Maximilian & Corrêa, Magellan's Voyage around the World.
