<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The date:\u00a0 September 6, 1522.\u00a0 Location:\u00a0 Sanlucar de Barrameda, Spain.\u00a0 \u201cAs the ship came closer, those who gathered onshore noticed that her tattered sails flailed in the breeze, her rigging had rotted away, the sun had bleached her colors, and storms had gouged her sides.\u00a0 A small pilot boat was dispatched to lead the strange ship over the reefs to the harbor.\u00a0 Those aboard the pilot boat found themselves looking into the face of every sailor\u2019s nightmare.\u00a0 The vessel they were guiding into the harbor was manned by a \u2018skeleton crew\u2019 of just eighteen sailors and three captives, all of them severely malnourished.\u00a0 Most lacked the strength to walk or even to speak,\u00a0 Their tongues were swollen, and their bodies were covered with painful boils.\u00a0 Their captain was dead, as were the officers, the boatswains, and the pilots.\u00a0 In fact, nearly the entire crew had perished.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If the name in the title doesn\u2019t ring any bells, perhaps the title of the book from which the above passage was taken will help:\u00a0 <\/span>Over the Edge of the World – Magellan\u2019s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe <\/span><\/i>(Laurence Bergreen, Harper Perennial Books, 2004).\u00a0 I have always been fascinated by history.\u00a0 The textbook versions of the voyages undertaken during the Age of Discovery mapped the expeditions with dashed lines, names, and dates criss-crossing the oceans. All too often the descriptions left me with images of the \u2018glorious\u2019 view of these seafaring adventures.\u00a0 I distinctly recall the texts describing Ferdinand Magellan\u2019s voyage (yes, the Fernao de Magalhaes in the title):\u00a0 the harrowing trip through the strait that now bears his name, the mutiny aboard one of his ships, and his death during the voyage.\u00a0 I do not remember ever hearing how this first European voyage around the world ended.\u00a0 When my wife found this book at St. Vinnie\u2019s a while back, I read the above paragraph in the prologue and was hooked on learning more details than the dashed lines on a map had provided in the past.\u00a0 How the five vessels sporting a crew of 260 could be reduced to the ghostly remains that sailed into Spain at the conclusion of the three year trek turned out to be a page turner of a story unlike anything I had encountered in a World History text.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Fernao de Magalhaes was born in 1480 in the mountain parish of Sabrosa, Portugal.\u00a0 As the sheriff of the port of Aveiro, his father Rodrigo was considered a minor Portuguese noble, but his son aspired to a higher calling.\u00a0 He and his brother Diogo moved to Lisbon and became pages at the royal court when Fernao was twelve.\u00a0 His placement there allowed him to take advantage of educational opportunities that would not have been available had he remained at his childhood home.\u00a0 As young Ferdinand absorbed lessons in algebra, geometry, astronomy, and navigation,\u00a0 the stories of Portuguese and Spanish discoveries in the Indies fired his imagination.\u00a0 Lessons about provisioning, rigging, and arming ships came when he assisted the fleets preparing to leave for India.\u00a0 His courtside apprenticeship surely was preparing him to captain his own ship, but when his patron, King Joao, died, his route to nautical fame and fortune hit a snag.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0King Joao\u2019s successor, King Manuel I, distrusted Magellan even though Ferdinand acted as a true company man in his service of Portugal.\u00a0 After twenty years of having his requests to make authorized voyages for the crown denied, he asked if the King would allow him to offer his services elsewhere.\u00a0 In September of 1517, Magellan was told he was free to to what he pleased, but he was humiliated:\u00a0 \u201cWhen Magellan knelt to kiss the king\u2019s hands, as custom dictated, King Manuel concealed them behind his cloak and turned his back on his petitioner.\u00a0 After he received the final rebuff from the Portuguese king, [Ferdinand] suddenly found direction in his live, and he moved quickly, carried along by his own ambitions and by the tides of history.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It would be for Spain, not Portugal, that Magellan would make his most famous voyage.\u00a0 Back in 1494, Pope Alexander VI signed a decree that divided the world in half.\u00a0 Spain was granted all holdings west of an arbitrary line drawn in the middle of the Ocean Sea (as the Atlantic was then known) while Portugal was granted all discoveries east of the line.\u00a0 Both countries would do their best to push this boundary to their own advantage in their quest to dominate the New World.\u00a0 When King Manuel learned that Magellan and his compatriot Ruy Faleiro were provisioning ships for an expedition to the Spice Islands, he protested.\u00a0 King Charles I, Manuel\u2019s relation by marriage (he was about to wed a member of Charles\u2019 family, his sister Leonor, at the time Magellan was organizing his voyage), wrote the Portuguese royal a letter explaining his instructions to Magellan.\u00a0 King Charles said, \u201cOur first charge and order to the said commanders is to respect the line of demarcation and not to touch in any way, under heavy penalties, any regions of either lands or seas which were assigned to and belong to you by the line of demarcation.\u201d\u00a0 In that an accurate means of calculating longitude was decades away, King Charles only had his advisor\u2019s word that the Spice Islands were in Spain\u2019s sphere of influence.\u00a0 The two countries would continue to keep and eye on each other.\u00a0 King Manuel would make a couple of attempts to pry Magellan out of Spain and back to his homeland even though he had previously pushed him away.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That two Portuguese navigators would sail under the Spanish flag caused a good deal of outrage in Lisbon.\u00a0 There were some that thought Manuel would try to have Magellan and Faleiro assassinated.\u00a0 King Charles, who feared this outcome,\u00a0 urged them to depart as soon as possible.\u00a0 He also assigned officer Juan de Cartagena to be his special agent on the entire expedition at a salary considerably higher than the two Portuguese commanders were earning.\u00a0 Cartagena\u2019s instructions from the king were so thorough that, (according to author Bergreen), \u201cA Spandiard predisposed to mistrust Magellan and Faleiro could conclude that he, and not they, had the final say on the conduct of the entire voyage.\u00a0 And that was exactly the conclusion to which Cartegena came.\u201d\u00a0 There were many dark clouds hanging over the expedition and they hadn\u2019t even set sail!\u00a0 King Manuel could not understand why Magellan would do this (forgetting, of course, that he wouldn\u2019t commission such a voyage no matter how many times Magellan had asked him to).\u00a0 King Charles had promised the two Portuguese Captains a ten year franchise guarantee to establish trade with the Spice Islands, yet he waited only six years before authorizing another voyage patterned after Magellan\u2019s.\u00a0 Magellan was slow to learn the Spanish language and his constant use of an interpreter only underscored his stigma as an \u2018outsider\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Former British Naval officer Gavin Menzies wrote several volumes about Admiral Xheng He\u2019s own voyages of discovery (see FTV:\u00a0 Gavin and Fred – Parts 1, 2, & 3, July 11, 18, & 25, 2018).\u00a0 Menzies\u2019 extensive research points to the Chinese sending vast Treasure Fleets sailing around the world\u2019s oceans in the early 1400s. \u00a0 By comparison, the Chinese expeditions sent out hundreds of ships crewed by thousands.\u00a0 They were masters of the sea long before the European Age of Discovery even began.\u00a0 Their superior navigation charts were shared with European heads of state to insure they understood the Chinese superiority on the high seas.\u00a0 When China closed itself off from the rest of the world, they burned their Books of Knowledge along with their navigation charts.\u00a0 Of course, the charts they had shared with some European countries survived.\u00a0 The Portuguese royals were in possession of some of these maps and guarded them so jealously that sharing the information was considered a capital offense.\u00a0 When Magellan showed King Charles a hand drawn globe to describe his proposed voyage to the Spice Islands, Bergreen likens it to, \u201cSharing nuclear secrets during the Cold War.\u201d\u00a0 Magellan knew returning to Portugal was not going to end well, so he curried favor with King Charles and kept organizing his \u2018Armada de Molluccas\u2019 (\u2018Molluccas\u2019 being the name used for the Spice Islands in Indonesia).\u00a0 The sudden mental decline of Faleiro (perhaps from depression or a bipolar disorder) added another wrinkle to the plan:\u00a0 The Magellan expedition would not have co-commanders and Faleiro would never take to the sea.\u00a0 Magellan would be the Captain General of a five ship fleet with Spanish captains serving under him.\u00a0 This did not at all sit well with the Spaniards.\u00a0 When they made their first provisioning stop in the Canary Islands, Magellan received word that King Manuel had dispatched a fleet of Caravels to arrest him and return him to Portugal.\u00a0 He ordered a hasty departure and charted a course he did not think the Portuguese would be able to follow.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0His Spanish captains were alarmed when Magellan sailed a southerly route instead of steering westward, toward South America.\u00a0 The grumbling and distrust began to ferment almost immediately.\u00a0 As the Captain General, Magellan didn\u2019t have to explain his actions to anyone, but had he perhaps mentioned the pursuing Portuguese ships, maybe some of the tension could have been diffused.\u00a0 The goal, once they reached South America, was to probe the coast until they found the strait that would lead them to another ocean and the Spice Islands.\u00a0 The size of the Earth had been grossly underestimated and the general consensus was, \u201cFind the strait, proceed directly to the Spice Islands.\u201d\u00a0 As the armada sailed to the south, they explored bays and river mouths while being battered by the severe storms that were endemic to the South American coast.\u00a0 It became apparent that they would need to overwinter at a sheltered bay they called Port Saint Julian and it was there that Magellan\u2019s voyage nearly came to an end.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Spanish captains on three of the ships conspired to kill Magellan and return to Spain.\u00a0 Rather than meeting the threat head on with force, the Captain General used his wits to outsmart the mutineers.\u00a0 He relied on the loyal crew members to help him out maneuver those leading the plot.\u00a0 Gaining control of one of the rebellious ships, Magellan blockaded the harbor mouth with three ships preventing the other two from escaping.\u00a0 A fierce, albeit short, battle occurred and the rebellion collapsed.\u00a0 To make sure there was no doubt that he was still in charge, Magellan resorted to the torture and excecution of some of the conspirators (which, as Captain General, he had been given the authority to do by King Charles I).\u00a0 In the age of the Spanish Inquisition, no one really thought it unusual for Magellan to resort to such cruelty to keep his crew in line.\u00a0 The biggest complaint aired later was that Magellan had tortured and executed <\/span>Spaniards<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 With the leaders of the rebellion out of the way, the Captain General commuted the death sentences of the forty crew members who were swept up in the mutiny.\u00a0 He had put the fear of God (or fear of Magellan) in them and fully recognized that his armada would be left shorthanded without them.\u00a0 Whether it was the right decision or not, no one would question the Captain General after he restored his rule of law, but it wouldn\u2019t be the last mutiny on this voyage.\u00a0 In fact, one of the conspirators who Magellan felt he couldn\u2019t execute (he had friends in high places) survived, only to begin plotting again.\u00a0 Even in the face of this devious Spaniard\u2019s third attempt at stirring up a mutiny, Magellan resolved that if he could not execute him, he would abandon him when the armada left Port Saint Julian.\u00a0 After the southern winter season released them to resume the voyage, he left the mutineer and a priest who had sided with him on an island to fend for themselves.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Armada de Moluccas had departed from Seville, Spain on August 10, 1519.\u00a0 With the April mutiny quelled, the fleet spent a miserable winter simply trying to survive.\u00a0 Their first contact with the indigenous people was of a positive nature, but it deteriorated into distrust and bloodshed.\u00a0 Anxious to resume the search for the strait, one of the ships, <\/span>Santiago,<\/span><\/i> was sent to explore the shoreline and was wrecked in a storm some seventy miles to the south.\u00a0 The armada, reduced to four ships, finally departed in search of the strait on August 24, 1520. They would not discover and enter the strait until October 21, 1520, a full fourteen months after they had set sail on what was originally thought would be a two year voyage.\u00a0 Over the next 38 days, they would lose another ship before they gained the Western Sea.\u00a0 In Part Two of <\/span>Fernao de Magalhaes,<\/span><\/i> we will delve into the rest of Magellan\u2019s historic voyage.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Obviously, the Beach Boys had better sailing experiences than Magellan’s crew!\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The date:\u00a0 September 6, 1522.\u00a0 Location:\u00a0 Sanlucar de Barrameda, Spain.\u00a0 \u201cAs the ship came closer, those who gathered onshore noticed that her tattered sails flailed in the breeze, her rigging had rotted away, the sun had bleached her colors, and storms had gouged her sides.\u00a0 A small pilot boat was dispatched to lead the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1938"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1941,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1938\/revisions\/1941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}