STORY OF Fernão de Magalhães

The Portuguese mariner Fernão de Magalhães, whom the world knows as Ferdinand Magellan, was given command of a Spanish fleet of five ships in 1518 to discover the Spice Islands for Spain. Magellan's five small ships, the Armada de Molucca, departed Seville in 1519 with about 260 crew members from "divers nations"—Greeks, Venetians, Genoese, Sicilians, French, Portuguese, Spaniards, and others—as the chronicler Antonio Pigafetta (d. ca. 1534) wrote. This three-year expedition was the most important European voyage of discovery after the voyages of Vasco da Gama (ca. 1469–1524) to India in 1497 to 1499 and Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) to America in 1492 to 1493.



 Magellan's expedition was an expedition of many "firsts." It was the first voyage to pass from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean through what came to be known as the Strait of Magellan, the first European voyage to cross the Pacific Ocean, the first European "discovery" of the Philippines, and—most famously—the first circumnavigation of the globe. This 96,500-kilometer (about 60,000-mile) voyage opened the remaining crucial sea-lanes of the world to European ships, commerce, and colonial empires




 Ferdinand Magellan was born near Villa Real in Tras os Montes, Portugal, and educated in Lisbon at the royal courts first of King João II (1455–1495) and then of Manuel I (1469–1521). Beginning in 1505, Magellan began an eight-year career as a sailor and soldier in the Portuguese East Indies. In 1513 he joined the Portuguese invasion of Morocco. In India, Magellan lost his investment in trade. In Morocco, his horse was killed in battle. His requests to the king for compensation were refused. Charges of treason and corruption against Magellan for actions taken in Morocco were not reviewed by the king at Magellan's request but were later dismissed in North Africa. By 1517, when the king refused to increase Magellan's allowance or support a voyage to the Indies, the soldier-mariner was deeply distressed; his pride was wounded, his reputation insulted, and his ambition thwarted. When Magellan asked the king if he could offer his services to another kingdom, the answer was a surprising yes. A month later, Magellan arrived in Seville.
 
 n Spain, the Portuguese mariner Fernão de Magalhães became known as Hernando de Magallanes. He offered the kingdom's powerful House of Trade extremely valuable knowledge. He claimed he had sailed on behalf of Portugal to the Spice Islands (the Moluccas), he knew where they where and how to find them, and he claimed that under the Spanish-Portuguese Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) these islands were located within the Spanish hemisphere.
 
 n 1518 King Charles I (1500–1558; soon to be Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor), gave Magellan a commission "to find in the domains that belong to us and are ours in the area in the Ocean Sea, within the limits of our demarcation, islands, mainlands, rich spices" (quoted in Thomas 2003, p. 496). The crown (and the banking House of Fugger) provided Magellan with the ships of the Armada de Molucca, salaries for the crew, trade goods, provisions, and more, all expenses coming to 8,751,125 maravedís (in current U.S. dollars, this expenditure would have a value of approximately one million dollars). The captain-general (Magellan) was paid 50,000 maravedís and an additional 8,000 each month.
 Magellan left Spain in September 1519 with the San Antonio, the Concepción, the Victoria, the Santiago, and the captain-general's flagship, the caravel Trinidad.
 
    inside canary islands 
This small fleet immediately sailed to the Canary Islands to pick up more provisions. From this usual departure point for Spanish ships heading west, Magellan turned south and followed the coast of West Africa from Cape Verde to about Sierra Leone, and then let the south equatorial current take his ships across the Atlantic to the bulge of Brazil. From late November through December and January, the Armada de Molucca coasted southwest, reaching the bay at Rio de Janeiro and then the great estuary of the Río de la Plata. After determining that the River Plate was not the strait to the East Indies, Magellan continued sailing south and searching for a passage. Discontent among the crew, particularly the Spanish officers, led to a mutiny against the Portuguese captain-general that took control of three ships. The hesitation of the conspirators and the furious response of Magellan defeated the mutiny.


 The search for the strait began in May 1520 and took months. During the search, the Santiago was shipwrecked in a storm in August. Magellan and his four remaining ships discovered the strait in October. Passage through the narrow, surging, and confusing network of fjords approximately 480 kilometers (about 300 miles) long was difficult and dangerous and took three of the ships thirty-eight days to accomplish. In midpassage, the San Antonio disappeared and returned to Spain

 

 Emerging from the strait into what was known as the Southern Sea, the smaller Armada de Molucca coasted northwest along the South American shore until reaching the site of the future Santiago de Chile and then turned due west. For ninety-eight days this small fleet sailed across more than 11,300 kilometers (about 7,000 miles) of relative calm. On this exceedingly long voyage, the crew ran out of food and water and ate rats, ox hides, and saw dust, and drank "yellow water." Scurvy, a malady caused by vitamin C deficiency, produced a swelling of the gums, as well as boils and lesions that seemed to make the skin fall off the bones. Pigafetta reported that twenty-nine crewmen died of scurvy, and nearly as many fell grievously ill. In March 1521 the crew heard the cry "Tierra!" (land). The fleet landed in the Marianas on the islands of Rota and Guam.
 
 By April, Magellan and his steadily shrinking expedition arrived in what would later be named the Philippines. At Cebu Island, Magellan made a show of military force and forged an alliance with the local ruler Humabon. As the captain-general began to make himself lord of the natives, he became more and more insistent on encouraging his native allies to convert to Christianity and, where necessary, on requiring conversion by coercion and violence.

 


MAGELLAN FACE TO FACE WITH LAPULAPU
 
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            RAJAH HUMABON
           
 
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 On the neighboring island of Mactan, Magellan found a chief, Lapu Lapu, who refused any cooperation with the Europeans. At the request of another native chief, Magellan brought sixty of his men, armed and armored, and attacked the village of Lapu Lapu. Although Magellan believed one European soldier could defeat a hundred native warriors, when the fight began the Europeans were outnumbered twenty-five to one, and the battle did not go as planned. Natives shot poisoned arrows at the unprotected legs of the European soldiers. The toxin disoriented and weakened the soldiers, which allowed natives to approach the wounded and do more damage. This is what happened to Magellan. Shot in the leg with a poisoned arrow, Magellan continued to fight for another hour or so, but eventually he lost his strength and was surrounded and attacked by several natives who hacked him to death. An additional eight European soldiers were killed in the battle before the surviving wounded and scared soldiers retreated to their ship. On April 27, 1521, European expansion met effective resistance. Facing Mactan Harbor today is a giant statue of Lapu Lapu. An obelisk nearby commemorates the battle: "Here on this spot the great chieftain Lapu Lapu repelled an attack by Ferdinand Magellan, killing him and sending his forces away" (Bergreen 2004, p. 287).

 
 A few days after the battle, Magellan's ally Humabon hosted a feast that thirty Europeans attended, most of them officers, about one-quarter of the entire crew. Near the end of the banquet, the Europeans were attacked and most were killed. Learning of this tragedy, the remaining 115 crewmen in three small ships did not send a rescue party but, instead, set sail and left Cebu as quickly as possible. Once they were at sea, the crew of the Concepción concluded that their damaged and wormeaten ship would not make the voyage. After its provisions, rigging, and other useful items were transferred to the other two ships, the Concepción was burned and scuttled. The Trinidad and the Victoria now proceeded to the Spice Islands as best they could.
 
 From May to November 1521, the ever-smaller Armada de Molucca journeyed to Borneo, Palawan, Brunei, and Cimbonbon. As they traveled into the "East Indies," the crew entered more populated, commercial, and politically dangerous regions. They also found a guide to bring them to Ternate, Tidore, Motin, Makian, and Bacan, the primary islands of the Moluccas, the famed Spice Islands
 
                              cloves
 In November and December 1521 the crew traded what they had for 1,400 pounds of cloves, the most valuable spice on the European market. In late December the Victoria, under the command of the Basque sailor Juan Sebastián de Elcano (d. 1526), left for home with sixty crewmembers. The Trinidad attempted to sail back across the Pacific but foundered and turned around, then sailed to Portuguese Goa in India. The few surviving crew reached Lisbon and were immediately imprisoned. Only four sailors from this ship ever returned to Spain.
 



 
VICTORIA SHIP OF MAGELLAN 




Captain Sebastián de Elcano

 
 The Victoria passed Java and then sailed across the Indian Ocean to the Cape of Good Hope, then north to the Cape Verde Islands and finally Spain. Pigafetta noted that as the ship sailed north along the African coast, the crew had to throw the dead bodies of their mates into the ocean. When the Victoria reached Seville on September 8, 1522, there were eighteen survivors onboard. King Charles granted Captain Sebastián de Elcano a coat of arms that showed a globe, spices, Malay kings, and the legend Primus me circumdedisti (Thou first circled me).
 
 After 1522, the great unknown was known. All the world's oceans were connected and they became highways for European ships, traders, missionaries, and colonists. This became clear in 1529 in Diego Ribero's world map, which accurately depicted the outlines of the continents of Africa, India, and America. This map also showed the route of the Magellan voyage. The most famous illustrations of the Magellan circumnavigation were the oval world maps made by Battista Agnese from 1543 to 1545. These gorgeous color manuscript maps on vellum showed the route of Magellan (in black ink) and the Spanish silver fleet (in gold). In 1543 Charles V ordered one of these maps to give to his son Philip. Paolo Forlani's engraved map of South America (ca. 1564–1572), although not the first to do so, clearly showed the strait connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans and gave it the name Streto di Magaanes, the Strait of Magellan.