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

Over the Edge
of the World

MAGELLEN'S TERRIFYING
CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF THE GLOBE

LAURENCE BERGREEN

In memory of my brother and father

How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

C
ontents

Epigraph
Principal Characters
A Note on Dates
Measurements

PROLOGUE
:  A Ghostly Apparition

Book One:
In Search of Empire
CHAPTER I
:  The Quest
CHAPTER II
:  The Man Without a Country
CHAPTER III
:  Neverlands
CHAPTER IV
:  “The Church of the Lawless”

Book Two:
The Edge of the World
CHAPTER V
:  The Crucible of Leadership
CHAPTER VI
:  Castaways
CHAPTER VII
:  Dragon’s Tail
CHAPTER VIII
:  A Race Against Death
CHAPTER IV
:  A Vanished Empire
CHAPTER X
:  The Final Battle

Book Three:
Back from the Dead
CHAPTER XI
:  Ship of Mutineers
CHAPTER XII
:  Survivors
CHAPTER XIII
:  Et in Arcadia Ego
CHAPTER XIV
:  Ghost Ship
CHAPTER XV
:  After Magellan

Notes on Dates
Bibliography
Acknowledgments

About the Author
Other Books by Laurence Bergreen
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher

P
rincipal
C
haracters

King Charles I (later Charles V, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire)
King Manuel (king of Portugal)
Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca (bishop of Burgos)
Cristóbal de Haro (financier)
Ruy Faleiro (cosmographer)
Beatriz Barbosa (Magellan’s)
Diogo Barbosa (Magellan’s father-in-law)

The Armada de Molucca
(at the time of departure from Seville)

Trinidad
Ferdinand Magellan (Captain General)
Estêvão Gomes (pilot major)
Gonzalo Gómez de Espinosa (
alguacil.
or master-at-arms)
Francisco Albo (pilot)
Pedro de Valderrama (chaplain)
Ginés de Mafra (seaman)
Enrique de Malacca (interpreter)
Duarte Barbosa (supernumerary)
Álvaro de Mesquita (Magellan’s relative, supernumerary)
Antonio Pigafetta (chronicler, supernumerary)
Cristóvão Rebêlo (Magellan’s illegitimate son, supernumerary)

San Antonio
Juan de Cartagena (captain and inspector general)
Antonio de Coca (fleet accountant)
Andrés de San Martín (astrologer and pilot)
Juan de Elorriaga (master)
Gerónimo Guerra (clerk)
Bernard de Calmette, also known as
Pero Sánchez de la Reina (chaplain)

Concepción
Gaspar de Quesada (captain)
João Lopes Carvalho (pilot)
Juan Sebastián Elcano (master)
Juan de Acurio (mate)
Hernando Bustamente (barber)
Joãozito Carvalho (cabin boy)
Martin de Magalhães (supernumerary)

Victoria
Luis de Mendoza (captain)
Vasco Gomes Gallego (pilot)
Antonio Salamón (master)
Miguel de Rodas (mate)

Santiago
Juan Rodríguez Serrano (captain)
Baltasar Palla (master)
Bartolomé Prieur (mate)

A N
ote on
D
ates

D
ates are given in the Julian calendar, in effect since the time of Julius Caesar. With modifications, this calendar was adopted by Christian churches around the world, including those in Spain.

Sixty years after the completion of Magellan’s voyage, in 1582, Spain, France, and other European countries migrated to the Gregorian calendar, decreed by Pope Gregory XIII and designed to correct incremental errors in the Julian system. It took more than two centuries to complete the transition to the new calendar throughout Europe, since Protestant nations resisted the change. To correct for accumulated errors, ten days were omitted, so that October 5, 1582, in the Julian calendar suddenly became October 15, 1582, in the Gregorian.

In addition to this calendar shift, Magellan’s voyage had its own record-keeping issues. The dates of various events recorded by the two official chroniclers of the expedition, Antonio Pigafetta and Francisco Albo, occasionally diverge by one day. The discrepancy may be due to human error, and it may also have been caused by the way each diarist reckoned the day. Albo, a pilot, followed the custom of ships’ logs, which began the day at noon rather than at midnight. In contrast, Pigafetta used a nonnautical frame of reference in his diary. Thus, an event occurring on a given morning might have been put down a day apart in the records maintained by the two.

Finally, the international date line did not exist before Magellan’s voyage. (It now extends west from the island of Guam, in the Pacific Ocean.) As Albo and Pigafetta neared the completion of their circumnavigation, they were astonished to note that their calculations were off, and their voyage around the world actually took one day longer than they had thought.

M
easurements

One fathom equals six feet.
One Spanish league (
legua
) equals approximately four miles.

One
bahar
(of cloves) equals 406 pounds.
One
quintal
equals 100 pounds.
One
cati
(a Chinese measurement) equals 1.75 pounds.

One
braza
(of cloth) equals about five and a half feet.

One
maravedí
equals approximately 12 modern cents.

P R O L O G U E
A Ghostly Apparition

Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed
The light-house top I see?
Is this the hill? is this the kirk?
Is this mine own countree?

O
n September 6, 1522, a battered ship appeared on the horizon near the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain.

As 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. A small pilot boat was dispatched to lead the strange ship over the reefs to the harbor. Those aboard the pilot boat found themselves looking into the face of every sailor’s nightmare. The vessel they were guiding into the harbor was manned by a skeleton crew of just eighteen sailors and three captives, all of them severely malnourished. Most lacked the strength to walk or even to speak. Their tongues were swollen, and their bodies were covered with painful boils. Their captain was dead, as were the officers, the boatswains, and the pilots; in fact, nearly the entire crew had perished.

The pilot boat gradually coaxed the battered vessel past the natural hazards guarding the harbor, and the ship,
Victoria,
slowly beganto make her way along the gently winding Guadalquivir River to Seville, the city from which she had departed three years earlier. No one knew what had become of her since then, and her appearance came as a surprise to those who watched the horizon for sails.
Victoria
was a ship of mystery, and every gaunt face on her deck was filled with the dark secrets of a prolonged voyage to unknown lands. Despite the journey’s hardships,
Victoria
and her diminished crew accomplished what no other ship had ever done before. By sailing west until they reached the East, and then sailing on in the same direction, they had fulfilled an ambition as old as the human imagination, the first circumnavigation of the globe.

T
hree years earlier,
Victoria
had belonged to a fleet of five vessels about 260 sailors, all under the command of Fernão de Magalhães, whom we know as Ferdinand Magellan. A Portuguese nobleman and navigator, he had left his homeland to sail for Spain with a charter to explore undiscovered parts of the world and claim them for the Spanish crown. The expedition he led was among the largest and best equipped in the Age of Discovery. Now
Victoria
and her ravaged little crew were all that was left, a ghost ship haunted by the memory of more than two hundred absent sailors. Many had died an excruciating death, some from scurvy, others by torture, and a few by drowning. Worse, Magellan, the Captain General, had been brutally killed. Despite her brave name,
Victoria
was not a ship of triumph, she was a vessel of desolation and anguish.