Over the Edge of the World: Magellen's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe (3 page)

The global spice trade underwent an upheaval in 1453, when Constantinople fell to the Turks, and the time-honored overland spice routes between Asia and Europe were severed. The prospect of establishing a spice trade via an ocean route opened up new economic possibilities for any European nation able to master the seas. For those willing to assume the risks, the rewards of an oceanic spice trade, combined with control over the world’s economy, were irresistible.

The lure of spices impelled sober, cautious financiers to back highly risky expeditions to unknown parts of the globe, and enticed young men to risk their lives. In Spain, the best and perhaps the only reason to risk going to sea was the prospect of getting rich in the Spice Islands, wherever they were. If a sailor devoted years of his life to getting there and back, and if he managed to bring home a small sack stuffed with spices such as cloves or nutmeg, legitimately or not, he could sell it for enough to buy a small house; he could live off the proceeds for the rest of his life. An ordinary seaman might attain a modest degree of wealth, but a captain had a right to expect much more than that in the Age of Discovery—not only vast riches and fame, but titles to pass on to his heirs and foreign lands to rule.

P
ortugal was the first European nation to exploit the sea for spices and the global empire that went along with them. The quest began as early as 1419, when Prince Henry, the third son of João I and his English wife, Philippa, established his court at Sagres, a stark outcropping of rock at the southernmost edge of Portugal. Known as Prince Henry the Navigator, he rarely went to sea himself; instead, he inspired others to conquer the ocean. Portuguese ships faced obstacles so overwhelming, so shrouded in ignorance and superstition, that only extraordinarily confident and accomplished mariners dared to venture into the Ocean Sea, as the Atlantic Ocean was then known.

As a young soldier, Prince Henry had fought against Arabs, and he was determined to drive them from the Iberian peninsula and from North Africa. At the same time, he learned much from his avowed enemy: their trade routes, their science and mapmaking, and most of all, their navigational techniques. When Prince Henry came to Sagres, Europeans knew little about the ocean beyond latitude 27°N, marked by Cape Bojador in West Africa. It was believed that the waters south of this point teemed with monsters, that their storms made them too violent to navigate, and that inescapable fogs would envelop wayward ships. In the face of all these dangers, Prince Henry offered a bold reply, “You cannot find a peril so great that the hope of reward will not be greater.”

In pursuit of his goal, he attracted navigators, shipwrights, astronomers, pilots, cosmographers, and cartographers, both Christians and Jews, to the academy at Sagres, where they cooperated in the enterprise of exploring the world, under Henry’s direction. They designed a new type of ship, the small, maneuverable caravel, distinguished by her triangular lateen sail (the name
lateen
came from the word “Latin”), borrowed from Arab vessels. Until this time, European vessels such as galleys relied on oarsmen or fixed sails for power. With their shallow draught and movable sails, Henry’s caravels could set a course close to the wind, and they could tack, that is, shift their course to take advantage of the wind from one direction and then from another, zigzagging against the wind toward a fixed point. With their maneuverable sails and impressive seaworthiness, caravels became the vessels of choice for exploration. Even so, the ocean proved extremely hazardous. Prince Henry sent no less than fourteen expeditions to Cape Bojador within twelve years, and they all failed. He convinced Gil Eannes, a Portuguese explorer, to try once more, and in 1434, Eannes finally accomplished what so many had said was impossible: He sailed safely past Cape Bojador. The following year Eannes, together with Alfonso Gonçalves Baldaya, returned to Cape Bojador; fifty leagues past the cape, they explored a large bay and came upon a caravan of men and camels. Baldaya sailed farther south and collected thousands of sealskins; this was the first commercial cargo brought back to Europe from that part of Africa. On subsequent voyages, Portuguese ships brought gold, animal hides, elephant tusks—and slaves.

Every captain sponsored by Prince Henry was under orders to record the tides, the currents, and the winds, and to compile accurate charts of the coastlines. Voyage by voyage, these charts added to the Portuguese knowledge of the oceans and of the world beyond the Iberian peninsula.

A
lthough Portugal was celebrated for leading Europe into the Age of Discovery, Portuguese kings often frustrated their heroic mariners. In 1488, during the reign of João II, Bartolomeu Dias reached the southernmost point of Africa and rounded what is now known as the Cape of Good Hope; his voyage opened new possibilities for Portuguese trade and conquest. On his return, Dias attempted to claim a reward for his feat, but received practically none. Ten years later, when King Manuel I had succeeded to the throne, Vasco da Gama retraced Dias’s route around the tip of Africa and reached Mozambique on the southeastern coast; there he replenished his supplies and sailed farther east to establish an ocean route to India. Da Gama received a royal appointment as viceroy of India, and King Manuel anointed himself “Lord of Guinea and of the navigation and commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India”—all of it thanks to Vasco da Gama. Across Europe, other monarchs disparaged Manuel as “The Grocer King,” and Vasco da Gama came to believe that he had been inadequately rewarded for his service to the crown. In time he joined the ranks of explorers who became estranged from this vain ruler.

King Manuel’s indifference to those who had risked their lives to advance the cause of the Portuguese empire had much to do with his ingrained fear of rivals within Portugal. Ever since the start of his reign in 1495, he had enjoyed great commercial success as the wealth of the Indies flowed into the royal coffers, thanks to the exploits of da Gama and other Portuguese explorers, all of which the king took as his due. But King Manuel was no adventurer, and he lacked an appreciation beyond the strictly commercial aspects of what his explorers had done for the Portuguese empire. Rather than doing battle himself, he preferred to remain in his palace, faithful to his wife and to the Church, and tending to Portugal’s domestic issues.

Manuel’s harshest policies concerned the Jews of Portugal, who distinguished themselves as scientists, artisans, merchants, scholars, doctors, and cosmographers. In 1496, when King Manuel wished to take the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella as his wife, he was told that he could do so only on condition that he “purify” Portugal by expelling the Jews, as Spain had done four years earlier. Rather than lose this valuable segment of the population, Manuel encouraged conversions to Christianity—forced conversions, in many cases. As “new Christians” (the title fooled no one), Portuguese Jews continued to occupy high positions in the government, and received royal trading concessions, in Brazil especially. Despite these accommodations, anti-Semitism in Portugal led to a massacre of Jews in Lisbon in 1506. Manuel punished those responsible, but the legacy of bitterness lingered, and many Jews left the country for the Netherlands.

T
hroughout all the turmoil, Portugal retained its ambition to wrest control of the spice trade from the Arabs, and to reach the Spice Islands. In pursuit of this goal, daring, even reckless mariners presented themselves to the king to seek backing for their journeys of exploration to these exotic and dangerous new worlds. Most met with frustration, for the Portuguese court was a place of intrigue, suspicion, double-dealing, and envy.

Among the most persistent supplicants was a minor nobleman with a long and checkered history in the service of the Portuguese empire in Africa: Fernão de Magalhães, or Ferdinand Magellan. According to most accounts, he was born in 1480, in the remote mountain parish of Sabrosa, the seat of the family homestead. He spent his childhood in northwestern Portugal, within sight of the pounding surf of the Atlantic. His father, Rodrigo de Magalhães, traced his lineage back to an eleventh-century French crusader, De Magalhãis, who distinguished himself sufficiently to be rewarded with a grant of land from the duke of Burgundy. Rodrigo himself qualified as minor Portuguese nobility, and served as a sheriff of the port of Aveiro.

Less is known about Magellan’s mother, Alda de Mesquita, and there is room for intriguing speculation. The name
Mesquita,
meaning mosque, was a common name among Portuguese
conversos
who sought to disguise their Jewish origins. It is possible that she had Jewish ancestry, and if she did, Ferdinand was also Jewish, according to Jewish law. Nevertheless, the family considered itself Christian, and Ferdinand Magellan never thought of himself as anything other than a devout Catholic.

Even these basic outlines about Magellan’s ancestry are in doubt. In 1567, his heirs began squabbling over his estate, and questions arose over his exact place in the Magalhães family tree. The difficulties in tracing Magellan’s ancestry arise from the idiosyncrasies of Portuguese genealogy. For example, until the eighteenth century, males usually assumed their father’s last name, but the females often chose other surnames for themselves. They took on their father’s name, or their mother’s, or even a saint’s name. And some children assumed a grandfather’s name, or their mother’s last name, or still other family names. Ferdinand Magellan’s brother Diogo took on the name de Sousa, from his paternal grandmother’s family. The irregularities make it difficult to determine even today exactly which branch of the Magalhães family tree can rightfully claim the explorer.

A
t twelve years of age, Ferdinand Magellan and his brother Diogo moved to Lisbon, where they became pages at the royal court; there Ferdinand took advantage of the most advanced education in Portugal, and he was exposed to topics as varied as religion, writing, mathematics, music and dance, horsemanship, martial arts, and, thanks to the legacy of Prince Henry the Navigator, algebra, geometry, astronomy, and navigation. Through his privileged position at court, Ferdinand came of age hearing about Portuguese and Spanish discoveries in the Indies, and he was privy to the secrets of the Portuguese exploration of the ocean. He even assisted with preparing fleets leaving for India, familiarizing himself with provisions, rigging, and arms.

Magellan seemed destined to become a captain himself, but in 1495, his patron, King João, the leader of a faction with only tenuous claims to the throne, suddenly died. João’s successor, Manuel I, mistrusted young Magellan, who had, after all, been allied with the opposition. As a result, the fast-rising courtier found his career stymied. Although he retained his modest position at court, the prospect of leading a major expedition for Portugal seemed to vanish. Finally, in 1505, after a decade of anonymous service at the palace, Ferdinand and Diogo Magellan received dual assignments aboard a mammoth fleet consisting of twenty-two ships bound for India, all of them under the command of Francisco de Almeida. Ferdinand Magellan spent the next eight years trying to establish a permanent Portuguese presence in India, dashing from one trading post to another, and from one battle to the next; he survived multiple wounds and, if nothing else, learned to stay alive in a hostile environment.

In this, the first phase of his career abroad, Magellan had displayed remarkable bravery and toughness, but in the end his foreign service proved a mixed adventure. He invested most of his fortune with a merchant who soon died; in the ensuing confusion, Magellan lost most of his assets. He petitioned King Manuel for restitution, but the king refused the request. After all those years of service abroad to the crown, all the dangers he had experienced, and the wounds he had received, his relationship to the court was no better than it had been when he left home years before.

R
eturning to Lisbon, Magellan, still bristling with ambition, commenced a new phase in his career. Seeking to make himself useful to the crown, he involved himself with the Portuguese struggle to dominate North Africa. In 1513, he seemed to find an ideal opportunity to demonstrate his loyalty and usefulness to the crown when the city of Azamor, in Morocco, suddenly refused to pay its annual tribute to Portugal. The Moroccan governor, Muley Zayam, ringed the city with a powerful, well-equipped army. King Manuel responded to the challenge by sending the largest seaborne force ever to sail for his kingdom: five hundred ships, fifteen thousand soldiers, the entire military might of this small nation.

Among the hordes of soldiers sent to defend the honor of Portugal was Ferdinand Magellan, along with an aging steed, the only mount he could afford on his drastically reduced budget. He rode courageously into battle, only to lose his horse to the Arabs. What started so bravely for Magellan turned into a near disaster, as he barely escaped from the siege with his life. The larger picture was more favorable, as Portugal reclaimed the city, but Magellan remained indignant. He had lost his horse in the service of his country and king! And the Portuguese army was offering him only a fraction of what he considered to be his mount’s true value as compensation.

Displaying a hotheadedness and tactlessness that bedeviled his entire career, Magellan wrote directly to King Manuel, insulting numerous ministers by circumventing their jealously guarded authority, and insisted on receiving full compensation for the horse. Manuel proved no more generous than he had been on the occasion of Magellan’s previous demand for compensation of his lost investment. The new request was swiftly dismissed as a minor nuisance.

Magellan’s reaction was telling; rather than quitting the field of battle in disgust, he stubbornly remained at his post, somehow acquired a new horse, and participated in skirmishes with the Arabs who swooped out of the desert wastes to harass Portuguese soldiers guarding Azamor. Magellan showed himself to be a fearless warrior, engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy on a daily basis. In one confrontation, he received a serious wound from an Arab lance, which left him with a shattered knee and a lifelong limp; it also ended his career as a soldier. With his irrational idealism and loyalty, his wounds, and his unquenchable thirst for battle and righting perceived wrongs, Magellan came to seem like a real-life Don Quixote.