A ghastly crew
Raymond Carr
OVER THE EDGE OF THE WORLD: MAGELLAN'S TERRIFYING CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF THE GLOBE by Laurence Bergreen HarperCollins, £25, pp. 456, ISBN 0007118317 1 n September 1519 the Armada de Molucca of five ships and 250 sailors had set out from San Lticar de Barrameda under the command of Fernando de Magellan. It was to sail to the Spice Islands of the Malayan Archipelago where they were to exchange an assortment of mirrors, bells and scissors for cinnamon and cloves. In September 1522 Victoria, the sole survivor of the armada, limped into the Spanish port of San Lticar, manned by a skeleton crew of 15, so weak they could not walk. Its cargo consisted of 38 sacks of spices. Magellan himself had been hacked to pieces on the beach of Mactan in the Philippines. It was the crew of the Victoria who were the first men to have sailed round the globe. In his book, well researched and clearly written, Laurence Bergreen chronicles this stupendous voyage. Its hero is Magellan, for Bergreen the greatest navigator of all time.
Like Columbus he was driven by a towering ambition, an obsessed man supported by the conviction that he was the instrument of Divine Providence. Success as an explorer expanding an empire would bring fame, riches and spectacular social advancement at home — precisely the motives of Clive of India. The first step was to secure a backer, which demanded the persistence and humiliations of an Oxford college head as a fundraiser. Magellan was born a subject of King Manuel of Portugal, who rejected his repeated demands for an increase in pay. In 1517 he arrived at Valladolid to try his luck with the young King Charles of Spain by changing his nationality. Whereas Columbus held out the prospect of gold for his royal backers, Magellan offered an equally valuable commodity: spices, which like sugar and later oil, were the engines that drove a global economy. The Portuguese had replaced the Arabs as masters of the spice trade, a fact that they kept a closely guarded state secret. Magellan persuaded himself and the king that the Spice Islands could be reached without infringing Portuguese territory. He would sail west, finding a strait at the tip of the south of the American continent that would open up a Spanish route to the Pacific and to the Spice Islands.
All seemed well in hand when, in 1518, Charles I granted Magellan and his cosmographer friend Rui Faleiro a very generous contract as joint commanders of the Armada de Molucca. Bergreen is well aware that those who haunt the courts of kings fight for survival in a world of intrigue. Bishop Fonseca, who controlled the trade to the New World, was determined to whittle down the royal grant. He replaced Faleiro, who had gone off his head, by his own illegitimate son, Cartegena. Cartegena hated Magellan, as did the other Spanish ship captains who resented the strict discipline imposed by a Portuguese. The divided command was a recipe for mutiny.
Mutiny was a constant threat on all voyages through unknown seas to unknown destinations. Officer malcontents could count on the support of crews suffering the awful conditions of a long voyage. Bergreen is eloquent on these. To the filthy, pest-ridden crew of stinking, leaking ships, often reduced to a diet of biscuits soaked in rats' piss, the temptation to follow an officer mutineer ready to sail for home was irresistible. Cartegena and the Spanish captains planned such a mutiny.
It came in Easter 1521 when the fleet was wintering in Patagonia. If successful, the mutineers would have killed Magellan. 'Subtle and calculating when possible and brutal when necessary', Magellan defeated the mutineers. His revenge was terrible. The limbs of the leading Spanish mutineers were strung up in the rigging; others were subjected to the torture of the strape
lo. Fonseca's bastard was put ashore to starve in the wastes of Patagonia. Magellan had been given full powers by King Charles. But the Portuguese Magellan had recovered control of his fleet by executing and torturing Spaniards. He could not expect a hero's welcome at the Spanish court.
It was Magellan's determination to find at any cost to himself and his crew the strait that now bears his name that was the test of his greatness. Finding the strait and navigating it was, Bergreen writes, 'the single greatest feat in the history of maritime exploration'. He must now cross the sea he christened the Pacific. He hoped to reach the Spice Islands in a fortnight. It took him 98 days to cross a sea 'past imagining'. It covered 63 million square miles, an area greater than all the dry land of the planet.
The voyages of the Age of Discovery brought Christian Europeans into contact with heathen pagans. Were they rational beings who could be converted to Christianity or savages who could be enslaved to work on the mines and plantations of the New World? Charles I had enjoined Magellan to treat the indigenous people humanely. But what if they turned out to be bloodthirsty savages, denying Magellan the fresh water and provisions he needed to survive?
'If he wished peace he would have peace,' Magellan told the king of Cebu, tut if war he would have war.' The king turned out to be a generous, deferential host; dazzled by the pageantry of a mass celebrated on the beach, 2,000 of his subjects 'converted' to Christianity. Magellan began having delusions of grandeur. In his search for glory he took risks his crew thought insane. The result was a battle on the beach of Mactan which cost Magellan his life.
Their commander dead, the discontented crew made haste to load up a cargo of spices with the help of a friendly king and make for home under the leadership of a Basque pilot, Antonio Elcano. The long voyage home was a race against death by scurvy. Back in Spain Elcano presented the version of an ex-mutineer to the bureaucrats of an official enquiry. Spanish contemporary historians welcomed Magellan's downgrading. For Philippine patriots he is an imperialist villain. Every April on the beach of Mactan they celebrate his death.
Bergreen's narrative makes compelling reading because it reflects the unique conditions of the Age of Discovery. Its heroes faced the unknown world not knowing what they would encounter, with little hope of rescue if lost in impenetrable forests or vast seas. Today, exploring the unknown is not an option. Explorers like Magellan have been replaced by brave men testing human endurance in inclement climes or anthropologists in search of a remote tribe undiscovered by their professional colleagues. It is the astronauts who are the true explorers of the unknown in our age.
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