(an excerpt of a New York Times Book Review piece by W. Jeffrey Bolster about a book on Magellan, Over the Edge of the World, by Laurence Bergreen)
Magellan himself did not live to complete the circumnavigation. He was a victim of his own arrogance and authoritarianism, and his penchant for confrontational risk-taking ended in knee-deep water off the Philippine island of Mactan. Neither his Catholic faith nor his Castilian armor saved him from being hacked to death by Mactanese fighters he had needlessly antagonized. Tellingly, few of his soldiers or sailors hovering at a safe distance off the beach went to his aid. As Bergreen explains, ''his death brought a palpable sense of relief that the ordeal of sailing under him had at last ended.''
The ordeal, however, had by no means ended. Of the approximately 260 men who set forth in the five small ships of the Armada de Molucca, only 60 returned to Spain alive; of those, only 22 actually made it around the world. Storms, scurvy, battles, mutinies, torture, execution, marooning, capture and suicide accounted for the rest. Many
of those deaths and the loss of several ships might have been avoided had Magellan lived. Only a megalomaniac of Magellan's stature could have set the enterprise in motion, Bergreen suggests; only a mariner of his technical skill, intuition and icy leadership could have kept the fleet seaworthy in the daunting conditions it faced.
Ultimately the Basque captain Juan Sebastian Elcano brought Magellan's ship, the Victoria, safely back to Seville. Manned by a cadaverous crew and a few ghostly captives, the ship wound its way up the Guadalquivir River laden with pungent cloves that were worth their weight in gold, and that had cost their weight in blood. The Victoria's return conclusively demonstrated that the Far East could be reached by sailing west, that the Pacific Ocean was incomparably larger than imagined and that calendars would not work without an international date line. As Bergreen tells the tale, it was also the moment in which mythical never-never lands gave way in European cosmology to real-life exotic places populated by outlandish yet recognizably human people.
Elcano is often credited with being the first circumnavigator. One of Bergreen's interesting subplots alternatively reveals Magellan's slave, Enrique, as the first human to circle the globe. Magellan had purchased him ''10 years earlier in Malacca, where he was baptized, and he had followed his master ever since across Africa and Europe,'' then across the Atlantic, through the Straits of Magellan and across the Pacific. Enrique appeared to be a loyal domestic, and Magellan's will stipulated unambiguously that in the event of his death, Enrique was to be freed immediately and paid 10,000 maravedis. Enrique astonished his shipmates in the Philippines by conversing with islanders. Apparently he was not a native of Malacca, but a Filipino captured in boyhood by slave traders from Sumatra. His service to Magellan created the circumstances in which he became the first person to circle the world and return home, albeit indirectly and not of his own volition.
That homecoming set the stage for a dramatic act of resistance to slavery. After Magellan's death Enrique demanded his freedom. Rebuffed, and threatened by the new commanders, he plotted with a local king to betray the armada. In the massacre that followed, almost 30 men were killed, including many of the most capable and prestigious. The slavery, the murder, the betrayals, the greed: all were part of the encounters between Europeans and others in the wake of Magellan, and they temper the triumph associated with the expedition.
Magellan himself did not live to complete the circumnavigation. He was a victim of his own arrogance and authoritarianism, and his penchant for confrontational risk-taking ended in knee-deep water off the Philippine island of Mactan. Neither his Catholic faith nor his Castilian armor saved him from being hacked to death by Mactanese fighters he had needlessly antagonized. Tellingly, few of his soldiers or sailors hovering at a safe distance off the beach went to his aid. As Bergreen explains, ''his death brought a palpable sense of relief that the ordeal of sailing under him had at last ended.''
The ordeal, however, had by no means ended. Of the approximately 260 men who set forth in the five small ships of the Armada de Molucca, only 60 returned to Spain alive; of those, only 22 actually made it around the world. Storms, scurvy, battles, mutinies, torture, execution, marooning, capture and suicide accounted for the rest. Many
of those deaths and the loss of several ships might have been avoided had Magellan lived. Only a megalomaniac of Magellan's stature could have set the enterprise in motion, Bergreen suggests; only a mariner of his technical skill, intuition and icy leadership could have kept the fleet seaworthy in the daunting conditions it faced.
Ultimately the Basque captain Juan Sebastian Elcano brought Magellan's ship, the Victoria, safely back to Seville. Manned by a cadaverous crew and a few ghostly captives, the ship wound its way up the Guadalquivir River laden with pungent cloves that were worth their weight in gold, and that had cost their weight in blood. The Victoria's return conclusively demonstrated that the Far East could be reached by sailing west, that the Pacific Ocean was incomparably larger than imagined and that calendars would not work without an international date line. As Bergreen tells the tale, it was also the moment in which mythical never-never lands gave way in European cosmology to real-life exotic places populated by outlandish yet recognizably human people.
Elcano is often credited with being the first circumnavigator. One of Bergreen's interesting subplots alternatively reveals Magellan's slave, Enrique, as the first human to circle the globe. Magellan had purchased him ''10 years earlier in Malacca, where he was baptized, and he had followed his master ever since across Africa and Europe,'' then across the Atlantic, through the Straits of Magellan and across the Pacific. Enrique appeared to be a loyal domestic, and Magellan's will stipulated unambiguously that in the event of his death, Enrique was to be freed immediately and paid 10,000 maravedis. Enrique astonished his shipmates in the Philippines by conversing with islanders. Apparently he was not a native of Malacca, but a Filipino captured in boyhood by slave traders from Sumatra. His service to Magellan created the circumstances in which he became the first person to circle the world and return home, albeit indirectly and not of his own volition.
That homecoming set the stage for a dramatic act of resistance to slavery. After Magellan's death Enrique demanded his freedom. Rebuffed, and threatened by the new commanders, he plotted with a local king to betray the armada. In the massacre that followed, almost 30 men were killed, including many of the most capable and prestigious. The slavery, the murder, the betrayals, the greed: all were part of the encounters between Europeans and others in the wake of Magellan, and they temper the triumph associated with the expedition.
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joscelyne:
How are you?
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You're good my man, sorry about the hastle.