Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
his horoscope revealed that if he embarked on the voyage he would
not survive it. Perhaps he was not as crazy as he appeared. Because
few Spanish seamen would submit to his leadership, Magellan had to
scour the waterfront to assemble a motley crew of 265 soldiers, sail-
ors and gentleman adventurers - Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, French,
Greek, Spanish and one English gunner. His vessels were: the flag-
ship Trinidad (110 tons), the San Antonio (120 tons), the Concepcion
(90 tons), the Victoria (85 tons), and the Santiago. None of these
ships was new or sufficiently robust to cope with the worst condi-
tions it might encounter. The largest had an overall length of less
than eighty feet (about the size of a modern luxury pleasure yacht),
into which were crammed stores, trade goods and a crew of fifty
men.
It must have been with enormous relief that Magellan boarded
the Trinidad off Sanlucar de Barrameda on 20 September 1519 and
gave orders for the fleet to weigh anchor. His task was to find a
channel connecting the Atlantic with the 'South Sea'. Ever since 1513
when Vasco Nufiez de Balboa had:
. . . stared at the Pacific - and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise -
Silent upon a peak in Darien *
it had been generally assumed that a fairly narrow strip of land
separated the two oceans. Several captains had already patrolled the
coasts of South and Central America looking for the breach which
they felt must be there. Magellan's was by far the best equipped such
expedition. Having found and penetrated the strait, his task was to
make the short crossing of the South Sea and establish a trading post
on the Moluccas. He carried 20,000 hawk-bells, rolls of velvet, 2,000
pounds of mercury, as well as mirrors and articles of brass in order
to do business with the merchant princes of the islands. And what
 
 
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