Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ter of a wide bay out of range of any covering fire from his ships. In
the brief battle Magellan, eight Europeans and four islanders were
cut down. A subsequent appeal for the return of their bodies was re-
jected.
This was not the end of the voyagers' misfortunes. The two cap-
tains who now took over the leadership of the expedition succeeded
in alienating their ally, the King of Cebu. At a royal banquet they and
twenty-five of their men were murdered. The survivors lost no time
in escaping. But once at sea they had to face another problem. None
of their ships was in good shape after more than two years of open
warfare with the sea and the fifth column attacks of teredo worms
below the waterline. But the
Concepcion
was quite unfit for further
service. She was stripped and burned and her crew transferred to
the remaining two vessels.
The next six months was a period of aimless wandering among
the confusion of islands that make up the Sundas and Indonesia. The
captains had no charts and no clear objective. More than one com-
mander was voted into and, later, out of office. Indecision and di-
vided counsels threatened to complete the disintegration of the ex-
pedition. The mariners' route was decided more than anything else
by the reception they experienced at their ports of call. After their
previous experiences they were on their guard and were quick to
weigh anchor at the slightest suspicion of hostility. But at Palawan
the local ruler welcomed them warmly and made a blood pact to sig-
nify his friendship. The weary travellers found his land a veritable
paradise. It was, in the words of Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian gentle-
man adventurer, who wrote an account of the voyage:
a large island, where grow rice, ginger, swine, goats, poultry, figs
half a cubit long and as thick as the arm [bananas], which are good,
and some others much smaller, which are better than all the others.
There are also coconuts, sweet potato, sugarcanes, roots like turnips,
