Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
from single leadership and clarity of purpose. There was the custom-
ary gaggle of gentlemen adventurers (one of whom left an account
of the voyage) but they seem to have offered no challenge to Caven-
dish's authority.
The first objective was to reach the straits of Magellan in the
middle of the southern summer with ships and men in a fit state
to attempt the passage. In this Cavendish was successful. He made
a landfall at Sierra Leone, then crossed the Atlantic, reaching Brazil
on 1 November. He spent three weeks resting his men and revictual-
ling his ships. He even took time to build a 10 ton pinnace to hold
extra stores. Working down the Patagonian coast, he sailed into and
named Port Desire. Here his men took advantage of the large seal
and penguin colonies to eat plenty of fresh meat and to lay in enough
for several days ahead. The fleet sailed on and reached the entrance
to the straits on 6 January. The timing could scarcely have been bet-
ter and for two weeks they proceeded westwards with favourable
winds. Half-way through they came upon a deserted Spanish settle-
ment which had been intended as a lock and chain upon the back-
door of Philip II's empire. The fate of the colonists upon that wild
and barren coast must have been terrible. Cavendish named the
place Port Famine because of 'the noisome stench and vile savour
wherewith it was infected through the contagion of the Spaniards'
enough to help himself to twelve abandoned cannon.
The voyagers were almost through the narrows when they ran
spend three and a half weeks skulking in what shelter they could
find and hazarding the 'best cables and anchors that we had for to
hold, which, if they had failed we had been in danger to have been
one account states 'we fed almost altogether on mussels and limpets
and birds or such as we could get on shore, seeking for them every
