On the World’s Seas and Oceans - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 34

bors. In 1517, Fernando de Magallanes, a Portuguese nobleman, offered his sword to the
king of Spain. Ferdinand Magellan, as he is called in English, proposed to make Spain rich
by sailing west across Balboa's sea to an as-yet-undiscovered spice island, thus avoiding
the Treaty of Tordesillas. So, in 1519 Magellan sailed from Spain in command of five ships,
bound for the glory of spices.
He sailed across the Atlantic to Rio de Janeiro and turned south to find a supposed
passage into the Great South Sea. South of Rio, the weather turned increasingly cold. On
October 21, 1521, he came to a deep bay-like opening and concluded from its salinity that
it was not a river emptying into the sea. It was the strait that now bears his name. The Strait
of Magellan runs 334 miles east to west, never more than fifteen miles wide and narrow-
ing to a mere two miles. Fierce winds and strong currents make it treacherous sailing even
today. It was a sailor's nightmare. It took thirty-eight days for the passage. Says Daniel
Boorstin, “Only Magellan's iron courage and deft mastery of men kept him going.” [27]
Emerging at last into the Great South Sea, Magellan gives a prayer of thanks: “We are
about to stand in an ocean where no ship has ever sailed before. May the ocean be as calm
and benevolent as it is today. In this hope I name it Mar Pacifico.” [28] One ship had deser-
ted, while another had been wrecked. With a rapidly diminishing food supply, the small
flotilla sailed west into the unknown Pacific. As Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan's devoted fol-
lower, writes,
We were three months and twenty days without getting any kind of fresh food. We ate
biscuit which stank strongly of the urine of rats…. We drank yellow water that had
been putrid for days. We also ate some of the ox hides that covered the top of the main-
yard…. The gums of both the lower and upper teeth swelled, so that they could not
eat…. Nineteen died. [29]
Ninety-eight days into that terrible crossing, they landed in Guam. Refreshed by food
and water, they continued westward and landed at last in the Philippines. Here, Magellan
entered into pacts of friendship with local rulers and converted Filipinos to Christianity. He
now felt himself under divine protection and grew careless of his safety. He went into battle
with too few men against an enemy of a friendly ruler and was killed.
Disheartened and frightened, his men set sail under the command of Juan Sebastian
del Cano. One of the ships was boarded by the Portuguese, and its crew was hanged for pir-
acy. According to the terms of Tordesillas, they had entered Portuguese territory. The last
remaining ship sailed west across the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and
arrived back in Spain in September 1522. Nineteen men of the original 265 had circumnav-
igated the world on a voyage of 4,200 miles.