Over the Edge of the World: Magellen's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe (45 page)

“Upon catching sight of them, imagining that there was some trickery afoot, we hoisted our sails as quickly as possible, abandoning an anchor in our haste,” Pigafetta wrote. As the armada began to gain speed in the water, some crew members jumped aboard the junks and captured four warriors. The men-at-arms fired their weapons at their adversaries, “killing many persons,” according to Pigafetta. Several of the menacing
proas,
frightened by the armada’s vehement response, veered away. De Mafra, a more cynical commentator than Pigafetta, was bewildered by the battle. How would such behavior lead to the recovery of the three lost crew members? Nevertheless, the battle raged on, as the armada turned its guns on one of the huge junks. They ordered the junk to drop sail, and when her captain refused, the Europeans opened fire at the rudder; still her crew refused to comply. The Europeans swarmed aboard the junk, where they discovered that her captain was not the murderous pirate they had imagined. “Their captain said that he served the king of Luzon and that while with a fleet to an island he had been cut off from the rest of the ships by a storm, and that being near the island he had resolved to call on it to repair his vessel, since the local king was a relative of Luzon’s king.” After that, Carvalho and the captain fell into secret conversation, to the dismay of the armada’s officers, who had risked their lives to disable and board the junk. In hushed tones, the wily captain offered Carvalho jewels, two cutlasses, and a dagger “with golden hilts and guards inlaid with many diamonds,” all for his personal use. The gifts had their intended effect: “Having received these presents,” according to de Mafra, “our captain released the junk and its people, something which everyone later regretted because they saw that under their poorlooking cotton garments, most of those men were wearing silk clothes with gold embroidery.”

Pigafetta recognized the transaction as a simple case of bribery, and his opinion of Carvalho, never high to begin with, fell several notches. Had they held the captain hostage, Pigafetta believed, Rajah Siripada would have paid a tremendous ransom for him, far more than the bribe that Carvalho had accepted. As Pigafetta interpreted local politics, the captain was needed to battle the heathens who threatened the rajah’s Muslim empire.

The matter did not end there. The extent of the Europeans’ confusion became apparent when Rajah Siripada revealed that the
proas
had no intention of attacking the armada. They were actually on their way to attack the Arabs’ enemies when the armada got in the way and thwarted their battle plan. “As a proof of that statement, the Moros showed some heads of men who had been killed, which they declared to be the heads of heathens.” Once they realized their mistake, the armada’s officers awkwardly struggled to make amends with the rajah. At the same time, they requested that the detained men, including Carvalho’s illegitimate son, be returned. But Rajah Siripada refused. He had lately pampered the Europeans, treating them to elephant rides and mattresses, to feasts and gifts of precious jewels; he had even granted them a personal audience, and they had repaid his generosity by meddling in his internal affairs and letting the troublesome captain go. As a result, the rajah insisted on holding his hostages, at least for the present.

Carvalho responded with an insult of his own. He decided to keep sixteen of the prisoners they had captured at sea, as well as another prize, three extraordinarily beautiful women. He declared that he would present them to King Charles, a plan that the other officers enthusiastically seconded. Magellan had always forbidden the presence of women and slaves (his own slave excepted) aboard the ships because he believed that their presence would become divisive, and Carvalho’s captives proved Magellan’s belief correct. Soon everyone on board
Trinidad
was aware that Carvalho had turned the women prisoners into his personal harem, and he was busy taking liberties with all three. This behavior so incensed the other officers that they muttered threats to kill Carvalho, who bartered for his life, and his harem, with liberal gifts of gold and jewels from the loot he had received from the captain of the captured junk. In the end, Carvalho was spared, and he even kept his harem, but he lost all authority in the eyes of his men. As the officers realized, if they took bribes and maintained harems, they would become pirates themselves.

Carvalho’s unscrupulous behavior made Pigafetta long for Magellan’s icy sense of duty and discipline; without those driving forces, the expedition’s sense of moral imperative melted away amid the luxuriant Indonesian heat.

A
t length, the rajah released two hostages, Elcano and Espinosa, whom the messengers promptly returned to the waiting fleet. They said they had been detained separately, “treated well,” and knew nothing about the mysterious flotilla of
proas
bearing down on the armada. But where were the others? Elcano and Espinosa explained to Carvalho that the two Greek sailors had decided to desert. The story seemed unlikely, but there was no way to confirm it. Magellan, had he been alive, would have immediately launched a search for the deserters, but Carvalho did not lift a finger. He was naturally more interested in the fate of his young son; with long faces, Elcano and Espinosa said they had heard the boy had died ashore, but they did not know for certain.

That was only the beginning of Carvalho’s misfortunes. On September 21, 1521, the other officers decided to replace him. The change of command did not amount to a mutiny, and Carvalho was neither attacked nor restrained; he was simply told to step down, and he did, returning to his former post as pilot.

The officers settled on an awkward triumvirate to command the fleet. The purser, Martín Méndez, became the fifth Captain General, and Gonzalo Gómez de Espinosa took over the captaincy of
Trinidad,
still the flagship. Elcano gnashed his teeth in frustration, having been bypassed yet again in favor of men with lesser skills but greater rank. No one could forget that he had participated in the mutiny against Magellan and served his time in chains. Since then, he had rehabilitated himself, but some stain of dishonor clung to him. Still, he could console himself with becoming the captain of
Victoria.
Because neither Espinosa nor Méndez had firsthand navigation experience, Juan Sebastián Elcano, the veteran Basque mariner, became the unofficial head of the expedition.

T
o be a Basque meant, and still means, to be a historical anomaly. The Basques are the oldest ethnic group of Europe, a breed apart ever since Paleolithic times. In their province in northern Spain, next to the French border, the Basques speak a distinct language, actually, eight dialects of a distinct language. No direct link between the Basque tongue and another language has been identified. Over the centuries, various monarchs had attempted to annex the Basques, and although King Ferdinand finally conquered them in 1512, and Basques became fervent Catholics, the fiercely independent Basque culture persisted.

The sea loomed large in the lives of Basque men; they were born facing the sea, they lived by the sea, they died at sea. It was into this highly idiosyncratic and tenacious culture that Juan Sebastián Elcano was born in 1487 in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa. His name, usually given as Elcano or Del Cano, is said to have derived from
Elk-ano,
a Basque word for a district of fields. From his youth in Guipúzcoa, the center of the Basque fishing industry, Elcano was destined for the sea. Of his eight siblings, at least two brothers became mariners, and one sister married a pilot. At twenty, Elcano found work ferrying Spanish soldiers in ships, although he had undoubtedly gone to sea much earlier. Two years later, he found work aboard an expeditionary ship taking Spanish forces and matériel to Africa, where the king’s soldiers engaged Arabs in battle; his duties included overseeing the ship’s cargo—gold to pay the soldiers—and weapons. By the time he was twenty-three, Elcano became the owner and captain of his own ship, a large vessel weighing two hundred tons. He offered his services to Spain, which refused to pay him; the situation forced him to borrow to pay his crew members, and ultimately he had to sell the ship to pay his debts, which involved him in more trouble, for it was illegal to sell an armed Spanish ship.

Elcano took refuge in Seville, where he attended the Casa de Contratación’s School of Navigation, receiving formal training as a pilot, probably from the boastful and controversial Amerigo Vespucci, who served as head of its board of examiners. Students received credit in the form of beans won from their instructor; if they successfully completed a course, they were awarded a dry bean; if unsuccessful, they received a shriveled pea. Under Vespucci’s supervison, Elcano learned his navigation, was awarded his bean, and became a master pilot.

With his new credentials, he applied for a position as a pilot for the Armada de Molucca, but even here Elcano’s business troubles continued to haunt him, for many of the officials of the Casa de Contratación were Basques, including the chief accountant, who came from the same little province as Elcano and might detect Elcano’s old financial transgressions. As luck would have it, a relative who worked at the Casa and was willing to overlook Elcano’s problems recommended him to Magellan, who in turn appointed Elcano master of
Concepción
at a salary of 3,000
maravedís
per month. Even

better, he received six months’ pay in advance—18,000
maravedís,
a small fortune for a young man from a modest Basque family. Although he would have to pay for his furnishings out of the advance, he would still have a considerable amount left over. By combining his salary with his share of the expedition’s profits, he would become wealthy. Once Elcano accepted his position, he recruited other seamen for the voyage, and in the end, ten Guipúzcoans wound up on the armada’s rolls, largely through Elcano’s efforts.

Just before the fleet departed from Seville, Elcano was called to testify before a formal board of inquiry in Seville, where he testified that Magellan was a “discreet and virtuous man and careful of his honor.” After that brief moment of prominence, Elcano blended into the background, and even though he was among the mutineers at Port Saint Julian, he made little impression on his fellow crew members. In his entire chronicle of the voyage, Pigafetta did not mention even once the name of the Basque mariner who now led the armada.

A
fter thirty-five days in Brunei, the fleet was ready to make the final assault on the Moluccas. They had reason to believe they were approaching the Spice Islands at last, because they were now following the path of an earlier European traveler, Ludovico di Varthema of Bologna, who had published a popular account of his travels, including his visit to the Spice Islands, in 1510. (He had reached the Spice Islands by traveling east along the overland route rather than west over water.) Varthema was a pioneer many times over, the first European to become wealthy by trading in gems in India, and among the first to gain a sustained look behind the veil of Islam. He even claimed to be the first nonbeliever to visit Mecca, at the risk of his life. Soon after, he arrived in the Spice Islands, where he was transfixed by the sight of the fabled clove tree. “The tree of the cloves is exactly like the box tree,” he wrote, “that is, thick, and the leaf is like that of the cinnamon, but it is a little more round. . . When those cloves are ripe, the said men beat them down with canes, and place some mats under the said tree to catch them.” He observed how the people of Molucca traded in their precious resource, and was not impressed: “We found that they were sold for twice as much as nutmegs, but by measure, because these people do not understand weights.”

Distracted and overextended, the surviving men of the fleet lacked Varthema’s cunning and ability to blend into the surroundings. From the moment the fleet weighed anchor, the ships ran into serious navigational trouble. Sailing downwind out of the harbor of Brunei,
Trinidad
ran aground as she attempted to round a point; the shoal

could have sliced the hull open. The accident was caused solely by the pilot’s negligence, according to Pigafetta, “but by the help of God we freed it.” Actually, they had to wait for four hours, praying that the hull would remain intact until the tide rose and freed the ship.

Shortly afterward, a sailor “snuffed a candle into a barrel full of gunpowder, but he quickly snatched it out without any harm.” An explosion could have destroyed the ship and claimed many lives. Mishaps like these would never have occurred on Magellan’s watch, and in each case, the undisciplined fleet had been lucky to survive a mistake of its own making, but how long would their luck hold?

D
amaged by running aground,
Trinidad’s
hull needed repairs; in fact, both ships leaked rapidly, and the constant seepage meant that the men had to take exhausting turns at the pumps just to keep them afloat. It became apparent to all that they would have to recondition the fleet for the first time since the painstaking overhaul conducted during the grim winter in Port Saint Julian.

Arriving on the island of Cimbonbon, the armada spent the next forty-two days on repairs. Pigafetta describes their refuge as a “perfect port for repairing ships,” for it was remote from waterborne traffic, and tranquil, but the work itself was difficult to perform efficiently, “as we lacked many things for repairing the ships.” The difficult and exhausting task, made even more taxing by the Indonesian heat, was absolutely necessary if the ships were to be seaworthy. “During that time, each one of us labored hard at one thing or another. Our greatest fatigue, however, was to go barefoot to the woods for wood.” Wandering in the shade, they were attacked by wild boar. They managed to kill one of the beasts as it was swimming across the harbor, pursuing it in a longboat. They also found a wide variety of fish and amphibious life, including “large crocodiles,” giant oysters five or six feet long and weighing hundreds of pounds, and a curious fish with a “head like a hog and two horns. Its body consisted entirely of one bone, and on its back it resembled a saddle. And they are small.” To judge from this description, this might have been the squamipen, or angelfish, the brightly colored, highly compressed fish found in the region.