Joyner (pp. 286–287) has the complete text of Magellan’s will, and Denucé (p. 255) tells of Sabrosa’s sad decline after Magellan fled Portugal.
CHAPTER III: NEVERLANDS
The prayerful commands are recorded by Pérez-Mallaína (p. 69).
The literature of early cartography is vast. A good place for general readers to start is Lloyd A. Brown’s The Story of Maps, along with Rodney Shirley’s The Mapping of the World: Early Printed World Maps, 1472–1700. John Noble Wilford’s The Mapmakers, now in a revised edition (2000), is another valuable summation.
Stephen Frimmer’s Neverlands offers a diverting introduction to the subject of mythical kingdoms. The quotations from Pliny the Elder are found in the Penguin edition of Natural History (pp. 76, 81). John Livingston Lowes’s The Road to Xanadu (pp. 117–118) catalogs some colorful monsters of the deep. Accounts of the Prester John phenomenon are drawn from Robert Silverberg’s The Realm of Prester John (pp. 41–45, 63). Marco Polo’s words come from the Penguin edition of The Travels (pp. 96, 106), and Mandeville’s fanciful descriptions can be found in the Penguin edition of Sir John Mandeville (pp. 117, 122, 129, 130). John Larner’s Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World (p. 166) has also been consulted. Finally, Rabelais’s satirical skewering of Hearsay can be found in the Penguin edition of Gargantua and Pantagruel (p. 679).
CHAPTER IV: “THE CHURCH OF THE LAWLESS”
Details of the contretemps concerning the proper form of address to Magellan come from Morison (p. 358), and the incident involving António Ginovés is told most persuasively by Vial and Morente (p. 111).
For more on the social and political aspects of homosexuality in Spain, see Roger Bigelow Merriman, The Rise of the Spanish Empire (p. 53). It was common practice for homosexuals and even those suspected of homosexual practices to be denounced and punished in public. In August 1519, at the time of Magellan’s departure from Spain, a clergyman in Valencia used the public punishment of a number of homosexuals as the occasion for a hysterical sermon condemning the accused, and his listeners cried out for the death of those who had escaped with lesser punishments. The hysteria boiled along as the populace took up arms; the uprising appeared to end when the authorities confiscated the weapons and demanded that the protestors confine themselves to their homes, but even then the controversy continued as the protestors formed a fraternity and insisted on bearing arms.
Albo’s account of the fleet’s arrival in Rio de Janeiro can be found in Lord Stanley, First Voyage (p. 212), and Morison (p. 299) discusses early Portuguese efforts to exploit the region’s natural resources. Joyner (p. 125) offers details of Carvalho’s past.
Vespucci’s ripe description of Brazilian Indians is reproduced by Morison (pp. 285–286).
Morison (p. 362) discusses Magellan’s efforts to calculate latitudes.
Details of the sailor’s existence aboard ship are drawn from Pérez-Malláina (pp. 135–159) and Morison (pp. 165–171). Joyner (p. 250) has an interesting discussion of the ampolletas. And only Morison (p. 171), it seems, would trouble to explain the difficulties sailors faced when they had to relieve themselves at sea. Roger Craig Smith’s thesis (pp. 175–176) and the Colección General de Documentos Relativos a las Islas Filipinas Existentes en el Archivo de Indias de Sevilla (vol. 2, pp. 165–168) describe Bustamente’s limited store of medical supplies.
Information about the saints in the ships’ rosters comes from Pérez-Malláina (p. 238) and from Louis Reau, Iconographie de l’Art Chrétien (vol. 3, pp. 115–122, 169–177, 804).
For more on the Consulado, see Paul S. Taylor, “Spanish Seamen in the New World During the Colonial Period,” The Hispanic American Historical Review.
Early conceptions of the strait are discussed by Guillemard (pp. 191–193), who quotes Galvão about the “Dragon’s taile”; by Justin Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America (p. 107); and by Morison (pp. 301–302). See also Mateo Martinic Beros, Historia del Estrecho de Magallanes (1977).
CHAPTER V: THE CRUCIBLE OF LEADERSHIP
The quotation from Albo’s diary is drawn from Stanley (p. 217). Morison (p. 365) provides details of Magellan’s reconnaissance during the waning days of February. Guillemard, normally scrupulous, mentions only one island discovered on February 27, but as Pigafetta makes clear, there were two. See Skelton’s translation of Pigafetta’s Magellan’s Voyage (p. 46).
The actual animals that Magellan and his crew saw in this part of the world are open to debate because Pigafetta did not provide enough details for exact identification. Guillemard and his followers labeled the “sea wolves” that Magellan’s men saw as “fur seals,” but that is probably not correct. In general, fur seals do not live in this part of the world, but are found in Australia or more northerly waters, around the Bering Strait, for example. It is more likely that Pigafetta was describing the sea lion or sea elephant (sometimes called elephant seal), which is far more common in these latitudes.
The case for Magellan’s deliberately obscuring the location of Port Saint Julian is made by Denucé, whose Portuguese sources might have imputed sinister motives to Magellan and his pilots where none existed. Nevertheless, there are a number of strong hints that as the voyage proceeded Magellan came to realize he had sailed into Portuguese waters, and it was too late for him to do anything about it except hope he was not caught.
Accounts of Magellan’s motivational speech are found in Guillemard (p. 163) and Antonio Herrera, The General History (vol. 2, pp. 357ff, and vol. 3, p. 14).
Since Pigafetta is silent on the subject of the mutiny out of loyalty to his Captain General, de Mafra’s recollections, found in his Relation, are particularly useful, but he was not writing about events at the time they occurred; rather, he was reminiscing—to a scribe—some years after the fact. Nevertheless, de Mafra, unlike Pigafetta, was able to speak freely about controversial matters. See Blázquez and Aguilera’s Descripción for the complete de Mafra account. The translation is by Víctor Ubéda. Useful, if predictable, eyewitness accounts of the mutiny in Port Saint Julian can also be found in Navarrete (vol. 4); Elcano’s comment can be found on p. 288. See also Joyner (pp. 284, 291). Finally, Gaspar Correia’s brief but jumbled account of the voyage (found in Lord Stanley of Alderly, ed., The First Voyage Round the World and in Charles E. Nowell, ed., Magellan’s Voyage Around the World) supplies details of Magellan’s use of trickery in regaining control over his ships. Unfortunately, Correia, one of the earliest historians of the voyage, confuses Cartagena with Quesada and relates that Magellan had Cartagena drawn and quartered, when it was Quesada who suffered that fate. Guillemard (pp. 165–170) makes sense of the chaotic set of events surrouding the mutiny.
Descriptions of torture procedures are drawn from Henry Lea, Torture (p. 116); Philippus Limborch, The History of the Inquisition (vol. 1, pp. 217–220); and John Marchant et al., A Review of the Bloody Tribunal (pp. 357–358). The final stage of the strappado can be found on pp. 219–220 of Limborch. The punctuation has been modernized. Denucé names the victims of torture and declares Magellan’s deeds to be illegal (pp. 272–280).