There were casks filled with vinegar, which was used as a disinfectant both for the ships and for contaminated water. On rare occasions, starving sailors would add vinegar to rotting hardtack. Sugar and salt also had a place in the list of provisions. Salt was plentiful, and was used for preserving meat and fish through the voyage, while sugar was scarce. It was administered to sailors who had fallen ill, but not used in food. Honey, far cheaper, served as the universal sweetener.
These provisions made for an unhealthy diet, high in salt, low in protein, and lacking vitamins that sailors needed to protect themselves against the rigors of the sea. Given the inadequacy and volatility of his food supply, it was no surprise that Magellan’s first thought on arriving at ports of call was replenishing his stock, and, along with it, his sailors’ health and morale.
Disputes over the crew’s composition and pay bedeviled Magellan until the moment of the fleet’s departure from Seville. Three of his Spanish pilots demanded to be paid as much as the more experienced Portuguese pilots Magellan had retained, but King Charles refused, reminding them that they had already been richly rewarded with a full year’s pay in advance, free lodgings in Seville, and the prospect of knighthood.
The composition of the crew engendered greater controversy. Magellan was suspected of packing the roster with his countrymen, but the reality was that experienced Spanish seamen willing to enlist on the voyage were scarce, and so he was forced to include many foreigners. The Casa de Contratación decreed that Magellan must limit his entire crew to 235 men, including cabin boys. If he did not obey this constraint, the Casa sternly warned, the resulting “scandal or damage” would be blamed on him, “as it would any person who chooses to disobey a royal command.” When the armada’s roster, bloated with well-connected Spaniards, exceeded this number, the Casa stopped short of halting preparations, but it placed Magellan on warning. And when he hired no less than seventeen apprentice sailors, or grumetes, he was forced to let them go. He was reminded that key positions such as bookkeepers and bursars must be filled by Spaniards. Magellan protested that he had retained the services of only two Portuguese bursars, and he pleaded in writing with the Casa to allow the men he had enlisted to board the ships, regardless of nationality. If he could not have the crew he wanted, he insisted that he would abandon the expedition.
The Casa would not let matters rest there. On the day before the fleet’s departure from Seville, August 9, 1519, Magellan was summoned from his frantic last-minute preparations to testify that he had made every effort to hire Spanish officers and crew members rather than foreigners. He had, in fact, gone to great lengths to comply, and he swelled with pride as he delivered his sworn statement. “I proclaimed [through a town crier] in this city [Seville], in squares and markets and busy places and along the river that anyone—sailors, cabin boys, caulkers, carpenters, and other officers—who wished to join the Armada should contact me, the captain, or talk to the masters of the ship, and I also mentioned the salaries stipulated by the king. Sailors will receive 1,200 maravedís, cabin boys 800 maravedís, and pages 500 maravedís every month, and carpenters and caulkers five ducats every month. None of the villagers born here wanted to join the Armada.” And that was the truth. Qualified sailors were rare in Seville, and qualified sailors willing to risk their lives on a voyage to the Spice Islands rarer still.
Desperate to recruit qualified crew members for the expedition, Magellan cast his net even further. He sent his master-at-arms to Málaga with a letter from the Casa de Contratación indicating the salaries and benefits those joining the Armada de Molucca would receive. Other officers fanned out to popular seaports such as Cádiz in search of willing hands, but those willing to risk their lives on a voyage into the unknown proved scarce. “I couldn’t find enough people,” Magellan explained, “so I accepted all the foreigners we needed, foreigners such as Greeks, and people from Venice, Genoa, Sicily, and France.” Although he did not say so, few Spanish seamen wanted to sail under a Portuguese captain.
As matters stood at the time of departure, Magellan had official permission to hire only a dozen Portuguese; in reality, he was taking nearly forty with him. At the last minute, he sacrificed three relatives whom he had quietly enlisted, one of whom was a pilot approved by the Casa, but he kept berths for at least two others: Álvaro de Mesquita, a relative on his mother’s side, and Cristóvão Rebêlo, his illegitimate son.
Magellan’s last-minute compromises on the composition of the crew placated the Casa, and the Captain General received final permission to proceed with his expedition. To guarantee this voyage, he had sacrificed his allegiance to his homeland, his partnership with Ruy Faleiro, and a considerable amount of his authority as Captain General, but he had kept his essential mission intact. After twelve months of painstaking preparation, the Armada de Molucca was at last ready to conquer the ocean.
Just before departure, the officers and crew of the five ships comprising the fleet attended a mass at Santa María de la Victoria, located in Triana, the sailors’ district.
During the ceremony, King Charles’s representative, Sancho Martínez de Leiva, presented Magellan with the royal flag as the Captain General knelt before a representation of the Virgin. This marked the first occasion that Charles had bestowed the royal colors on a non-Castilian. Magellan could only have felt that he was now invested with the king’s full trust.
Still kneeling, his head bent, Magellan swore that he was the king’s faithful servant, that he would fulfill all his obligations to guarantee the success of the expedition, and when he was finished, the captains repeated the oath and swore to obey Magellan and to follow him on his route, wherever it might lead.
Among those in attendance at Santa María de la Victoria that day was a Venetian scholar named Antonio Pigafetta who had spent long years in the service of Andrea Chiericati, an emissary of Pope Leo X. When the pope appointed Chiericati ambassador to King Charles, Pigafetta, who was about thirty years old at the time, followed the diplomat to Spain. By his own description, Pigafetta was a man of learning (he boasted of having “read many books”) and religious conviction, but he also had a thirst for adventure, or, as he put it, “a craving for experience and glory.”
Learning of Magellan’s expedition to the Spice Islands, he felt destiny calling, and excused himself from the diplomatic circles to seek out the renowned navigator, arriving in Seville in May 1519, in the midst of feverish preparations for the expedition. During the next several months, he helped to gather navigational instruments and ingratiated himself into Magellan’s trust. Pigafetta quickly came to idolize the Captain General, despite their differing nationalities, and was awestricken by the ambitiousness and danger of the mission. Nevertheless, Pigafetta decided he had to go along. Although he lacked experience at sea, he did have funds and impeccable papal credentials to recommend him. Accepting a salary of just 1,000 maravedís, he joined the roster as a sobrasaliente, a supernumerary, receiving four months of his modest pay in advance.
Magellan, who left nothing to accident, had an assignment for Pigafetta; the young Italian diplomat was to keep a record of the voyage, not the dry, factual pilot’s log, but a more personal, anecdotal, and free-flowing account in the tradition of other popular travel works of the day; these included books by Magellan’s brother-in-law, Duarte Barbosa; Ludovico di Varthema, another Italian visitor to the Indies; and Marco Polo, the most celebrated Italian traveler of them all. Making no secret of his ambition to take his place in letters beside them, Pigafetta readily accepted the assignment. His loyalties belonged to Magellan alone, not to Cartagena or to any of the other officers. For Pigafetta, the Armada de Molucca was the tangible result of Magellan’s daring, and if the expedition succeeded, it would be the result of Magellan’s skill and God’s will—of that Pigafetta was quite certain.