From the moment the fleet left Seville, Pigafetta kept a diary of events that gradually evolved from a routine account of life at sea to a shockingly graphic and candid diary that serves as the best record of the voyage. He took his role as the expedition’s official chronicler seriously, and his account is bursting with botanical, linguistic, and anthropological detail. It is also a humane and compassionate record written in a distinctive voice, naïve yet cultivated, pious yet bawdy. Of the handful of genuine chronicles of foreign lands available at the time, only Pigafetta’s preserved moments of self-deprecation and humor; only his betrayed the realistic fears, joys, and ambivalence felt by the crew. His narrative anticipates a modern sensibility, in which self-doubt and revelation play roles. If Magellan was the expedition’s hero, its Don Quixote, a knight wandering the world in a foolish, vain, yet magnificent quest, Pigafetta can be considered its antihero, its Sancho Panza, steadfastly loyal to his master while casting a skeptical, mordant eye on the proceedings. His hunger for experience makes it possible to experience Magellan’s voyage as the sailors themselves experienced it, and to watch this extraordinary navigator straining against the limits of knowledge, his men’s loyalty, and his own stubborn nature.
Pigafetta was not the only diarist on the voyage. Francisco Albo, Trinidad’s pilot, kept a logbook, and some of the surviving sailors gave extensive interviews and depositions on their return to Spain, or wrote their own accounts from memory. The plethora of firsthand impressions of the voyage, combined with the fantastically detailed Spanish records, make it possible to re-create and understand it from a variety of perspectives, ranging from the deeply personal and casually anecdotal to the official and legalistic; royalty and ordinary seamen alike have their voices in this epic of discovery.
An important limitation governed all the accounts, varied as they are. They provide only the European perspective on a voyage that affected nations and cultures around the world, often profoundly. There is no testimony from the individuals whom Magellan’s fleet would visit. Occasionally, we can glean disturbing hints of the reactions of those whom the armada would visit, and what they thought of the intruders in their black ships, the men who had come from a great distance, men bearing gifts but also guns.
Magellan’s departure deeply affected the fortunes of those he left behind. His wife, Beatriz, pregnant with their second child, lived quietly in the city under the protection of her father. She received a monthly stipend, as specified in Magellan’s contract, but she was, in fact, a hostage to the Spanish authorities. If word should reach Seville that Magellan had done anything untoward during the expedition, or exhibited disloyalty to King Charles, she would be the first person the king’s agents would seek out.
Although it seemed Magellan had placed his pregnant wife and young child at risk in the hostile environment of Seville, he did take elaborate precautions to ensure their future—and his own posthumous glory—in his will, dated August 24, 1519. Magellan knew from experience the risks of embarking on his voyage of discovery. He knew that each day of the voyage he would be at the mercy of forces he could scarcely contemplate, forces that only his fervent belief in God and unswerving loyalty to King Charles would be able to help him surmount. Although he coveted the renown and rewards of a successful voyage, he realized he might die far from home, in a part of the world that was still a blank on European maps. This knowledge imparted to his will a special weight and urgency.
In the will, Magellan left thousands of maravedís to various churches and religious orders, all of them in Seville, which he designated as his permanent home in this life and the next: “I desire that if I die in this city of Seville my body may be buried in the monastery of Santa María de la Victoria in Triana—ward and precinct of the city of Seville—in the grave set apart for me; and if I die on this said voyage, I desire that my body may be buried in a church dedicated to Our Lady, in the nearest spot at which death seize me and I die.” He proposed very specific and pious plans for his funeral rites: “And I desire that on the said day of my burial thirty masses may be said over my body—two cantadas and twenty-eight rezadas, and that they shall offer for me the offering of the bread and wine and candles that my executors desire; And I desire that in the said monastery of Santa María de la Victoria a thirty-day mass may be said for my soul, and that the accustomed alms may be given therefor; and I desire that on the said day of my burial three poor men may be clothed—such as I have indicated to my executors—and that to each may be given a cloak of gray stuff, a shirt, and a pair of shoes, that they may pray to God for my soul; and I also desire that upon the said day of my burial food may be given to the said three paupers, and to twelve others, that they may pray for my soul.”
Magellan made certain that all acknowledged family members and retainers would be well taken care of. He specified that Beatriz’s entire dowry of 600,000 maravedís be returned to her; that his illegitimate son, Cristóvão Rebêlo, whom he called “my page,” receive a legacy of 30,000 maravedís; and that his slave, Enrique, be freed. Since Enrique, like Cristóvão, would accompany Magellan on the voyage to the Spice Islands, the terms of his freedom were of particular interest: “I declare and ordain as free and quit of every obligation of captivity, subjection, and slavery, my captured slave Enrique, mulatto, native of the city of Malacca, of the age of twenty-six years more or less, that from the day of my death thenceforward forever the said Enrique may be free and manumitted, and quit, exempt, and relieved of every obligation of slavery and subjection, and that he may act as he desires and thinks fit.”
All that, plus 10,000 maravedís.
Magellan envisioned leaving behind a great empire. He left to Rodrigo, “my legitimate son,” along with any other legitimate male heirs that he might have with Beatriz Barbosa, all the rights and titles King Charles had granted to him for the voyage to the Spice Islands; in other words, these children might grow up to find themselves the rulers of distant lands, administered by Spain, and very wealthy rulers at that. All that Magellan asked was that they give a portion of their income to their mother, making her a wealthy widow. And even if she remarried after Magellan’s death, “I desire that there be given and paid to her the sum of two thousand Spanish doubloons.”
The will covered every eventuality that might befall a great explorer such as Magellan—except what would actually occur once he set forth from Seville.
The Portuguese reacted bitterly to the imminent departure of the Armada de Molucca. King Manuel ordered the harassment of Magellan’s relatives who remained in their homeland. To make his dishonor public, vandals were sent to the family estate in Sabrosa; they tore the Magellan escutcheon from the gates and smashed it to the ground. Even young relatives of Magellan found themselves the object of derision and were stoned. Fearing for their lives, they fled the country. Francisco de Silva Téllez, who claimed to be Magellan’s nephew, eventually sought refuge in the Portuguese colony of Brazil, where he dictated instructions that suggest the depth of shame stirred by Magellan’s betrayaclass="underline" “I order all my relatives and heirs to put no other stone nor shield of arms in my house . . . in Sabrosa because I want them forever effaced, in the same condition that our lord and King prescribed, as punishment of Ferdinand Magellan’s crime of moving to Castile.” Should others take up Magellan’s mantle, his nephew warned that he would refuse to acknowledge them “should I learn that they had entertained feelings and designs so base and ruinous to their families as befell my father and me, who felt compelled to leave our house out of shame and fear that our neighbors would attack us, as they justly could not suffer him who went against Portugal, his motherland, to serve the Castilians, our natural enemies.”