Reeling from discoveries of his own, Magellan evolved during the arduous voyage from a conventionally unyielding captain with specific commercial goals—bring back cloves to the king of Spain or else!—to a seeker engaged in a spiritual quest. Thousands of miles from home, things looked different. Government, marriage customs, and language all varied greatly from the European and Mediterranean societies he’d known. The greatest dangers he faced came not from the anticipated calamities of storms or starvation or sickness, which he managed to survive with a combination of skill and luck, but from his own traitorous men, several of whom believed they were more entitled to lead the expedition. When they mutinied and returned to Spain, they spread stories of Magellan’s perfidy and incompetence, partly to explain away their own actions, and partly to make sure Magellan would be imprisoned, tried, and executed if he ever returned. As he circled the world, Magellan became a man without a country, rebuffed by his native Portugal and mistrusted by Spain, the kingdom that had sponsored the voyage.
Still, his knowledge of the cosmos—the oceans, the landmasses, and the heavens—expanded. For instance, Magellan first noted the phenomenon now called the Magellanic Clouds. The faint smudge he observed in the night sky was actually a pair of dwarf galaxies attached to the Milky Way, all of it visible to the naked eye, at least in the southern hemisphere. If the size of the Pacific was past envisioning for Magellan, the size and scope of the Magellanic Clouds would have short-circuited his imagination. These celestial blotches consisted of countless suns and universes that people of Magellan’s time could not have conceived because it was still believed that all heavenly bodies revolved around the earth. Magellan and his men could not accept that the earth was, in Carl Sagan’s phrase, just a “pale blue dot” lost in a cosmos of incomprehensible dimensions.
As Magellan sailed across the earth’s surface, he was also journeying into time and space, into a multidimensional voyage of cosmology that baffled him even as it added greatly to our understanding of the nature of the planet where we live. It should be mentioned that by Magellan’s day almost no one thought it was flat. Any sailor who observed a departing ship gradually sink below the horizon could tell you it was curved. Nor did it trail off into mists, as fanciful maps depicted. Nor did islands float, or mermaids enchant gullible mariners, or powerful submerged magnets pull nails from the hulls of ships—to list common superstitions disproved by Magellan for all time. His voyage showed, in case there was any doubt, that the world was round, and mostly covered with water. It was possible to reach the East by sailing west, and connect with almost any coastline. All of these revelations were disconcerting to Magellan, who’d seen more of the world than he ever thought he would.
The challenge I faced, half a millennium later, was squeezing the world as it was circa 1520 into a book. I wrote and wrote, trying to encompass the world. And then, at last, the work was done. There was only one problem. I had written nearly twice as much as I should have. My editor, Henry Ferris—courteous, skillful, no-nonsense, and passionate about the book—put the manuscript on a strict diet. Eventually, a more manageable version of the story emerged, stronger, perhaps, because extraneous material had been excised.
When the book was published in October 2003 (and months and years later in other lands and languages), I was taken aback by the response from all over the globe. This was my seventh book, and I thought I knew more or less who my readers were, but in this case, it reached audiences I could not have imagined across the United States, in Sweden, the Philippines, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Brazil, and even ships at sea. Sailors responded with enthusiasm, as did insomniacs. My mother noted typos and posed questions in the marginal notes she made in her copy. I met with the prime minister of Portugal, who asked for my recommendations concerning the Portuguese economy. (I didn’t have any.)
The book is still appearing in various countries. China is coming up, as is Turkey. I’ve heard rumors of an Indonesian edition, but I never saw it, not even in the age of the Internet. A version for younger readers, skillfully abridged by my daughter, Sara, appeared. I’m glad the book has taken on a life of its own and has become part of the quincentenary observance of Magellan’s circumnavigation. A global Magellan network will look back on this extraordinary voyage and reflect on what it has meant for global commerce, culture, and history.
The response to my account surprised me. All I’d set out to do was write a rattling good story that would keep people up late, turning the pages to find out what happens next. I also wanted to convey a sense of amazement at the world we inhabit as it was experienced by some impossibly brave, foolhardy, and vainglorious explorers who lived and died five hundred years ago. These days, Magellan’s circumnavigation is often considered the greatest single sea voyage ever undertaken. And as NASA’s missions demonstrate, it still inspires today’s explorers.
Prologue A Ghostly Apparition
Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed
The light-house top I see?
Is this the hill? is this the kirk?
Is this mine own countree?
On September 6, 1522, a battered ship appeared on the horizon near the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain.
As the ship came closer, those who gathered onshore noticed that her tattered sails flailed in the breeze, her rigging had rotted away, the sun had bleached her colors, and storms had gouged her sides. A small pilot boat was dispatched to lead the strange ship over the reefs to the harbor. Those aboard the pilot boat found themselves looking into the face of every sailor’s nightmare. The vessel they were guiding into the harbor was manned by a skeleton crew of just eighteen sailors and three captives, all of them severely malnourished. Most lacked the strength to walk or even to speak. Their tongues were swollen, and their bodies were covered with painful boils. Their captain was dead, as were the officers, the boatswains, and the pilots; in fact, nearly the entire crew had perished.
The pilot boat gradually coaxed the battered vessel past the natural hazards guarding the harbor, and the ship, Victoria, slowly began to make her way along the gently winding Guadalquivir River to Seville, the city from which she had departed three years earlier. No one knew what had become of her since then, and her appearance came as a surprise to those who watched the horizon for sails. Victoria was a ship of mystery, and every gaunt face on her deck was filled with the dark secrets of a prolonged voyage to unknown lands. Despite the journey’s hardships, Victoria and her diminished crew accomplished what no other ship had ever done before. By sailing west until they reached the East, and then sailing on in the same direction, they had fulfilled an ambition as old as the human imagination, the first circumnavigation of the globe.
Three years earlier, Victoria had belonged to a fleet of five vessels with about 260 sailors, all under the command of Fernão de Magalhães, whom we know as Ferdinand Magellan. A Portuguese nobleman and navigator, he had left his homeland to sail for Spain with a charter to explore undiscovered parts of the world and claim them for the Spanish crown. The expedition he led was among the largest and best equipped in the Age of Discovery. Now Victoria and her ravaged little crew were all that was left, a ghost ship haunted by the memory of more than two hundred absent sailors. Many had died an excruciating death, some from scurvy, others by torture, and a few by drowning. Worse, Magellan, the Captain General, had been brutally killed. Despite her brave name, Victoria was not a ship of triumph, she was a vessel of desolation and anguish.