At the top of the pinnacle came the pilot, who plotted the ship’s route; the master, who supervised the precious cargo; and finally the captain. Each of the top three officers had his own page (as Captain General, Magellan had several, including his illegitimate son), and they lived a life as separate as possible from the rank-and-file sailors and apprentices. The officers had their own cabins, cramped, to be sure, but a mark of distinction, and they rarely ate with the crew. To most of the men aboard the fleet, even the flagship, Trinidad, Ferdinand Magellan seemed a remote, imperious figure, authoritarian and arbitrary, a man whose every word was law, and on whose skill, luck, and good judgment their lives depended.
Although sea captains, Magellan included, could be notoriously high-handed, the sailors’ lot was governed, at least in theory, by the Consulado del Mare, the Spanish maritime code that had been in existence—and in force—for several centuries before it was formally compiled in 1494. The code described approved methods for hiring and paying sailors, and spelled out the ordinary seaman’s exhausting chores (“to go to the forest and fetch wood, to saw and to make planks, to make spars and ropes, to bake, to man the boat with the boatswain, to stow goods and to unstow them; and at every hour when the mate shall order him to go and fetch spars and ropes, to carry planks, and to put on board all the victuals of the merchants, to heave the vessel over”), as well as the punishments they could expect to receive if they failed to follow orders (“A mariner ought not to undress himself if he is not in a port for wintering. And if he does so, for each time he ought to be plunged into the sea with a rope from the yard arm three times; and after three times offending, he ought to lose his salary and the goods which he has in the ship”). In addition, a sailor was bound to go wherever the captain ordered, even “to the end of the world.” So, under the Consulado, Magellan had the right to take his crew wherever he wished, all the way to the Spice Islands, and even beyond.
The provisions of the Consulado afforded some protection to sailors by specifying their diet. They were entitled to meat three days a week, “That is to say on Sundays, Tuesday, and Thursdays.” Other days, they were to be served “porridge, and every evening of every day accompaniment with bread, and also on the same three days in the morning he ought to give them wine, and also he ought to give them the same quantity of wine in the evening.” Accounts of exactly how much wine Magellan allowed his crew members vary, but it probably came to two liters per man each day. And on Feast Days, which were frequent, the Consulado specified that the captain was to double his crew’s rations. Magellan, from all accounts, followed these guidelines scrupulously, except when he had to cut back on rations to prevent starvation. As the voyage unfolded, it became apparent that he, like other captains of the day, had two obsessions: maintaining the seaworthiness of his fragile ships, and acquiring enough food for his unruly men.
Why did sailors put up with it all? Why did the ordinary seamen and trained officers abandon hearth and home to live amid these grim circumstances for years on end? Why did they endure starvation rations, the indignity and agony of the lash and the stocks, torment by vermin, thirst, sunstroke, and the lack of women? They went to sea for a variety of reasons, for glory and greed, for escape, out of habit, out of desperation, and through pure chance. To Juan de Escalante de Mendoza, the veteran Spanish mariner, sailors came in two varieties. “The first sort includes all those who commence to sail as a livelihood, such as poor men. . . . Seafaring is the most suitable occupation they can find to sustain themselves, especially for those born in ports and maritime areas. This sort is the most numerous among mariners,” he noted. “Although they might want to be schooled for some other occupation, they do not have the disposition or the means to be able to do it.” So they went to sea because it was their livelihood, and in all likelihood their fathers’ before them; because they knew the sea better than they knew land; because they could throw off the concerns of ordinary life; because, if they stayed home, they knew the dreary routines life held in store for them, whereas at sea anything could happen; because, if they survived the ordeal of an ocean voyage, they would have a fund of stories to draw on for the rest of their lives; and finally because if they successfully smuggled even a small amount of gold or spices, they would have a nest egg to sustain them and their families against the vicissitudes of life.
Many of the men went to sea simply to escape. Some were fleeing jail, hanging, or torture; others were abandoning their families and responsibilities. Others were avoiding debtors’ prison; once they obtained a berth on a ship, they would be immune from arrest, safe for as long as they were at sea. Many sailors planned to desert their ships once they reached the fabled Indies, with their gold and women and luxury. For them, the Indies served, in Cervantes’s words, as “the shelter and refuge of Spain’s desperadoes, the church of the lawless, the safe haven of murderers, the native land and cover for cardsharps, the general lure for loose women, and the common deception of the many and the remedy of the particular few.”
In the late hours of January 10, 1520, a severe storm descended on the Armada de Molucca, forcing Magellan to seek shelter. He ordered the fleet to reverse course and head north, toward the shelter offered by Paranaguá Bay. During the journey to safety, fierce but erratic winds blew the fleet off course, and Magellan found himself in dangerously shallow waters. Before him stretched the mouth of the Río de la Plata, a funnel-shaped river located on the coast of what is now Argentina.
We know, though Magellan did not, that the Río de la Plata is fed by two important rivers, the Río Uruguay and the Río Paraná, whose headwaters originate in the Andes. Sailing into these shallow, sediment-rich waters, Magellan thought he might have been entering the waterway leading to Asia, but the weather frustrated his efforts at reconnaissance. The region’s climate is typical of the temperate middle latitudes. Dry winds, called zondas, swoop down from the Andes; when they combine with cold offshore currents in the Atlantic, the result can be coastal storms called sudestadas, and it was probably a robust sudestada that caused Magellan to turn back and seek shelter.
Magellan faced difficult choices. If he lowered sail and tried to ride out the storm, the winds might blow his helpless fleet onto the shoals, or even ashore, where disaster awaited. But if he attempted to enter the harbor under short sail, he might run aground in the shallow water. He chose to proceed north with extreme caution; he made sure to sound the waters, and learned to his relief that they were deep enough for his ships to pass unharmed.
When the storm finally relented, Magellan turned south again and returned to the Río de la Plata. Although many on board the fleet argued that the river led to the strait, Magellan remained skeptical. Still, he would have to conduct a careful surveillance, just in case. And even if there was no strait, they had at least found abundant provisions. During the next two weeks, the men took on water and caught fish, or rather, learned how to catch fish.
Years before Magellan arrived at the Río de la Plata, both Spanish and Portuguese ships had searched for the strait at this very point. Antonio Galvão, who served as the Portuguese governor of the Moluccas, wrote about a “most rare and excellent map of the world, which was a great helpe to Don Henry (the Navigator) in his discouries.” In 1428, Galvão said, the king of Portugal’s eldest son made a journey through England, France, Germany, and Italy “from whence he brought a map of the world which had all the parts of the world and earth described. The Streight of Magelan was called in it the Dragon’s taile.” A dragon’s tail was a fitting image for the strait, suggesting that it was dangerous, sinuous, and possibly mythological. Columbus believed in its existence, too. That mystical explorer supposedly received a vision prior to his fourth voyage in which he saw a map depicting the strait. He never found it, of course.