On February 3, 1520, the fleet resumed its southward course in search of the real strait—if it existed—but San Antonio was found to be leaking badly. Within two days, the leak was repaired, and the Armada de Molucca rounded what is now known as Cape Corrientes.
Magellan adopted measures to ensure that he did not sail past the strait for which he was searching. He dropped anchor at night and resumed sailing in the morning as close to shore as he dared, always on the lookout for any formation suggesting a strait. As they ventured toward 40 degrees latitude, passing along the eastern coast of what is now Argentina, the weather steadily turned colder, a warning of the discomfort and hazards that awaited them. Their deliverance from the brisk days and frigid nights at sea would come only in the form of the strait, if such a strait existed, but it proved maddeningly elusive. Without realizing it, they were heading into latitudes notorious for sudden, frequent, and violent squalls, and on February 13, they ran into another storm, tossing the boats, damaging Victoria’s keel, and terrifying the sailors with thunder and lightning and torrential downpours. When the storm finally blew itself out, Saint Elmo’s fire once again appeared on the masts of the flagship, lighting the way, reassuring the sailors that they enjoyed divine protection.
The next day, the fleet hoisted sail, but without reliable maps to point the way, the ships were in danger of running aground on treacherous shoals—a submerged reef or outcropping of sand. The water was so shallow, and the shoals so well concealed, that Victoria struck bottom, not once, but several times. Colliding with a shoal was a sickening sensation dreaded by every sailor. It began with a shudder arresting the ship’s progress. Those aboard the afflicted ship would cry out in dismay, fearing the worst. If the shoal was rocky, it might slice open the hull, and the ship would sink. If it was sandy, or covered with seaweed, it might hold the ship in a death grip. To clear seaweed from the rudder, those few sailors who knew how to swim would enter the water, fearing the appearance of sharks at any moment, dive beneath the ship, and with bursting lungs remove the vegetation with their bare hands. Tides were critically important to a ship stuck on a shoal; a rising tide could free her, and a low tide could leave her beached, trapped, impossible to move. By waiting for a rising tide, Victoria managed to free herself from the shoal’s grip each time, but Magellan, in search of deeper water, eventually decided to lead the fleet away from shore and shoals even though he could no longer see land—or a strait.
The farther south he went, the more concerned Magellan became that he had accidentally passed the strait. On February 23, he retraced part of his route, and the following day, the black ships reached the expansive mouth of San Matías Gulf, on the coast of Argentina. To Magellan, the gulf appeared far more likely to lead to the strait than the Río de la Plata because the water was deep and blue and chilly. The men of the fleet might have seen whales because this was the principal breeding site of the Southern Right Whale. If they sailed close to land, they would have spotted penguins, sea lions, and even huge elephant seals lolling on the rocky shores. And if they had gone ashore, they would have encountered an animal paradise of foxes, hares, puma, peregrine falcons, owls, flamingos, hairy armadillos, and parrots. But Magellan preferred to anchor offshore, away from danger, as he continued his single-minded quest for the strait.
The fate of the expedition depended on finding it.
Book Two The Edge of the World
Chapter V The Crucible of Leadership
With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.
After six months at sea, Magellan’s ability to lead the armada was still in grave doubt. Many of the most influential Castilian officers, and even the Portuguese pilots, were convinced their fierce and rigid Captain General was leading them all to their deaths in his zeal to find the Spice Islands. Few among them had confidence that Magellan could lead them to the edge of the world and beyond with a reasonable chance of survival.
A crucial evolution of Magellan’s style of leadership, and perhaps his character, occurred over a period of nine trying months, from February to October 1520. He emerged from the ordeal a very different man from the one who had begun the voyage. The Magellan of February teetered on the brink of being murdered by the men he commanded. The Magellan of October was on the way to earning a place in history. In the intervening months, he passed a series of tests that forced him to confront his own limits as a leader and to change his ways, or die.
Hugging the coast, the fleet spent the last week of February sailing west toward Bahía Blanca, a spacious harbor worthy of investigation. Magellan led his ships in and around the islands of the bay, but found no sign of a strait. As he familiarized himself with the coastline, he became increasingly confident of his navigational skills, and he resumed sailing twenty-four hours a day, staying well offshore at night to avoid rocks and reefs lurking below the dark water. On February 24, the fleet came to another possible opening. “We entered well in,” Albo recorded in his log, “but could not find the bottom until we were entirely inside, and we found eighty fathoms, and it has a circuit of 50 leagues.” Magellan refused to consider this huge bay as anything more than that. His surmise proved correct and saved the fleet days of aimless investigation.
Finally, on February 27, the armada explored a promising inlet with two islands sheltering what appeared to be numerous ducks. Magellan named the inlet Bahía de los Patos, Duck Bay, and carefully explored it to locate an entrance to the strait. He cautiously committed only six seamen to a landing party charged with fetching supplies, mainly wood for fire and fresh water. Fearful of stumbling across warlike tribes that might be prowling in the forest, the landing party confined their activities to a diminutive island lacking in either fresh water or wood but seething with wildlife. On closer inspection, what appeared to be ducks turned out to be something quite different. Pigafetta identified them as “geese” and “goslings.” There were too many to count, he said, and wonderfully easy to catch. “We loaded all the ships with them in an hour,” he claimed, and they were soon salted and consumed by the voracious sailors. From his description, it is apparent that the “geese” were actually penguins: “These goslings are black and have feathers over their whole body of the same size and fashion, and they do not fly, and they live on fish. And they were so fat that we did not pluck them but skinned them, and they have a beak like a crow’s.”
Pigafetta marveled at another beast they encountered, one worthy of Pliny himself and all the more wonderful because it was absolutely real. “The sea wolves of these two islands are of various colors and of the size and thickness of a calf, and they have a head like that of a calf, and small round ears. They have large teeth and no legs, but they have feet attached to their body and resembling a human hand. And they have feet, nails on their feet, and skin between the toes like goslings. And if the animals could run, they would be very fierce and cruel. But they do not leave the water, where they swim and live on fish.”