In full view of the crew, Quesada knelt on the deck of Trinidad, and Molino stood over him, sword in hand. He asked his master for forgiveness, but received none. And then with one powerful blow, he severed Quesada’s head from his neck. As if that were not enough carnage for one day, Magellan ordered a detail to draw and quarter Quesada’s body. His remains were displayed as a grisly warning to the others, just as Mendoza’s body had been displayed several weeks before.
Days later, Magellan discovered that Cartagena, the sole surviving Spanish captain, was conspiring with a priest, Pero Sánchez de la Reina, to mount yet another mutiny. Under his real name, Bernard de Calmette, the priest, who came from the south of France, served as chaplain aboard San Antonio; he adopted a Spanish name so that the crew would feel more comfortable with him. It was astonishing that Magellan’s nemesis would risk his life again, after all the carnage, this time with little hope that any of the seamen would follow, but Cartagena was almost as stubborn as Magellan.
The Captain General subjected the two conspirators to a fresh court-martial. His first instinct was to have both men executed; this was, after all, Cartagena’s third attempt at mutiny, but Magellan found himself in a difficult position. He could not bring himself to condemn a priest—even a disloyal priest—to death. And as for Cartagena, his blood ties to Archbishop Fonseca prevented Magellan from taking severe disciplinary action such as execution or torture. Instead, Magellan devised a much worse fate for Cartagena and the priest. He decided to leave them behind to fend for themselves in the wilderness of Port Saint Julian after the fleet’s departure.
In all, Magellan’s conduct during the mutiny and its aftermath was worthy of Machiavelli—subtle and calculating when possible, but brutal when necessary. He had survived the testing, and emerged victorious.
Always a perfectionist about outfitting his ships, Magellan turned his attention to his neglected fleet. The ships were in a state of disrepair, their sails and rigging in disarray, their holds fetid, their hulls leaky. He ordered his men to empty the ships and give them a thorough cleaning. This exhausting chore meant removing all the provisions, even the stone ballast, which was cleansed by seawater. The forty mutineers, bound in chains, performed the most grueling labor; they operated the pumps, essential for keeping the ships afloat until the armada’s carpenters made them seaworthy again. Once they had emptied the ships, the seamen scoured the holds, washed down the wooden surfaces with vinegar to eradicate the ubiquitous stench, and returned the ballast.
So the wretched winter passed, day by day, hour by hour, the men working constantly and trying to keep themselves warm as best they could, enduring life in a prison so remote it needed no walls. Overseeing these projects, Magellan intended to keep his prisoners in chains until they left Port Saint Julian in the spring.
When the time came to load the provisions, they discovered more evidence that the dishonest chandlers in Seville and the Canary Islands had robbed them blind, and endangered their lives. Although their bills of lading showed enough supplies on board to last a year and a half, long enough to reach the Spice Islands, the ships’ holds actually carried only a third of that amount. This grim discovery cast the rest of the expedition in a different light because, as Magellan realized, they would likely run out of food well before they reached their goal. The men resumed hunting to make up the difference, but they were eating their way through their supplies almost as fast as they replenished them. The only way out of their predicament was to resume the voyage as soon as possible, storms or no storms.
Chapter VI Castaways
And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
Finding the strait leading to the Spice Islands, always a priority for Magellan, reached the level of an obsession in late April. When the oppressive weather briefly lifted, he rashly sent out a reconnaissance mission to search for the elusive waterway. He selected Santiago, the soundest of the vessels, for the task, with Juan Rodríguez Serrano as her Castilian captain. “An industrious man, he never rested,” said one of the crew members of him. He was about to meet the ultimate challenge of his career.
Even if Serrano succeeded in finding the mouth of the strait, he would have to embark on an equally dangerous return journey to Port Saint Julian. Violent storms at sea or cannibals on land could spell disaster. And the temptation to mutiny and sail away—either east toward Spain or west through the strait—might be irresistible to Santiago’s crew. Magellan stifled thoughts of escape by keeping provisions on board to a minimum and offering Serrano a reward of one hundred ducats if the expedition located the strait; of course, he could collect only on his return.
Favored by calm weather, the mission began auspiciously enough. On May 3, about sixty miles south of Port Saint Julian, Serrano discovered a promising inlet, which on closer inspection revealed itself as the mouth of a river, which he named Santa Cruz. More than three hundred years later, in 1834, the youthful Charles Darwin visited the Santa Cruz River aboard HMS Beagle on her voyage of discovery, and found the same inviting prospect. The river, he wrote, “was generally from 300 to 400 yards broad, and in the middle about 17 feet deep. . . . The water is of a fine blue colour, but with a slight milky tinge, and not so transparent as at first sight might have been expected.”
Santiago’s crew soon discovered that food was even more plentiful around the Santa Cruz River than at Port Saint Julian, and Serrano decided to linger for six days to fish and hunt for sea elephants. Given the urgency of finding the strait, his decision to tarry is peculiar. Perhaps neither he nor his men wished to return to Port Saint Julian and its grim reminders of the mutiny sooner than necessary; or perhaps they had no desire to risk their lives on the open water.
After the tranquil respite, Santiago set sail and proceeded south in search of the strait. On May 22, the wind picked up and the seas began to churn, tossing the ship as if she were nothing more than an oversized piece of flotsam. The armada had encountered many violent squalls, but little Santiago had stumbled into the most powerful storm her crew had ever experienced, and they would have to face it alone.
Serrano had no time to reef the sails. Fierce seas pounded the ship mercilessly, terrifying her crew. Serrano attempted to head into the wind and ride out the storm, but overpowering gusts tore the sails, and the seas battered the rudder until the device failed to respond. Santiago was now out of control, caught in the middle of a storm that was still building in power, her men beyond the hope of rescue. The situation was desperate.
At that moment, the storm gathered force, and the winds pushed the helpless ship toward the rocky coast and the prospect of certain death for her crew. Serrano faced every captain’s nightmare as razor-sharp rocks sawed into her hull, and she began taking on water. Luck was with her crew, since Santiago washed ashore before breaking up. One by one, her crew of thirty-seven crawled to the end of the jib boom and jumped to a rocky beach. As soon as they had abandoned ship, Santiago broke up, and the storm carried away all her life-sustaining provisions—wine, hardtack, and water, to say nothing of the freshly caught sea elephants. Incredibly, all the men aboard ship survived, but once they had given thanks to the Lord for sparing their lives, they grasped the desperate situation they now faced.