Carvalho’s unscrupulous behavior made Pigafetta long for Magellan’s icy sense of duty and discipline; without those driving forces, the expedition’s sense of moral imperative melted away amid the luxuriant Indonesian heat.
At length, the rajah released two hostages, Elcano and Espinosa, whom the messengers promptly returned to the waiting fleet. They said they had been detained separately, “treated well,” and knew nothing about the mysterious flotilla of proas bearing down on the armada. But where were the others? Elcano and Espinosa explained to Carvalho that the two Greek sailors had decided to desert. The story seemed unlikely, but there was no way to confirm it. Magellan, had he been alive, would have immediately launched a search for the deserters, but Carvalho did not lift a finger. He was naturally more interested in the fate of his young son; with long faces, Elcano and Espinosa said they had heard the boy had died ashore, but they did not know for certain.
That was only the beginning of Carvalho’s misfortunes. On September 21, 1521, the other officers decided to replace him. The change of command did not amount to a mutiny, and Carvalho was neither attacked nor restrained; he was simply told to step down, and he did, returning to his former post as pilot.
The officers settled on an awkward triumvirate to command the fleet. The purser, Martín Méndez, became the fifth Captain General, and Gonzalo Gómez de Espinosa took over the captaincy of Trinidad, still the flagship. Elcano gnashed his teeth in frustration, having been bypassed yet again in favor of men with lesser skills but greater rank. No one could forget that he had participated in the mutiny against Magellan and served his time in chains. Since then, he had rehabilitated himself, but some stain of dishonor clung to him. Still, he could console himself with becoming the captain of Victoria. Because neither Espinosa nor Méndez had firsthand navigation experience, Juan Sebastián Elcano, the veteran Basque mariner, became the unofficial head of the expedition.
To be a Basque meant, and still means, to be a historical anomaly. The Basques are the oldest ethnic group of Europe, a breed apart ever since Paleolithic times. In their province in northern Spain, next to the French border, the Basques speak a distinct language, actually, eight dialects of a distinct language. No direct link between the Basque tongue and another language has been identified. Over the centuries, various monarchs had attempted to annex the Basques, and although King Ferdinand finally conquered them in 1512, and Basques became fervent Catholics, the fiercely independent Basque culture persisted.
The sea loomed large in the lives of Basque men; they were born facing the sea, they lived by the sea, they died at sea. It was into this highly idiosyncratic and tenacious culture that Juan Sebastián Elcano was born in 1487 in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa. His name, usually given as Elcano or Del Cano, is said to have derived from Elk-ano, a Basque word for a district of fields. From his youth in Guipúzcoa, the center of the Basque fishing industry, Elcano was destined for the sea. Of his eight siblings, at least two brothers became mariners, and one sister married a pilot. At twenty, Elcano found work ferrying Spanish soldiers in ships, although he had undoubtedly gone to sea much earlier. Two years later, he found work aboard an expeditionary ship taking Spanish forces and matériel to Africa, where the king’s soldiers engaged Arabs in battle; his duties included overseeing the ship’s cargo—gold to pay the soldiers—and weapons. By the time he was twenty-three, Elcano became the owner and captain of his own ship, a large vessel weighing two hundred tons. He offered his services to Spain, which refused to pay him; the situation forced him to borrow to pay his crew members, and ultimately he had to sell the ship to pay his debts, which involved him in more trouble, for it was illegal to sell an armed Spanish ship.
Elcano took refuge in Seville, where he attended the Casa de Contratación’s School of Navigation, receiving formal training as a pilot, probably from the boastful and controversial Amerigo Vespucci, who served as head of its board of examiners. Students received credit in the form of beans won from their instructor; if they successfully completed a course, they were awarded a dry bean; if unsuccessful, they received a shriveled pea. Under Vespucci’s supervison, Elcano learned his navigation, was awarded his bean, and became a master pilot.
With his new credentials, he applied for a position as a pilot for the Armada de Molucca, but even here Elcano’s business troubles continued to haunt him, for many of the officials of the Casa de Contratación were Basques, including the chief accountant, who came from the same little province as Elcano and might detect Elcano’s old financial transgressions. As luck would have it, a relative who worked at the Casa and was willing to overlook Elcano’s problems recommended him to Magellan, who in turn appointed Elcano master of Concepción at a salary of 3,000 maravedís per month. Even better, he received six months’ pay in advance—18,000 maravedís, a small fortune for a young man from a modest Basque family. Although he would have to pay for his furnishings out of the advance, he would still have a considerable amount left over. By combining his salary with his share of the expedition’s profits, he would become wealthy. Once Elcano accepted his position, he recruited other seamen for the voyage, and in the end, ten Guipúzcoans wound up on the armada’s rolls, largely through Elcano’s efforts.
Just before the fleet departed from Seville, Elcano was called to testify before a formal board of inquiry in Seville, where he testified that Magellan was a “discreet and virtuous man and careful of his honor.” After that brief moment of prominence, Elcano blended into the background, and even though he was among the mutineers at Port Saint Julian, he made little impression on his fellow crew members. In his entire chronicle of the voyage, Pigafetta did not mention even once the name of the Basque mariner who now led the armada.
After thirty-five days in Brunei, the fleet was ready to make the final assault on the Moluccas. They had reason to believe they were approaching the Spice Islands at last, because they were now following the path of an earlier European traveler, Ludovico di Varthema of Bologna, who had published a popular account of his travels, including his visit to the Spice Islands, in 1510. (He had reached the Spice Islands by traveling east along the overland route rather than west over water.) Varthema was a pioneer many times over, the first European to become wealthy by trading in gems in India, and among the first to gain a sustained look behind the veil of Islam. He even claimed to be the first nonbeliever to visit Mecca, at the risk of his life. Soon after, he arrived in the Spice Islands, where he was transfixed by the sight of the fabled clove tree. “The tree of the cloves is exactly like the box tree,” he wrote, “that is, thick, and the leaf is like that of the cinnamon, but it is a little more round. . . . When those cloves are ripe, the said men beat them down with canes, and place some mats under the said tree to catch them.” He observed how the people of Molucca traded in their precious resource, and was not impressed: “We found that they were sold for twice as much as nutmegs, but by measure, because these people do not understand weights.”
Distracted and overextended, the surviving men of the fleet lacked Varthema’s cunning and ability to blend into the surroundings. From the moment the fleet weighed anchor, the ships ran into serious navigational trouble. Sailing downwind out of the harbor of Brunei, Trinidad ran aground as she attempted to round a point; the shoal could have sliced the hull open. The accident was caused solely by the pilot’s negligence, according to Pigafetta, “but by the help of God we freed it.” Actually, they had to wait for four hours, praying that the hull would remain intact until the tide rose and freed the ship.