Four hundred eighty six years and one month ago today, by the Julian calendar then in use, the tiny, battered, sinking ship Victoria edged into the Spanish port of Sanlucar de Barrameda bearing eighteen ravaged, half-dead survivors, the remains of the expedition of Ferdinand Magellan, the first circumnavigators of the globe.
Almost to the day, three years before, five ships and 260 sailors had set their course from that port on the Guadalquivir river on a daring and ambitious voyage into the unknown — “an expedition to the ends of the earth,” but also “a voyage into the darkest recesses of the human soul.” For each survivor, nearly fifteen others had perished, mutinied, deserted, or surrendered. Magellan himself had been hacked to pieces half a world away on the Philippine island of Macatan.
Over the Edge of the World is Laurence Bergreen’s captivating, lucid, eminently readable account of Magellan’s fantastic voyage, stunningly rich, detailed and multifaceted — a cornucopia of interesting vignettes, fascinating excursions, and illuminating observations. It is definitive proof that the most intriguing of all adventure novels is a well-written history.
Best to let Bergreen speak for himself, in discussing the death of Magellan:
“The circumstance leading to Magellan’s spectacular, gory death were not, as has often been suggested, an aberration, the result of an unusual tactical error or inexplicable lapse of judgment. Rather, it was the direct outcome of his increasingly belligerent conduct in the Philippines, where he burned the dwellings of people who could easily have been converted to Christianity by diplomacy rather than force. Through frequent displays of his military might, Magellan convinced the islanders — and himself — that he was omnipotent. It was only a matter of time until he provoked a confrontation with enemies who held a decisive advantage from which faith alone could not protect him. His thirst for glory, under cover of religious zeal, led him fatally astray. In the course of the voyage, Magellan had managed to outwit death many times. He overcame natural hazards ranging from storms to scurvy, and human hazards in the form of mutinies. In the end the only peril he could not survive was the greatest of all: himself.”
……………………………………………………………..
“Antonio Pigafetta was among the few men of the armada who saw the Captain General’s death in a different, more glorious light. He was no tyrant and engendered no anger or disloyalty; his end embodied the Portuguese ideal of submission to fate, no matter how tragic, in the service of a noble principle. Magellan seemed even greater because he was doomed; he had become a martyr to a cause greater than himself. Even so, the chronicler’s own record tells a more ambiguous story, one in which light and shadow are virtually inseparable, and in which Magellan is both heroic and foolish, perspicacious yet blind, a man of his time who was trying to escape his time, a visionary whose instincts outran his ideals.
“Magellan was generally at his best, and a far more sympathetic character, when he was the underdog. At such moments, his best qualities came to the fore: tenacity, cunning, and courage. When his plan to reach the Spice Islands was turned down by the king of Portugal — not once, but many times — Magellan successfully assembled and promoted a mission to the king of Spain. When mutineers seized three of his ships in Port Saint Julian (and nearly captured a fourth), Magellan immediately, and with little assistance from others, manged to reclaim the vessels, one by one, to end the mutiney. When his officers doubted the existence of the strait, Magellan found it; when they quailed at the prospect of entering the Pacific Ocean, he proceeded to sail into its roiling waters. And it took the massed forces of fifteen hundred men to kill him.”
Bergreen’s delightful book includes abbreviated but excellent source notes, which have whetted my own appetite for further exploration — Guillemard’s 1890 Life of Magellan, for instance, and, most especially, “the best and most affecting eyewitness account” by Antonio Pigafetta, “the young Venetian scholar and diplomat who was among the handful of survivors” and whose “chronicle remains one of the most significant documents of the Age of Discovery,” among numerous others.
I highly recommend Laurence Bergreen’s Over the Edge of the World.
Haysville Community Library 