Around the World in a Thousand Days

   Welcome to Friday with Chairman Joe

   On this day in 1522 the Spanish ship Victoria returned to Spain making her the first ship to circumnavigate the globe. The ship was in bad shape. Her sails were torn and she was only kept afloat by constant pumping. The Victoria had left Spain over three years earlier, one of a fleet of five ships with a total crew of 265 under the command of Ferdinand Magellan. The eighteen men aboard Victoria were the only survivors.
   Fortunately for history, one of the survivors was Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian scholar who served as Magellan's assistant and who kept an accurate journal of the voyage. The rest of the survivors were Spaniards or Basques except for one Greek, known appropriately as Nicholas the Greek. Magellan himself had been killed in the Philippines in a battle with natives.
   Victoria had been built in northwest Spain presumably by those master mariners the Basques who had gotten to North America on whale hunts a century before Columbus. The purpose of Magellan's voyage was to find a western route to the highly profitable Spice Islands. Portugal controlled the eastern route around Africa which had cut out the previous middle men, the Indians and Arabs. Before the Portuguese got involved, only the rich could afford the spices that made food more interesting.
   Magellan, a Portuguese himself,  had convinced the 18 year old King Charles I of Spain to sponsor his expedition and claim the Spice Islands in present day Indonesia for Spain. Charles said yes, but was heavily in debt and had to borrow money from German bankers. He appropriated the Victoria from her merchant owners for a fraction of what the ship was worth.
   The fleet left Seville on August 10, 1519. They stopped in the Canary Islands for more provisions. While there, Magellan received a letter from his father-in-law warning him that the Spanish captains on three of the other ships didn't trust Magellan and planned to mutiny. Magellan was ready for the mutiny and when it began off the coast of Africa, he put one of the ringleaders in stocks.
   The fleet arrived in Brazil on November 29 and spent two weeks in Rio de Janeiro. Magellan was counting on using a fabled strait south of Rio that cut through the continent and led right on to the Spice Islands. There is a strait and it's named after Magellan, but it's way down by Antarctica near the southern tip of the continent. Magellan spent more than two months exploring rivers looking for the strait, before deciding to take shelter in Patagonia and wait out the winter. This killed another five months.
   During the wait, there was another mutiny. Three of the ships mutinied against Magellan's flagship and one other. Thanks to luck and courage, Magellan was able to thwart the mutiny. The two Spanish captains were executed. The third, the one who had attempted a mutiny back in Africa, was left on an island to die.
   Three months after the mutiny, Magellan sent one of his ships south to look for the strait. This was in July, the height of the southern winter, and the ship was headed towards the South Pole. The ship took shelter from bad weather in a river, but was driven ashore. The crew was able to get ashore and two volunteers walked 11 days back to the fleet. Magellan sent an overland rescue party to bring the shipwrecked crew back.
   Finally, on October 21, almost a year after arriving in South America, Magellan found the narrow entry into the passage west. The ships became separated in the strait and one of them, the San Antonio, disappeared. Magellan searched for the San Antonio, but it had deserted the expeition and returned to Spain. The three remaining ships reached the ocean on November 28. Magellan called it Pacific because the waters appeared so calm.
   Magellan thought it would only take three or four days to reach the Spice Islands. The crew was near starvation when they reached Guam almost four months after leaving the strait. They had been reduced to eating sawdust, rats, and boiled cowhide. They had a violent confrontation with the Chomorro people on Guam and had to sail another week to an uninhabited island in the Philippines where they could stock up on fresh water and food.
   On April 2, Magellan held a conference to decide the fleet's next course of action. His men urged him to continue on to the Spice Islands only a few days sail to the south. But Magellan decided to start baptizing the locals. He befriended and baptized the chief of the big island of Cebu who was impressed by the Spaniards' armor and cannons. This chief ordered his minor chiefs to get baptized too. One chief named Lapu Lapu refused. Magellan attacked Lapu Lapu's island with about 60 of his men. He wasn't able to get his ships close enough to shore to use their cannons. He started burning the houses of Lapu Lapu's people which enraged them. Magellan and several of his men were killed on the beach.
   Magellan had a slave named Enrique whom he had acquired years previously on a trip to the Spice Islands he had made from the east. Enrique was able to speak the local Malay language. Magellan's will specified Enrique was to be freed upon his death, but the captains would not let him go because they needed his services as an interpreter. There is speculation that Enrique connived with the chief of Cebu to invite the captains and many of the officers of the fleet to a banquet where they were massacred. Enrique was never seen again. If he made it back to his home island, he would be the first person to circumnavigate the globe.
   The crew was now down to 115 men, not enough to man three ships, so one of them was cleaned out and burned before the other two sailed to the Spice Islands. They reached the island of Tidore on November 8, 1521 and were able to trade their cloth, knives and glassware for 26 tons of cloves and cinnamon. On December 15, the two ships, the Victoria and the Trinidad started for home, but the Trinidad was leaking so badly, she remained behind for repairs, after which she headed back across the Pacific the way she had come, only to be captured by the Portuguese.
   It took Victoria six months to round the southern tip of Africa, with crew members dying of starvation along the way. Victoria arrived in Spain on September 6, 1522. The cargo of spices more than paid for the cost of the expedition, but the king decided the cost in time, ships and men was too great. In a treaty a few years later, the Spice Islands went to Portugal and Spain got the Philippines, which she held until the Americans took them in 1899.
   Victoria was sold to a merchant and sailed another fifty years before being lost with all hands on a return trip from the Caribbean. The captain who brought Victoria back to Spain returned to the Spice Islands on a different ship three years later, but died of starvation along the way. So put a little cinnamon in your coffee today in memory of Victoria and her brave crew.

There are two replicas of the Victoria, one in Spain, the other in Chile.