Magellan's Globe #332.2 1 Title: Magellan's Globe Date: 1522
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Magellan’s Globe #332.2 Title: Magellan’s Globe Date: 1522 Description: Magellan’s ship returned to Spain after a grueling sea voyage that claimed his life. The surviving crews were the first seamen known to have circumnavigated the globe. One of the items made to commemorate this feat was a small terrestrial globe; it is possibly an early example of a commemorative souvenir. Magellan’s route is clearly depicted circumnavigating the globe. None of the original globes have survived to the present day, and only one set of unmounted gores has survived. A facsimile of these gores has been used in the production of “Magellan’s Globe”. This globe, which is 18 cm in diameter, is presented on a separate hand-turned wooden base. As seen below, Hans Holbein used this globe as reference for the small terrestrial globe in his famous masterpiece painting entitled The Ambassadors. 1 Magellan’s Globe #332.2 Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521) was born to a minor Portuguese noble family in 1480 and by the age of 12 had become a pageboy to his Queen, at the Court of King John II. Like many of the younger Portuguese nobility he received his education at Court and could look forward to a military command, a diplomatic post or an administrative position in Portugal or her colonies. However fired by the exploits of earlier Portuguese explorers like Dias and Da Gama he began his career as a soldier/adventurer on the 1505 expedition to India under the command of Francisco de Almeida. After seven years of distinguished service in India, Malacca (Malaysian peninsula) and the Moluccas (Spice Islands) he returned to Portugal but received little recognition from his King, Manuel I, and no increase in his pension. Worse still he had put all his savings into backing a scheme by a Portuguese trader to ship pepper from India to Portugal. The merchant had subsequently died and his father had fled the country to escape his son’s creditors. Magellan who had only a meager pension to live on was broke and so he volunteered for a Portuguese campaign against Morocco; where he again distinguished himself with his bravery. However he not only suffered a severe leg wound which caused him to limp for the rest of his life, he also, whilst in the position of Quartermaster suffered the unjust accusations of dishonesty, theft and treason. Magellan found the charges against him contemptuous and he rashly abandoned his post to return to Lisbon and clear his name. The King, Manuel I refused to intercede on his behalf and ordered him back to Morocco. Magellan returned to face trial and was cleared of all charges but his relationship with his King had deteriorated to such an extent that Manuel I refused all of Magellan’s requests for financial recognition of his loyal service and told him that he could take his offers of service elsewhere. This was the principle reason why Magellan came to sail around the world under the Spanish flag. On the Moluccan expedition of 1511, Magellan’s friend, Francisco Serrao had been shipwrecked and had taken refuge on the island of Ternate where, despite later voyages there by the Portuguese, he had chosen to remain. He had sent letters back to Portugal extolling the riches of the islands and urging Magellan to visit him. Because the exact longitude of the Moluccas was uncertain, Magellan thought that their far easterly position might bring them into the Spanish hemisphere as defined by the Treaty of Tordesillias of 1494. His plan was to sail west and like Columbus before him to try and find the western route to the east and the Spice Islands. This expedition he hoped would ensure his financial security as well as bringing him the fame and recognition he felt was long overdue. To this end he began to study all the maps, pilots logs, charts and journals he could obtain. He knew that Columbus had failed to find a passage around the Central American coastline, that Cabot had likewise failed in the North, that the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci had possibly reached as far South as the River Plate estuary and Patagonia without encountering a passage and that Balboa had crossed the Panamanian Isthmus and seen a great ocean that was different to the Atlantic. He became convinced that a southwestern route was there south of the River Plate, and the scientist, mapmaker and scholar Rui Faleiro, who thought that the likely passage was just below the 40 degree South latitude, shared this belief. He also assured Magellan that the ocean Balboa had seen could not be more than a couple of thousand miles across and that the Spice Islands must therefore be in the Spanish half of the world as laid down by the Treaty of Tordesillias. With his humiliation at the hands of the Portuguese King fresh in his mind, it was to Spain that Magellan now offered his knowledge and his services. This plan may have been encouraged by the news of Juan Diaz de Solis’ Spanish expedition of 1515 which had reached 35 degrees South before an exploratory landing 2 Magellan’s Globe #332.2 party led by Solis himself had encountered death and disaster. They were attacked by hostile natives, slaughtered, butchered roasted and then eaten in view of the rest of the crew watching from the safety of their ships. The expedition was aborted but the news from the survivors back in Spain seemed to indicate that with the coastline bearing west at that point, a likely passage through to Balboa’s Ocean lay just South of that latitude. Magellan’s plan interested the young Spanish monarch Charles I (later the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V) and a formal agreement was made between the two in March 1518, whereby Magellan was appointed Captain General of the proposed expedition, given five ships, and the prospective governorship of any new lands he might discover plus one fifth of the profits from the voyage. The five ships, San Antonio, Trinidad, Concepcion, Victoria and Santiago were all small, (none above 130 tons), old and somewhat the worse for wear. They all needed extensive repairs and renovation to make them seaworthy for such a voyage much to the amusement of Alvarez the Portuguese agent in Spain. Alvarez did his utmost to sow seeds of doubt amongst Magellan’s new backers, whilst gauging what potential threat they might pose to the Portuguese possessions overseas. Satisfied that they were as poorly armed as they were fitted, Alvarez thought Portuguese interests might be best served by an opportunist attack on them if they should stray anywhere near Portuguese colonial interests. His interference in Magellan’s preparations led to Spanish misgivings over the number of Portuguese members of the proposed crews and in the end only 37 of the 270 odd crew were Portuguese with three of the five captains of the individual ships being Spanish. The remainder of the various crews comprised of Greeks, Italians, French, Flemings, Africans, Spanish, an Englishman and Malays including Enrique, a slave from Malacca who Magellan had brought back to Portugal on his previous expedition East. Also on board was a Venetian, Antonio Pigafetta, a Papal Ambassador at the court of King Charles. Whether he was on board out of a sense for adventure, or on behalf of the Pope should any dispute arise over whose half the Spice Islands were in, or as a spy for his native Venice is unclear. Whatever his reasons Pigafetta kept a detailed journal of the voyage, describing the weather, wildlife and indigenous people as well as the conditions the crew were forced to endure. Throughout the voyage his admiration 3 Magellan’s Globe #332.2 for Magellan, for his command and character is displayed on every page. Two other important members of the company were Albo, a Greek pilot who kept a detailed navigational log from the first sighting of the Brazilian Coast until the sighting of Cape Vincent on the return (November 29th 1519 to September 4, 1522) and San Martin an astrologer and astronomer who made calculations on the exact point of longitude the ships had reached; he was also the most accomplished pilot at celestial navigation amongst Magellan’s crew. On September 20, 1519 the flotilla of five ships finally sailed off into the Atlantic heading first for the Canaries and then onto South America. However, the course taken south went along the Coast of Africa until Sierra Leone and then went across the Atlantic was both extremely long and hazardous being susceptible to extreme changes in the wind and weather. Already there was talk of mutiny amongst the Spanish Officers who had plenty of experience in crossing the Atlantic. Magellan knew this route was well known for its unpredictable weather and that most ships tried to avoid it, but he was anxious to negate any Portuguese attempts to intercept and destroy his expedition and despite the misgivings of some of his Spanish officers refused to jeopardize his mission by altering his course. The Spanish Captains, Castilians of high birth considered themselves more knowledgeable and it wasn’t long before there was open insubordin- ation resulting in the replacement of Cartogena as the Captain of the San Antonio with another Spaniard, Antonio de Coca. On November 29th the fleet sighted the coastline of Brazil near where the modern port of Recife stands and on December 13th they moored in Guanabara Bay (Rio de Janiero) where they were able to replenish their supplies by bartering with the natives “For the King in a deck of playing cards ..........