Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe

by Laurence Bergreen

Measurements One fathom equals six feet. One Spanish league (legua) equals approximately four miles. One bahar (of cloves) equals 406 pounds. One quintal equals 100 pounds. One cati (a Chinese measurement) equals 1.75 pounds. One braza (of cloth) equals about five and a half feet. One maravedí equals approximately 12 modern cents.

On June 7, 1494, Pope Alexander VI divided the world in half, bestowing the western portion on Spain, and the eastern on Portugal.

Reliable information about trade routes was so sensitive and precious that governments zealously guarded all maps and charts, which were essential to national security, and for Magellan to display a map likely purloined from Portugal was the equivalent of selling nuclear secrets at the height of the Cold War.

Had Magellan comprehended the size of the Pacific, its currents, storms, and reefs, it is unlikely that he would have dared to mount an expedition. But without the Pacific Ocean to inform his calculations, the estimated length of his route came to only half the actual distance. Magellan confidently predicted that it would take him at most two years to reach the Spice Islands and return to Spain with ships bulging with precious cargo. All he would have to do was find a way to get around or through South America, and he would be at the doorstep of the Indies. This was nearly the same mistake that Columbus had made over and over, during his four voyages.

Why did sailors put up with it all? Why did the ordinary seamen and trained officers abandon hearth and home to live amid these grim circumstances for years on end? Why did they endure starvation rations, the indignity and agony of the lash and the stocks, torment by vermin, thirst, sunstroke, and the lack of women? They went to sea for a variety of reasons, for glory and greed, for escape, out of habit, out of desperation, and through pure chance.

Eventually, Magellan gave the Indians a name—Pathagoni, a neologism suggesting the Spanish word patacones, or dogs with great paws, by which he meant to call attention to their big feet, made even larger by the rough-hewn boots they wore. So these were the Bigfeet Indians, according to Magellan, who later gave the name to the whole region, known ever since as Patagonia.

Magellan’s skill in negotiating the entire length of the strait is acknowledged as the single greatest feat in the history of maritime exploration. It was, perhaps, an even greater accomplishment than Columbus’s discovery of the New World, because the Genoan, thinking he had arrived in China, remained befuddled to the end of his days about where he was, and what he had accomplished, and as a result he misled others. Magellan, in contrast, realized exactly what he had done; he had, at long last, begun to correct Columbus’s great navigational error.

The scale of the Pacific Ocean was past imagining to Magellan. It encompasses one-third of the earth’s surface, covers twice the area of the Atlantic Ocean, and contains more than twice as much water volume. It extends over a greater area than all the dry land on the planet, more than sixty-three million square miles. Lost in this immensity are twenty-five thousand islands, and concealed beneath its waters lurks the lowest point on earth, the Mariana Trench, buried in inky blackness thirty-six thousand feet beneath the shimmering surface.

Since leaving the western mouth of the strait, Magellan had traveled more than seven thousand miles without interruption: the longest ocean voyage recorded until that time.

Chinese exploration of the Philippines reached its commercial peak during the years 1405 to 1433, when the Treasure Fleet ruled the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean. Its immense ships ranged as far as the east coast of Africa to collect precious items and tributes for the emperor. They were eight or nine times longer than Columbus’s ships and five or six times longer than any in Magellan’s armada. For sheer size, the Treasure Fleet was unrivaled until the zenith of the British navy in the nineteenth century. Despite its importance and unique character, the Treasure Fleet is little known in the West, even today. It was the creation, in many respects, of one man whose accomplishments rivaled and in some ways surpassed the more celebrated exploits of Columbus and Magellan: Cheng Ho.

the Treasure Fleet did not conquer or claim distant lands. Although the Chinese considered themselves culturally superior to the outside world, they had no interest in establishing a colonial or military empire. Rather, the goal was to establish trade and diplomatic relations with the “barbarians” beyond their borders and to conduct scientific research.

Cheng Ho’s voyages demonstrated that China was once the most powerful nation in the world, a seagoing empire that Spain or Portugal would have feared and envied, had they known of its reach. The reputation of the Treasure Fleet never made it to European shores. Portuguese and Spanish explorers sailed into the vacuum of power left by China. Like the Chinese, they came in search of wealth, but quite unlike them, they fiercely battled for territory, for commercial and political advantage over one another, and for religious conquest.

islands of varying sizes, but for Europeans of the sixteenth century, the Moluccas referred to just those five islands. The best-known among them were Ternate and Tidore, volcanic islands whose steep cones towered about a mile above the sea,

Not until 1580, fifty-eight years after Victoria returned to Seville, did another explorer, Sir Francis Drake, complete a circumnavigation. His voyage took him through the Strait of Magellan. To accomplish the feat, Drake relied on the knowledge so painfully and heroically acquired by the Captain General and his crew.