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

by Laurence Bergreen

The voyage conclusively demonstrated that the earth is, after all, one world. But it also demonstrated that it was a world of unceasing conflict, both natural and human. The cost of these discoveries in terms of loss of life and suffering was greater than anyone could have anticipated at the start of the expedition. They had survived an expedition to the ends of the earth, but more than that, they had endured a voyage into the darkest recesses of the human soul.

Following Ptolemy’s example, European cosmologists disregarded the Pacific Ocean, which covers a third of the world’s surface, from their maps, and they presented incomplete renditions of the American continent based on reports and rumors rather than direct observations. Ptolemy’s omissions inadvertently encouraged exploration because he made the world seem smaller and more navigable than it really was. If he had correctly estimated the size of the world, the Age of Discovery might never have occurred.

In Spain, the best and perhaps the only reason to risk going to sea was the prospect of getting rich in the Spice Islands, wherever they were. If a sailor devoted years of his life to getting there and back, and if he managed to bring home a small sack stuffed with spices such as cloves or nutmeg, legitimately or not, he could sell it for enough to buy a small house; he could live off the proceeds for the rest of his life.

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. And it was a mistake that would be corrected only at the cost of great suffering and of many lives during the voyage Magellan now proposed.

This was a revolutionary concept in the Age of Discovery, to go see for one’s self, to study the world as it was, not as myths and sacred texts suggested that it should be. And that was exactly what Magellan proposed to do; he would see for himself if there was a water route to the Spice Islands, he would find the strait leading to them if it existed, and then he would report back to King Charles on his findings. So Magellan stood on the knife-edge dividing the ancient and medieval worlds from the modern.

His sophisticated approach to navigating uncharted waters went far beyond technical ability in boat handling and direction finding; it revealed an ability to deploy novel tactics to overcome one of the great challenges of the Age of Discovery: namely, how to guide a fleet of ships through hundreds of miles of unmapped archipelagos in rough weather. Magellan’s skill in negotiating the entire length of the strait is acknowledged as the single greatest feat in the history of maritime exploration.

The rapidity with which the Cebuans accepted Christianity was suspect, but neither Magellan nor Pigafetta saw beyond the outward signs of faith to the lack of sincerity, conviction, and understanding that lay beneath. Thousands of islanders had converted to Christianity, but for how long? A tribe that converted so easily could readily accept another religion, or none at all.

The circumstances 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.

From the standpoint of the men in the ships, this mutiny had the advantage of being easy to disguise; the revolt consisted of what they failed to do rather than what they did. In effect, they allowed the Mactanese to do the dirty work for them; they left Magellan to die the death of a thousand cuts in Mactan harbor.

Although the loss of the Captain General was tragic—no one, not even his detractors, begrudged Magellan his courage—his death brought a palpable sense of relief that the ordeal of sailing under him had at last ended.

After the multiple tragedies the armada had suffered in the Philippines, commercial considerations ruled their actions. Never again would they erect crosses or insist on mass conversions. Everything was different now.

Twenty-two men: all that remained of the approximately 260 who had left Seville with the armada three years earlier. Twenty-two survivors of an endless succession of calamities, storms, scurvy, drowning, torture, execution, war, desertion, and now this final indignity: capture by the Portuguese.

At last, Pigafetta allowed himself a moment of pride concerning the chief accomplishment of the Armada de Molucca. “From the time we left that bay until the present day, we sailed fourteen thousand four hundred and sixty leagues”—nearly sixty thousand miles—“and furthermore completed the circumnavigation of the world from east to west.” The distance the armada traveled was fifteen times longer than that covered by Columbus’s first voyage to the New World, and correspondingly more dangerous.

Elcano led the gaunt, weary pilgrims through Seville’s narrow, winding streets to the shrine of Santa María de la Victoria, where they knelt to pray before the statue of the blessed Virgin and Child. They returned to Seville as sinners and penitents rather than conquerors. Their voyage had commenced as a Shakespearean drama, bristling with significance and passion, starring the heroic Magellan, but three years had taken a dreadful toll and the journey was ending as a play by Samuel Beckett. The survivors were shell-shocked, tentative, and chastened by all they had seen and experienced.