A scholarly shipmate of Ferdinand Magellan documents the events of their epic around-the-globe voyage that have cost the explorer his life and changed the course of world history. Of the 237 mariners who embarked only eighteen have survived the three-year ordeal.
Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521) was a Portuguese-born explorer sailing at the service of Spain by order of King Charles I on a major expedition to the Indies. A total of 1519. Although most of the crew were Spaniards, their ranks also include a mixture of Portuguese, Italians, Greeks, and Frenchmen, as well as different classes. Among those closest to Magellan were his brother-in-law, his indentured servant, and Antonio Pigafetta (1490/91-1534), a Venetian scholar who would serve as Magellan’s assistant and act as the explorer’s liaison to the natives when they established the first contact. He was also the official chronicler of the expedition.
Pigafetta had kept a meticulous daily journal of the voyage around the world in 1529-22, recording their discoveries and hardships in rich detail. Although Magellan would end up being largely credited for leading the first successful voyage to circumnavigate the globe he had been slain in combat with natives in the Phillippines midway through the oddysey – an event that Pigafetta recounts with deep sadness, ending with the passage, “they killed our mirror, our light, our comfort, and our true guide.”
After the commander’s death, it fell to Juan Sebastian Elcano to captain the rest of their exploration, which he managed to do. Only 7 percent of the voyagers would survive the nightmare of fear, hunger, disease, storms, warfare, mutiny, and homicide. A feeble Elcano and his skeleton crew, Including Pigafetta, arrived back in Seville on the only remaining vessel almost exactly three years after they had started.
Many historians consider Magellan’s expedition the greatest in history. It was the first to reach Asia by sailing westward from Europe – achieving what Columbus had failed to do in 1492- and was the first voyage to circumnavigate the globe, covering an astonishing 43,400 miles under rough conditions in what was probably the greatest fear of seamanship in history.
Although the original log was later lost, Pigafetta’s extraordinary account, which he wrote between 1522 and 1525, has survived in four manuscript versions. The finest copy, written in French in numbered chapters and richly illustrated with beautiful maps, is held in the Beinecke Library of Yale University. Remarkably, The Journal of Magellan’s First Voyage around the World was published in its entirety until the late eighteenth century. Pigafetta’s straightforward and readable narrative includes fascinating descriptions of some of the places and cultures the explorers encountered around the globe. Little is known about his own fate after he penned the document.
