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2010/03/12-19h51
| For a very long time, the learned Greeks declared that the Earth was round and even its dimensions were predicted with a great
deal of accuracy. However, nobody dared venture into the open ocean and go beyond the horizon to open a route towards the
riches of Asia...
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Though the future America was already known to the Vikings, who had pushed their longships as far as Labrador and even
along the coast of Nova Scotia, there were only few that had done so. Indeed it was necessary to wait for the Venetian Giovanni
Caboto to be assigned by King Henry VII of England, for the East coast of Newfoundland to be identified on 24th June 1497.
However, in the meantime, Christopher Columbus had discovered the Caribbean on 12th October 1492...
Unfortunately,
it wasn't India which emerged before La Pinta's bow! A New World existed and formed a barrier to making the Moluccas and its
spices. Of course, this discovery of America made expeditions increasingly far afield and there were an increasing number
of these expeditions to conquer new lands, that the Spanish and Portuguese shared under the seal of a conversion to Christianity
begun by Pope Alexander VI on 7th June 1494 (Treaty of Tordesillas).
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The spice route
In the 15th century, the sailors were extraordinary men, who were often erudite, sometimes noble, but above all experienced.
Initially the Venetians criss-crossed the Big Blue, because all the riches passed via the Mediterranean from China, India
and other distant islands. Next the Genoese shook up the monopoly until such time as the Portuguese got it into their heads
to go around Arab territories to make Black Africa. Then the Spanish decided they weren't going to let this conquest of a
world, which was growing everyday, go on without them. It was the reign of cartographers, astrologists, cosmographers... and
sailors who brought glory, honour, fortune and recognition to Seville and Lisbon. However they were often a long way from
the idealised image under their Court finery: when you scratch the surface of portraits painted by artists from this Renaissance,
hidden behind their piercing stare was a character tempered by ambition, money, promotion, intransigence, indeed vengeance,
even though a zest of humanity and a touch of adventure marked their sea-sprayed wrinkles.
The Moluccas (between
New Guinea and Borneo), the Philippines, Malaysia... inspired sailors: pepper, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, chilli, saffron and
other spices became vital commodities for livening up the high game flavours of the dishes at the end of the Middle Ages.
Not to mention the oriental perfumes to win female favour, nor the incense and balms necessary for religious offices! Europe
was drab, bland, insipid and flavourless... Black gold took on the form of a grain of pepper. Indeed all the traffic was in
the hands of the Arabs and Persians who controlled the turntables of Hormuz and Baghdad, Aden and Alexandria. To the west
a sea route opened: Colombus only discovering a New World there. To the East, you had to go round Africa and traverse the
Indian Ocean like Vasco de Gama. Now, if the Earth was round, then so too was the sea...
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Cantino's chart (1502) was shown around all the Courts of Europe: between China and America stretched a sea, but what
size was it and most importantly how could you get round the new continent? Vasco Núñez de Balboa was the first European to
see the Southern Seas, beyond the Isthmus of Panama. All that remained was to find a way through, but to the North the ice
prevented navigation... But what about the South?
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Convincing the kingsA few decades earlier, Christopher Colombus took a great deal of time to convince the high and mighty of this world: King
Jean II of Portugal rejected his project and Isabella of Castile prevaricated for many a long year before giving her consent
and her fleet to this intrepid Genoese adventurer. Fernão de Magalhães was above all a soldier, a warrior and a sailor, who
was part of Francisco de Almeida's great armada, which set out from Lisbon on 25th March 1505 to extend the influence of the
Portuguese empire from Madagascar to Calicut, from Mombasa to Malacca. He struck up a friendship with Francisco Serrão during
the many battles they fought against the Malays. In fact the Portuguese were the first to reach the Moluccas and led Magellan
to understand that the sea opened out towards the East beyond the Asian islands...
His compatriot, astrologist Rui
Faleiro, convinced him that he'd found an infallible method for calculating longitude: the difference in azimuth between the
pole star, which indicates the geographical North and the compass which indicates the magnetic North, tell us what the meridian
is... Unfortunately his hypothesis proved totally woolly and erroneous! Ferdinand Magellan also had charts and "from a well
depicted globe found the whole Earth" (Las Casas - 1518). Dom Manuel, King of Portugal, despised the requests of the "sobresaliente"
who had made several punitive campaigns in Arabia, India, Indonesia and Africa... The navigator then set off to conquer the
kingdom of Spain! After several interventions by Court nobles, Magellan met the young and future Charles the Fifth, who provided
him with all the necessary means for the expedition...
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 Confidence and uncertainties On 20th September 1519, five vessels left Spain: Victoria, Concepcion, San Antonio, Santiago and Trinidad, captained by
Magellan. 237 men embarked in Seville and four more climbed aboard in the Canaries, which they left behind them on 3rd
October. Two months later, they anchored in the bay of Rio de Janeiro, "en terre de Verzin"(in the land of Brazil wood) (Antonio
Pigafetta). What began next was the descent towards the Southern Ocean... On 10th January 1520, the fleet entered the Rio
de la Plata, a bay that Spaniard Juan Dias de Solis had already explored in 1515, before being eaten by natives "en cette
terre de Les Canibali" (on this land of The Cannibals)! This huge opening was to be the famous passage which provides access
to the Southern Seas...
Nay and thrice nay!: Fernand de Magellan sent his ships criss-crossing these waters for two
months in search of the strait drawn on Martin Behaim's chart. These certainties took a real knock, especially when the other
Spanish captains were giving the evil eye to this tough, brutish, not very talkative adventurer, full of certainty... and
Portuguese! This was further heightened by the fact that because the summer season in the southern hemisphere was drawing
to a close, bad weather was followed by gales. However, nothing could dent the inflexibility of the Captain General: the armada
picked their way along the coast to the South and reached San Matias bay on 24th February. Another failure. Further still,
San Julian bay enabled an incredible discovery: "a giant clad in the skin of an animal", the first "Pathagon", a name inspired
by a medieval novel.
A five month forced stopover in the wintry weather of the Fifties made the crew quick-tempered
and the captains rebellious: Luis de Mendoza was stabbed to death and Gaspard de Quesada was decapitated for wanting to take
control... The ships plunged further still to 51°S to stop off in Santa Cruz bay on 26th August 1520 where they anchored for
two months! They headed off again on 18th October, nearly 400 days after their triumphal departure from Seville, to discover
a snow-capped promontory, the cape of the Eleven Thousand Virgins: it was the entry to a strait...
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 The peaceful seaIn these virgin lands, the Patagons make huge flaming fires to signal the presence of this incredible event, hence the name
Tierra del Fuego! Just four vessels entered this labyrinth of canals and fjords as the captain of the San Antonio decided
that he'd had enough and returned to Spain... without warning Fernand de Magellan beforehand! The latter continued his exploration
and on Wednesday 28th November, "we're jutting out from the said strait and we're entering the Pacific sea"(Pigafetta). Indeed
the new ocean was so peaceful that the passage to the Philippines extended through until March 1521! A first island (named
Larrons or `thieves' because the natives stole a dinghy) was reached on 6th March, then on 16th March Samar emerged over the
horizon and on 28th March Magellan anchored up at Massawa.
Having bought a Malay slave some ten years earlier
for a few maravedis, during a war expedition to Malacca (Singapore), the captain of the Iberian fleet discovered that his
"servant" christened Henrique (since he was bought on Saint Henry's day) understood the dialect of these indigenous Filipinos!
As such the Malay was the first man to circumnavigate the world... Indeed Magellan wasn't to get the chance to continue
his own circumnavigation: wanting to teach a local kinglet a lesson he was killed and his companions massacred offshore of
Sébu, on the island of Mactan on 27th April 1521...
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Solely the vessel Victoria, captained by Sebastian del Cano, was to make it back to Seville on 7th September 1522,
passing via the Moluccas to load her bilges with spices, and the Cape of Good Hope, with a single stopover in Cape Verde to
fill up with freshwater and fresh food... Seven months sailing then to avoid the fleet of the King of Portugal, Dom Manuel,
who were in search of these Spanish mercenaries who had made a dent in his Asian kingdom! Antonio Pigafetta, the expedition's
writer, and seventeen other sailors, thus completed their first circumnavigation of the globe: "from the time we left this
bay to the present day, we've covered fourteen thousand four hundred and sixty leagues and circled the world from East to
West."
Dominic Bourgeois
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