QUARANTINE BLOG # 659

January 28, 2022

As the Armada passed along the eastern coast of what is now Argentina, they were heading into latitudes notorious for sudden, frequent, and violent squalls. The fate of the expedition depended on finding a strait that would lead them from the Atlantic to the Spice Islands.

Searching for a strait that some of the men did not believe existed, and led by jealous captains, three ships mounted the Easter Rebellion on April 2, 1520. Through extraordinary luck, Magellan defeated the mutineers. Several of the leaders were executed.

Just days after the last ring leader was executed, Magellan discovered that Juan de Cartagena, his nemesis, was conspiring with a priest, Pedro Sanchez de la Reina, to mount yet another mutiny.

Magellan’s first instinct was to have both men executed; this was Cartagena’s third mutiny, but he could not bring himself to condemn a priest. Instead, Magellan devised a much worse fate. He decided to leave them behind to fend for themselves in the wilderness of Port Saint Julian after the fleet’s departure.

Magellan turned his attention to the fleet. The ships were in a state of disrepair, their holds fetid, their hulls leaky. The ships were emptied and given a thorough cleaning. Forty mutineers, bound in chains, performed the most grueling labor.

Reloading, they discovered that the chandlers in the Canary Islands had robbed them, and endangered their lives. The ships’ holds actually contained a third of what the bills of lading showed. They would run out of food before they reached their goal.

Winter relentlessly advanced on Port Saint Julian. With the days contracted to less than four hours of light, Magellan ordered his men to hunt and fish. They also found mussels, as well as foxes, sparrows, and rabbits. They preserved their catch with salt derived from flats surrounding the bay.

Magellan gave the command to weigh anchor on August 24, 1520. After five months  in Port Saint Julian, the Armada de Molucca put to sea. 

Before they would find the strait to the Pacific, two ships would be lost. The first was Santiago – in a freak storm – but all hands were saved. The second would come some months later – another mutiny.

As the Armada sailed into the Atlantic, Cartagena, and Father Reina watched from their island prison. They were marooned. Their supplies consisted mainly of bread and wine, enough to last them the summer. The two condemned men kneeled at the waters edge, pleading for mercy as the ships grew finally vanished over the horizon. They were never heard from again.

On October 21, 1520, Magellan finally noticed a cape extending into the ocean, strewn with whales skeletons – suggesting a migration route leading from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He had finally found his strait.

Precisely how he divined its existence has been debated ever since. According to Pigafetta, Magellan, while still in Portugal, had seen a map depicting or suggesting a strait cutting through South America.

Magellan now faced 300 miles of nautical nightmare. The sides were lined with enormous glaciers, some 500 feet high, running through 30 miles of mountains before sheering off at the water’s edge. 

To everyone’s surprise, a light, almost iridescent blue that in the crevasses and seams darkened to a deep azure.

At night a dazzling array of constellations competed for attention. Orion and the Big Dipper mingled with the unfamiliar constellations of the Southern Hemisphere, especially the Southern Cross, whose presence reinforced Magellan’s conviction that the Almighty was looking over the entire venture.

Encouraged, the captains and pilots were strongly in favor of pushing on – all but one. Estevao Gomes, pilot of the San Antonio, strongly dissented. Now that they had found the strait, he argued, they should sail back to Spain to assemble a better-equipped fleet. Gomes’s opposition set the stage for another mutiny.

A week after discovering the strait, they reached a point where it extended in two directions. To choose a course, Magellan dispatched two ships to reconnoiter – Victoria and San Antonio.

Victoria returned within three days and reported that they had seen the cape and the open sea. San Antonio failed to reappear, having fled for Spain. The long-frustrated mutiny had finally succeeded. San Antonio carried many of the fleet’s provisions in her hold, so the loss instantly put the remaining sailors’ lives in jeopardy.

The strait still lacked a name. Pigafetta took to referring to it as the Patagonian Strait, while the astrologer  preferred the name Strait of All Saints. Still others referred to it as Victoria Strait, after the first ship to enter its waters. By 1527, the waterway was known as  the Strait of Magellan.

On Wednesday, November 28, 1520, they sailed into the Pacific, 38 days since they left the Atlantic.

Magellan’s skill in negotiating the strait is the single greatest feat in the history of maritime exploration. Greater even than Columbus’s discovery of the New World, because thinking he had arrived in China, he remained befuddled to the end about where he was, what he had accomplished, and as a result he misled others. Magellan realized exactly what he had done; he had begun to correct Columbus’s great navigational error.

But no one aboard the fleet’s three remaining ships suspected they were about to traverse the largest body of water in the world to reach their ultimate goal.

Next week: “A Race Against Death.”

🛐Today’s close is from Praying with the Psalms, by Eugene H. Peterson.

“Guard me as the apple of the eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings” (Psalm 17:8).

With God, no one is just another number. The population explosion doesn’t overwhelm us. Each of us is a prized object of affection to be cared for and cherished. His recognition of us makes it possible for us finally to recognize him.

Prayer: I’ll never understand, gracious God, how I can be singled out from the millions of humankind for your love. But I don’t need to understand it: I accept it! In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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