QUARANTINE BLOG # 677

February 28, 2022

QB is on the road, so a quick QB today, and then a break until Friday (and the updated Index will be posted Friday, too).

I checked an item off of my bucket list today by being in the audience for the PBA Tournament of Champions.

I’ve been a bowling fan and a bowler since I was a teenager.  My first game was 37, scored in the Oakland, Maryland bowling alley (located under the A&P store).  The house had semi-automatic pin setters which meant pin boys loaded the pins into the pin setter and lifted the balls up to roll back to the players.

My first league bowling was an alternate for the Friday night team Dad bowled on.  I went every Friday and if one of the team didn’t show up, I’d get to bowl – of course this was after I was scoring more than 37.

My high score, in a fraternity league at Frostburg State College, was 237.  That’s not the highest score for a Sisler.  Dad and the Bro were both way better.  But I’m writing the blog, so I can tell you my scores.

Every Saturday during the bowling season we’d watch ABC-TV with commentators Chris Schenkel and Nelson Burton, Jr.  The season ended with the ultimate prize, the Firestone Tournament of Champions.

And that brings me to the bucket list item.  Bonnie and I drove to Akron Ohio and took our seats in the AMF Rivera Lanes.  In a step ladder format – #5 qualifier bowling #4, then the winner takes on #3 and #2 and #1 until the final game.  Dom Barrett took on tournament leader, Kris Prather and walked away with the $100,000 first prize.

Can’t wait until next year!

The championship lanes, from our seats.

Dom Barrett with the replica check and the trophy.

👉  What would Monday be without the Monday Pun?

👉  Two smilies:

🛐  Today’s close is by Phil Ware.

“Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:18).

“Talk is cheap!” “You can tell me with your words, but I’ll show it with my life.” “Put your life where your mouth is.” We know the slogans, now let’s live love in truth. In a world where barter has replaced sacrificial and steadfast love, let’s go against the grain and do the truth!

Prayer:

Sacrificial Father, I confess to you that at times I am selfish. Other times my intentions are good, but my follow-through and faithfulness are lacking. Use your Spirit to empower and enable me to be what I hope to become, to your glory. May your love be seen in my actions of genuine concern today. I pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

-30-

QUARANTINE BLOG # 676

February 27, 2022

The Last Visit to Home – For Now

I first published this piece in The Augusta Chronicle May, 13, 2000.

It had been the best of times, but for the first time in 75 years the cedar-shingled house at 117 Shenandoah Avenue in Loch Lynn, Maryland is not owned by someone whose last name is Sisler. On Monday, my brother, Kyle and I signed the papers which will transfer ownership of the place where we grew up. I was the last member of the family to be in the house. I walked through, room by room, one last time, then closed and locked the door, and drove away without looking back.

In the fall of 1925, Stella Sisler, my paternal grandmother, bought the house for $1500, a significant sum in those pre-depression days. Widowed while her youngest child was only six months old, she took a small pension and raised four children. Grandma remarried about fifteen years later, and in the spring of 1950, sold it to (I’m quoting from the deed) “Melvin Sisler and his wife, Elizabeth Sisler, for the sum of ten dollars,” and Dad, Mom and I moved in. Kyle took up residence there the next year.

Home. What thoughts and images come to our minds with the mention of that one little word. We understand what J. Howard Payne meant when he wrote, “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like Home.” When Dorothy Gale clicked the ruby slippers together she woke up in her own bed, clutched her dog, Toto, close to her, and cried, “There’s no place like home.” A German proverb says, “Blessed are the homesick, for they shall reach home.” When the prodigal son came to his senses he thought of home. Or was it thoughts of home which restored him to his senses?

Home. I think of three addresses.

The first is that house in Loch Lynn, where I grew up. The place where my Mom and Dad taught me about God. The place where Kyle and I shared a bedroom and became best friends. The place where all the memories are happy.

The second home is 4214 Cap Chat Street, and although we no longer live there, it is the first place that was uniquely ours. It was the place where Bonnie and I taught our children about God. The place where Jennifer, Amy, Michael, and Matthew, took refuge from the outside. The place where, no matter what, there was always someone to tell me, “I love you.” The place where all six of us last lived together.

But let’s back up a few years.

Going to auctions with Dad is one of my fondest memories from my childhood. Every Thursday, Dad would buy a copy of The Republican, the local weekly newspaper, and read the sale bills. He would mark one or two auctions, usually one ran by his friend and co-worker, Bill Callis, and early Saturday morning we would set out for the sales. I learned a little about Depression Glass and other collectibles. I enjoyed the excitement when Dad would allow me to bid on something. The best part was simply the time spent with Dad.

As I have written in this space previously, my parents, indeed all of us, were (and are) collectors, and the auctions were the mines where we dug for treasures. Occasionally an antique store or collectible shop would go out of business and that sale became priority number one for the weekend. I remember Dad buying a lot of 120 pieces of cobalt blue Depression Glass for $12. Not one single piece is today worth that little.

Dad died almost four years ago, and Mom died last fall, so to complete the settling of the estate, we followed local tradition and hired an auctioneer. It was ironic, then, and very fitting, several of the people at the sale were “dealers.” Many of the pieces which we collected over the years will now make their way into the hands of other collectors. It was sad, but it just seemed right.

There was another touch of irony over the weekend. Twenty-five years ago, Larry and Becky Friend moved in next door and began to raise a family. They were the youngsters, Mom and Dad the middle-aged next-door-neighbors. In a few days another young couple will move in, and Larry and Becky will assume the status relinquished by Melvin and Elizabeth. Life goes on. Homes change.

And that brings me to the third and final home, Heaven, where I will live, and live forever, because of Jesus of Nazareth, God’s only begotten Son. It is a permanent abiding place. The place where Father is. The place my Elder Brother is preparing for me, and all who will put their eternal trust in him. The place of untroubled hearts. Home!

-30- 

QUARANTINE BLOG # 675

February 25, 2022

Here are a few more questions to test your IQ:

If the professor on Gilligan’s Island can make a radio out of a coconut, why can’t he fix a hole in a boat?

Why do toasters always have a setting that burns the toast to a horrible crisp, which no human would eat?

Why is “bra” singular and “panties” plural?

Why do the “Alphabet Song” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” have the same tune?

Why did you just try singing the two songs above?

👉  A couple of quotations:

👉  Two Blackouts:

👉  A trio of Smilies:

👉  There is very little documentary evidence of dance being practiced in Ireland prior to the 7th century; this could be due to the destruction of written records in Ireland during Viking raids.  The first native Irish documentary evidence of dancing is an account of a Mayor of Waterford’s visit to Baltimore, County Cork in 1413, where the attendees “took to the floor” to celebrate Christmas Eve.  By the 1760s, the distinctive rhythm of the Irish dance tradition had developed.  The step dance is probably the most widely known style of Irish dancing.  Sometime in the early 19th century, a dance teacher had his students dance with arms held firmly down to their sides, hands in fists, to call more attention to the intricacy of the steps. 

The Irish step dance was popularized from 1994 onwards by shows such as “Riverdance.”  “Riverdance” – featuring Irish dancing champions Jean Butler and Michael Flatley – was first performed during the seven-minute interval of the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest at the Point Theatre in Dublin on April 30, 1994.  The performance was transmitted to an estimated 300 million viewers worldwide and earned a standing ovation from the packed theatre of 4,000 people.

Flatley is credited with reinventing traditional Irish dance by incorporating new rhythms, syncopation, and upper body movements, which were previously absent from the dance, as well as including influences from tap and contemporary dance.  He is in the Guinness World Records for tap dancing 35 times per second and his feet were at one time insured for $57.6 million.  Flatley retired in 2016 due to constant spinal, knee, foot, and rib pain.

👉  And now, the Candy Bomber.

Lt. Gail S. Halvorsen, an Air Force transport pilot, was on the grounds of West Berlin’s Tempelhof airfield on a mid-July day in 1948, taking part in a historic confrontation of the early Cold War years, when he spotted some 30 German children in ragged clothing outside a fence. He reached into his back pocket, extracted a pack of Wrigley’s Doublemint and handed out the last two sticks of gum in the pack.

“The look in their eyes, I could see their appreciation for something so small,” he recalled long afterward. “I wanted to do something more, so I told them to come back later.”

He promised to drop candy to the youngsters on his flight the next day, carrying food and other vital supplies in a massive relief mission known as the Berlin airlift.

“They asked how they would know it was me,” he said. “I told them I’ll wiggle the wings.”

Lieutenant Halvorsen and his two crewmen joined with fellow American airmen to drop a total of 23 tons of candies, chocolate and chewing gum wrapped in tiny parachutes from their planes while preparing to touch down at Tempelhof airfield with vast quantities of other supplies in an effort to break a Soviet land blockade of Berlin’s Allied-occupied western sectors.

When Mr. Halvorsen died February 15, at 101, he was remembered as the original “Candy Bomber” of the airlift, a defiance of Soviet power by the United States, Britain and France that also symbolized reconciliation between the German people and the Allies in the wake of World War II.

Lieutenant Halvorsen, a native of Utah, flew 126 Berlin airlift missions, joined by his co-pilot, Capt. John Pickering, and his navigator, Sgt. Herschel Elkins.

In September 1948, the Air Force sent Lieutenant Halvorsen back to the United States to publicize his efforts, and he appeared on the CBS-TV program “We the People.” American candy manufacturers began donating sweets, and schoolchildren volunteered to wrap them in simulated parachutes, made from handkerchiefs and twine, for shipment to Allied-occupied West Germany.

At least two dozen pilots from Lieutenant Halverson’s squadron were among those who took part in the candy drops. They all became known as Candy Bombers.

A 9-year-old named Peter Zimmerman sent him a homemade parachute and a map providing directions to his home for a candy drop. Lieutenant Halvorsen searched for the house on his next flight but couldn’t find it. Peter sent another note reading: “No chocolate yet. You’re a pilot. I gave you a map. How did you guys win the war anyway?”

Lieutenant Halvorsen sent Peter a chocolate bar in the mail.

“Gail Halvorsen enchanted the children of Berlin,” recalled Ursula Yunger, who had been one of those children and later settled in the United States. “It wasn’t the candy,” she told The Tucson Citizen in 2004. “It was his profound gesture, showing us that somebody cared.”

Ms. Yunger met Mr. Halvorsen for the first time at a reunion of airlift veterans in Tucson in September 2003. “I was just shaking,” she said. He hugged her and handed her a Hershey bar.

On the 50th anniversary of the airlift, Mr. Halvorsen flew to Berlin in a restored cargo plane that had been used in the mission and was introduced by President Bill Clinton at commemorative ceremonies. In May 2009, he was honored at the Pentagon when it unveiled a display telling of humanitarian efforts by the armed forces. He attended a ceremony in Frankfurt in 2013 marking the 65th anniversary of the Berlin airlift’s beginning, and he was also present that year for the naming of a school for him in Berlin.

“The airlift reminded me that the only way to fulfillment in life, real fulfillment, is to serve others,” Mr. Halvorsen told CNN on the Berlin airlift’s 40th anniversary. “I was taught that as a youth in my church, and I found when I flew day and night to serve a former enemy that my feelings of fulfillment and being worthwhile were the strongest that I’ve felt.”

🛐   The close today is from Praying with the Psalms, by Eugene H. Peterson.

“You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy” (Psalm 30:11).

Anger becomes favor. Weeping is exchanged for joy. Mourning is turned into dancing. Grim sackcloth is discarded for God’s garment of gladness. The silent soul suddenly becomes loquacious with praise. These are just some of the changes we experience when we begin, in prayer, to open ourselves to God.

Prayer: “O for a heart to praise my God! a heart from sin set free; a heart that always feels Thy blood, so freely shed for me.... Thy nature, gracious Lord, impart; come quickly from above; write Thy new name upon my heart, Thy new, best name of love” (Charles Wesley, “O for a Heart to Praise My God”). Amen.

-30-

QUARANTINE BLOG # 674

February 23, 2022

Little Johnny and his family were having Sunday dinner at his Grandmother’s house.  Everyone was seated around the table as the food was being served.  When Little Johnny received his plate, he started eating right away.  “Johnny! Please wait until we say our prayer.” said his mother. 

“I don’t need to,” the boy replied.  “Of course, you do,” his mother insisted.  “We always say a prayer before eating at our house.” 

“That’s at our house.”  Johnny explained.  “But this is Grandma’s house and she knows how to cook!”

👉  Here are a few questions to test your IQ:

If most people die of natural causes, why do so many people eat natural foods?

How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered?

Once you’re in heaven, do you get stuck wearing the clothes you were buried in for eternity?

What disease did ‘cured ham’ actually have?

Why is it that people say they “slept like a baby” when babies wake up like every two hours?

👉  Here is some Gasoline Humor, although “humor” is questionable, considering what is happening at the pump

👉  Some quotations:

👉  When Samuel Ryde got his first smartphone in 2012, he began a project to photograph whatever he was up to at 12:34 pm every day.  Initially he planned to complete the project over one year, but afterwards decided to keep on snapping.  More than 10 years later, the 40-year-old artist and hairdresser from east London  says he has documented both the “exciting and mundane” nature of everyday London life.

He chose 12:34 simply because it’s 1-2-3-4, and it’s his favorite time of the day.  His goal was to overtake Samuel Pepys (pronounced “peeps”), the most famous diarist in British history – he lived through Charles I, Charles II, Oliver Cromwell, the plague, and the Great Fire of London, writing every day.  Failing eyesight kept Pepys short of 10 years.  The detailed private diary that Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century and is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. 

BBC posted Ryde’s story Monday, so if my calculations are correct today’s picture was 10 years and 2 days.

Here is a quartet of Ryde’s pictures

👉  As promised Monday, here is the “Food Fight,” first of two food-related stories.  This one is taken from my cruise talk, “History: It’s What’s For Dinner.”  We’ve done the story of Potatoes and Bananas and there are 6 more talks in the series – maybe we’ll pick some of those up in the blogs ahead.  But now, “Food Fight.”

The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union began in earnest with a food fight over the divided city of Berlin.

In early 1948, the Western allies moved to unite their respective zones under a single administration to begin the reconstruction a democratic country. The Soviets strongly opposed the plan, hoping to orchestrate the installation of a Communist regime.

On April 1, 1948 the Soviets began to interfere with delivery of supplies to West Berlin, calculating that the Western allies would give up the city rather than go to war to defend it. On June 18, the Soviets blocked all freight access to West Berlin. The city had only enough food for 36 days, and enough coal for 45 days. General Brian Robertson, the British commander, suggested supplying West Berlin by air.

At first glance, this was preposterous. Supplying the two million people would mean delivering some 1500 tons of food and 2000 tons of coal and fuel every day, at a bare minimum. On June 26, using Douglas C-47S, the first supplies from airfields in West Germany, arrived in West Berlin. They reached 3500 tons a day by mid-July.

Flights were soon operating every three minutes, twenty-four hours a day. Teams of volunteers competed to unloaded the aircraft in the shortest possible time. By October deliveries had reached 5000 tons per day.

General William H. Tunner decided to stage the “Easter Parade” to demonstrate Allied commitment. Deliveries were exceeding 6000 tons a day by March 1949, but Tunner set the ambitious target of delivering 10,000 tons on a single day: April 17, Easter Sunday. The ground crews and pilots delivered 12,940 tons.

The publicity surrounding the Easter Parade produced a new round of negotiations. The Soviets agreed to lift the blockade of West Berlin on May 12, 1949. The airlift operated for 15 months, during which some 2.3 million tons of supplies were delivered in more than 275,000 flights. The first battle of this Cold War had been fought not with bullets or bombs, but with foodstuffs.

Friday, “Lt. Gail Halvorsen, the Candy Bomber.”

🛐  The close today is from Praying with the Psalms, by Eugene H. Peterson.

“In you, O Lord, I seek refuge; do not let me ever be put to shame; in your righteousness deliver me. Incline your ear to me, rescue me speedily. Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me” (Psalm 31:1-2).

If we have only a vague idea of who God is and what he does, we can only hesitantly and tentatively suggest things he might do for us. The clean-cut metaphors ascribed here to God show that the psalmist has a very clear picture of God’s nature and will. As a consequence he urgently and confidently presses his claims.

Prayer: You, O God, have taken all the guesswork out of knowing you. You have revealed yourself clearly and graciously. I come to you now appreciating how capable you are of dealing with me, body and soul, and how single-minded you are in wanting to rescue me in Jesus Christ. Amen.

-30-

QUARANTINE BLOG # 673

February 21, 2022

Today’s sermon, from the Crawfordville Pulpit, “What Do You Do When Life Goes Bump?” is from Genesis 37:1-11.

👉  From north of the border, a good chuckle to begin the day:

After a tiring day, a commuter settled down in his seat and closed his eyes. As the train rolled out of the station, the young woman sitting next to him pulled out her cell phone and started talking in a loud voice: “Hi sweetheart. It’s Mary. I’m on the train. Yes, I know it’s the six thirty and not the four thirty, but I had a long meeting. No, honey, not with that Kevin from the accounting office. It was with the boss. No sweetheart, you’re the only one in my life. Yes, I’m sure, cross my heart!” 

Fifteen minutes later, she was still talking loudly. When the man sitting next to her had enough, he leaned over and said into the phone, “Mary, hang up the phone and come back to bed.”

Mary doesn’t use her cell phone in public any longer. 

**  Here’s the Monday Pun:

👉  All over the country, governors are walking back from face mask mandates.  Maybe they should think about the comment made by Non Sequitur.

👉  Three Blackouts:

  A head-scratcher from an old TV Guide:

👉  A couple from Ooh You’re Gold:

👉  And two Smilies:

For everyone who has ever been to 117 Shenandoah Avenue, take a look over Skinny Pappy’s left shoulder:

👉  Back in the before time, when I was the manager of Taber’s Jewelers, your jeweler with the 100 day money back guarantee, a woman walked into the store and asked to see our “Errples.”  I said, “Errples?”  She said, “No.  Errples.”  I said, “Errples?”  She said, “No! Errples!”  After this conversation was repeated several more times she walked around the store, stopped in front of a case with semi-precious stones and with a large smile pointed and said, “Errples!”  I walked over, looked into the case and said, “Oh, opals!”  She said, “Yes!  Errples!”

Well, that little memory and bit of miscommunication was resurrected by a sale yesterday of the largest gem-quality opal in existence.  The opal, dubbed the “Americus Australis,” weighs more than 11,800 carats, according to the auction house Alaska Premier Auctions & Appraisals.  

Most recently, it was kept in a linen closet in a home in Big Lake, north of Anchorage, by Fred von Brandt, who mines for gold in Alaska and whose family has deep roots in the gem and rock business.  The opal is larger than a brick and is broken into two pieces, which von Brandt said was a practice used decades ago to prove gem quality.  Von Brandt said the stone has been in his family since the late 1950s, when his grandfather bought it from an Australian opal dealer named John Altmann.

The sale price, including buyer’s premium was $143,750 – for one errple!

👉  After a couple of amusing (hopefully) pictures, Wednesday’s and Friday’s blog will be devoted to a two-part story.  Part 1 is “Food Fight,” when food became a weapon, and won the first battle of the Cold War.  Part 2 is an episode from that fight featuring Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen, the “Candy Bomber.”

🛐  The exact details of the writing of this hymn are not known, but from a number of different sources we find that the writer, James Black, was a Sunday School teacher in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. 

In 1893 he supposedly befriended a poorly dressed girl who lived “down on Front Street, along the river.” He invited her to attend Sunday School but she hesitated because of her shabby clothes. Black apparently saw to it that she had something decent to wear and she began to attend. One day when he called the roll she failed to answer. Upon checking on her he found that she was very sick with typhoid fever and had little hope of recovery. Death came quickly. 

It is said that when Black realized that she would never again be there when the roll was called, he made the comment that he trusted that when the roll is called up yonder that she’ll be there. It is said that he couldn’t find an appropriate song to respond to this sad situation. The thought came to him that he should try to write one. When he got home he sat at his piano and the words and music to this hymn just flowed from his heart. 

And neither the words or the music have ever been changed. And so for many years this up tempo song – When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder” – has been sung by thousands as a reminder of the day when an important roll will be called. And those of us whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life will be there to respond and enter the joys of that heavenly realm. What a day that will be!

-30-

QUARANTINE BLOG # 672

February 20, 2022

Personal Responsibility? Absolutely Not. Let’s Sue Someone!

I first published this in The Augusta Chronicle April 15, 2000.

One of life’s pleasures, thanks to the Internet, continues to be the daily reading of Bill Watterson’s great comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes.

In a recent strip, the little boy and his tiger are walking in the woods. Calvin says, “I don’t believe in ethics any more. As far as I am concerned, the end justifies the means. Get what you can while the getting’s good – that’s what I say. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, so I’ll do whatever I have to do, and let others argue about whether it’s right or not.”

At that point Hobbes pushes Calvin into a large mud puddle. “Why did you do that?” Calvin demands.

“You were in my way,” Hobbes says. “Now you’re not. The end justifies the means.”

Calvin, totally covered in sticky, brown mud says, “I didn’t mean for everyone, you dolt! Just me!”

This spring our back yard is a candidate for “just me.” The grass is barely visible because of the “gum balls.” These tree droppings are two inches in diameter with a solid center and spikes that extend outward in all directions. They thump against the lawn mower like bumble bees trapped in a coffee can. The offending tree is in our neighbor’s yard and more gum balls fall onto our property than on theirs. Bonnie won’t allow me to rake them up and throw them back over the fence, so I suggested we sue.

My litigious leanings and Calvin’s me-first philosophy seem to have found mirror images in Florida. In a landmark case against the tobacco industry, the AP reported that two smokers, “representing an estimated 500,000 sick Floridians in the first class-action lawsuit against Big Tobacco to reach trial,” were awarded $6.9 million dollars. The same jury which determined that “five cigarette companies and two industry groups conspired to produce a dangerous, addictive product that causes 29 illnesses, including cancer and heart disease” could award $300 billion to the 500,000 class-action smokers.

If you smoke, there may be nothing worse than a living ex-smoker – and put me into that category. I started stealing my Dad’s cigarettes when I was in junior high school, quit smoking before Bonnie and I were married, stayed off the weed for fourteen years, stupidly picked them up again for four years, and have been nicotine free again ever since. So it was with a sense of personal involvement that I read about the Miami lawsuit.

Mary Farnan is one of the Florida smokers who stands to collect in the case which experts say may bankrupt the tobacco industry. “You can imagine how I feel,” she said after the award was announced. Many were touched by the scene of Ms. Farnan, her body ravaged by cancer, hugging her ten-year-old daughter. You had to read deep into the story to learn that this plaintiff was a former three-pack-a-day smoker who incredibly continued smoking through her first course of radiation and chemotherapy. Whatever happened to the idea of personal responsibility?

My Dad started smoking when he was five-years-old. Contributing factors in his death were emphysema and heart disease brought on by smoking. He quit smoking 16 years before he died, but the damage had been done. More or less jokingly, I asked Dad, after he had stopped, if he had ever considered suing for damages. He snapped his fingers and said, “I did. For about that long.”

When I pressed him for more information, he said, “I knew if I won, you and your brother would have a lot of money after I died, and I didn’t want you to do anything foolish with it. So not suing seemed the better idea.” He smiled and continued, “But more than that, how could I, with a clean conscience, sue cigarette makers because I voluntarily used their legal product? They never put a cigarette into my mouth and forced me to inhale, and I learned to read a long time ago. The warning on the side of the pack was a constant reminder that I was hurting myself every time I lit up.”

Certain facts are no longer in dispute. The tobacco industry lied to us for years. They knew their product was killing us. They altered the ingredients to make cigarettes even more addictive than they were naturally. They manipulated research to keep us coughing up the price of pack. Do not misunderstand: I have zero sympathy for the tobacco industry, but everyone of us who has ever smoked, did so because we wanted to smoke. And now we want them to pay us for damages because we exercised our personal right of free choice? Calvin, you have too many disciples!

-30-

QUARANTINE BLOG # 671

February 18, 2022

On April 6, after more than three months of repairs, Trinidad prepared to leave the island of Tidore. The ship carried a full load of spices – fifty tons of cloves – more than enough to justify the expense of the entire voyage.

In one of the worst decisions in the history of navigation, Trinidad, under the command of Gonzalo Espinosa, decided to sail east. Five months later, with his crew starving, he returned to the Moluccas, only to find a fleet of seven Portugese ships on station, all looking for Magellan and the Armada de Molucca.

Espinosa begged sympathy. His ship was in bad condition. One storm could send her to the bottom. And he was in desperate need of supplies. 

Portuguese soldiers boarded and took possession of Trinidad’s papers, including Magellan’s personal logbook. They imprisoned Espinosa and his surviving crew in a Portugese fort, determined to leave them to die in their harsh surroundings. 

Trinidad rode helplessly at anchor until a severe storm hit the island and smashed the ship. Her precious cargo of cloves sank, and the flagship of the Armada de Molucca ended up as driftwood. 

Now there was only one ship left of the five comprising the original Armada de Molucca. This was Victoria, and her prospects of returning to Seville appeared even less certain than Trinidad’s.

On June 8, 1522, Victoria crossed the equator again. Pigafetta reported that scurvy had returned to devastate the crew. “Twenty-one men died during that short time.”

On July 9, they reached Cape Verde off the coast of West Africa. The islands were a Portuguese stronghold. Despite the fact that they were a Spanish ship in Portugese waters, Espinosa dispatched a longboat for food needed by the starving crew.

Their cover story omitted any mention of their visit to the Spice Islands, the precious cloves they were carrying, Magellan’s death, and, most important of all, their nearly complete circumnavigation of the globe. They posed as an unlucky, storm-battered Spanish cargo ship, hardly worth troubling over. The ruse worked, and Pigafetta exulted, “We got two boatloads of rice.”

It has never been determined how it happened, but before Victoria could sail away from Santiago Island, their cover story unraveled, and several crew members were taken prisoner. Not risking the loss of their boat and the capture of the rest of the men, Victoria set full sails, and left with 22 men – all that remained of the 257 who had left Seville three years earlier.

On Saturday, September 6, 1522, they entered the bay of San Lucar with only 18 men, the majority of them sick.

Pigafetta wrote: “From the time we left that bay until the present day, we sailed 14,460 leagues” – nearly 60,000 miles – “and 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.

Victoria tied up in Seville on September 10, 1522.

Under the scrutiny of representatives of the king, dock workers unloaded the precious cargo that Victoria had traveled around the world to collect: cloves. Even without the other four ships, the amount of cloves in Victoria’s hold was sufficient to turn a profit for the expedition’s backers. Their value came to $1 million.

The completion of Magellan’s voyage gave the Spanish a water route to the Spice Islands. In terms of prestige and political might, the achievement was the Renaissance equivalent of winning the space race – a competition between the world’s two great superpowers, Spain and Portugal, for territory of vital economic and political importance. Spain was poised to control the spice trade and, by extension, global commerce.

Ferdinand Magellan

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, relying on the knowledge acquired by Magellan and his crew.

Sir Francis Drake

Victoria, the first ship to complete a circumnavigation, had a curious epilogue. She was repaired, sold to a merchant for $12,000 and returned to service, a workhorse of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. As late as 1570, she was still plying the Atlantic. En route to Seville from the Antilles, she disappeared without a trace; all hands on board were lost. 

Victoria

Flemish cartographer, Gerardus Mercator, canonized the Strait of Magellan on his famous globe in 1536. The name Magellan designated only the strait – no lands or territories that he once dreamed of leaving to his heirs.

Gerardus Mercator

On Sunday, September 7, 1522, the day after arriving in Seville, the 18 survivors, attired only in their ragged shirts and breeches, did penance at the shrine of Santa Maria de la Victoria. They returned to Seville as sinners and penitents rather than conquerors.

In a bustling square in Sanlucar de Barrameda, there is today a marble plaque mounted high on the stone facade of a well-worn building. The tarnished inscription commemorates the 18 survivors of the first-ever circumnavigation of the world:

Juan Sebastian Elcano, Captain. Francisco Albo, Pilot. Miguel de Rodas, Master. Juan de Acuno, Boatswain. Martin de Judicibus, Sailor. Hernando Bustamente, Barber. Hans of Aachen, Gunner. Diego Carmona, Sailor. Nicholas the Greek, of Naples, Sailor. Miguel Sanchez, of Rodas, Sailor. Francisco Rodrigues, Sailor. Juan Rodriguez de Huelva, Sailor. Antonio Hernandez Colmenero, Sailor. Juan de Arratia, Sailor. Juan de Santandres, Ordinary seaman. Vasco Gomes Gallego, Ordinary seaman. Juan de Zubileta, Page. Antonio Pigafetta, Passenger.

They had surveyed more of the world than anyone else before them; by accident or design, their names belong among history’s great explorers.

They had circled the globe, demonstrating that the world was a larger place than previously imagined. 7,000 miles had been added to the globe’s circumference. They had learned that beyond Europe, people existed in astonishing profusion and variety. Banished were phenomena such as mermaids, boiling water at the equator, and a magnetic island capable of pulling the nails from passing ships. These discoveries came at the cost of over 200 lives. No other voyage had been as prolonged, complicated, ambitious, or daring as this one.

The expedition of the Armada de Molucca had ended, but its effects on Spain, and on world history, were just beginning.

Next week, a story from my series “The Creators.”

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

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1).

Fear responds to danger by burying us beneath thick layers of self-defense, where we can only cower in shadows.  Faith responds to danger by trusting God and lives head high out in the open with shouts of joy.

Prayer: I refuse, O God, to live fearfully or cautiously.  I name my fears one by one and turn them over to you, and find them simply trivial when set alongside your majesty.  With lifted head I will live in your light and salvation, through Jesus Christ.  Amen.

-30-