The ATA Chronicle - January/February 2017 - 30


INTERPRETERS FORUM

BY EWANDRO MAGALHÃES

The Man Who Beat Magellan in
the Race Around the Globe
Could the first man to circumnavigate the globe actually have been an interpreter?

Ferdinand Magellan

M

ost people think of Ferdinand
Magellan as the Portuguese
explorer who first sailed around
the planet on a quest to prove that the
Earth was round. Now, consider this.
While Magellan did sail from Spain
on an expedition that eventually went
full circle, he never completed the
tour. Also, Magellan never set out to
sail around the globe. His goal was
to establish a western route to the
spices that grew in the Indies. Used
as seasonings, food preservatives, and
aphrodisiacs, these exotic commodities
were worth many times their weight in
gold. With as little as a sack of cloves,
one could buy a house, settle down
on a good pension, and never leave
port again.
30

The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2017

Assuming the Earth to be round,
Magellan was confident he could find
a fabled maritime passage through
the continents that had been claimed
earlier by Portugal and Spain, the two
competing seafaring superpowers of
the time.
A few decades earlier, under pressure
from the catholic rulers of Spain, the
Pope had drawn an imaginary line on
the map from pole to pole and divided
the world in two. Spain was granted
exclusive rights to territories west of the
divide, with Portugal expected to keep
to the east. The deal was sealed in the
small Spanish town of Tordesillas.
Dismissed by King Manuel of Portugal,
to whom he first pitched the idea of
an expedition, a humiliated Magellan
crossed the border into Spain where he
got the attention of King Charles I, then
in his teens. When Magellan declared
authoritatively that the Spice Islands lay in
the Spanish hemisphere and that he knew
how to get there, the Spanish monarch
was sold.
On September 20, 1519, five ships
carrying 260 men headed into the
unknown. Sailing southwest, the
armada made a pleasant landfall in the
tropics. Proceeding south, any waterway
leading inland was explored in search of
the canal.
The Spaniards resented having a
Portuguese at the helm. As the weather
worsened and provisions dwindled,
their impatience escalated into fullblown mutiny, which Magellan crushed
with unspeakable cruelty. Mutineers
were marooned, eviscerated alive or
dismembered, their heads and limbs
displayed on the five ships as a warning.
Sour at the captain's brutality, the
crew of the San Antonio defected back
to Spain, carrying with it most of the
provisions. And during a reconnaissance
journey, the Santiago ran aground.
On November 1, Magellan started
exploring a westward navigable seaway.

Twenty-seven freezing days later the
three remaining ships emerged into
the Mar Pacifico. The legendary strait
connecting east and west had been
found and crossed.
Past the strait, it would take the crew
98 days to see dry land again. Scurvy
and famine claimed the lives of dozens
of seamen. After replenishments and
repairs in modern-day Guam, the fleet
advanced into what would later be
the Philippines. To everyone's surprise,
Magellan's slave Henry, acquired in a
journey to Malacca eight years earlier
and brought along as an interpreter,
could easily communicate with the
rulers and natives on various islands,
which Magellan claimed for Spain.
With Henry's linguistic support, and
the imposing thunder of European
canons, Magellan had no trouble
claiming a few islands for Spain. But
when he tried to convert chieftain
Lapu Lapu to Christianity by force,
his fate was sealed on the island of
Mactan. Shallow waters kept the
ships away and cannon shots out of
range. Overconfident and severely
outnumbered, Magellan was killed
brutally, along with another
eight Europeans.
With his master dead, Henry was free.
Furthermore, he found himself back
home. If Henry was actually from the
Cebu region-as his command of the
local language indicates-the interpreter
may have been the first man to actually
circumnavigate the world.
But the expedition still had to
navigate the maze of islands on its way
back to Spain, and the new captains
refused to release the interpreter.
Disgruntled, Henry turned to Rajah
Humabon, the ruler of Cebu, and
plotted a conspiracy. He convinced the
king to offer a farewell banquet to about
30 Europeans. As the feast came to a
close, archers emerged from the bushes
and killed all the guests but one: Henry.
After this, the few Spaniards who
remained burned one of their ships and
proceeded to the Spice Islands. Having
also lost the Trinidad, they resorted to
raiding passing ships and eventually
reached the spices with a new
interpreter: Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian
scholar and explorer from Venice.
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