Bookshot #180: Over The Edge of The World

I've always had a fascination with maps, dating back to childhood- but that, combined with now


obscure 80s cartoons like The Mysterious Cities of Gold has always left me fascinated by the Tierra Del Fuego (because it's literally, 'The Land of Fire') and the Straits of Magellan. So, when I found a book that detailed the voyage that first circumnavigated the globe, it was an easy sell for me.

Over the Edge of the World, by Laurence Bergreen tells the story of Magellan's voyage in 1520. It's tempting to credit Bergreen's writing for how quickly he keeps the narrative moving and the pages turning, but in reality, the subject matter does it for him. (That's not to say that the book is badly written, quite the opposite- it's just that sometimes authors need to paint a picture and jazz things up a bit to get the pages turning. Bergreen has absolutely no need to do that with this subject matter.) The politics of setting up such a voyage are interesting enough: at the time, the location of the Spice Islands was known only to the Portuguese and their maps and navigation routes were state secrets. The fact that Magellan-- who was Portuguese, went to Spain to get a voyage going had the Portuguese racing to stop him on multiple fronts, to maintain their monopoly over the spice trade.

Spain was interested- for obvious reasons. Charles I needed the money, that's for sure-- but the spice trade, if they could get a piece of it would be incredibly lucrative and became all the more important after Charles secured the title of Holy Roman Emperor through massive amounts of loans that needed to be paid back. The geopolitics of the voyage were careful: the Treaty of Tordesillas, though rapidly becoming silly the more voyages went out and the more map was filled in had to be respected. Magellan could do this only if he could find a way to do so without impinging on Portuguese territory under the treaty. Magellan- being Portuguese, was also not exactly trusted by the Spanish who viewed him as a potential spy and possible traitor-- this distrust was to prove to be a problem throughout his voyage.

Eventually, they get everything organized and five ships set out from Seville, heading south. They get south of the Rio De La Plata and start searching for the mouth of a strait that Magellan is convinced will lead them more or less directly to the Spice Islands. (They don't realize how big the Pacific Ocean is quite yet.) They are forced to winter just north of the present-day mouth of the straits-- and Magellan sees off his first mutiny in a fairly brutal way-- leaving three ringleaders marooned as punishment and executing a few more. After the winter, they set out south and discovered the mouth of what became the Straits of Magellan. 

Navigating through the strait proves to be complicated-- and it's here, that they lose their first ship, the San Antonio, which either deliberately just breaks free and returns to Spain or genuinely loses the rest of the fleet and presumes them lost and returns to Spain. The fact that they got back ahead of the rest of the fleet allows those crew members (who aren't fans of Magellan) to paint an ugly picture of what has happened to the Spanish authorities-- not realizing or knowing that the rest of the fleet has made it through and is making their way westward across the Pacific.

Crossing the Pacific led to an outbreak of scurvy. Now, I knew what scurvy was, but the descriptions of people actually suffering from it make it sound just terrible and what's worse is that Bergreen takes the time to fill in some details about scurvy and they didn't really figure it out until about 1795 or so, which is ridiculous to me. It sounds like they had been nibbling around the edges of figuring out that fruit, specifically citrus was good for scurvy even in Magellan's time. (Bergreen mentions that the officers had a supply of quince jam that they went through that staved off scurvy for a while at least) and I'll allow for the fact that long-distance voyages were still relatively new in Magellan's time-- but the fact that it took nearly three hundred years after Magellan to nail it down once and for all seems a little ludicrous to me. 

Magellan and Company at this point, had realized that the Spice Islands weren't just right there at the other side of the straits-- and although they didn't realize it, had crossed the then non-existent international dateline and the Pacific Ocean to arrive at Guam. They reach a tentative understanding with the indigenous populations, patch themselves up, and keep heading west in search of the Spice Islands and wind up in the Phillippines. 

Losing one ship, and going through one mutiny is rough enough and that doesn't even take into account crossing the entire Pacific Ocean for the first time, but by the time they get to the Philippines, things start to go sideways. For a lot of people on board, the voyage was a business proposition-- they were after spices for the payoff, but Magellan got a little too into the concept of civilizing, converting, and spreading Spanish power around the place and it finally got the best of him on the Philippine Island of Mactan, where he was killed in a battle with local forces.  After that, the fleet elected new leaders, and from then on, the focus was strictly commercial. They were all about finding the Spice Islands, getting the goods, and getting back to Spain.

By the time they got to the Spice Islands (actually located in Indonesia-- along the west coast of the island of Maluku) they were down to two ships and the decision was made- given the condition of one of them, to split up. In the end, the one that stayed to make repairs was taken by the Portuguese and its crew spent time in various prisons before only some of them made it home. In the end, only one ship, the Victoria made it all the way back around the world to Spain.

Bergreen at one point, compares this expedition to the Space Race, and having finished this book, I think that's the perfect metaphor. When we first started to send people into space, we knew literally nothing about what we were doing, and now the phone I carry around in my pocket has more computing power than Apollo 11. Similarly, at that time, when Magellan set out on his voyage, what we knew about the world was finite compared to today. His voyage was a monumental achievement in human history and much like the initial landing on the moon it took sixty years before someone managed to do it again successfully-- Sir Francis Drake in 1577.

Overall: Informative, thrilling, gripping, and cinematic, Over the Edge of the World will grab you by the scruff of the neck and keep you engaged the entire way through. I loved learning about this voyage of discovery and if you're curious about it too- there's no better volume to start with than this one. It's compelling, readable, and everything you could possibly want in a book on the subject. My Grade: **** out of ****

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