As they reached the wide South Sea, which I believe no other vessels have sailed across before, they entered it. And Magellan, seeing that dry land was to the north, changed course towards that large and unknown sea. They sailed with favorable winds, but they never saw any land, only water and the sky everywhere.
Men have always wanted to go beyond where they lived. They have always wondered what there was beyond the piece of land they inhabited, or the island they walked on, or the sea they could see. Before the circumnavigation, men saw the world in a completely different way. It was a smaller world.
The seas were regarded as very dangerous places, inhabited even by monsters, and they were surrounded by land. They were places to avoid. Ferdinand Magellan, throughout the story of the circumnavigation of the world, was key, we could say, at the beginning of it.
He is a formidable officer who has served the Portuguese crown well. He is a great explorer. He has gained experience in carrying out missions on the other side of the world.
He can be regarded as, in today's language, a great entrepreneur. Ferdinand Magellan was a typical person of the Portuguese gentry. Because he came from the north, which is on the other side of the world, during the period of an increasing Portuguese presence in the Indian Ocean.
Therefore, he's a representative of the nobility. He's an officer, he's a person of his time, which is a time of evolution, a time of change, and he adapts to that change. In the 16th century in general, the challenge of exploration was to discover what the world was like.
There was between Portugal and Spain a great deal of conflict. and Spain, basically a competition. The Treaty of Tordesillas established the terms of this game, as we might call it.
It was the first time, or one of the first times, that a diplomatic treaty was signed to avoid war and not when diplomats typically agreed on the terms and conditions for the victors and the defeated. What Portugal as well as Castile targeted was to open a maritime route to India and the Spice Islands, in what today is Indonesia. The Moluccas were a spice paradise.
Clove, the rarest spice, is only found there. It's the most expensive spice in Seville, in Europe. Spices, at that moment of transition from the middle to the modern age that we're talking about, were the most profitable trade from an economic point of view. It was the trade you had to be in if your goal was to make a fortune. In 1508, the Portuguese had already reached Malacca.
They already knew the Moluccas. In 1509, Magellan himself had already been in this part of the world. Up to then, the Spanish maritime expeditions that had set sail searching for these islands had always encountered a continental landmass that was impossible, America. They were unable to find the passage, the famous strait, that would connect the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. Magellan's plan was the same as that of Columbus.
Exactly the same, to reach India by sailing west. After 20-some years, they had not found that passage, while the Portuguese were already bringing pepper. So they had to hurry up to finally get there, to find a new route so the Portuguese wouldn't take over the spice trade, as they were managing to do.
For the Portuguese king, this project made no sense. Firstly, because it had already been reached via the Cape Route. On the other hand, it made no sense essentially because it endangered the agreement reached at Tordesillas.
So he came to Spain and became a subject of Carlos I. At that time, Seville was becoming a cosmopolitan city, where many foreigners arrived to try to make their fortune. A city of merchants, of traders, of sailors. And furthermore, he had a partner who was a cosmographer, who could provide the scientific knowledge, the maps for the possible project.
Magellan and his navigator Rui Faleiro offered to provide proof that the Molucca Islands were on the Castilian side of the demarcation, as agreed in the Treaty of Tordesillas, and that they would find a route to get there different from the one used by the Portuguese through a strait that they knew. Ferdinand Magellan had been in the expeditions to India. He went there with Francisco Almeida, with Alfonso Albuquerque. He studied, we could say, cartography.
He had some knowledge. Theoretically, he passed on this information for the adversary's use. The Portuguese crown tried to stop the expedition from beginning. Seville and Lisbon were the control centres of these two projects to expand by sea between Spain and Portugal. Obviously, all the information that one side or the other obtained was zealously kept.
It's actually amazing to see the similarities we may find between that world and the arms race and the space race between the former Soviet Union and the United States. A race linked to military interests, a race linked to political and military prestige, but also linked to the history of the world. to many financial interests when we reach the 20th century we have knowledge about the world it's mapped we know the land and the water masses and the new frontier is space the first milestone was reached in 1957 when the Soviet Union succeeded in launching Sputnik 1 which became the first artificial satellite put into space and to orbit the Earth.
At that time, it came as a crushing blow for the United States. From then on, there were several milestones. The first human being to travel into space was another Soviet success, with the astronaut Yuri Gagarin.
And this meant more humiliation for the United States as they perceived it. In fact, it was President Kennedy who set a deadline of less than a decade to reach the Moon. That meant doing things very quickly, very fast, before the other superpower got there.
It was a risky mission, as was Magellan's expedition, his adventure, 500 years ago. There are risks involved. There are unexpected events.
In general, the Space Race was one of the conflicts during the Cold War between the two superpowers, between the United States and the former Soviet Union. In Magellan and Elcano's case, in the same way, there were two superpowers that had divided the world, and one of them, Spain, also intended to compete with the other naval superpower, Portugal. I never knew of anyone in this city who wanted to join the Navy. They said they were badly paid. As no one from Seville would work as part of the crew, Magellan ordered us, the Grand Masters, to hire people from other countries, despite being foreigners, as long as they were fit for the job.
The fact that no one had ever made this voyage before meant that people were very afraid they would never return. That was more than enough to deter many people from deciding to go. It wasn't easy to find a way to get back to the island. find people to go on such a dangerous voyage Magellan managed to hire many followers relatives and acquaintances but on the Castilian side they did too the high officers of the crown demanded the inclusion of certain officers such as Juan de Cartagena To make sure that all the orders were followed.
Magellan was going to be the only dominant leader, so they had to place someone close to him to control him somehow. He was named co-responsible. person together with the Captain General.
There were two leaders who had to reach agreement to make important decisions. Despite all this, Magellan had a little more authority because he was the only one with the rank of Captain General. That caused friction. And as we know, the relationship between Magellan and Cartagena wasn't easy. Among the Basque crew hired for the expedition we find Juan Sebastián Elcano, Grand Master of the Concepción.
He was in charge of the navigation, in charge of the decisions that involved the ship's maintenance. He was the highest authority on the vessel. Frequently, Elcano was said to be a fugitive from justice, that he had embarked on the expedition really to escape the punishment for those who sold ships to foreign countries. Elcano descended from a lineage that was absolutely devoted to the sea and who at that time sought fortune as well as glory and honor at sea. Initially, Spanish people didn't want to sign on as crew.
Many foreigners joined the crew. However, although there were a lot of foreigners, Spaniards formed two-thirds of the expedition's crew, while the other third was composed of foreigners, mainly from Italy and Portugal. Apart from the sailors, they had Enriquillo, as he was often called. Enrique of Malacca was a slave belonging to Magellan, who he brought along as a translator.
Malay was a language spoken in Malaysia, Indonesia, throughout that region. I will give instructions to furnish five vessels with plenty of people, enough supplies and artillery to last you two years. And it will carry a crew of 234 persons consisting of grand masters, sailors, ships boys and all the necessary people.
The preparations for the fleet began immediately after signing the capitulations in Valladolid on 22 March 1518. The King instructs the officers of the House of Commerce to quickly furnish five vessels for a two-year expedition. The Trinidad, the flagship, captained by Ferdinand Magellan. The San Antonio, captained by Juan de Cartagena. The Concepción, captained by Gaspar de Quesada.
The Victoria, which left Seville, captained by Luis de Mendoza. And the Santiago, captained by Juan Serrano. They were different vessels of different sizes. The smaller vessels were used, for example, to sound the waters, to explore rivers and near the shore.
The larger vessels carried everything necessary to make such a long voyage and all the important equipment needed for the voyage. Nowadays we'd be amazed to discover what they were capable of doing. Both these vessels that sailed around the world and the spacecraft that reached the Moon, given their technical conditions, perhaps today we wouldn't consider doing it that way.
The 10th of August, 1519, the fleet, with everything necessary on board, announced its departure from the port of Seville with a salvo. On the 20th of September we left Sanlúcar sailing southwest and on the 26th we reached one of the Canary Islands called Tenerife. We stopped there for three days to take on meat, water and firewood.
After leaving the Canary Islands, Magellan followed a rather strange route, hugging the African coast. That, together with the tensions that had already arisen between the Spanish captains and Magellan, made people afraid that Magellan was heading into a Portuguese colony in Africa. The relationship between Magellan and Elcano initially seems to be cordial. This relationship will gradually become more difficult once they set sail. Magellan had to inform all the captains of the ships of the route they were going to follow, and he didn't.
Cartagena asked him, Have you changed course? Why? Where are we heading? Magellan knew how to avoid calm conditions and find the winds he needed to take him to the coast of Brazil.
It's clear that here Juan de Cartagena tried to demonstrate some control over Magellan, telling him that that wasn't the route to follow. And on the other hand, Magellan feels the need to retain his authority and impose his orders. Following the king's orders, the captains of the ships were forced to salute the flagship at the end of the day. Danny?
One calm day, a sailor on Cartagena's vessel was given the job of saluting Magellan. Magellan did not like being saluted by a mere sailor, and so he sent a message to Juan de Cartagena, ordering the Spaniard himself to salute Magellan and address him as Captain General. Cartagena responded that he had sent the best sailor on his ship to salute him, and that perhaps another day he would be saluted by a ship's boy.
And so he refused to salute him again for three days. That voyage took 75 days approximately, from the Canary Islands to Brazil. A bay of calm waters, paradisaical, of an extremely intense green colour.
Here we stocked up on many hens, potatoes, sugar cane and meat. We bartered things to our advantage. For a hook or a knife, they gave us five or six hens.
For a comb, two geese. For a small mirror, enough fish for ten people to eat. They had enjoyed Brazil a lot, but they sailed on towards the south.
It had been eight months since they had left Seville. They kept following South America's coastline, which they did know from the expedition of Juan Díaz de Solís, until they got to La Plata River. From there on, the coast they would find was unknown.
At that point, they were entering an untraveled part of the map. There were a lot of inlets and each cape, each bay had to be explored in detail in case it was the passage that they were looking for. The weather was getting worse and worse.
The austral winter was setting in. And Magellan decided to stop at a natural harbour he found and which he named Puerto San Julián. Seeing that the sailing would go on for a long time, Magellan ordered that the food be distributed carefully so it would last longer.
It was very cold, and there was no hope of finding the end of that dry land, nor the passage. to the other sea they were seeking. Being so hungry and cold, it was impossible to go for much longer with the food rationing that had been imposed.
The sailors begged him to go back and to be satisfied with having reached where no mortal had dared to. But Magellan told them something, that he was determined to die before sailing back to Spain in disgrace. They were entering seas no one had ever sailed before. That must have caused a lot of anxiety and stress in the crew.
Being on a ship in the middle of the sea is like being inside an eggshell, and that makes bad tempers and friction more frequent. Elcano, as Grand Master of the Concepción, positioned himself against Magellan, supporting the proposals of Cartagena, Quesada, etc. Magellan, not following any strategy, open to animosity, had removed Juan de Cartagena from his position as captain. Cartagena was very upset and from then on he was waiting for the chance to get revenge.
Magellan stayed at Port St. Julian for a lengthy period of time, 148 days. The crew didn't understand why they were staying there for so long. There were more and more doubts about Magellan's ability to lead such a long voyage.
The captains of the other four ships plotted to kill Captain Magellan. The plot was uncovered. One man ended up dismembered and another stabbed. Elcano supported Juan de Cartagena and the rebels, and Michelin wanted Elcano to be hung together with 40 more men. He didn't hang that many because he wouldn't have had enough crew.
Magellan had no power to kill Juan de Cartagena because, due to his social status, only the king could order his execution. But it was proved that he couldn't be trusted either. Cartagena and the bishop on the expedition were arrested and finally left to their devices on an island. And this was Magellan's main message for everyone.
He had reached his limit, and from that moment on he couldn't allow people not to follow the orders which King Carlos V himself had given him. The aims of that voyage and his authority, granted by the King, couldn't be compromised. Another misfortune befell us there.
The Santiago, which had sailed ahead towards shore to scout the area, was wrecked on a shoal. All the crew miraculously survived, however. The crew stayed at the shipwreck for two months to salvage the wreckage and the goods that the sea tossed up on the beach from time to time. The Santiago's crew was assigned to the remaining ships.
The four vessels continued sailing. Many days had passed, but oddly enough, it took only two days to find a cape, which they named 11,000 Virgins Cape. They didn't know it, but this cape was the beginning of the Strait of Magellan. Not knowing what it was we were entering, we sailed five leagues up it until nightfall. The crew firmly believed that the strait had no exit to the west.
In the strait the currents are really strong, full of twists and turns, of islands, of channels. It's extremely difficult. The weather is unstable, very inhospitable.
Strong winds start blowing very quickly. Halfway up the strait they found a fork, and it wasn't at all clear which of the two routes was the right one to take. So he sent an advance party composed of two ships, the San Antonio and the Concepción.
The pilot of the San Antonio took advantage of the dark of night to turn back. They chained and even wounded the captain of the ship. And that's how they headed back to Spain. Then Captain General Magellan gave orders to look for them everywhere. It was too late.
The San Antonio was far away. So they had no choice but to continue. The sailors on the reconnaissance boat came back on the third day. And told us that they had seen the Cape with a straight ended.
And a big sea could be seen. An ocean. We all burst into tears of joy. And very soon we named it the Pacific Ocean.
The Pacific Ocean was something unknown. That was why Magellan wanted to find a new route. The expedition, which had been launched for an important financial reason, then became a scientific expedition as many new things were being discovered. It was in fact an adventure in the end.
It was a coincidence, a lovely one, that centuries later the astronauts who went to the moon for the first time splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. What had happened four days earlier was that for the first time, humankind had managed to set foot on another world. We were able to set foot on the moon.
It was a historic milestone. It would make the United States win the space race against the Soviet Union. Sailing across the Pacific began when they reached the end of the Strait of Magellan. Once there, Magellan quickly set sail northbound, trying to leave that place that was so cold and inhospitable, in search of areas that had better weather.
They found themselves firstly without enough food, because the ship that had deserted them, the San Antonio, was, you could say, the larder ship that supplied the others. When it deserted and sailed back to Spain, it left them with scarcely any food, very limited at that point. The water we were forced to drink was putrid and stank. Very often the only food we had to eat was sawdust. Even rats, so disgusting to men, became such an expensive delicacy that each one went for half a ducat.
We were faced with the ordeal of having to eat the pieces of leather that covered the main mast. Besides the dead, there were six sailors whose arms, legs and other parts of their bodies ached. Besides they see, they describe how they start, how they have a disease in their mouths that makes their gums grow and their teeth fall out.
Scurvy. We know that after one month, two months of sailing, when they reached the equatorial calm with high temperatures, all the fresh food they had on board, the vegetables and fruits, were practically rotten. We sailed for three months and 20 days with no fresh food to eat.
I do not think any person in the future will venture to set off on a similar journey. And then a man on the topsail cried, Land! Land!
We were all so happy that we thought mad the person who least showed his joy. After a long time sailing across the Pacific, they finally reached the Isle of Guam, which they named the Isle of Thieves. Magellan wanted to stop to take on provisions, but that was not possible, because the islanders would come on board our ships and rob us, and we were unable to stop them.
Ferdinand Magellan realized he had to show his authority with some sort of retaliation. Then the captain, furious, went ashore with a group of armed men. They burnt down 40 or 50 houses, as well as many of their canoes, and killed seven men. Seeing that the situation was unsustainable, they decided to keep sailing, although they were able to get refreshed, that is, get fresh food, as that was the term used back then. If one looks at their route, you might think the Magellan wanted to take a detour from the past to the Moluccas, and intended to first look for other regions he might have heard of, where there might be other islands where he could make some kind of profit for himself or his descendants.
And they hear of a city called Cebu. They even received help to get there. When he saw Cebu, with such lush vegetation, so much greenery, and he saw that the natives, especially the kings, wore gold necklaces around their necks, thick gold necklaces, he said, this is where I want to stay.
Magellan sent one of his assistants with Enrique, the interpreter, as ambassador to talk to the King of Cebu. When they arrived in the village, they found a king surrounded by a crowd, frightened by the sound of the barrage. The interpreter began by calming down the king, telling him that it was our custom, and that the din was nothing but a friendly salutation of peace to honour the king as well as the island. That put everyone at ease.
We consider this to be a time of transition from an almost medieval mentality to a modern mentality. In that sense, Magellan himself embodies perfectly the people of that generation, who were military men, but also very curious about all the aspects of sailing and even of trading itself. At that time, religion was the last resort they could cling to. So often, everyday life on board during these voyages was full of religious rituals and masses.
Here our people were very joyful. The people of Cebu showed signs of being very pleased. The lord of this island and his wife became Christians with only a little persuasion. And in less than a fortnight, over 10,000 people on this island became Christians. It was a ritual for both of them.
In Magellan's eyes, it was the Christianization of a future partner. And in Humaman's eyes, it was the possible beginning of a bond of loyalty, a friendship, of a union with a powerful ally. Magellan was seeking to approach the local king in order to possibly form an alliance with the king of. of Castile so that that place would form part of the lands belonging to the King of Castile. Magellan had agreed with King Carlos I that he'd be the governor of the islands he found along the way.
Because what Magellan wanted was to become a nobleman in the old-fashioned sense, a Rico-Omi, as it was called then, a lord of vassals. At the same time as we gain an ally, a support, a commercial agent with whom to exchange our products for theirs, we also inherit the eternal enemies of this new ally. The king of Sibyl was quite happy to be converted to Christianity without gaining anything in return.
But he was pleased to be respected by some of the lords of the islands who had refused to obey him. Then the captain ordered them to be brought before him. He told them that if they did not obey the king of Cebu, he would order their execution and confiscate their properties. Under this threat, all the lords promised to recognize his authority.
But they have a problem with the king of a nearby island across from Cebu that is hostile to Magellan's orders. Only one lord was so arrogant as to not come when he was summoned. His name was Lapu-Lapu, and he lived on a small island north of Cebu called Mactan. Magellan felt insulted and said in public that that offence had to be avenged.
A man who ran an enterprise of such importance had no need to prove his power. The mission of his fleet was more important. Magellan got 40 men on small boats and headed for Makdan.
The king of Cebu warned him not to fight. The king of Cebu went with 2,000 armed men just to watch the battle. The captain general had ordered them to remain as spectators and watch us fight. As he had to get off the boats, Magellan had no protection on his legs.
They didn't wear any iron on their legs, the part of the armor that goes on the legs. There were 1,500 islanders. As soon as they saw us, they charged us, making a terrible noise. Two battalions attacked on our flank, and a third from the front. Feeling confident that they outnumbered us, they threw swarms of spears at us, stakes, stones, even soil, and we struggled to defend ourselves.
When the natives realized that their blows to our heads or our bodies did not hurt us due to the protection of the armor, but that our legs were unprotected, they threw arrows, spears, and stones at our legs. As they knew our captain Magellan, most of the attacks were directed at him. And twice they knocked his burgonet off. However, Magellan stood his ground. That's how our guiding light, our pillar, died.
On an expedition like Magellan's, where there were mutinies, where people died, where there were captains who turned back home, everything seemed to lack organization. As time passed we have learned how human beings react when they lose their leader. On space missions, the roles are well defined, so everyone knows who the successor will be if the leader dies.
That doesn't stop them from feeling some stress, nor the situation from becoming tense because a person has died. He's passed away right in front of you. The death of a charismatic leader such as Magellan creates disruption for the whole of the expedition. As soon as that strong leader is no longer there, in an unexpected way for everyone, chaos ensued, to the point that they didn't know how to continue.
After Magellan's death, the powerful group of people close to Magellan continues to lead the expedition. They're invited to a banquet by the King of Cebu. The King of Mactan, together with many other local kings, pressured the King of Cebu, saying, If you don't get rid of the Spaniards now, we will get rid of you. Two captains attended and took along 25 members of the crew.
They were murdered. Elcano was ill and Antonio Pigafetta, a crew member on the Trinidad, was wounded in battle. So they didn't go, but almost all who did were killed.
And that's when they started to feel real terror. They've lost their captain, most of the important men in the expedition have died. Their physical fear of being killed with an arrow or running aground during the night or just being betrayed.
When the episode of the banquet takes place on Cebu, one of the people who immediately disappears is Enrique, the slave. It's said that this slave, Enrique, was abused by the Spaniards and that he went ashore and plotted the betrayal at Cebu. The truth is that Enrique should have been freed after Magellan's death, but that didn't happen. But we don't know why we have no further information about Enrique's whereabouts.
When they leave Cebu, fleeing after that betrayal, there aren't enough sailors to man three vessels, so they need to get rid of one. It was quite normal to sacrifice the ship that was in the worst shape, so that the materials could be redistributed in order to continue the voyage. They burnt the Concepción so the Portuguese couldn't get hold of it, nor other countries could use it. The members of the crew were divided between the two remaining ships, the Trinidad and the Victoria. The expedition starts to feel absolutely disoriented.
They only know that they have to head towards some islands that they've heard are on the equator, and that's all they know. They don't even know where they are, their exact position. The leadership keeps changing within the expedition. Gonzalo Gomez de Espinosa assumed the position of Captain General and undoubtedly Elcano was already Captain of the Victoria.
We, the crew, named Juan Sebastián Elcano captain of the other ship. From the mutiny at Port St. Julian to the death of Magellan, he had suffered greatly. They decide to set sail for the Moluccas, no matter what. And from that moment on, every time they encounter a vessel in the middle of the sea, they board it and ask how to get to the Moluccas.
If anyone knows how, they take him with them. And that's how they wound up reaching the Moluccas a month later. We have done all this to come to the Molucca Islands and not to cause harm to anyone. The will of the Emperor, our Lord, is to be at peace and befriend anyone who wants to respond to him in kind.
The Trinidad and the Victoria are the only vessels that managed to reach the Spice Islands, the expedition's main goal. They reached the Moluccas two years after leaving Seville. Two vessels arrived with two captains who knew and were committed to the mission of taking possession in the name of the King of Spain.
And this was done not by using force but by reaching agreements with the local kings. They obtained the spices which worked in favor of the Castilian traders, and they did that by bartering, not by stealing or plundering. And they loaded the two vessels with spices.
They loaded them for the king and for the crew. The crew held a share in the load of spices. We were well received. We did everything we could to do business with them.
And we spent many days loading the ship. And loading it. And loading it.
Their orders were that when they reached the Moluccas, they were to load the holds and return immediately to Spain. On Saturday 21st December 1521, everything was ready for us to leave. The monarchs were ready to leave. of the Moluccas came to say goodbye. The sails of the Victoria were unfurled first, and she sailed offshore, where she waited for the Trinidad, which raised anchor with difficulty.
The sailors discovered that there was a leak. They could hear the water flowing in, and faster and faster as if through a pipe but we could not find where the water was coming in the Trinidad was losing the bottom of its hull the wooden boards were separating so they decided that the Trinidad should stay there and that the Victoria should sail back to Spain to report to the king that they had reached the spice islands they decided to sail back across the Indian Ocean and around southern Africa which was the Portuguese route and where if they were caught That would be the end of them. Basically, their goal was to get back to Spain from the other side of the world without making landfall.
Some of the most dramatic moments of the expedition were when the Victoria was on its way back. Today sailors speak of the roaring 40s. In other words, at 40 degrees latitude south in the Indian Ocean, there are terrible winds and currents.
They are really hard, even for modern racing sailboats. The ship had holes and they had to use the bale pump continuously. It's a superhuman effort for malnourished people and they were very few.
To sail round the Cape of Good Hope, we had to wait for nine weeks off it, with the sails furled due to the strong winds that turned it into a terrible storm. That was the largest and most dangerous cape known on Earth. Some of us, especially all the sick people, would have liked to go to land on Mozambique, where there was a Portuguese settlement.
The ship was taking on water, the cold was unbearable, and the only food we had was rice ice and water because all the meat had rotted. But most of the crew, driven more by our honor than our own will to survive, decided to do everything we could to return to Spain, even if it meant having to run grave risks. If sailing across the Pacific took three months, almost four, sailing across the Indian Ocean to get to Cape Verde in the Atlantic Ocean took almost five months, around five months of not making landfall.
They wanted to make landfall, but they weren't able to due to the coastline, which was very abrupt, and the winds, which pushed them towards the shore. When a ship is near the shore, and the wind pushes it even closer, it's almost its end. It's the most dangerous situation.
We sailed for months and months with no rest. During that time we lost 21 men. When the Victoria arrives in Cape Verde, Elcano tries to follow a strategy saying that she was a ship coming from the West Indies, that she was a Spanish ship, and due to a storm or due to some limitations of the voyage, it had to find the Cape Verde Islands to get supplies. They put a boat in the water with 13 people on board.
They managed to bring some rice once, and then they sent them once again, and then again, and the boat no longer came back. The Portuguese knew that Ferdinand Magellan had gone on a voyage, so it was likely that one of his ships was sailing across Portuguese waters. After five months of eating only rice and water, we did not make landfall for fear of the King of Portugal, who had ordered the capture of our fleet in all his domains.
Four vessels were sent to capture us. But we decided that we would rather die than be caught by the Portuguese. Why did this happen?
Some people say, and it's possibly true, because they paid with clove. They paid for the rice they bought with the spice they had on board, clove. And clove could only be found in the Moluccas. But it's also possible that one of the Moluccas was a real thief.
One of the 13 people who left the ship was Portuguese and reported them to the authorities. The way Juan Sebastian Elcano sails back, a six-month journey sailing across unknown waters of the southern Indian Ocean until they arrive back in Sanlúcar, was the greatest naval deed of that whole expedition, something no one had ever achieved before. Never before had anyone sailed such long distances across three different oceans.
So it's a great heroic feat. Thanks to Providence, on Saturday the 6th of September, we entered the Bay of Sanlúcar. Of the 60 men that made up the crew when we left the Malucca Islands, only 18 survived, and most of them were sick.
It was a success, a wonderful one, thanks to the places they discovered. However, the death toll was huge. If you think about it, you wonder, was it worth it?
So many deaths? That is for history to say. Of the 250 men who left Seville, 50 deserted, and 30-odd people returned home, the 18 with Elcano, and the 12 of the island of Cape Verde, who later returned to Spain, just 30 people, and the three or four aboard the Trinidad who came back, some 30 people.
The fate of the five vessels during the circumnavigation was different. As we know, only one made it back to Spain by sailing around the world, the Victoria. On the 6th of September 1522 they finally arrived in Sanlúcar de Barrameda.
That's when Elcano wrote to the king to report his arrival. It's a short, beautiful letter that lists all their achievements very briefly. But the greatest achievement is that we had, for the first time, sailed around the world.
Perhaps the biggest contribution of the voyage was, for the first time in world history, a real global perception of the world. That voyage changed the maps and the routes in a drastic way. The travels of Columbus had allowed the mapping of the Atlantic region of the Americas, but they hadn't sailed south of Brazil.
It allowed the mapping of the Pacific regions. It allowed the discovery of new lands in that region, so how the world was seen was enlarged tremendously. Magellan and Elcano have to be considered two important inspirational icons, not only for future expeditions, but for the great challenges that come up in scientific exploration, the knowledge and all of that. In this voyage in particular, we also see that scientific knowledge is essential for the same projection. Without that scientific knowledge, progress isn't possible, nor are the ways to approach the world.
First we start with the Mediterranean, then we go on to cross the oceans, and later we have gone on to the expanses of outer space. I can see a continuity of humanity, a search for the same thing, for new horizons, new riches, new fields of expansion. I'd say that Magellan opened a gateway 500 years ago. A gateway towards a new world of exploration. And that gateway is always open.
And that was what motivated us to explore further. To launch satellites, space probes, the mapping of the Moon, the mapping of Mars. That was the starting point. That gateway is there and will never close. If they asked me what I would compare it to, I would compare it to another event that could happen someday, such as a journey through a wormhole.
Imagine that one day the President of the United States sees a Russian entrepreneur and a Russian scientist who show him that the theory of a folded universe and the theory of wormholes are true, and if they tell him they know where one is. If at that point the President of the United States tells NASA, to send five spacecraft with the best astronauts and enter the wormhole and they do it and disappear for years and one day three years later one of them arrives with a few survivors saying that the world is completely different then our understanding of the universe changes in the same way that at that moment the perception of the world changed it's the same story Five vessels were launched with 239 people on board, on an adventure from which they didn't know whether they'd come back alive. Only a few made it, and that changed the mentality of mankind. Your Distinguished Highness, you need to know that only 18 men made it back home, and only one of the five vessels that Your Highness sent out to discover the Spice Islands with Captain Ferdinand Magellan.
God rest his soul. As your highness knows, sailing westbound and coming back eastbound, we have discovered and gone round the whole world.