Over the Edge of the World: Magellen's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen

carpenters and caulkers five ducats every month. None of the villagers born here wanted to join the Armada.” And that was the truth. Qualified sailors were rare in Seville, and qualified sailors willing to risk their lives on a voyage to the Spice Islands rarer still.
    Desperate to recruit qualified crew members for the expedition, Magellan cast his net even further. He sent his master-at-arms to MÁlaga with a letter from the Casa de Contratación indicating the salaries and benefits those joining the Armada de Molucca would receive. Other officers fanned out to popular seaports such as Cádiz in search of willing hands, but those willing to risk their lives on a voyage into the unknown proved scarce. “I couldn’t find enough people,” Magellan explained, “so I accepted all the foreigners we needed, foreigners such as Greeks, and people from Venice, Genoa, Sicily, and France.” Although he did not say so, few Spanish seamen wanted to sail under a Portuguese captain.
    As matters stood at the time of departure, Magellan had official permission to hire only a dozen Portuguese; in reality, he was taking nearly forty with him. At the last minute, he sacrificed three relatives whom he had quietly enlisted, one of whom was a pilot approved by the Casa, but he kept berths for at least two others: Álvaro de Mesquita, a relative on his mother’s side, and Cristóvão Rebêlo, his illegitimate son.
    Magellan’s last-minute compromises on the composition of the crew placated the Casa, and the Captain General received final permission to proceed with his expedition. To guarantee this voyage, he had sacrificed his allegiance to his homeland, his partnership with Ruy Faleiro, and a considerable amount of his authority as Captain General, but he had kept his essential mission intact. After twelve months of painstaking preparation, the Armada de Molucca was at last ready to conquer the ocean.
     
    J ust before departure, the officers and crew of the five ships comprising the fleet attended a mass at Santa María de la Victoria, located in Triana, the sailors’ district.
    During the ceremony, King Charles’s representative, Sancho Martínez de Leiva, presented Magellan with the royal flag as the Captain General knelt before a representation of the Virgin. This marked the first occasion that Charles had bestowed the royal colors on a non-Castilian. Magellan could only have felt that he was now invested with the king’s full trust.
    Still kneeling, his head bent, Magellan swore that he was the king’s faithful servant, that he would fulfill all his obligations to guarantee the success of the expedition, and when he was finished, the captains repeated the oath and swore to obey Magellan and to follow him on his route, wherever it might lead.
    Among those in attendance at Santa María de la Victoria that day was a Venetian scholar named Antonio Pigafetta who had spent long years in the service of Andrea Chiericati, an emissary of Pope Leo X. When the pope appointed Chiericati ambassador to King Charles, Pigafetta, who was about thirty years old at the time, followed the diplomat to Spain. By his own description, Pigafetta was a man of learning (he boasted of having “read many books”) and religious conviction, but he also had a thirst for adventure, or, as he put it, “a craving for experience and glory.”
    Learning of Magellan’s expedition to the Spice Islands, he felt destiny calling, and excused himself from the diplomatic circles to seek out the renowned navigator, arriving in Seville in May 1519, in the midst of feverish preparations for the expedition. During the next several months, he helped to gather navigational instruments and ingratiated himself into Magellan’s trust. Pigafetta quickly came to idolize the Captain General, despite their differing nationalities, and was awestricken by the ambitiousness and danger of the mission. Nevertheless, Pigafetta decided he had to go along. Although he lacked experience at