Magellan was the First

European to sight the Pacific Ocean

This Naval History follows on from: "Hawkins Family"

This story tells of the first European who had sighted that great South Sea-the Pacific Ocean. In times past, the saying was: "each voyage adds something new to the map, each nation learns somerthing from its predecessors."

The same searches in the sixteenth century were still being pursued in the eighteenth. The wanderers sailed beyond the sunset, how far they sailed, or exactly where they were, they had no means of telling, but these Mariners were convinced, one day they would return home to their Country.

Drake's was the first English ship to sail across the Pacific Ocean, but it was another Englishman that had crossed it many years before him in the service of Spain. Magellan sailed a gun ship the "master Andrew of Bristol."

Of all the voyagers, ancient and modern, Magellan's must be deemed the most courageous. As a Master he was well versed in nautical charts and the true art of navigation. Magellan launched into the unknown knowing stories of great superstitions which clouded the minds of many seamen. These popular superstitions did not easily get killed off in the minds of those seafarers.

Hawkins Family

Mermaids and Giants with big feet

Stories of floating weed which engulfed ships, bat-winged demons with human faces, octopuses that swallowed elephants or scaly dragons and beasts with horns; all exaggerated and more terrifying after each voyage than the one before.

The Patagonia Giant, it was said: "was so tall that the tallest of us only came up to his waist." For time was not long passed where many believed the world was shaped like a plate and they would sail over the edge like a waterfall.

When Magellan's crew started murmuring in the mazes of a strait, he could see despondency creeping in, he had to assure them that it opened into another sea; something he knew from other unknown mariners maps that he had seen. These Straits at the foot of Patagonia became known as the Magellan Straites, himself being recognised as the first known circumnavigator to enter the Silent Sea by this route.

Circumnavigators ventured into the unknown

The men who first crossed the Pacific Ocean had no sextants, no chronometers, no nautical almanacs or even accurate tables. They had to feel their way into the unknown, even the Oceans didn't have a names.

The Master was the navigator his main reliance was the three L's-the Log, to estimate the distance travelled, the Lead-line for depth, and the Look-out to steer him clear of reefs and shoals.

The Log was originally a piece of wood; later it became triangular wooden kite standing upright in the water, and attached to a line marked at regular intervals with knots made of pieces of ribbon. This contraption was heaved overboard every hour, and the speed at which the knots passed across a mark on the deck was measured by the Master's Mate standing by with an hour glass in his hand.

A "knot" is a nuatical measure of speed at which a ship passes through the water; the knot is still used to measure a ship's speed, although it is now calculated differently. To write up an accurate as possible record of the log, was to chalk up the result on a slate; hence the knot and the log are still with us today.

By such means they tried to judge the distance they had travelled, but a ship under sail very rarely travels at a regular speed because of the variation of the wind speeds and the various currents, enormous errors were frequently made. One of Magellans pilots caused an error of over 3,000 miles in his calculations on one journey.

As late as the middle of the eighteenth century a naval officer under Anson's command found himself off the east coast of South America when he thought he was off the west. As for the ship's themselves they were small by today's standards because they were limited by the size of the oak trees they were built from.

They had to be seaworthy vessels becuase of the long voyages they did; but there are few pictures of them. With the limited sailing gear of the day, they could not have sailed close to the wind and they had to be at the mercy of strong currents and the elements. That is why nearly all of the routes of the early voyages across the Pacific were nearly all identical.

It took time to discover the Trade Winds

They had to rely on the trade winds to get them across from America; the other direction was out of the question until the wind systems across the Ocean began to be known. On long voyages there was not only the difficulty of waiting for the wind, the naval worm also had to be taken into account. Every few weeks the ship had to be hauled up on some beach or creek and when the tide turned, careen the ship by removing the worms "teredo navalis" and patch up the repairs.

At the best of times there was always a foot or two of foul water swilling in the well of the ship, the smell mingled with the stench of decaying provisions, must have turned the stongest of stomachs. Many died of scurvy; a disease caused by a deficiency of vitamin C, characterized by swollen bleeding gums and the opening of previously healed wounds.

With inadequate navigation instruments, no provisions that could be preserved, clumsy sailing gear and the risk of a mutinous crew, Magellan fearlessly set sail.

In defiance of ingnorance and superstition he sailed in 1519, in five "very old patched ships" in which the Portuguese ambassador said he would not reach the Canary Isles. As for the geographer who, together with an Antwerp spice merchant, backed the enterprise, "I do not count him for much, for he is crazy."

Of course the ambassador was prejudiced. Magellan was by birth Portuguese, of English parents, with a limp from fighting for the King of Portugal. At the age of thirty he came back from the east, quarrelled with the King for refusing to raise his pension by half a ducat, and enlisted in the service of the King of Spain.

The pattern of Magellan's voyage was to be repeated in broad outlines by most of the circumnavigators before Cook. Only one of his ships returned home; that was a common occurance, since ships not commanded by skilful, resolute men were apt to be wrecked or turn back at the entrance to the South Seas.

Time for careening and replenishing ship

At St. Julian on the coast of Patagonia he discovered the last port at which it was possible to careen the ship before the next most hazardous part of the voyage. Here he had to Quell a mutiny. Drake had to do the same thing at the same spot sixty years later, because here, after a long Atlantic voyage, the thought of travelling through uncharted and unknown seas struck the faint-hearted with intolerable dismay.

Magellan's passage through the straights after entering the South Seas was more fortunate than many of his predecessors; it took him only thirty-eight days, compared to the eighty, of other eighteenth century captains.

It was he who gave the name of Cape Virgins to the cape marking the entrance, because he sighted it on the day of the Eleven Thousand Virgins. His route across the Pacific was much the same as that followed by other early circumnavigators, largely because, as we have seen, the ship's of those days were at the mercy of natural forces.

Sailing out from the straits at the end of November more by chance than by calculation, he did not encounter the Westerlies at their worst. The Peru, or Humboldt, Current swept him north to an undetermined latitude, probably somewhere near the tropic, where the South-East Trades carried him across the waste of ocean.

By ill chance his course just missed the paradice isles which refreshed his successors. Instead for ninety-eight days they sailed without opportunity to provision the ship. "We ate only old biscuits, turned to powder and stinking from the dirt which the rats had made on it, from eating the good bicuit, and we drank water which was yellow and stinking."

"We also ate the ox hides which were under the main sail; they were very hard on account of the sun, rain and wind and we left them four or five days in the sea, and then we put them a little on the embers so we could eat them; also the sawdust of wood, and rats which cost half a ducat apiece, moreover enough of them were not to be caught."

In consequence of this diagonal north-westerly course their first landfall was the group called by Magellan the Islands of Lateen Sails, later to become known as the Ladrones or Isles of Thieves, and today as the Marianas, from Maria Anna the Queen of Philip IV. Les Jardines, is what others called them, from the luxuriant vegetation of Tinian and Guam.

Magellan continued west and somewhat south of Cebu in the central Philipines. At a neighbouring inlet he was killed by savages whilst covering the retreat of his men on 27th September 1521. His bones lie somewhere in the Landrones or Mariana islands.

His Mate, the second in command, Sebastian del Cano, took the little Victoria home to Seville the next year with a cargo of twenty-six tons of cloves.

The continuation of this Naval History will be: "Other Descendents"

Magellan Other Descendents

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