Part 23

[After this the course was W.S.W. for several days, and there is nothing worthy of note till Tuesday, the 18th of March, when the Victoria discovered Amsterdam Island.]

On the 18th of the said month (March), I took the sun in 49½°, it had 2° 55′ declination, the latitude came to be 37° 35′, and whilst taking the sun we saw a very high island, and we went towards it to anchor, and we could not fetch it; and we struck the sails and lay to until next day, and the wind was W.; and we made another tack to the north under storm sails;[449] and this was on the 19th, and we could not take the sun; we were east and west with the island, and it is in 38°[450] to the south, and it appears that it is uninhabited, and it has no trees at all, and it has a circumference of a matter of six leagues.

On the 20th of the said month, Thursday, I did not take the sun, but we were east and west with the island, and we went to N.W. and to N.N.W. and ¼ N.W., and for the whole course I put down a matter of 15 leagues to the N.N.W., and in the latitude of 35½°.

On the 22nd of the said month I took the sun in 50¼°: it had 4° 27′ declination; the latitude came to 36° 18′. The day before we had struck the sails until the morning of the said Saturday, and this day we set sail and went to the N.W.

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On the 8th of the said month (May) I did not take the sun; but, according to the run we had made, we thought we were ahead of the Cape, and on this day we saw land, and the coast runs N.E. and S.W. and a quarter east and west; and so we saw that we were behind the Cape a matter of 160 leagues, and opposite the river Del Infante,[451] eight leagues distant from it in the offing; and this day we were lying to with winds from the west and west-north-west, and it was Thursday.

On the 9th I did not take the sun, but we made land and anchored, and the coast was very wild, and we remained thus till next day; and the wind shifted to W.S.W., and upon that we set sail, and we went along the coast to find some port for anchoring and taking refreshments for the people who were most suffering, which we did not find. And we stood out to sea, to be at our ease; and we saw many smokes along the coast, and the coast was very bare, without any trees, and this coast runs N.E. and S.W.: it is in 33° latitude, and it was Saturday, 10th of May.

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Friday, the 16th (May), I took the sun in 33¼°; it had 21° 6′ declination; the latitude came to 35° 39′, and we were E.S.E. and W.N.W., with the Cape of Good Hope twenty leagues off from it; and this day we sprung our fore-mast and fore-yard, and we were all day hove to, and the wind was W.

[The _Victoria_ doubled the Cape of Good Hope between the 18th and the 19th of May, and arrived] on the 9th of the month of July, and anchored in the port of Rio Grande in Santiago [of the Cape Verde Islands], and they received us very well, and gave us what provisions we wanted; and this day was Wednesday, and they reckoned this day as Thursday, and so I believe that we had made a mistake of a day; and we remained there till Sunday in the night, and we set sail for fear of bad weather and the difficulty of the port; and on the morrow we sent our boat on shore to get more rice, which we wanted, and we were standing off and on till it came.

On the 14th of July, Monday, we sent our boat on shore for more rice, and it came at midday, and returned for more, and we were waiting for it till night, and it did not come; and we waited till next day, and it never came; then we went near the port to see what the matter was, and a boat came and told us to give ourselves up, and that they would send us with a ship which was coming from the Indies, and that they would put some of their people in our ship, and that the gentlemen had so ordered. We required them to send us our boat and men, and they said that they would bring an answer from the gentlemen; and we said we would take another tack, and would wait: and so we took another tack, and we made all sail, and went away with twenty-two men, sick and sound, and this was Tuesday, the 15th of the month of July. On the 14th I took the sun. This town is in 15° 10′.

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September, 1522.

On the 4th of the said month, in the morning, we saw land, and it was Cape St. Vincent, and it was to the north-east of us, and so we changed our course to the S.E., to get away from that Cape.

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The manuscript has at the end: Vᵗᵒ Simancas, 8 Setiembre, 1783, Muñoz.

D. Juan Bautista Muñoz, who died in 1822 or 1823, made a large collection of transcripts from the Simancas and Seville archives, which Navarrete made use of. In 1793 Muñoz published the first volume of his _Historia del Nuevo Mundo_, which he never finished.

ACCOUNT OF WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SHIP “TRINITY” AND HER CREW

_After she parted company with the “Victoria”._ _From Navarrete._

After the _Victoria_ left Tidore, the crew of the _Trinity_ commenced careening their ship, and took out of her and placed in the store-house in Tidore their goods and the guns of the _Conception_, which they had burned, and of the _Santiago_, which was lost. Gonzalo Gomez de Espinosa determined to leave in charge of these goods and factory the accountant, Juan de Campos, as clerk; the officer, Luis del Molino; the servants, Alonso de Cota, Genoese, and Diego Arias; and Master Pedro, a bombardier.

Taking leave of the King of Tidore, the _Trinity_ sailed thence on the 6th of April 1522, with fifty men on the muster-roll, and a cargo of nine hundred quintals of cloves. The _Trinity_ sailed for forty leagues to an island named Zanufo, in 2 deg. 30 min. N. latitude, belonging to the King of Tidore, thence to the open sea, where they calculated they had two thousand leagues to run to Panama. In 20 deg. they fell in with an island, where they took in a native, and continuing a northerly course to 42 deg., they met with a storm which lasted five days, and they had to cut away the castle at the prow; their poop was broken; their mainmast was broken in two. The crews fell sick, and they returned to seek the island from which they had taken the native; but, not being able to fetch it, they arrived at another twenty leagues distant from it. This island was named Mao, and is to the north of the island Botaha; they are in 12 deg. and 13 deg. This island was three hundred leagues from the Moluccas, and they were a month and a half in getting there; many of the crew died. When they arrived and anchored at the first land, which was Zanufo, a vessel passed by which informed them that a fortnight after the _Trinity_ sailed, five or seven Portuguese sail had arrived at Terrenate, whose captain was Antonio de Brito, and that they were building a fortress there. Barros states that the first stone of this was placed by Antonio de Brito June 24th, 1522. The captain of the _Trinity_ begged the people of this vessel to take a man to Terrenate, who was Bartolome Sanchez, the clerk of the ship, by whom he sent a letter to the Portuguese captain, begging him, on the part of His Majesty, to send him succour to prevent the ship being lost, for his crew was sick and reduced in number. Gonzalo Gomez, seeing that this was delayed, weighed, and came to anchor in the port of Benaconora. Simon Abreu, and Duarte Roger, clerk of the King of Portugal’s factory, came there, with other people, in a caracora, and after that came a fusta and caravel, with other armed Portuguese, who entered the _Trinity_, and gave to the captain a letter from Antonio de Brito in answer to his, dated October 21st, 1522, which only said that people were going to bring in his ship. By an order which they brought from Antonio Brito, they at once took from Gonzalo Gomez all the letters, astrolabes, quadrants, and log-books which he had made; they took the vessel and anchored her in the port of Talangomi. There were seventeen Castilians of sound and sick in the vessel, and they took those that were well with Gonzalo Gomez to the fortress, and next day took the sick to the hospital.

Gonzalo Gomez complained of the violence done in taking that which belonged to the emperor, and in his country. They replied that he had done what the emperor, his lord, had commanded him; and they, what they ought to do by the instructions from the king, their lord. They asked him to give up the royal standard of Castile, and he answered that he could not do so, neither could he defend it, since he was in their power. Upon which they drew up some documents before a notary; and when they discharged the cargo of the ship, he asked the Portuguese to give him a certificate of what was in it, for him to render an account to His Majesty; and they replied that, if he asked for this often, they would give it him on a yard arm. In the fortress we found Juan de Campos, Diego Arias, and Alonzo, the Genoese, sick, who were three of those who had remained in Tidore with the goods of His Majesty. They said that the Portuguese had knocked down the factory-house and taken the cloves and receipts for cloves which were paid for, and all the rigging and fittings of the ships; Luis del Molino had fled, and Gonzalo Gomez called him to come to the fortress under safe conduct, but when in it they put him in irons; Master Pedro had died.

When the ship was in Tidore, the pilot, Juan Lopez Carvalho, died on the 14th February, 1522; and, between sailing thence and anchoring at Benaconora, there died in August, September, and October, thirty-one individuals, without counting three who ran away in the isle of Mao of the Ladrones.

The twenty-one Castilians of the ship and factory remained about four months as prisoners in Terrenate, until, at the end of February 1523, Captain Antonio de Brito gave them a passage to India, sending them to the island of Banda, which was a hundred leagues off, excepting the carpenter Antonio, and the caulker Antonio Basazaval, whom he said that he required. The clerk of the factory, Juan de Campos, and three other Castilians, went in a junk, of which nothing was known nor what became of those persons. The Castilians remained in Banda about four months; from thence they were conducted to Java, and coasting it they arrived at a city named Agrazue. Agrazue was a town of thirty thousand inhabitants, Mussulmans, of great trade, to which porcelain, silks, and other Chinese goods were brought from Borneo and other parts.

From Agrazue they went to Malacca, two hundred leagues distant, where Jorge de Albuquerque was captain.

They were about five months at Malacca. Four Castilians died there at the end of November 1524. The ship-boy, Anton Moreno, remained there, who was, they said, the slave of a sister of Jorge de Albuquerque, and the rest went on to India. They were twenty-five days in reaching Ceylon, which was three hundred leagues, and they went a hundred leagues more to Cochin. The clerk, Bartolomé Sanchez, and two others, went in a junk, of which nothing more was heard. In Cochin they found that the ships for Portugal had sailed a short time before their arrival, and they had to wait a year for the passage of the spice ships.

After they had been ten months in Cochin, without obtaining leave to embark, the seaman, Leon Pancaldo, and Bautista Poncero, master of the ship _Trinity_, fled secretly in the ship _Sta. Catalina_, which left them in Mozambique. There they were arrested and put on board the ship of Diego de Melo to be taken to the Governor of India, but contrary winds did not permit her departure; and, having been allowed to go ashore, Bautista Poncero died, and Leon Pancaldo hid himself in the ship of Francisco Pereira, which was going to Portugal. He remained hid till they got a hundred leagues from Mozambique. When they arrived at Lisbon they put him in prison, from which the king commanded him to be set free.

At this time, D. Vasco da Gama arrived in India as Viceroy, and the Castilians begged for leave to embark in the ships which were going to Portugal, but he would not give it. The Viceroy died in twenty days, and they elected in his stead D. Enrique de Meneses governor of Goa, who came to Cochin. Two Castilians died there, and those that remained had to wait for another year.

Gonzalo Gomez had done homage and could not get away until after constant recourse and petitions to the governor, D. Enrique de Meneses, who gave him leave, as also to the seaman, Gines de Mafra, and to Master Hans, a bombardier, when it was known there that the King of Portugal was married to Da. Catalina, sister of His Majesty the Emperor. These three individuals left Cochin in the Portuguese ships, and when they arrived at Lisbon they put them in the Limoneiro or public prison, where Master Hans died. Gonzalo Gomez and Gines de Mafra remained there about seven months, until they were set free by letters from His Majesty; but Gonzalo Gomez[452] was set free twenty-seven days before Gines, whom they supposed to be a pilot, having found some log-books in his box and two other (books), which Andres de San Martin, pilot of His Majesty, had made, which books and other writings they took, and would not return to him.

From their departure from Terrenate, in the Moluccas, to Lisbon, inclusively, there died eight individuals. What became of seven was unknown; two remained in the Moluccas; one in Malacca; and three reached Spain, besides the licentiate and priest, Morales.

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Gaspar Correa says (tome iii, p. 109):—

“In this year 1527, one Sebastian Gabato, a Basque, and a great pilot, sailed from Seville as captain-major of two ships and a caravel, who was ordered by the Viceroy of the Antilles to go and take in cargo at Maluco, and recover the property of the Castilians, which he might find belonging to the ship of the fleet of Fernan de Magalhāes which put in in distress; and if he found any things in the possession of the Portuguese, he was to ask for them and require them from the captains on behalf of the emperor, with all urbanity: and if they did not choose to give them up, he was to ask for documents, with protests, which he was to bring to the emperor for him to do in the matter what might be for his service. This fleet sailed from Seville, and never more was any news heard of what became of it, nor what end it had. This only was known, that this fleet had thus sailed this year, through other Castilians, who later arrived at Maluco in another fleet, as I will relate further on in its place.”

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[Correa relates, in his Tom. III, cap. xiv, that Charles V sent a fleet of five ships in 1527 to Maluco under Fray Garcia de Loaysa, and that only one ship under Captain Martim Inhigo reached Maluco: he then describes the disputes and skirmishes between the Castilians and Portuguese.]

ACCOUNT OF THE MUTINY IN PORT ST. JULIAN.

Navarrete gives, No. XX of his documents relating to Magellan, a copy of a document presented on Wednesday, the 22nd of May, 1521, by a servant of Diego Barbosa, on behalf of Alvaro de Mezquita, to the Alcalde of Seville, dated April 26th, 1520, which were the informations taken in Port St. Julian by Martin Mendes, clerk of the _Victoria_; Sancho de Heredia, king’s notary; Gonzalo Gomes de Spinosa, Alguazil-mayor or chief constable of the fleet: he could not write, and Domingo de Barruty signed for him.

These informations were taken in consequence of a petition from Alvaro de Mezquita, captain of the _S. Antonio_, to Magellan, complaining of Gaspar de Quesada, captain of the _Conception_, and Juan de Cartagena, with about thirty armed men, having seized him the night of Palm Sunday, April 1st, 1520, and having locked him up in the cabin of Geronimo Guerra, the clerk of the _S. Antonio_. This petition was presented to Magellan when he was on shore, after hearing Mass on Sunday, the 15th of April, and he gave orders to the two clerks and Alguazil to make an inquiry on board the _S. Antonio_. His order was dated April 17th, and signed by himself and Leon de Speleta, clerk of the flag-ship. The informations taken on board the _S. Antonio_ were dated Thursday, the twenty-sixth April, 1520.

No. XXI of Navarrete is a letter from Juan Lopez do Recalde to the Bishop of Burgos, of May 12th, 1521, giving him an account of the arrival of the _S. Antonio_ at Seville, 6th May, 1521, commanded by Geronimo Guerra, a relation and servant of Christoval de Haro, and of the execution of Gaspar de Quesada and others. This letter relates the story of the mutineers and those who turned back from difficulty and danger, and is naturally unfavourable to Magellan.

According to Navarrete, the desertion of Magellan’s fleet by the ship _S. Antonio_, was caused by Esteban Gomez, a Portuguese pilot, who, from rivalry with Magellan, and envy at seeing others promoted instead of himself, after the executions, got up a conspiracy on board the _S. Antonio_, and proposed to return to Spain. The mutineers put Alvaro de Mezquita in irons; they then went to the coast of Guinea, and thence to Spain. When the _S. Antonio_ arrived at Seville, Alvaro de Mezquita was handed over to the authorities and kept in prison until the ship _Victoria_ arrived. Esteban Gomez, Juan do Chinchilla, Geronimo Guerra, and Francisco Angulo, were also arrested; and Magellan’s wife and family were put under surveillance to prevent their going away to Portugal. According to Herrera, Juan de Cartagena and the priest, who were left behind, did not come away with the _S. Antonio_, and orders were given to send and look for them.

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More ample details of the suppression of the mutiny are given by Gaspar Correa in the following account of Magellan’s voyage, in his _Lendas da India_ (tome II, cap. xiv):—

“Ferdinand Magellan went to Castile to the port of Seville, where he married the daughter of a man of importance, with the design of navigating on the sea, because he was very learned in the art of pilots, which is that of the sphere. The emperor kept the House of Commerce in Seville, with the overseers of the treasury, with great powers, and much seafaring traffic, and fleets for abroad. Magellan, bold with his knowledge, and with the readiness which he had to annoy the King of Portugal, spoke to the overseers of this House of Commerce, and told them that Malacca, and Maluco, the islands in which cloves grew, belonged to the emperor on account of the demarcation drawn between them both [the Kings of Spain and Portugal]: for which reason the King of Portugal wrongfully possessed these lands: and that he would make this certain before all the doctors who might contradict him, and would pledge his head for it. The overseers replied to him, that they well knew that he was speaking truth, and that the emperor also knew it, but that the emperor had no navigation to that part, because he could not navigate through the sea within the demarcation of the King of Portugal. Magellan said to them: ‘If you would give me ships and men, I would show you navigation to those parts, without touching any sea or land of the King of Portugal; and if not, they might cut off his head.’ The overseers, much pleased at this, wrote it to the emperor, who answered them that he had pleasure in the speech, and would have much more with the deed; and that they were to do everything to carry out his service, and the affairs of the King of Portugal, which were not to be meddled with; rather than that everything should be lost. With this answer from the emperor, they spoke with Magellan, and became much more convinced by what he said, that he would navigate and show a course outside of the seas of the King of Portugal; and that if they gave him the ships he asked for, and men and artillery, he would fulfil what he had said, and would discover new lands which were in the demarcation of the emperor, from which he would bring gold, cloves, cinnamon, and other riches. The overseers hearing this, with a great desire to render so great a service to the emperor as the discovery of this navigation, and to make this matter more certain, brought together pilots and men learned in the sphere, to dispute upon the matter with Magellan, who gave such reasons to all, that they agreed with what he said, and affirmed that he was a very learned man. So the overseers at once made agreements with him, and arrangements, and powers, and regulations, which they sent to the emperor, who confirmed everything, reserving specially the navigation of the King of Portugal; thus he commanded and prohibited, and ordered that everything which Magellan asked for should be given him. On this account, Magellan went to Burgos, where the emperor was, and kissed his hand, and the emperor gave him a thousand cruzados alimony for the expenses of his wife whilst he was on his voyage, set down in the rolls of Seville, and he gave him power of life and death[453] over all persons who went in the fleet, of which he should be captain-major, with regard to which he assigned him large powers. So, on his return to Seville, they equipped for him five small ships, such as he asked for, equipped and armed as he chose, with four hundred men-at-arms, and they were laden with the merchandise which he asked for. The overseers told him to give the captaincies, with regard to which he excused himself, saying that he was new in the country and did not know the men; and that they should seek out men who would be good and faithful in the emperor’s service, and who would rejoice to endure hardships in his service, and the bad life which they would have to go through in the voyage. The overseers were obliged to him for this, and held it to be good advice, and decided to inform the captains they might make, and the crews they might take, of the powers which he had received from the emperor. This they did, and they sought in Seville for trustworthy men for captains, who were Juan de Cartagena, Luis de Mendoça, Juan Serrano, Pero de Quesada. This fleet having been fitted out, and the crews paid for six months, he sailed from San Lucar de Barrameda in August of the year 1519. So he navigated to the Canary Islands, and took in water; whilst he was there a vessel arrived with letters from his father-in-law,[454] in which he warned him to keep a good watch for his personal safety, because he had learned that the captains whom he took with him had said to their friends and relations, that if he annoyed them they would kill him, and would rise up against him. To this he replied, that he would do them no injuries so that they should have reason to act thus; and on that account he had not appointed them, but the overseers, who knew them, had given them; and whether they were good or bad, he would labour to do the service of the emperor, and for that they had offered their lives. The father-in-law showed this answer to the overseers, who greatly praised the good heart of Magellan.”