Ships That Made History · Episode 2
Victoria
Five ships set out with Magellan to sail around the world, and one comes home. A giant on the beach in Patagonia, the Land of Fire, the Pacific gets its name, three months of grilled leather, a day that goes missing, and eighteen men walking barefoot through Seville to give thanks.
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Carol Seville, Spain. September 1522. A battered little ship comes up the river and ties up at the dock.
Shannon Her sails are patched. Her hull is leaking. And on board are eighteen thin, worn-out men.
Carol Three years earlier, about two hundred and fifty men had set out from here in five ships.
Shannon And these eighteen men have just done something nobody in history had ever done. They've sailed all the way around the world.
Carol Welcome to Ships That Made History. One ship, one story.
Shannon Last time, Columbus and his three little ships crossed the Atlantic. This time, the first ship to go all the way around.
Carol Episode two. Victoria.
Carol So whose voyage was this?
Shannon A sailor named Ferdinand Magellan. He was from Portugal, but he sailed for Spain, for the young King Charles.
Carol And what was he after?
Shannon Spices. Cloves and nutmeg, from a little group of islands on the far side of the world called the Spice Islands. In those days, a sack of cloves was worth a fortune.
Carol And the Portuguese already had a way there.
Shannon They did. East, around Africa. Magellan's idea was to get there the other way. Sail west, find a passage through the Americas, and come at the Spice Islands from behind.
Carol Like Columbus wanted to.
Shannon Like Columbus wanted to. Except by now, everybody knew there was a whole continent in the way. Magellan was betting he could find a way through it.
Carol So, the fleet.
Shannon Five ships. The Trinidad, which was Magellan's flagship. The San Antonio, the biggest. The Concepción. The Santiago, the smallest. And the Victoria.
Carol And where did the Victoria get her name?
Shannon From a church in Seville. Santa María de la Victoria, Holy Mary of Victory. It's where Magellan swore his oath to the king before they sailed.
Carol So she's named for Mary too, like the Santa María.
Shannon She is. And on September 20th, 1519, the five ships sailed out of the mouth of the river at Sanlúcar, into the Atlantic.
Carol And somebody was taking notes.
Shannon Thank goodness, yes. A young Italian gentleman named Antonio Pigafetta signed on, just because he wanted to see the world. And he kept a journal the whole way. Almost everything we know about this voyage, we know because of him.
Carol So they crossed the Atlantic.
Shannon They crossed to Brazil, and stopped in a beautiful bay where Rio de Janeiro is today. Then they sailed south, down the coast of South America, checking every big bay and river mouth.
Carol Looking for the passage.
Shannon Looking for the passage. And not finding it. It kept getting colder. So they spent the southern winter in a sheltered harbor in what we call Patagonia today.
Carol Patagonia. Where does that name come from?
Shannon That's a fun one. Pigafetta wrote about meeting a man there so tall that the Europeans only came up to his waist. He sang and danced on the beach. And Magellan called the people there Patagones. Nobody's quite sure why. One old story says it means big feet. Another says he borrowed it from a giant in a popular storybook of the day.
Carol Big feet! (laughs)
Shannon Maybe! Either way, the name Patagonia stuck.
Carol And all five ships made it through the winter?
Shannon Four of them. The little Santiago went out scouting and was wrecked on the coast. But her whole crew walked back overland, and they were taken onto the other ships.
Carol So when did they finally find it?
Shannon In October 1520. More than a year after they left Spain. They came to a cape, and behind it was a narrow opening, going west.
Carol Was that it?
Shannon That was it. A long, twisting channel, between the mainland and a big island to the south. At night, the sailors saw fires burning on the island's shore.
Carol So they called it?
Shannon Tierra del Fuego. Land of Fire. Though some say at first it was called the Land of Smoke.
Carol That's beautiful.
Shannon It took them more than a month to work their way through. Cold, steep mountains, snow, narrow passages. Today we call it the Strait of Magellan.
Carol And did all four ships make it?
Shannon Three. The San Antonio turned around in the strait and sailed home to Spain.
Carol And then, out the other end.
Shannon On November 28th, 1520, they came out of the strait into open ocean. And for months, it stayed calm. So calm they called it the Mar Pacífico. The Peaceful Sea.
Carol The Pacific!
Shannon The Pacific. That's where the name comes from. And Pigafetta says when Magellan first learned they'd found the way out, he wept for joy.
Carol So now they just had to cross it.
Shannon Now they just had to cross it. And here's the problem. Nobody knew how big it was. It turned out to be far bigger than anyone had guessed. It took them more than three months.
Carol Three months! With what food?
Shannon Not much. The biscuits turned to powder, full of worms. They drank yellow, stale water. They ate sawdust. They soaked the leather that wrapped the yards in seawater for a few days, and grilled it.
Carol They ate the leather off the ship.
Shannon They ate the leather off the ship. Many of the men got sick. But the weather stayed fair the whole way, and the ships kept going. Pigafetta wrote that if God and his blessed mother hadn't given them such good weather, they'd all have died out there.
Carol And at last?
Shannon At last, in March 1521, they reached Guam. Fresh food, fresh water. And about ten days later, the islands we now call the Philippines.
Carol And Magellan?
Shannon Magellan never made it home. He was killed in a battle in the Philippines in April 1521.
Carol After all that.
Shannon After all that. The men had to choose new leaders. And they didn't have enough sailors left for three ships. So they took everything off the Concepción, and burned her, and sailed on in two. The Trinidad and the Victoria.
Carol And did they get to the Spice Islands?
Shannon They did. In November 1521, they reached an island called Tidore, in the Spice Islands. More than two years after leaving Spain.
Carol And they got their cloves.
Shannon They loaded both ships with cloves. And then the Trinidad sprang a bad leak. She had to stay behind for repairs.
Carol So it was down to one.
Shannon Down to one. The Victoria.
Carol So who was in charge of the Victoria?
Shannon A Basque sailor named Juan Sebastián Elcano. And he made a bold choice. Instead of going back across the Pacific, he kept going west. Across the Indian Ocean, around the bottom of Africa, and home.
Carol The whole way around.
Shannon The whole way around. And he had to stay far out at sea to keep away from Portuguese ports. They rounded the Cape of Good Hope in May 1522, in terrible storms.
Carol And food again?
Shannon Food again. Hunger, sickness. By the time they reached the Cape Verde Islands, off West Africa, in July, they were so desperate they had to stop.
Carol And something strange happened there.
Shannon My favorite part of the whole story. Pigafetta had written down every single day of the voyage. And when some of the men went ashore at Cape Verde, they asked what day it was.
Carol And?
Shannon Pigafetta's journal said Wednesday. The people on shore said it was Thursday.
Carol They'd lost a day?
Shannon They'd lost a day. Pigafetta couldn't believe it. He'd been so careful. But here's what happened. When you sail west, all the way around the world, you're always following the sun. Each day is a tiny bit longer. And after going all the way around, it adds up to one whole day.
Carol That's amazing.
Shannon They were the first people ever to run into it for real. And it's the very same puzzle that, centuries later, the International Date Line was made to solve.
Carol And then, home.
Shannon On September 6th, 1522, the Victoria came back into Sanlúcar, where she had started. Two days later, she made her way up the river to Seville, and fired all her cannons in celebration.
Carol With eighteen men.
Shannon Eighteen men. And the very next morning, they did something lovely. They walked barefoot through the streets of Seville, in their shirts, each one holding a candle.
Carol Where were they going?
Shannon To church. To the church of Santa María de la Victoria, the one the ship was named for, and to the cathedral, to give thanks for bringing them home.
Carol Oh, that's beautiful.
Shannon It is. And remember those cloves? The Victoria's little cargo of spices was worth so much, it covered the cost of the whole voyage.
Carol And Elcano?
Shannon The king gave him a coat of arms. On it is a globe, and a motto in Latin. Primus circumdedisti me.
Carol Which means?
Shannon You were the first to go around me.
Carol So, can you see the Victoria today?
Shannon You can see a full-size replica. Spain built one in 1992, and from 2004 to 2006, it sailed all the way around the world, just like the real one.
Carol Did it eat the leather?
Shannon (laughs) No. They had a much better galley. And down at the very tip of South America, in Punta Arenas, Chile, right on the Strait of Magellan, there's another replica you can walk aboard.
Carol And you can stand on the strait itself.
Shannon You can. And look out at Tierra del Fuego, across the water.
Carol That's the Victoria. Five ships set out, and one came home. The Pacific got its name. A day went missing. And eighteen men walked barefoot through Seville to say thank you.
Shannon The first ship to sail around the world.
Carol Next time, a small ship crosses the Atlantic with a hundred and two passengers, and ends up at a place called Plymouth.
Shannon The Mayflower. That's next time, on Ships That Made History.