Dedication
Epigraph
“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
Contents
Prologue: A Ghostly Apparition
Chapter I: The Quest
Chapter II: The Man Without a Country
Chapter III: Neverlands
Chapter IV: “The Church of the Lawless”
Chapter V: The Crucible of Leadership
Chapter VI: Castaways
Chapter VII: Dragon’s Tail
Chapter VIII: A Race Against Death
Chapter IX: A Vanished Empire
Chapter X: The Final Battle
Chapter XI: Ship of Mutineers
Chapter XII: Survivors
Chapter XIII: Et in Arcadia Ego
Chapter XIV: Ghost Ship
Chapter XV: After Magellan
Principal Characters
King Charles I (later Charles V, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire)
King Manuel (king of Portugal)
Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca (bishop of Burgos)
Cristóbal de Haro (financier)
Ruy Faleiro (cosmographer)
Beatriz Barbosa (Magellan’s wife)
Diogo Barbosa (Magellan’s father-in-law)
The Armada de Molucca
(at the time of departure from Seville)
Ferdinand Magellan (Captain General)
Estêvão Gomes (pilot major)
Gonzalo Gómez de Espinosa (
Francisco Albo (pilot)
Pedro de Valderrama (chaplain)
Ginés de Mafra (seaman)
Enrique de Malacca (interpreter)
Duarte Barbosa (supernumerary)
Álvaro de Mesquita (Magellan’s relative, supernumerary)
Antonio Pigafetta (chronicler, supernumerary)
Cristóvão Rebêlo (Magellan’s illegitimate son, supernumerary)
Juan de Cartagena (captain and inspector general)
Antonio de Coca (fleet accountant)
Andrés de San Martín (astrologer and pilot)
Juan de Elorriaga (master)
Gerónimo Guerra (clerk)
Bernard de Calmette, also known as
Pero Sánchez de la Reina (chaplain)
Gaspar de Quesada (captain)
João Lopes Carvalho (pilot)
Juan Sebastián Elcano (master)
Juan de Acurio (mate)
Hernando Bustamente (barber)
Joãozito Carvalho (cabin boy)
Martin de Magalhães (supernumerary)
Luis de Mendoza (captain)
Vasco Gomes Gallego (pilot)
Antonio Salamón (master)
Miguel de Rodas (mate)
Juan Rodríguez Serrano (captain)
Baltasar Palla (master)
Bartolomé Prieur (mate)
A Note on Dates
Sixty years after the completion of Magellan’s voyage, in 1582, Spain, France, and other European countries migrated to the Gregorian calendar, decreed by Pope Gregory XIII and designed to correct incremental errors in the Julian system. It took more than two centuries to complete the transition to the new calendar throughout Europe, since Protestant nations resisted the change. To correct for accumulated errors, ten days were omitted, so that October 5, 1582, in the Julian calendar suddenly became October 15, 1582, in the Gregorian.
In addition to this calendar shift, Magellan’s voyage had its own record-keeping issues. The dates of various events recorded by the two official chroniclers of the expedition, Antonio Pigafetta and Francisco Albo, occasionally diverge by one day. The discrepancy may be due to human error, and it may also have been caused by the way each diarist reckoned the day. Albo, a pilot, followed the custom of ships’ logs, which began the day at noon rather than at midnight. In contrast, Pigafetta used a nonnautical frame of reference in his diary. Thus, an event occurring on a given morning might have been put down a day apart in the records maintained by the two.