Over the Edge of the World

American author and historian Laurence Bergreen’s biography, Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe (2003), chronicles Ferdinand Magellan's 1519 attempt to become the first man to circumnavigate the globe. Although his circumnavigation voyage was ultimately successful, Magellan died in 1521 before completing it. "The book tells the gripping story of a 60,000-mile ocean voyage, by turns sorrowful, violent, and promiscuous" (The Los Angeles Times).

Born around 1480 in Sabrosa, Portugal, Magellan belonged to a family of nobility and wealth. His father, Pedro de Magalhaes, was the mayor of Sabrosa. Growing up, Magellan served as a page for Eleanor of Viseu, the queen consort of Portugal, and later in the court of King Manuel I. Magellan first set sail at the age of 25, enlisting in the Seventh India Armada tasked with securing Portuguese naval dominance over the Indian Ocean. Over the next decade, Magellan participated in a number of battles, including the successful conquest of the Malaysian state of Malacca. His military successes led to a major promotion, and he received a significant amount of plunder from the Portuguese navy's conquests.

Around 1514, however, Magellan fell out of favor with Manuel I after taking a leave of absence without permission. Around this time, Magellan devoted his efforts to investigating a westward route to the Indian Ocean, avoiding the need to sail around the Southern tip of Africa. Given his personal and professional falling-out with Manuel I, Magellan approached Charles I of Spain to finance his trip. Charles I agreed, and on September 20, 1519, five ships with a total combined crew of 270 men set out from Spain with about two years worth of supplies.



The route from Spain to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was well charted, and the fleet arrived there without incident by December. The fleet proceeded to sail along the coast hoping to discover a route through or around the continent. Magellan thought he had found such a route in the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, but the attempt proved fruitless and costly. By April, the increasingly cold weather forced the fleet to wait out the next few months at Puerto San Julian, which was, in fact, only a three-day sail from the gateway to the Pacific, though Magellan could not have known that. Shortly after their arrival in St. Julian, some of the Spanish captains declared a mutiny. Magellan nearly lost control of the fleet, in the end, barely fending off the mutineers. He sentenced one of its leaders to death, another to being marooned, and lower-level conspirators to hard labor. During a storm that winter, one of the ships, the Santiago, was lost. All the men aboard escaped before it sunk.

In October, three days after resuming the voyage, the fleet discovered what would later be known as the Strait of Magellan, a narrow sea-route separating the South American mainland from the Tierra del Fuego archipelago and connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Around this time, another of the ships, the San Antonio, turned around and deserted the fleet, arriving back in Spain six months later.

With no conception of the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, Magellan expected to reach Asia in as little as three days. Instead, it would be three months and twenty days before they saw land again, finally reaching Guam in March of 1521. During the journey, the fleet consumed most of its food and water and at least thirty men died of scurvy. Exhausted by the journey, the crew lacked the energy to fight off the local Chamarro people who raided the ships of supplies. After regrouping, Magellan ordered his men to burn down the thieves' houses, slaughter many of them, and recover their supplies.



Ten days later, the fleet landed in the Philippines. Over the next month, Magellan befriended community leaders and sought to convert the locals to Christianity, planting crosses and holding Mass. When the people on the island of Mactan resisted these efforts, Magellan sought to subdue them with a show of military force. However, many of the people on Mactan were fierce warriors who easily overpowered Magellan's men, killing Magellan himself.

After Magellan's death, the crew selected Duarte Barbosa and Juan Serrano to lead the voyage. While Magellan's personal slave and translator, Enrique, was to be freed upon his master's death, Barbosa and Serrano forced him to continue as their slave. Furious, Enrique colluded with a local chieftain to plan the massacre of around thirty officers, including Barbosa and Serrano. While Serrano was initially kept alive and held for ransom, Joao Carvalho—the new first-in-command—abandoned Serrano. The scholar Antonio Pigafetta, who sailed with the crew in order to chronicle the journey, suggests in his account that Carvalho did so to remain in command.

At this point, only 115 men remained which wasn't enough to pilot three ships. Abandoning the Concepcion, the fleet sailed off in the Trinidad and the Victoria in search of the Molucca Islands in present-day Indonesia. It took them six months to find, during which time the fleet engaged in numerous acts of piracy, mostly against small Chinese junk boats. The fleet finally reached the Moluccas in November before setting out back to Spain in December. However, with the Trinidad in a sorry state of disrepair, it was decided that only the Victoria would head home via the Indian Ocean while the Trinidad would attempt to return across the Pacific Ocean. A few weeks later, the Trinidad was captured by the Portuguese navy and later shipwrecked.



Captained by Juan Sebastian Elcano, the Victoria set sail on December 21, 1521. It reached the Horn of Africa in May of 1522 with only a small amount of rice left for food. Due to rationing, twenty men died of starvation before the ship reached Cape Verde, a Portuguese-controlled archipelago off the coast of Africa. While they were trying to buy food, Portuguese soldiers captured 13 of the crewmen. By the time the Victoria reached Spain on September 6, 1522, only 18 of the 270 men who set out on the voyage to circumnavigate the globe remained.

Over the Edge of the World is an extensively researched and fascinating real-life adventure tale.