Voyage of Circumnavigation: The Return

The Return

 

The casualties suffered in the Philippines left the expedition with too few men to sail all three of the remaining ships. Consequently, on 2 May they abandoned Concepción and burned the ship. The fleet, reduced to Trinidad and Victoria, fled westward to Palawan. 

They left that island on 21 June and were guided to Brunei, Borneo by Moro pilots who could navigate the shallow seas. They anchored off the Brunei breakwater for 35 days, where Pigafetta, an Italian from Vicenza, recorded the splendour of Rajah Siripada's court (gold, two pearls the size of hens' eggs, etc.). In addition, Brunei boasted tame elephants and an armament of 62 cannons, more than 5 times the armament of Magellan's ships; Brunei also disdained the Spaniard's cargo of cloves, which were to prove more valuable than gold upon the return to Spain. Pigafetta mentions some of the technology of the court, such as porcelain and eyeglasses (both of which were neither available, or at best were only just becoming available, in Europe).

After reaching the Maluku Islands (the Spice Islands) on 6 November 115 crew were left. They managed to trade with the Sultan of Tidore, a rival of the Sultan of Ternate, who was the ally of the Portuguese.

The two remaining ships, laden with valuable spices, attempted to return to Spain by sailing westwards. However, as they left the Spice Islands, the Trinidad began to take on water. The crew tried to discover and repair the leak, but failed. They concluded that Trinidad would need to spend considerable time being overhauled, but the small Victoria was not large enough to accommodate all the surviving crew. As a result, Victoria with some of the crew sailed west for Spain. Several weeks later, Trinidad departed and attempted to return to Spain via the Pacific route. This attempt failed. Trinidad was captured by the Portuguese, and was eventually wrecked in a storm while at anchor under Portuguese control.
Victoria set sail via the Indian Ocean route home on 21 December, commanded by Juan Sebastián Elcano. By 6 May the Victoria rounded the Cape of Good Hope, with only rice for rations. Twenty crewmen died of starvation before Elcano put into Cape Verde, a Portuguese holding, where he abandoned 13 more crew on 9 July in fear of losing his cargo of 26 tons of spices (cloves and cinnamon).

On 6 September 1522, Elcano and the remaining crew of Magellan's voyage arrived in Spain aboard the last ship in the fleet, Victoria, almost exactly three years after they departed. Magellan had not intended to circumnavigate the world, only to find a secure way through which the Spanish ships could navigate to the Spice Islands; it was Elcano who, after Magellan's death, decided to push westward, thereby completing the first voyage around the entire Earth.

Maximilianus Transylvanus interviewed some of the surviving members of the expedition when they presented themselves to the Spanish court at Valladolid in the autumn of 1522 and wrote the first account of the voyage, which was published in 1523. The account written by Pigafetta did not appear until 1525 and was not wholly published until 1800. This was the Italian transcription by Carlo Amoretti of what we now call the Ambrosiana codex. The expedition eked out a small profit, but the crew was not paid full wages.

Four crewmen of the original 55 on Trinidad finally returned to Spain in 1522, 51 of them had died in war or from disease. In total, approximately 232 Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, English and German sailors died on the expedition around the world with Magellan.

Survivors

When Victoria, the one surviving ship, returned to the harbor of departure after completing the first circumnavigation of the Earth, only 18 men out of the original 237 men were on board. Among the survivors there were two Italians, Antonio Pigafetta and Martino de Judicibus. Martino de Judicibus (Spanish: Martín de Judicibus) was a Genoese or Savonese[26] Chief Steward. His history is preserved in the nominative registers at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain. The family name is referred to with the exact Latin patronymic, "de Judicibus". He was initially assigned to the caravel Concepción, one of five ships of the Spanish fleet of Magellan. Martino de Judicibus embarked on the expedition with the rank of captain.