The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - July 06, 2025


PREVIEW： Epochs #218 ｜ Magellan： Part I

Topics
Magellan voyage Magellan expedition Vasco da Gama explorations Magellan's expedition plan
Hosted by
Callum Edmunds Carl Benjamin Connor Tomlinson Harry Robinson John Wheatley Joshua Ferme Edward McLaren Elizabeth Heverin
Mentioned
Christopher Columbus Francis Drake Pedro Alvarez Cabral Lawrence Burgreen Amerigo Vespucci James Cook Marco Polo Diogo Cal Di Gama Victoria Diaz
PREVIEW： Chronicles #4 ｜ Joseph Conrad： Heart of Darkness PREVIEW： Realpolitik #3 ｜ The Geopolitics Of Israel

Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

145.93

Word count

3,152

Sentence count

210

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

This week on Epochs, I'm talking all about the voyage of Magellan, the first person ever to circumnavigate the globe. It's a fascinating story, full of adventure, danger, killings, sex, betrayals, and all sorts of other things, and it's one of those stories that every child should know about.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome back to Epochs. This week I'm going to start a new series, no doubt it will be
00:00:19.020 at least a mini-series, talking all about the voyage of Magellan, which was the first person
00:00:26.660 ever to circumnavigate the globe. So flat earthers need not really apply to this one if you don't
00:00:34.780 believe the earth is a sphere and that Magellan could have possibly headed west and kept going
00:00:40.580 and ended up back in the region of Spain. If you don't believe that's possible then maybe give this
00:00:48.920 mini-series a skip. So okay, I think it's a fascinating story. I really do think it's a
00:00:55.440 brilliant, brilliant story, chock full of adventure and daring do and tension and killings and sex,
00:01:05.460 violence, betrayal, all sorts of things. It's just a great story. It's one of the greatest
00:01:12.680 voyages of all time, right? I mean other people did things that are arguably as dangerous,
00:01:21.020 but to be the first ones to circumnavigate the globe is really, really quite remarkable. So I think it's
00:01:28.460 one of those stories that every small child should know about, or at least sort of teenage level
00:01:36.200 children should know about. Perhaps if you're Portuguese or Spanish, it's more taught in your
00:01:45.040 schools. Certainly wasn't really taught to me formally at school in any way. We hear a little
00:01:51.520 bit about Francis Drake, who also circumnavigated the globe, a good generation or two, 60 odd years,
00:01:59.120 50 years later. So being an English person, you hear a little bit about Drake, but not really much
00:02:06.460 about Magellan, not really any of the details. It's not sort of common knowledge, I don't think,
00:02:10.920 in the Anglosphere. But it should be. I think it really should be. It's a great story. So let me
00:02:18.960 just dive right in. I'm going to probably spend most of this episode sort of setting things up.
00:02:24.740 I'm not sure how far into the actual voyage we'll get this episode at all, but I want to talk all
00:02:29.460 about some of the details running into it and some of the main people that will be the main players.
00:02:37.580 So first thing to say, and it is a spoiler alert, but I'm deliberately doing it, a bit like a Columbo
00:02:45.900 episode. You let you know who did the murder right at the beginning. And it's not about that reveal.
00:02:53.240 It's about the journey. So one of the big headlines is, and anyone that knows the story of Magellan is
00:02:58.740 this, is that Magellan himself doesn't make it. He dies, for whatever reason, and I'll keep the
00:03:07.680 details of that until we get to it. But he doesn't live to see the end of the expedition. So to say
00:03:13.740 that Magellan circumnavigated the globe, well, he personally didn't. The armada of five ships that he
00:03:20.840 was the head of, the captain general, the leader of it, a portion of that returned, but Magellan
00:03:28.000 himself never did. So you could say that the first captain from start to finish of expedition
00:03:34.960 to circumnavigate the globe was in fact Sir Francis Drake, an Englishman. But no, I don't want to take
00:03:41.220 it away from the Magellan expedition. I mean, nowadays people are calling it, or sometimes
00:03:46.620 you see it called the Magellan Elcano expedition. Because eventually, when one of the five ships
00:03:55.660 returned, three years later, the most senior person on that ship, effectively, the commander
00:04:03.620 was a guy called Elcano. This is his surname. So it's sort of the Magellan Elcano. People call it that
00:04:11.720 a bit sometimes now. Okay, so originally it was five ships, something in the order of 260 to 270 men
00:04:22.440 to fill these ships. And they leave Spain in 1519. And nothing is heard of them. Again, three years go by,
00:04:32.820 just shy of three years go by, and nothing's heard of them. And it's assumed that they're lost, that they all
00:04:40.160 died, which is a really common thing. It's almost like a suicide mission, what they're attempting.
00:04:45.800 I'll get into the detail of how dangerous or hazardous it was. But it's not surprising that nothing was heard
00:04:53.060 from them. It's not really surprising that you might expect to never hear from them ever again.
00:04:59.520 Lots and lots of expeditions are lost. Or another way of putting it, perhaps, is that sometimes the
00:05:07.920 native indigenous peoples of the world aren't all that welcoming. Some are, some aren't. I mean, look at 0.83
00:05:15.600 Captain James Cook, just murdered by some islanders. But also shipwrecks, storms.
00:05:23.360 And the amount of ships and men that have been lost to storms in the pre-modern era is really higher,
00:05:34.180 probably higher than you might think. It's just really, really common to be shipwrecked and
00:05:39.200 lost at sea. And most people couldn't swim. And even if you're lost in the Atlantic, it doesn't
00:05:45.140 really matter if you can swim or not, you'll dive cold quite quickly anyway. So the idea that this
00:05:50.260 this great armada, great armada, five ships, sent out to explore the West, the idea that that could
00:05:59.820 just disappear is not crazy. But so like three years later, in 1522, one of the ships, the Victoria,
00:06:09.760 limps back into port. And it's battered to all hell. It's lucky it hasn't sunk. It's very nearly
00:06:17.920 sinking. It's completely battered. And there's only 18 men aboard it. Barely a skeleton crew.
00:06:26.080 And they're in extremely bad shape. Malnutrition, scurvy, rickets, dehydration. They're very,
00:06:38.660 very close to death, the 18 survivors. So it begs the question, and Magellan himself isn't among them,
00:06:46.140 nor his second in command, nor any of the original captains of the five ships.
00:06:51.080 So it begs the question, doesn't it? What in all the world could have happened to the other four 0.78
00:07:00.060 ships and the 240, 250 odd guys? Where are they? What happened to them? So it's a fascinating story.
00:07:11.800 And what a remarkable thing to have in the early 16th century, in the 1520s, to have sailed around the
00:07:19.580 world in one of those small little caravels. Well, technically only one of them was a caravel.
00:07:24.720 But anyway, these ships aren't all that big. You know, you look at the Golden Hind, the one Drake
00:07:30.580 did it in. You look at none of these ships have survived from Magellan's voyage. But they're replicas,
00:07:39.020 of course. We know what they, we know exactly what they were like and how big they were and all that
00:07:42.960 sort of thing. Um, yeah, it's more, it's more just like a cork bobbing along on the ocean rather than
00:07:49.880 this sturdy, you know, we think of a sturdy modern ship, which takes on the hazards of the seas and
00:07:56.440 the weather, takes them on and beats them. Right? Well, no, you, these, uh, early 16th century vessels
00:08:04.980 are, um, you're very much in the lap of the gods. You're very much just praying that a badass
00:08:13.400 squall doesn't just wreck you. Um, with the best will in the world, sometimes the best pilots or,
00:08:20.820 uh, captains just can't stop their ship for whatever reason from running aground. Uh, and so,
00:08:28.300 yeah, everyone can die that way. So it's very hazardous thing, very, very hazardous thing.
00:08:32.240 So I read a quick little passage from the book Over the Edge of the World by Lawrence Burgreen,
00:08:38.960 uh, Magellan's terrifying circumnavigation of the globe. Uh, and I want to read just a little,
00:08:44.420 well, a paragraph or two just from the prologue where he draws attention to that moment in time
00:08:50.760 when the Victoria sailed home and people, you know, can imagine sort of couldn't believe their eyes.
00:08:57.580 It's like, really? Wow. One of them made it back. Wow. I wonder if they did in fact keep going west
00:09:03.960 to the point where they came back. And it was very, very quickly discovered like the same day
00:09:09.140 that they had done that, you know, beyond question, beyond any doubt. And so of that,
00:09:15.360 of that moment in time, Burgreen writes this quote,
00:09:19.320 On September the 6th, 1522, a battered ship appeared on the horizon near the port of San
00:09:25.880 Luca de Barrameda in Spain. As the ship came closer, those who gathered on shore noticed that
00:09:32.960 her tattered sails flailed in the breeze. Her rigging had rotted away. The sun had bleached her
00:09:39.400 colours and storms had gouged her sides. A small pilot boat was dispatched to lead the strange ship
00:09:46.680 over the reefs to the harbour. Those aboard the pilot boat found themselves looking into the face
00:09:52.160 of every sailor's nightmare. The vessel they were guiding into the harbour was manned by a skeleton
00:09:57.640 crew of just 18 sailors and three captives, all of them severely malnourished. Most lacked the strength
00:10:04.800 to walk or even to speak. Their tongues were swollen. Their bodies were covered with painful boils.
00:10:11.040 Their captain was dead, as were the officers, the boat swains, and the pilots. In fact,
00:10:16.680 nearly the entire crew had perished. The pilot boat gradually coaxed the battered vessel past the
00:10:23.580 natural hazards guarding the harbour. The ship, Victoria, slowly began to make her way along the
00:10:29.580 gently winding Guadavira River to Seville, the city from which she had departed three years earlier.
00:10:37.180 No one knew what had become of her since then, and her appearance came as a surprise to those who
00:10:42.240 watched the horizon for sails. Victoria was a ship of mystery, and every gaunt face on her deck
00:10:48.800 was filled with the dark secrets of a prolonged voyage to unknown lands. Despite the journey's
00:10:55.420 hardships, Victoria and her diminished crew accomplished what no other ship had ever done
00:11:01.060 before. By sailing west until they reached the east, and then sailing on in the same direction,
00:11:06.280 they had fulfilled an ambition as old as the human imagination, the first circumnavigation of the
00:11:12.760 globe." End quote. Okay, so before we get on to Magellan and all the details of what actually happened
00:11:20.680 during those three years, I just want to talk all about Magellan, all about Portugal and Spain, a bit about
00:11:25.960 earlier explorers, and a bit about why. Why would you want to or feel like you needed to circumnavigate the
00:11:34.920 globe or head west at all? So let's put it all in its context. The early 16th century, or the late
00:11:43.240 15th century, is still very early on in the age of discovery. So it's only a few generations ago that
00:11:51.320 the first, largely Spanish and Portuguese, explorers really started pushing out into the wider world.
00:11:58.920 For example, there's a chap called Bortolemo Diaz, who is just about 20-odd years, 20-30 years before
00:12:07.240 Magellan, a Portuguese guy. I mean, he dies in like 1500, so they're his dates. And he is said to be the
00:12:16.440 first one, certainly the first European, documented European, let's say that, to round the Cape of Africa,
00:12:23.240 the Cape of Good Hope. Now, it may well be that ancient people had already done that. Who knows?
00:12:29.960 Maybe there's some undocumented Arabs or Chinese or Vikings that might have done it. But as far as the
00:12:37.000 formal story of history goes, it was a Portuguese man in the very, very late 15th century that sort of
00:12:43.160 first does that. So, I mean, in the scheme of things, that's not that long ago. I'll put it another way.
00:12:50.840 If you're not careful to keep these things straight in your mind, you might think that,
00:12:54.840 you know, the Romans had achieved something like that. Or that even in the 12th, the 11th or the 12th
00:13:00.760 or the 13th century, people were sailing from Northwest Europe to, you know, India or Southeast Asia
00:13:09.720 or Australia, whatever. No, no, no, no. It was only in the very, very late 15th century.
00:13:14.920 Of course, just quickly to say, because it will come up probably right towards the end of this
00:13:19.160 series, but the Cape of Good Hope, the Cape of Africa is some of the most treacherous waters in
00:13:26.280 the world. The passage through there is extremely difficult. You would need to be an expert sailor
00:13:33.720 to be able to do that. You have to wait for, particularly coming back, but either way, you'd have
00:13:37.800 to wait for just the right weather conditions. There's some other names. Diogo Cal, probably
00:13:44.040 pronouncing a lot of these names wrong, so to any Spanish or native Portuguese people, apologies.
00:13:49.720 Cal was another Portuguese chap and did further exploring around Africa.
00:13:54.440 There's Vasco de Gama. You might have heard of him. He's one of the much more famous people
00:14:03.320 that predates Magellan. Di Gama, also Portuguese, he reached India by sea, the first one.
00:14:11.560 So, you know, pushing out beyond just the point of Africa and on into the Indian Ocean, the South
00:14:19.160 China Seas. So, yeah, Vasco de Gama sort of beginning to prove that the ship technology is there,
00:14:27.800 the sailing ability is there, you know, that the funding just about every now and again is there,
00:14:35.480 that the will is there. You've just got to go and do it. It does take, it does take balls though.
00:14:43.560 I mean, it is extremely dangerous. You're probably quite likely to come a cropper and never come home,
00:14:49.800 but the potential rewards are gigantic. The risk versus reward is insane. You might come back with
00:14:57.720 having made your fortune many, many times over. You could just be a lowly ship hand,
00:15:03.240 but you get a tiny cut of the cargo, probably spices, maybe porcelain, maybe tea, whatever it is.
00:15:12.200 And that's enough to set you up for life. So brave chances it takes. There's Amerigo Vespucci,
00:15:20.360 who some say America is named after. He's actually an Italian, a Florentine, but working for Spain,
00:15:28.200 working for the Castile, the Crown of Castile. Vespucci famously goes west, where all these other
00:15:35.800 people, de Gama and Diaz went south and east. Vespucci goes west, you know, just straight across the
00:15:43.960 Atlantic. Of course, there's Christopher Columbus, of course, who is only a few years before Magellan,
00:15:50.840 you know, a generation or less, you know, 1492. And we're talking about 1519. So not long ago,
00:15:58.920 really, you know, certainly within living memory. You know, someone like Vespucci or
00:16:04.680 Christopher Columbus would have been people who Magellan looked up to, someone he aspired to be like.
00:16:12.440 There's some other names, Pedro Alvarez Cabral. Cabral was another Portuguese guy,
00:16:19.000 and this time he's exploring the coast of Brazil, what later becomes Brazil. Exploring up and down
00:16:26.520 that coast, because if you don't know, Christopher Columbus didn't actually land on mainland United
00:16:32.120 States. He landed in the Caribbean. And so there's obviously the whole of the east coast of America
00:16:39.400 to explore. There's the whole of the Gulf of Mexico. There's a whole of the Caribbean. There's a
00:16:45.400 whole of central Mesoamerica. And then there's the whole east coast of the South American continent.
00:16:52.680 So there's a lot to do. There's a lot to map and explore. And Cabral was one of those that explored
00:16:59.880 the Brazilian coastline, which is important for Magellan, because that's what he's going to do.
00:17:07.400 Just cuts the chase on this. No need for suspense. His plan is to strike out across the Atlantic,
00:17:15.480 go to like the Cape Verde or those islands, strike out across the Atlantic. This has been done many,
00:17:21.160 many times now, even though Columbus is only 20 or 30 years or less in the past.
00:17:27.160 Many, many. I mean, Christopher Columbus went across the Atlantic four times himself. So it's not
00:17:35.240 exactly old hat, but striking across the Atlantic and hitting the Caribbean is becoming more and more
00:17:44.040 a normalized event. So that's what he plans to do. And then go south all the way down, hugging the
00:17:50.920 Brazilian coast, you know, recreating what someone like Cabral had done. See if he can get around 0.92
00:17:58.520 the bottom of South America, whether there is a passage through South America or whether you have
00:18:04.760 to go all the way down to its most southern point and round it there. They weren't even sure whether
00:18:10.840 the Antarctic landmass and South America joined up. They thought it might do. Or no one had really
00:18:17.400 explored the Antarctic landmass at all. They were fairly sure there must be one down there because
00:18:23.800 of weather patterns and things, but no one had explored it. Yeah, no one had explored what is
00:18:29.400 today called Tierra del Fuego, the tip of South America. That wasn't mapped and explored at all.
00:18:35.080 So there's that. And then the thinking was Magellan's pitch. And many people thought that on the other
00:18:44.680 side of South America would be some ocean, some seas, but then quite quickly there would be the Indies,
00:18:55.240 the Spice Islands, what today is Southeast Asia. Again, they didn't know of Australia at all.
00:19:00.200 They thought the Spice Islands of Southeast Asia, places like modern day Indonesia and Malaysia.
00:19:08.600 And so instead of having to sail all the way around Africa, all the way across the Indian Ocean,
00:19:15.720 and then further to get to the Spice Islands, if you could just hop across the Atlantic,
00:19:21.720 sail down the east coast of Brazil, and then a short hop from there to the Molucca Islands,
00:19:27.640 which is what they called them. That's why the expedition was called the Armada de Molucca,
00:19:33.400 the Molucca Islands. But there's another reason on top of why it would be very, very advantageous
00:19:41.880 to find a route westward towards the Orient and the Far East, places like China and Japan.
00:19:50.280 And obviously because of land routes, we've known how far the continent, the Asian continent expands.
00:19:58.600 You know, we'd had people like Marco Polo a few hundred years before. There's accounts we knew of
00:20:03.720 the Silk Road and San Marcan and Beijing and Nippon. And we knew how far, how far the land went. We just
00:20:13.720 didn't know exactly how close it was if you were traveling westward from Europe. In other words,
00:20:20.440 no concept of the Pacific Ocean and absolutely no idea, even though you could surmise that there's
00:20:26.760 a body of water there, absolutely no idea how wide it is. And the Pacific Ocean is stupidly wide. I mean, 0.97
00:20:34.680 it's sort of half the world. I saw an interesting image just the other day, someone had posted on
00:20:39.880 Twitter and it was a view of the Earth when the Pacific fills the most of the disk of the Earth
00:20:47.800 from space. And it's the whole, you can see a tiny bit of New Zealand. You can see like a tiny bit of
00:20:55.480 like Siberia or Alaska, something like that. And the whole rest of the globe that you can see
00:21:02.120 is all ocean. So anyway, the Pacific is unbelievably vast, really unbelievably vast, you know, like twice
00:21:13.160 as wide as the Atlantic more depends on the angle and how you cross it and things. But the takeaway
00:21:20.040 is that it's almost unfathomably large.