The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Epochs #218

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

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

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

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,

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.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - July 06, 2025

PREVIEW： Epochs #218 ｜ Magellan： Part I

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