The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Epochs #219

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome back to Epochs. Last time I started telling the story all about Ferdinand

00:00:20.280 Magellan's voyage around the world, the first ever circumnavigation of the globe, if you believe

00:00:25.300 the globe is indeed a sphere. So first last week I just talked about setting things up really and I'm

00:00:31.820 going to continue doing that this week, bringing in a few new characters. One thing to say about this,

00:00:37.380 if you're going to tell the story in full detail as I do want to do, or sort of as much detail as

00:00:42.880 possible, there's actually loads and loads and loads of characters. Sometimes stories are like

00:00:46.980 that. So I'm going to try and keep it as simple as possible in a way. If I was to mention all the

00:00:53.760 names of people that have any real relevance, there'd be too many. And a lot of them are

00:00:57.660 obviously Spanish and Portuguese names. Some of them are kind of similar. So although I'm going

00:01:02.720 to try and tell this story in quite a bit of detail, I will actually leave out some people if

00:01:07.880 they're not vitally important. Having said all that, there's a couple of characters I need to

00:01:15.040 introduce before we go any further. And hopefully by the end of this episode, we will have actually

00:01:20.640 set off across the ocean sea, as they called it, the Atlantic Ocean by the end of this episode. But

00:01:26.060 still, there's a fair few quite important details that we need to talk about before we actually set

00:01:32.360 off with Magellan around the world. So a couple of figures, one royal and one not so royal. The first

00:01:40.240 one I need to talk about is the King of Spain, or rather the King of Castile and Aragon and Lyon,

00:01:46.800 who goes on to become the Holy Roman Emperor. Because this guy, Charles I of Spain, he is the

00:01:53.600 benefactor of the entire mission. If it weren't for his money and his patronage and his say-so,

00:02:00.740 his green light, it would never have happened. So he is really important. All these lands,

00:02:06.440 the Spice Islands, are being conquered on behalf of, essentially. So we just need to talk a little

00:02:12.180 bit about him. So the first thing to say about him is that he was really young. By the time Magellan's

00:02:18.620 sort of setting off, again, it's 1519 when he first leaves, he's about, Charles I of Castile,

00:02:25.200 is basically about 18 years old. So very young. I mean, we've talked about this before on Epochs,

00:02:29.980 haven't we, that people kind of grew up quicker in those days. By the time you're 18, even though

00:02:36.420 you're still definitely young, aren't you? And anyone that's in their middle age will look back at

00:02:41.100 themselves when they were 18 and think, I was still a kid, really. I was still a baby.

00:02:45.420 Certainly my whole personality and my worldview wasn't fully formed yet. But still, you are a

00:02:51.760 full-grown adult, aren't you? You're a man in the eyes of the law. And so back then, as soon as you

00:02:57.840 can sort of hang with adults, you had to sort of sink or swim in the adult world. By the time you're 18,

00:03:04.460 you really should be able to hold yourself in society. And anyway, Charles I was no pushover.

00:03:13.360 He was able to hold his own. He was a member of the Habsburg family, a little bit inbred at this

00:03:20.280 point, but not disastrously so. Not like deformed and infertile and, you know, all kinds of wrong.

00:03:27.280 Not that yet. But he was a Habsburg, so bear that in mind. And he grew up in Flanders,

00:03:32.620 because at that point, Flanders, or the Low Countries, today's sort of Holland and Belgium

00:03:37.040 sort of area, very, very northern France, that whole area, was controlled by Spain,

00:03:41.440 the Spanish Netherlands, or just Flanders, as it was called. And he grew up there.

00:03:45.520 So, I mean, not exactly alien to Spain and the Spanish peninsula, but, you know, came from a

00:03:53.060 little bit of a different situation. And he spoke Flemish, first and foremost. He loved drinking beer.

00:03:59.160 And he loved, you know, like a lot of young men, not adverse to taking a risk. Because that's what

00:04:04.300 this is. Magellan's expedition. It's a massive risk. You're going to have to spend loads of money

00:04:09.940 on it for a start. And it could fail. It could depart from Spain out into the Atlantic and never

00:04:16.760 be seen from again. Quite possibly. I mean, that's almost what happened, wasn't it? If you remember at

00:04:21.760 the beginning of the first episode, I said, one of the ships got back with only 18 guys on it.

00:04:25.740 So, it very, very nearly did completely disappear. And all that money is lost. So, if you were sort

00:04:32.140 of older and much more cautious, a bit more or less likely to pull the trigger on it. But he was a

00:04:37.960 young man. And he saw that the Portuguese were sort of getting ahead in the arms race of exploring the

00:04:45.840 world and claiming huge, vast swathes of the world for themselves. He could see that the Portuguese

00:04:52.160 were winning in that. And he didn't like that, obviously. Despite, you know, what Christopher

00:04:57.880 Columbus did was on behalf of his grandparents. Still, he basically had a thirst for fame and glory

00:05:04.000 of his own. You know, he's young. He realizes that he's one of the most important monarchs in Europe,

00:05:11.080 and therefore, sort of, the known world, certainly the Western world. And he wants to be like a lot of

00:05:16.820 monarchs in the Middle Ages or a lot of leaders throughout the world throughout all time. He, being

00:05:21.960 one of the greatest, isn't enough. He wants to be the preeminent one, you know. I mean, he almost

00:05:28.400 bankrupts it or does kind of bankrupt himself and create all sorts of political headaches just to

00:05:33.060 become the Holy Roman Emperor. This is a bit later in the story and not really exactly relevant to our

00:05:37.860 story. But still, it goes to show that titles and fame and glory are what he seeks above all else.

00:05:44.340 So, extremely ambitious. So, something like Magellan saying, although this is a risk,

00:05:49.480 everyone knows it's a risk. There's no secret. It's almost a crazy risk. It might just be worth

00:05:55.060 it. It might just change the course of history. Well, it does, doesn't it? And it might just be

00:06:00.600 the jewel in your crown. We might all disappear and it was all for nothing, but it might be among the

00:06:06.340 most glorious things you'll ever achieve or have achieved in your name, rather. And the risk versus

00:06:12.480 reward thing in terms of money, not just glory and fame, but money, if it works, if Magellan pulls it

00:06:20.000 off and the Molucca Islands, the Spice Islands, the Indies are indeed claimed for Spain or Castile,

00:06:27.660 I'll just say Spain, then it could be an endless revenue source, right? It could be better than finding

00:06:34.440 gold mines in El Dorado in the Americas. It could be better than that. So, you know, the old adage,

00:06:39.940 you've got to spend money to make money. This could be the perfect example, one of the greatest

00:06:44.560 examples in all of history of that. Okay. So there's a little bit about King Charles who will

00:06:49.520 come up from time to time again, but actually, you know, doesn't play a massive part, of course,

00:06:54.060 on the actual voyage of it. But you need to know who he is and what his thinking's like and how Magellan

00:07:00.740 and some of the other people are on the voyage, why they might act the way they do, because they think

00:07:06.240 it will please or perhaps sometimes displease the king. So it's important to bear in mind. Okay,

00:07:11.780 the next character I want to introduce to you is someone who will come up loads in this story,

00:07:16.420 who does play an absolutely key part day to day in the voyage. And in fact, I would argue is more

00:07:24.100 important than Magellan himself. And I will be saying this name over the coming episodes again and again

00:07:30.320 because this person is the person that wrote the account, the account. There's a couple of people

00:07:36.800 that survived, those 18 men that survived, that wrote accounts. But the main one by far is a chap

00:07:41.860 called Antonio Pigafetta. That's his name, Pigafetta. And Pigafetta's account is the main account.

00:07:49.820 And amazingly, it completely survives to this day. I've got my copy here. You can buy it on the internet.

00:07:55.960 You probably won't find it in Waterstones, but you can definitely get a copy. And it's an amazing,

00:08:01.020 it's an amazing read. It's obviously in translation. And even in translation, it's very antiquated,

00:08:06.780 right? It's a little like the diction is antiquated. It's not a particularly easy or fluid read. But

00:08:14.360 again, once you get your eye in, like Shakespeare, it's kind of difficult to begin with. But once you

00:08:18.640 get used to it, once you get used to it, it's absolutely fine and fascinating. Now, like a lot of

00:08:24.380 stories where there's only one or possibly two accounts, it's like if that one account, you know,

00:08:29.040 like Plutarch, often, often we've only got Plutarch to tell us something or Herodotus, if they're wrong

00:08:36.060 or lying, if they're mistaken or wrong in any way, that's it. We don't know any different. And we have

00:08:42.300 to take them on their word. We have to got no other option, really no other option, especially if

00:08:47.200 there's not really archaeology to back them up one way or another. Often there is in this case,

00:08:51.600 or there might be small accounts from other, usually quite slightly later sources, or accounts

00:08:58.820 from Portuguese explorers, which went out in the same region not too long after, and maybe the odd

00:09:04.400 thing from an Arab source or a Chinese or an Indian source or from the actual indigenous peoples of

00:09:10.520 Southeast Asia themselves. But basically, all that aside, it's Pigafetta. Pigafetta is 95, 99%

00:09:17.160 of the story, basically. If you read another book about Magellan's voyage, or watch a documentary

00:09:23.440 about Magellan's voyage, they'll almost certainly mention Pigafetta. And most of what they're telling

00:09:28.500 you is straight out of Pigafetta. So I'm going to quote him a bit, definitely, from time to time, during

00:09:35.940 these episodes on Magellan. So he went along with the voyage. He wasn't a particularly rich person. He

00:09:43.360 wasn't particularly important. He wasn't a peasant, of course. He was highly literate. I mean, he went on

00:09:48.100 the voyage as someone that was going to document it. That was his job. It wasn't just incidental that

00:09:53.220 he kept a diary that happened to survive. No, he was on the voyage to document it. And he was sort of

00:09:58.360 a middling, someone a bit like Magellan, actually, far from a peasant. You know, he could get an audience

00:10:04.440 with a cardinal or something, if he wanted. I think he was a knight. Certainly, once he came back to

00:10:11.040 survive, they knighted him. But he was still someone of no massive repute, of no massive wealth. And he

00:10:18.940 wanted to go on this voyage to try and, you know, make a name for himself. He wanted to do something

00:10:23.060 interesting with his life, something dangerous, even, and survive it, and then revel in the glory of

00:10:29.180 it. If afterwards, should he survive? And then, of course, he did. So, okay, Pigafetta. And one other

00:10:34.780 quick thing to say before I carry on the narrative in general about Pigafetta is that he was a pro-Magellan.

00:10:41.500 We'll find out almost straight away once they leave the Spanish shore that there's a pro-Magellan

00:10:48.000 and an anti-Magellan faction aboard the five ships, largely to do with Magellan's nationality and

00:10:56.140 character. Both the fact he was a Portuguese, so a lot of the Spaniards are bald, and there were more

00:11:00.580 Spaniards than Portuguese, that didn't sit nicely with them. And Magellan was something of a martinet.

00:11:07.660 He was something of fairly authoritarian-style leadership. It was his way on the highway,

00:11:13.020 right? I mean, that's the way it sort of had to be, aboard ship. But nonetheless, he was very much

00:11:18.280 like that. And he was apparently a kind of disagreeable person. You just didn't disagree with

00:11:24.980 him or question him at all. Again, that's not necessarily a bad thing on board a ship where,

00:11:30.740 you know, small mistakes can make the difference of life and death. But you can go too far with it.

00:11:35.600 You can rub people up the wrong way for years and months or years on end, and people snap if you do

00:11:41.720 that too much, right? So a little bit of his character was a bit too strong, a tiny bit. The fact

00:11:49.020 that he was Portuguese aboard a largely Spanish expedition, and there were one or two people that

00:11:53.260 thought they should really be the leader of it, or that they thought that, we'll get into the

00:11:57.720 details of this in a moment as well, the real detail of it, thought that their role aboard

00:12:02.420 actually superseded him. And anyway, there was a pro-Magellan faction, an anti-Magellan faction,

00:12:07.880 and Pigafetta is completely pro-Magellan. So of course, that colours his account, doesn't it?

00:12:12.940 But once you know that, and once you factor that in to what he's telling us, you know, that helps.

00:12:18.380 You know, if we get a particularly rosy description of something that happens, and it seems like

00:12:23.860 too rosy, it seems too pro-Magellan, you can, you know, as the historian, as the serious historian,

00:12:30.220 we can say, ah, maybe that's Pigafetta's bias there. Or for example, we know that there's certain

00:12:35.840 incidents that go on, because the voyage is filled with incidents. There's certain incidents we know

00:12:41.540 happened, which are bad from Magellan's point of view. They're sort of undeniably a black mark on

00:12:48.300 his record, or at least a grey mark, and Pigafetta doesn't mention them at all. It's completely omitted

00:12:55.000 from Pigafetta's account. So things like that. But hopefully, because this story has been poured over

00:13:00.920 in minute detail from the day that shit, the Victoria returned, from that day until now, books are still

00:13:06.740 getting published about it now. So for hundreds of years, people have picked over every tiny detail

00:13:12.620 of what might or might not have happened on this three-year voyage. And so now, anyway, largely

00:13:18.140 scholars, historians, think we know largely what happened. And I will, of course, fill you in on all

00:13:23.920 those things that Pigafetta escapes over, or we're fairly confident he's, you know, putting the rosiest

00:13:30.620 of spin on things. Okay, let's pick up the story again with Magellan. So the whole story of him

00:13:37.400 getting ready, first of all, getting the green light to do it at all, and secondly, actually getting

00:13:42.440 ready for it is quite a long saga. So, I mean, he's a stranger, essentially, in Spain. He's very much

00:13:50.300 a Portuguese defector, right? Until he left Portugal, if you remember last episode, the king of

00:13:58.000 Portugal, Manuel, refused to pay for this or do this. He didn't like Magellan, so he refused to do

00:14:05.580 it. And so until that moment, Magellan had been a 100% die-hard Portuguese loyalist. As I say, even

00:14:12.700 his Spanish wasn't all that great. His Spanish language skills weren't all that great. So when

00:14:16.760 he goes to Spain, it's sort of like, a bit like the enemy. Like, he is a defector. Obviously, that's

00:14:21.540 too strong, and that's a more modern term, but it's something like that. It's something, you know,

00:14:26.300 he's an outsider in Spain. Apparently, he did speak Spanish haltingly. That's a quote from

00:14:32.380 Lawrence Burgreen. I'll quote from Burgreen a bit as well. He's an expatriate. He's an expatriate,

00:14:38.780 is what he is. But he had lots of friends and even relatives and acquaintances in Spain who were in a

00:14:44.980 similar sort of situation, where they weren't getting what they wanted in Portugal, or from Manuel I,

00:14:52.180 King of Portugal. So the only way their dreams and ambitions might possibly be fulfilled is in Spain

00:14:58.400 from Seville. So one of those people is Diogo Barbosa and his nephew, Durant Barbosa. They were

00:15:05.920 important people in the scene, the scene of sailors that might do something like this. Certainly would

00:15:12.840 bounce across the Atlantic all the time to the New World, one way or another. And if you're going to

00:15:18.520 find a cadre of people that might go along with what Magellan's thinking, i.e. round the bottom of

00:15:24.340 South America, round the Cape and into no man's land, into uncharted waters. If anyone's going to do

00:15:31.580 that, obviously, it's the type of mariners that have already gone across the Atlantic more than once.

00:15:39.520 And this boss is one of those, and his whole family and all the crew and scene around him.

00:15:45.100 So it's exactly the sort of person Magellan would want to fall in with and just does sort of straight

00:15:50.200 away. Because remember, Magellan is no slouch himself. He's been out to India and back for years

00:15:55.960 on end. He's been to North Africa and back. He's already sort of made his bones. He's middle-aged.

00:16:01.320 He's in his early 40s, isn't he? So, you know, he's not some young, fresh-faced 18-year-old kid

00:16:06.920 who's trying to fake it until he makes it. No, he's already in that bracket of men that could

00:16:14.760 even dream of really doing this, of leading something like this. He goes on to marry Barbosa's

00:16:19.800 daughter, actually, Beatrice. Magellan had had at least illegitimate children earlier in life.

00:16:25.560 One of them goes on the voyage with him, but we'll get into that a bit later. Okay, so he has got the

00:16:30.960 green light from Charles, but then there is the actual real physical logistics of getting these

00:16:38.880 ships, however many they'll be, turns out to be five, and fitting them out for a voyage that they

00:16:44.160 really don't know, and they know they don't know, how long they might be at sea. So you really want

00:16:48.380 to try and pack it with as much as you possibly can. And at this point, I need to mention the key

00:16:54.180 organisation which will be overseeing this, and it is a key thing, is called the Casa de Contracción,

00:17:01.880 which roughly translates as the House of Commerce. And what that was, ever since Spain had really

00:17:07.560 been, not all that long ago, about a generation ago or so, ever since Spain had started to go around

00:17:13.540 the world, since the age of Columbus, had realised that we really need some sort of full bureaucracy

00:17:19.600 to oversee this. If we're going to start sending people out all over the world, all the time,

00:17:24.520 and certainly within Western European commerce, we really need to sort of get a handle on this.

00:17:30.160 The Portuguese never really did. Portuguese efforts were always kind of, I mean, amateurish is a bit

00:17:35.800 unfair and a bit strong, but it wasn't sort of all perfectly squared away, military style,

00:17:41.320 and every penny accounted for. The Portuguese never really did that, but the Spanish did.

00:17:46.440 And it was through this mechanism, the Casa de Contracción. So it is, as I say, like a

00:17:53.800 bureaucracy of type, a bit like a government department, early, very, very early 16th century

00:17:59.720 type government department. But, you know, a big building with lots and lots of what you might

00:18:04.960 call civil servants and bureaucrats, whose job it was to document everything, absolutely everything,

00:18:10.600 and to sign off on everything. And when and if the ships come back, to document everything that they

00:18:15.860 come back with, who and who didn't survive, everything that's in their holes, just everything

00:18:22.200 to do with it. So the crown itself, the household of the crown, doesn't have to deal with it. It's too

00:18:27.740 much work for them, right? And it's not good enough to do it the Portuguese way, i.e. just entirely sort

00:18:33.220 of kind of slapdash, amateur style. So the Spanish realise that they need to kind of get serious about

00:18:38.260 this, and they've already realised that. And so the Casa de Contracción are the key thing.

00:18:43.780 If Magellan's going to actually make this happen, get it done, and set sail, it's all done under the

00:18:49.840 auspices of the House of Commerce. It's often just called the Casa, and its offices were located

00:18:56.480 actually in the Royal Palace, at the Alcazar Real in Seville. So as you can imagine, once the king

00:19:03.180 gives it the green light, he then sort of steps away a bit, or entirely really, and lets the Casa

00:19:09.020 deal with everything. So then, the next thing someone like Magellan has to deal with is them,

00:19:15.360 and the leader of that, and all the bureaucracy and the senior leaders in the Casa, and it's now

00:19:22.760 them that he needs to get the okay from, for every little thing. Oh, we need extra, we need extra

00:19:28.480 barrels. We need you to spend a load of money on extra rigging for us. Four ships aren't enough,

00:19:33.440 we're going to need five or something. It's all through them. Okay, so the leader of the Casa de

00:19:38.880 Contracción was a chap called Juan Rodriguez de Fonseca. So this Fonseca is basically the gatekeeper.

00:19:46.780 If he says no about something, it's a no. Like Magellan can't really go over his head to the king

00:19:53.080 on something, certainly not on any small detail. It's just not going to happen. And even on a big detail,

00:19:58.100 the king is almost certainly just going to say, no, I side with Fonseca. Do as he says. He's my man

00:20:03.640 at the Casa, so you do what he says. So you really need a good relationship with Fonseca. He's sort of

00:20:09.440 the most powerful man below the king, certainly as far as Magellan is concerned, anyway, as far as,

00:20:15.100 you know, shipfaring, exploring, and things are concerned. So let me read a little paragraph here

00:20:20.120 from Burgreen, all about this. We're told, quote,

00:20:22.860 the Casa's role quickly expanded from collecting taxes and duties to administering all aspects of

00:20:28.760 exploration, including registering cargoes and proclaiming rules for the outfitting of ships and

00:20:34.860 their weapons. Within a few years of its founding, the Casa, which was only a few years before now,

00:20:39.920 the Casa began giving instructions to captains and imposing punishments for smuggling, which was

00:20:45.580 ever present. Soon the Casa functioned as a maritime court, adjudicating contract disputes and insurance

00:20:51.960 claims for all voyages to the new world. The Casa even administered cosmography, like maps and

00:20:58.520 navigation, I suppose, maintaining and updating the Padron Real, a royal chart, which served as a

00:21:05.300 master copy for charts distributed to all ships leaving Spain. By 1508, the Casa acquired a piloto

00:21:12.020 mare, a pilot major or chief pilot, who administered a school of navigation to train navigators and sailors

00:21:18.760 who wished to advance themselves. The very first pilot major was Amerigo Vespucci, who gave his name

00:21:24.360 to America. The Casa de Contracción was controlled by one man who was neither a navigator nor an explorer,

00:21:31.100 Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, the Bishop of Burgos. He had served as Queen Isabella's chaplain and had

00:21:37.100 managed Columbus's expeditions even before the Casa came into existence. A cold, manipulative bureaucrat who

00:21:43.840 jealously guarded his power. Fonseca made himself essential to all Spanish expeditions to the new

00:21:48.820 world. Anyone wishing Spain's backing would have to obtain Fonseca's blessing, which, as legions of

00:21:54.800 explorers would testify, was also a curse. End quote. So, as he sort of mentioned there, Fonseca was

00:22:01.040 something of a micromanager, and to put it mildly, and power hungry in his own right, and he was very

00:22:09.440 much of the mind, like, it's his way or the highway. Well, when you get two people like that, because

00:22:14.020 Magellan's like that, when you get two people like that, you know, it's a clash of horns, when two

00:22:18.640 people have got to work together, but they're both sort of ultra alphas, they're both sigmas, and they

00:22:24.600 don't deal well with authority. Well, in this instance, Fonseca is above Magellan. He just is. He is more

00:22:31.660 powerful. So, Magellan has to accept him as his master, at least before he leaves Spain, of course.

00:22:38.060 That grinds Magellan's gears, but, you know, he's got no choice. Fonseca could just scupper the whole

00:22:43.320 thing, if he wanted to. I mean, here's a line. There could be no expedition to the Spice Islands

00:22:47.840 without the backing of Fonseca and his Casa de Contracción. So, if Magellan pushed his luck too far,

00:22:54.380 or pissed off too many people, or he pissed off Fonseca enough, they could just pull the plug on the

00:22:58.500 whole thing. You're right. It could be, I think, if maybe you start filming a high-budget film, and the lead

00:23:05.020 actor falls out with the director, and the directors, and this has totally happened, and the director's

00:23:09.940 just like, you're fired, right, we're just going to start the whole project again, we're going to

00:23:12.840 recast your part. They can do that, right? Fonseca's the director here. Magellan's merely the main actor,

00:23:19.920 and King Charles is sort of the studio owner, if you like. Okay, but everyone wants this thing to

00:23:25.280 work, even though Fonseca and Magellan do lock horns a bit. Still, the king has said he wants this to happen,

00:23:30.920 so they do try to make it happen. If you enjoyed that preview, please consider heading over to

00:23:36.860 lotusseaters.com to watch the full unabridged video.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - July 13, 2025

PREVIEW： Epochs #219 ｜ Magellan： Part II

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