The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： Epochs #231

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome back to Epochs where I shall be once again continuing my story,

00:00:17.880 the long story of Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe, the first people, the first Europeans,

00:00:24.020 probably the first people ever to circumnavigate the globe, going west so far that you come back

00:00:30.800 to where you started in Seville in Spain. So if you remember last time Magellan himself had been

00:00:37.760 killed, he'd got himself chopped up by Lapu-Lapu's men in the Philippines. So we should continue the

00:00:46.100 story from there and of course the first thing is who is going to be the next leader of the

00:00:51.700 expedition de Malukas. They still haven't even got to the Spice Islands which are in modern day

00:00:58.540 Indonesia. So they're in the right part of the world, they're in the right region. The Philippines

00:01:04.440 and Indonesia aren't too far from each other in the grand scheme of things. On the scale of the

00:01:09.440 whole world they're quite close but still in reality they're still hundreds and hundreds of miles from

00:01:14.520 each other. So they've got to pick a new leader, sort all that out and get to Indonesia. And remember

00:01:20.880 they don't know exactly where these islands are. They're sort of fabled. There has been a Portuguese

00:01:27.020 person that's been there before but they don't have the full intelligence. They certainly don't

00:01:32.520 have a map or a chart of exactly where these islands are. So they're pretty sure they're real

00:01:38.060 and they are real but they don't know exactly where they are. They just know they're sort of in that

00:01:43.160 region. They have to keep sort of asking along the way, just asking indigenous peoples and

00:01:49.300 indigenous tribes and chieftains. We've heard of islands where there's like the clove tree and

00:01:54.600 cinnamon trees and you can get pepper there and mace. Where are they? And some know, some don't.

00:02:01.480 Some send them the wrong way and some genuinely help them out. So okay, let's continue the story. I

00:02:07.520 thought there would be one more episode of Epochs doing this. There'll probably have to be two

00:02:13.080 because where I've been doing the reading, I could just sweep through the rest of the story

00:02:16.600 a year or more or much more to go and lots and lots of adventures. I could just sort of

00:02:22.280 montage through it all. But seeing as we've come this far, I thought let's not, you know,

00:02:27.300 do the whole story an injustice by just whipping through all the adventures that are still to go.

00:02:33.300 You know, they're not even at the Spice Island yet, aren't they? They're still in the Philippines. So

00:02:36.400 probably be two more episodes, I think, of Epochs covering all this. So okay, let's pick up the

00:02:42.620 story. Once again, I should be largely reading from Lawrence Burgreen and all the quotes he gives us

00:02:47.920 from people like Pigafetta and Albo and Demafra and even Elcano. If you remember in the first episode

00:02:56.560 when I told you that one ship gets back to Seville, the Victoria, and it's only got 18 men aboard,

00:03:03.280 one of which is Pigafetta. And the captain of that ship is Elcano. So he survives and some of

00:03:09.640 his accounts have survived as well. So even once in a blue moon, we might even get a word from Elcano

00:03:15.720 himself here. But okay, so we're told that once Magellan was killed in quote-unquote battle and chopped

00:03:23.380 up into little bits and his body never recovered, there was no shortage of candidates for who could

00:03:28.900 replace him. There were lots and lots of men survived that wanted the job. So remember, they left

00:03:34.920 Spain with five ships and roughly 260 men. They've now only got three ships, the Trinidad, Concepcion,

00:03:44.240 and Victoria. And they've only got something like 150 men, maybe a bit less, maybe 140 odd men,

00:03:51.400 something like that. So, you know, the odd killing here or there, the odd murder, the odd accident here

00:03:58.080 or there, plus a bunch of them died to scurvy, if you remember. Various things like that had whittled

00:04:03.660 them down. And in fact, they've got slightly too few men to properly manage these three ships. So it's

00:04:11.360 not like they've got to pack all the remaining men, like five ships worth of men, into three ships.

00:04:16.980 No, if anything, they're shorthanded. Okay, we're told there's no shortage of candidates that wanted

00:04:21.900 to take over from Magellan. You know, a lot of these guys, many of these guys, the pilots and the

00:04:27.560 masters of the various ships, a lot of them, and the astronomer stroke astrologers, they've sort of

00:04:34.560 one and the same thing still at this time, in the very early 16th century. A lot of these guys all

00:04:38.820 think they should be the leader. But we're also told that it seems to have been, from the accounts,

00:04:44.040 not including Pigafetta, because Pigafetta was a Magellan arch-loyalist. It seems, though,

00:04:48.980 that to a lot of the men, it was a relief that Magellan was dead and gone, that his rule was an

00:04:56.080 extremely strict one. And whoever they got after him was almost certainly going to be a bit more

00:05:02.060 relaxed. And also was almost certainly not going to, like, ask them to go into battle again,

00:05:07.800 like Magellan did at Mactan. So it's sort of a relief, because Magellan was a taskmaster and

00:05:14.940 very, very serious, wouldn't let any women aboard under any circumstances, that sort of thing.

00:05:20.200 Didn't like fornication and didn't like too much fraternising with the enemy. And everything was

00:05:26.160 exactly ship-shape at all times under his watch. Well, that regime is over now. So, okay, what happens

00:05:34.000 is there is some sort of democracy goes on here, or some sort of plebiscite, some sort of vote

00:05:39.580 is taken over who should be the next captain general, because each three of the ships will

00:05:45.080 have their own leader. But there needs to be one overall captain general. And apparently the vote

00:05:51.900 is completely split. It must be, you know, more or less down the middle, because what they decide

00:05:57.500 is that two people, Barbosa, Durach Barbosa, who is Magellan's brother-in-law, and Juan Serrano,

00:06:05.400 should be sort of joint captain generals. See, now, already that's not ideal. Even if the leader

00:06:12.240 of an expedition like this is a bit crap at the job, it's still better to have one guy,

00:06:18.300 unless he actually leads everyone into death. It's still better to have one guy. It's like writing a

00:06:24.820 novel or directing a film. Sometimes two people can do it if they're completely of the same mind,

00:06:30.340 and they work perfectly together. But usually, nearly always, you want one person doing it,

00:06:35.780 one mind making the key decisions. And Barbosa and Serrano don't work perfectly together as one mind.

00:06:44.640 In fact, Serrano is Castilian, i.e. Spanish, and Barbosa is Portuguese. So they're sort of straight off

00:06:51.700 about a little bit at odds with each other, or suspicious of each other. This isn't good. This

00:06:56.220 isn't a good thing. If you are going to have more than one person or a committee ruling something,

00:07:01.220 they really need to be in complete unison. So this doesn't bode well. We're also told at this stage

00:07:07.520 that Sebastian Elcano, you know, one of the 18 survivors, is extremely annoyed at this stage for

00:07:13.660 being passed over, because they don't even make him a captain of one of the other ships. He'd expected,

00:07:18.760 he'd thought he might be the overall captain general, but not only does he not get that,

00:07:23.540 he doesn't even get to be captain of one of the ships, like Concepcion or something. Trinidad is

00:07:29.220 the flagship still, the main, the biggest ship out of the three remaining ones. Okay, so Elcano is

00:07:35.300 passed over, and that enrages him. Now we have the story of Enrique. Do you remember Magellan's slave,

00:07:42.080 Enrique, who was probably the first single human being to circumnavigate the globe? He was from the

00:07:48.160 far east, from southeast Asia, and he'd been captured and taken back west years and years

00:07:53.200 earlier by a Portuguese, and now, you know, headed out west with them across the Atlantic, and then

00:07:59.360 across around the bottom of South America, and then across the Pacific, and back to southeast Asia. So

00:08:05.140 anyway, this Enrique, now he thought, and he wasn't wrong, technically he wasn't wrong, he thought that

00:08:10.040 now his master, Magellan, was dead. He was absolved of his bondage, that he just simply wasn't a slave

00:08:17.780 anymore. He was a free man now, and he was actually suffering from a slight wound he'd had in that

00:08:24.500 battle, alongside Magellan and some of the others that died at the hands of Lapu-Lapu's men, and he

00:08:30.760 just insisted that he's a free man now. And the other leaders, like Barbossa and Serrano, said,

00:08:38.180 no you're not, no you're not. You still belong to Magellan's wife, if anything. That's your new

00:08:43.980 master, technically, legally, that's your new master, but you know, she's obviously still in Spain

00:08:50.040 at the moment, and for the time being, you just passed to us, like you still sort of belong to the

00:08:56.340 expedition. And apart from anything else, we really need you, you're our interpreter, you can speak the

00:09:02.160 Malay tongue, and so you're sort of badly needed, like without you, we were a bit screwed here, so

00:09:08.820 no, you can't just, like, leave. Enrique was talking about how he wanted to leave, he wanted to go back

00:09:13.640 to his home island, his original home island, or at the very least, be free to make up his own mind

00:09:20.340 what he wants to do. And they're saying, no, you can't do that. Now, accounts differ slightly over

00:09:24.800 whether it was Barbossa or whether it was Serrano that chewed him out, and in no uncertain terms told

00:09:30.060 him no. Picafesta said it was Barbossa. He said this, quote, Durat Barbossa, commander of the

00:09:34.880 captain general's flagship, told him in a loud voice that although his master was dead, he would

00:09:39.880 not be set free or released, but that when he reached Spain, he would still be the slave of

00:09:44.820 Madame Beatrice, which is Magellan's wife, or widow now, and he threatened that if he did not go ashore,

00:09:51.300 he would be driven away. And they're asking him to do something, and Enrique sort of refusing.

00:09:56.260 But in Elcano's account, he said it was Serrano who chewed him out, and Elcano said this, or wrote this,

00:10:02.380 Serrano, being unable to do anything without this interpreter and intermediary, reprimanded

00:10:08.640 him with bitter words, telling him that in spite of his master, Magellan, being dead, he was still

00:10:13.480 a slave, and that he would be whipped if he did not obey everything that he, Serrano, commanded.

00:10:18.920 The slave became enraged by Serrano's threat. Aya overtook his heart, end quote. Okay, so I say all

00:10:25.620 this and spend a few minutes on this because it's, again, a turning point. And this is all immediately

00:10:30.260 after Magellan's death. This is like the same day and evening of Magellan's death, all this plays out,

00:10:37.480 and the following day. So it seems what happened is that Enrique, the slave, first man to circumnavigate

00:10:44.640 the world, probably, just wasn't going to have this. He just wasn't going to be a Spanish or Portuguese

00:10:51.960 slave anymore. There's just no way. And so when he gets sort of threatened and shouted at for this,

00:10:59.460 obviously something switched in his mind, or in his heart, where it's just like, no, I'm not having

00:11:04.420 this. So they asked him to go ashore and, you know, start trading with the king again, the Christian

00:11:11.440 king, as he's called, King Humabon, because the new leadership of the expedition have decided they

00:11:17.360 just need to press onto the Spice Islands post-haste now. They need some provisions, fresh water, and

00:11:23.920 they're just going to push on. I mean, it was crazy for Magellan to have spent any time there, really,

00:11:28.240 let alone sort of started a fight. The whole point was to get to the Spice Islands, and now that's

00:11:33.100 what they're going to do. So they need a few provisions. So Enrique, as the interpreter, is sent

00:11:37.820 ashore with a few others. And it seems that at that point, even though earlier we were told Enrique

00:11:43.140 was slightly wounded, it seems that Enrique just enters into a plot with King Humabon against the

00:11:51.220 Europeans. Yeah, Enrique now is prepared to throw all caution to the wind and do kind of whatever it

00:11:56.680 takes, risk his own life, certainly, to just not continue with the expedition. He's back in his

00:12:03.760 neck of the woods, his home region, and he's not going to continue on down into Indonesia and then,

00:12:11.500 you know, on into the Indian Ocean and back to Europe. He's not going to do that. So he enters

00:12:16.420 into some kind of, yeah, some kind of plot with the native king. And Pikaveta tells us that if he would

00:12:24.620 follow his advice, the king would follow Enrique's advice, he would gain all of the European ships and

00:12:31.360 merchandise. And so they plotted a conspiracy. And then the slave returned to the ships, and he

00:12:36.960 appeared to behave better than before, end quote. So he's luring them into a false sense of security.

00:12:42.600 He goes on to say that the slave convinced the king that because the Castilians had been plotting

00:12:47.580 against them, there was no other solution for the Cebuians than to plot back against the Castilians,

00:12:54.960 end quote. So basically what happens is the next day, all the Europeans tell the natives that they

00:13:01.340 want to get a bunch of provisions and leave as soon as possible, really. And the king says, okay,

00:13:07.100 we can do all that for you, but have one last feast with us. We invite you ashore tomorrow afternoon

00:13:12.840 or tomorrow evening, and we'll put on a great feast, fill your bellies, and get drunk on our

00:13:18.020 sort of rice wine or palm wine. And we'll have one last giant feast, and we'll fill your ships with

00:13:24.220 all the provisions you need, and it'll be a great farewell. How about that? And Europeans not really

00:13:29.900 fearing anything, because until now, the people of Cebu have been very kind and generous. So

00:13:36.120 something like a quarter of the entire remaining crew, including both the leaders, Barbossa and

00:13:42.620 Serrano, go ashore for this sort of final farewell feast. And I mean, the long and short of it is,

00:13:50.000 is they get ambushed and massacred. Yeah. So Enrique and Hummerbond's plan was to, yeah, just completely

00:13:57.460 flip on them, just completely switch. There were other people that were involved in it. One of the main

00:14:03.420 astronomers, Andreas de Saint-Martin, who's been an important figure in all of this, if you remember,

00:14:08.940 his name's come up a few times. He was in that party, one of the quarter of the entire crew that

00:14:14.540 was sort of ambushed here. Pigafetta was supposed to go, but he said, quote, I could not go because

00:14:21.040 I was all swollen from the wound of a poison arrow that I had received in the forehead. So he was ailing,

00:14:27.120 otherwise Pigafetta would have gone and he would have almost certainly been killed. So yeah,

00:14:31.180 they're nearly all killed. So they lose a quarter of their remaining men here. It really is a

00:14:37.160 massacre. I'll let Berggring tell you a bit of the story. He says, quote, and this is from the point

00:14:43.660 of view of the men and Pigafetta on the ships. Berggring says, no sooner had those two spoken

00:14:49.360 their words than we heard great criers and moans, said Pigafetta. Then we quickly raised the anchors

00:14:55.180 and firing several pieces of artillery at their houses. We approached nearer to shore.

00:15:01.160 Now, Berggring again. What they saw exceeded their worst imaginings. It was worse even than the

00:15:06.520 massacre of Juan de Solis. You know, that legendary almost to these guys massacre in South America.

00:15:14.300 And Jean de Maffra, among those who had remained behind, described the murderous chaos engulfing the

00:15:20.460 sailors on shore. And here's a paragraph from de Maffra. He says, as the banquet was about to end,

00:15:26.200 some armed people emerged from the palm grove and attacked the invitees, killing 27 of them,

00:15:32.900 and captured the priest who had remained there. And Juan Serrano, the pilot, who was an old man,

00:15:39.240 others, although there were a few of them, swam to the ships and helped by those aboard. So a few got

00:15:44.580 away. Just swam, just ran out to the sands and just jumped in the sea and swam out to the European

00:15:50.580 ships. Well, that saved their lives. A few of them were able to do it. And they were helped aboard.

00:15:55.260 And then we cut the cables and set sail. So they just left. The barbarians, gulging on the killing

00:16:01.520 and anxious to steal whatever was in the ships, brought their armada to the sea. You know, small

00:16:06.980 boats. And in order to stop our men while they were preparing to leave, also brought Juan Serrano to the

00:16:13.580 shore and said that they wanted to exchange him for ransom. The old man implored our men with words

00:16:19.480 and tears to feel sympathy for his old age and not to become accomplices, lest his last days end in

00:16:26.080 the hands of such cruel barbarians, but to strive so that at least he could spend what little life he

00:16:31.240 had left amidst his kin. Our men told him that they would do so if they could. The ransom was discussed

00:16:37.240 and they asked for an iron gun, which is what they feared the most. This was sent to them on a skiff

00:16:43.200 and upon seeing it, the Indians asked for more. And no sooner would our men grant their request

00:16:48.960 than the Indians would reply asking for more. And this continued until, realising their intention,

00:16:55.300 those aboard the ships, i.e. that they weren't going to give Serrano or any hostages back and

00:16:59.740 they were just trying to get as much as they could from the Europeans. Realising their intention,

00:17:04.100 those aboard the ships did not want to remain there any longer and said to Juan Serrano that he

00:17:09.600 himself could very easily see what was going on and how the Indians' words were all but pretense,

00:17:15.860 end quote. So the remaining Europeans decide there's no other option but to just leave.

00:17:23.640 You know, a load of their men, 27 or 28 of them have been massacred. A few, a very small number

00:17:29.000 have swum out and got back. And the indigenous people have got Juan Serrano until a moment ago,

00:17:34.620 their joint leader. And they're sort of holding him captive on the beach, sort of threatening to

00:17:40.040 kill him there and then if they can't extort things out of the Europeans. And so the decision

00:17:44.380 is made that they're just going to sail away. Like it's really bad. It's really sad. We've got to

00:17:48.640 leave them there. We can't even bury our murdered, right? We're completely 100% outnumbered or more

00:17:54.540 than 100%. We're outnumbered many, many, many, many times over. There's nothing we can do. That's what

00:17:59.940 they decide. So we've got to cut our losses and just sail away. And that's what they do.

00:18:05.620 And according to Pigafetta, it was like a really sad sight that they had to leave Juan Serrano there.

00:18:11.580 And he wrote this, then Juan Serrano, weeping, says that as soon as he sailed, he would be killed.

00:18:17.640 And he said that he prayed God that at the day of his judgment, he would demand the soul of his

00:18:22.620 friend, Giao Carvello, end quote. So Giao Carvello is sort of the next in charge. We'll get to that in a

00:18:28.980 moment. And it would have been his decision to try and, you know, maybe, maybe lead a raiding party or

00:18:34.640 some sort of rescue party, which he decides not to do. As I say, they decided to just sail away.

00:18:39.540 So with his sort of final words, Serrano curses him. And so that's it. I mean, what a terrible,

00:18:46.220 a terrible turn of events. They've just suffered the loss of Magellan himself and a number of their

00:18:51.900 men. And then like one day later, or maybe two days later, then this happens. A big mass,

00:18:57.840 an even bigger loss of life and men, an even worse massacre at the hands of the people they

00:19:03.480 thought they were sort of best friends with, who had converted to Christianity and had seemed

00:19:07.800 entirely friendly and generous that they suddenly switch. And the slave, the treacherous slave,

00:19:13.860 Enrique, well, he's not a slave anymore, gets away with it. He stays on shore and his plan

00:19:18.500 sort of worked perfectly, it seems. He got what he wanted and he got his revenge, I suppose,

00:19:23.840 in some way. So yeah, Barbossa is dead. San Martin is dead. Serrano is dead. They don't

00:19:30.040 hear from him ever again. He's gone. He's left. He's dead. Pigafesta says, I do not know whether

00:19:34.260 he is dead or alive, but they never returned. And when later, years and years later, or not even all

00:19:39.960 that much later, but a few years later, more expeditions get to that same part of the world,

00:19:43.100 Serrano's never heard or seen from again. So you can only imagine that he is just killed very soon

00:19:47.740 after. But we don't know. Yeah, Lawrence Bergering describes it as Enrique's revenge on the Europeans

00:19:52.740 had been bloodier than anyone could have foreseen. So yeah, a real blow, a real big blow. If you

00:19:58.920 enjoyed that preview, please consider heading over to lotusseeters.com to watch the full unabridged video.

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - October 05, 2025

PREVIEW： Epochs #231 ｜ Magellan： Part XII

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