The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - October 12, 2025


PREVIEW： Epochs #232 ｜ Magellan： Part XIII


Episode Stats


Length

19 minutes

Words per minute

182.60596

Word count

3,484

Sentence count

211

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

14

sentences flagged


Summary

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

The story of Magellan's last stop on his circumnavigation of the globe, the Spice Islands in Indonesia. This is the final episode in the series on Magellan and his crew's final stop before they reach the rest of the world.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome back to Epochs, where this shall be the last episode, the final installment
00:00:18.140 of my story all about Magellan's terrifying circumnavigation of the globe. Okay, last time
00:00:24.300 we left off, if you remember, they basically just finally reached the actual Spice Islands
00:00:29.100 in Indonesia. So let's just pick up the story straight from there, shall we? A little bit
00:00:33.960 of a description from a slightly later chronicler, a Portuguese man from just a few years later.
00:00:39.320 He described the Spice Islands, these five islands in Indonesia, like this. He said, quote,
00:00:45.620 The shape of most of these islands is that of a sugar loaf, with the base going downward
00:00:50.520 into the water, surrounded by reefs, at little more than a stone's throw. At ebb tide, one
00:00:56.040 can go there on foot. One can put into the islands through some channels in the reef,
00:01:00.840 which outside is very high, and there is no place to anchor except in certain small sandy
00:01:05.460 bays, a dangerous thing. They look gloomy, somber and depressing. That is always the way 0.99
00:01:10.600 they strike the onlooker at first sight, for always, or nearly always, there is a large
00:01:15.160 blanket of fog on their summits. And for the greatest part of the year, the sky is cloudy,
00:01:19.660 which makes it rain very often. And if it does not, everything withers but the clove tree,
00:01:24.840 which prospers. And at certain intervals, there falls a dismal, misty rain. Some of these islands
00:01:30.840 spit fire and have warm waters like hot springs, and they are so thickly crowded with groves
00:01:36.340 as to look like one big mass of them, and they are therefore hiding places for evildoers.
00:01:41.380 The soil is black and loose, and in places there is clay and gravel, which is unstable because it
00:01:46.280 lies on the rock, where it does not take hold. And however much it may rain, the water stands only
00:01:51.880 a while before it is absorbed. So yeah, these are volcanic islands. So it's like the very volcanic
00:01:57.720 rich soil which absorbs all the water, and it rains loads. So it's very, very fertile. Barbosa himself,
00:02:05.400 from this expedition, said, the hills in these five islands are all of cloves. So yeah, when they get
00:02:11.240 there, they realise that it's true, it's all true, but about cloves anyway. There's other islands in the
00:02:16.880 region that have more pepper or more nutmeg. But for cloves, these islands really are just completely
00:02:22.640 covered with them. Okay, so, but they are inhabited, remember, there's the Al-Manzur, the ruler, and there
00:02:28.000 are all sorts of peoples on these various islands. So it's not the case that our Spanish expedition can 0.83
00:02:33.080 turn up and just pick lots and lots of cloves and leave again. They have to negotiate with the natives 0.95
00:02:38.760 and El-Manzur. And if you remember, towards the beginning, I talked about the Treaty of Tor de Silias,
00:02:44.600 which is where the Pope, the Spanish and the Portuguese decided to split the world up in a 1.00
00:02:50.840 certain arbitrary way. Anyway, these spice islands do lay in the Portuguese part of the world. And even
00:02:57.560 though a lot of the sailors are Portuguese, it is a Spanish expedition, isn't it? It's the Castilian
00:03:04.200 expedition. It's King Charles of Spain, who this whole expedition is done in the name of.
00:03:11.320 So, strictly speaking, they're sort of breaking the rules. Strictly speaking, these are Portuguese 1.00
00:03:17.960 possessions. As far as Manuel, the King of Spain is concerned, they're in his waters, his territory.
00:03:24.440 So that is a bit of a worry. And if you remember, right at the beginning of the expedition, when they
00:03:28.440 were still in the Atlantic, they were being hunted by Portuguese ships, Portuguese military ships,
00:03:35.480 even privateer type ships. And so there's always the possibility, and this definitely will come up,
00:03:40.760 there's always the possibility that Portuguese ships could, could intercept them or take them down or
00:03:47.720 attack them and board them and things. Obviously, Portuguese ships will be coming from the west. 1.00
00:03:52.360 They won't have followed them across the Pacific because Magellan's the first European ever to have
00:03:56.920 done that. But they're now in waters that may have Portuguese ships in it. It's a possibility,
00:04:04.040 a distinct possibility. But okay, so generally speaking, Magellan's, what remains of Magellan's
00:04:10.040 expedition, if you remember, we're now down to just two ships, the Trinidad and the Victoria.
00:04:15.320 They want to trade for clothes as quickly as possible and get going as quickly as possible.
00:04:21.480 They're done, very much done with staying over and enjoying feasts and enjoying the women and trying 1.00
00:04:29.080 to learn the language and just taking it easy. No, no, they don't want to do any of that.
00:04:34.680 They want to trade as quickly as possible and get going. They've had enough of getting involved in
00:04:39.960 the inter-Ireland politics in Southeast Asia. So yeah, they just want to trade and be gone.
00:04:47.560 But there is, there is one thing to mention. There was an old friend of Magellan and of Spain,
00:04:54.600 an explorer who had gone there years before arriving from the west again, obviously, called Francisco
00:05:00.840 Sorral. And this Sorral had been the one, if you remember, quite near the beginning again,
00:05:06.760 who was an actual friend or acquaintance of Magellan, had somehow got word back and sent letters back to
00:05:13.720 Iberia saying to Magellan, it's all true. Down in Southeast Asia, the Moluccas, they're real, 1.00
00:05:20.760 they're full of spices. And so as far as they know, as far as our expedition knows, he's still there.
00:05:27.480 And he's sort of famous, well, very, very famous. Again, these men are a bit like astronauts or something,
00:05:33.240 they're famous. And so they think he's still there, or he is sort of still there. And they
00:05:37.880 want to rendezvous with him. The last they heard, he was actually in one of these five islands.
00:05:42.360 He should be right here. And they want to rendezvous with him, they want to pick his brain,
00:05:46.200 they want to just meet him for the sake of it. But they also hope that he might lead them,
00:05:50.360 he might be their new Magellan. He could be their new leader. And surely he wants to go home by now,
00:05:55.080 back to Europe and be hailed as probably the most experienced and most famous explorer of all time.
00:06:01.320 Surely he will want that. So they want to do that. But they hear that he had died just a few months
00:06:07.400 before. He had been there, he was there, but he died just a few months before. Now, exactly what he
00:06:13.960 died of isn't 100% clear. It seems that maybe he got involved in inter-Ireland politics and strife,
00:06:22.200 and that he got wounded and killed, just like Magellan. In fact, the parallels are kind of striking.
00:06:28.920 At one point, the Sarau had pledged allegiance to one of the islands and had gone to sort of fight
00:06:35.000 another island. He'd gone to fight against the island of Tidor, and he'd forced the king of Tidor
00:06:40.680 to give up one of his own sons as a hostage. Now that's a classic, old, ancient even strategy,
00:06:47.640 that you take hostages, prisoners of extremely important people, even a royal family, in exchange
00:06:54.520 for keeping the peace. Like, we'll take good care of your son as a hostage, we'll take him away,
00:07:00.280 he's our captive, but we'll treat him well. He may even be raised in another royal palace. He's not just
00:07:05.800 going to be put in a cell and tortured or anything, but we're going to take him, and in exchange for
00:07:10.440 that, you keep the peace and don't be aggressive. Because if you do, we will just kill him or torture
00:07:15.480 him or something. So, and sometimes that has worked very, very well. So anyway, Sarau attempted to do
00:07:21.880 that, did that, but it sort of backfired on him a bit. Well, backfired on him entirely, because
00:07:27.080 apparently, in the end, at some point, somehow, we don't have all the details at all of exactly how
00:07:32.440 this went down, but the people of Tidor managed to poison him. And yeah, so he died. And if they'd got
00:07:39.000 there, if Magellan's expedition, what's left of it, had got there a few months earlier, they might have
00:07:43.320 been able to rendezvous with the great, famous Francisco Sarau, but he's gone now, so that's
00:07:49.720 off the table. Lawrence Burgreen says this, quote, the fleet's officers realised that Sarau's death
00:07:55.240 contained disturbing echoes of Magellans. Each had taken sides in a protracted struggle between two
00:08:01.080 island kingdoms, and each had acted harshly in his dealings with the enemy. Eventually, the warring
00:08:06.360 tribes formed common calls, and the formerly heroic outsider paid for his bold deeds with his life.
00:08:12.600 These cautionary tales reminded the officers to resist the temptation to fight anyone else's
00:08:17.720 battles. Despite their sorry history, the unhappy inhabitants of these two islands
00:08:23.000 hoped that the distant but powerful king of Spain, about whom they had heard,
00:08:27.000 could bring lasting peace, where their own efforts had failed, end quote.
00:08:31.160 Okay, so when they find out about Sarau, it's just one more example to them of, right, we just want
00:08:37.080 to get our spices and get the hell out of here. We're not interested in anything else now. It's
00:08:43.000 really single-minded, get our spices and get going, get home, just try and survive. Just a side note,
00:08:49.400 Pigafetta talks of the women of Indonesia, and he calls them ugly. Apparently, he hardly has ever used
00:08:55.880 that word to describe women, but he does call them ugly, and that the women of the Philippines are
00:09:01.800 beautiful, but the women of Indonesia are ugly. There you go. Don't shoot the messenger. That's just 1.00
00:09:06.760 what Pigafetta said in the early 16th century. Moving on. We're told that trading took place with,
00:09:11.640 quote, astonishing speed. Pigafetta wrote that, quote, we carried almost all our goods thither,
00:09:17.160 and left three or four men to guard them. We immediately began to trade in the following manner.
00:09:22.280 For ten brasas of red cloth of very good quality, they gave us one baha of clothes, which is
00:09:29.000 equivalent to four quintals and six libras. And Berggrin says, a quintal of clothes equaled 100 pounds
00:09:36.360 in weight, that is, and was the most important unit for measuring the value of a spice shipment,
00:09:41.560 end quote. So I won't bore you with too much of the details, because we do get lots and lots of
00:09:46.360 details about the exact weights of things, and like exactly what was traded for exactly what weight,
00:09:52.760 and how much that weight would be, when freshly picked, and when dried, and what that would be
00:09:57.080 worth back home, and all sorts of these things. The bottom line is that they got it for, they got,
00:10:03.160 they were able to fill their holes for a steel. They were able to trade things like beads and cloth,
00:10:09.000 and, you know, trinkets, things like scissors and knives, which, you know, aren't worth
00:10:14.840 very much, for these clothes, which are worth more than their weight in gold. So, so yeah,
00:10:19.800 we're told that over several days, trading continued, quote, at a feverish pace, end quote.
00:10:25.320 Yeah, we're told that they traded cloth quite a lot, drinking cups, they traded some silver,
00:10:30.760 all for clothes, 150 knives, 50 pairs of scissors, caps, 40 caps, and also some bronze. So you can
00:10:39.240 imagine in the European mind, oh, we can swap some caps, cloth caps, for clothes. I mean, what a crazy 0.92
00:10:46.680 deal that is. But those things were of value to the inhabitants of these Indonesian islands. So there
00:10:53.640 you go. On the 13th of November, we're still in the year 1521, by the way, on the 13th of November,
00:10:58.840 a man turns up, a Spanish man, Pedro Alfonso Dolorosa. And he had been one of Sorrel's
00:11:06.680 companions. He just turns up, he just paddles up to their ship, sort of out of nowhere, on his own.
00:11:13.320 And they obviously recognise him immediately as a European. And he tells them who he is,
00:11:17.080 and they're aware of him, they've heard his name before. And so he's known, he's very,
00:11:22.120 very experienced. And he's, he knows everything firsthand, this time firsthand, all about Sorrel,
00:11:28.360 and all those adventures. And he tells them that these waters do have Portuguese ships in them,
00:11:36.360 searching for them. Their expedition, which left like three years ago from Europe, is famous,
00:11:41.480 and no one's really heard hide nor hear of them over those three odd years. But still, Portuguese 0.99
00:11:46.840 ships are in that region. And if they find them, it will, there will be trouble. He tells them that
00:11:53.400 that's the case. In fact, the Portuguese authorities had been pursuing the armada around the globe,
00:11:58.280 obviously not across the Pacific, but everywhere else. And so he tells them, he tells them this,
00:12:03.720 he sort of raises the alarm. And he tells them that he knows, he's aware that the Portuguese, 0.99
00:12:10.360 King Manuel, has actually been sending ships to and from the Spice Islands for like 10 years or so.
00:12:15.720 Now that's news to the Spanish. That's news to even Portuguese sailors in this Spanish expedition.
00:12:22.760 That was like a proper state secret. Only a few people knew that that was the case. Even Magellan
00:12:27.800 didn't know that was the case. But it does explain why, why Manuel had refused to let Magellan,
00:12:33.480 like four different times, Manuel would refuse to let Magellan do his transatlantic stroke South American
00:12:41.480 expedition. Because he didn't want, he didn't trust Magellan enough to keep the secret. And he didn't
00:12:46.680 want it to be possible to get to the Indies westwards. Because he had it locked down, going eastwards.
00:12:55.160 You know, going across the bottom of Africa, across the Indian Ocean, across the bottom of India, and then
00:12:59.800 that way. The Portuguese had that locked down and that was good enough for Manuel and that's what he wanted. 0.99
00:13:04.360 Wanted to keep his monopoly on that. So it makes, you know, at this point it makes sense why he treated
00:13:10.280 Magellan the way he had and why it's absolutely in the Portuguese interest to, if they can, not let 0.97
00:13:17.720 any of this expedition or word of it ever get back to Europe, that that's possible. And so all this is
00:13:23.960 fascinating, of course, to our men in the Magellan expedition. And so apparently they just kind of
00:13:30.200 grill him, well it's not, it's not an interrogation, but they grill him for like a day and a night.
00:13:34.600 And they give him loads of drink to like, you know, make sure he just keeps talking. And they
00:13:38.760 get as much info, loads and loads of information out of him. Berggren says this, quote, the officers
00:13:43.160 of the Armada applied Pedro Alfonso de la Rosa with alcohol. So the revelations came thick and fast.
00:13:49.640 Not until three o'clock in the morning did the exhausted wanderer reach the end of his tale.
00:13:54.040 Amazed and persuaded by his stories, the officers begged him to join their number by,
00:13:58.680 quote, promising him good wages and salaries, quote. A man without a country, he agreed. After eluding
00:14:05.000 the agents of the Portuguese crown for so long, he would live to regret his decision, end quote.
00:14:10.200 So he does just sort of agree to join them. And just to end that story real quick, when they do go
00:14:16.040 to leave, when Magellan's expedition does go to leave the Spice Islands, he sort of prevented from
00:14:22.120 doing so. This de la Rosa is prevented from doing so at the last moment. So just to finish off his little
00:14:27.880 story. And he doesn't get to go home with them. But there you go. And at some point, another king
00:14:32.280 from a place called Gilolo, a king called Isusu, turns up and he demands to see Magellan's ships fire
00:14:40.040 off their guns. He knows enough of Spanish and Portuguese technology to know that they would have
00:14:45.080 guns. And he loves to see them. And they do do a demonstration for him. And apparently he took great
00:14:49.800 pleasure in it and delighted. This time they're not scared. They sort of love it. They think it's great.
00:14:55.320 OK, so quick word about cloves themselves then, because this is sort of the key thing.
00:14:59.960 This is what it's been all about. Berggren says this. Later that day, after the de la Rosa incident,
00:15:05.400 later that day, Pigafetta finally had his chance to examine cloves carefully. These aromatic,
00:15:11.240 humble bushes had inspired the voyage and had cost so many lives and moved the destinies of empires
00:15:17.560 around the world. Kingdoms in the east and west alike depended on them for economic support,
00:15:22.600 and they provided the incentives for the emerging world economy. Centuries before Magellan,
00:15:27.640 the Chinese had imported cloves, which were believed to have medicinal value. They were also
00:15:32.520 used to flavour food and to sweeten breath. Europe found even more applications for the clove.
00:15:37.400 In essence, when applied to the eyes, it supposedly improved vision. Its powder,
00:15:42.920 when applied to the forehead, supposedly relieved fevers and colds. If added to food,
00:15:47.960 it supposedly stimulated the bladder and cleansed the colon. If consumed with milk,
00:15:52.520 it supposedly made intercourse more satisfying. It was miraculous, precious and wonderful in all
00:15:58.360 respects." So again, it's just really, it's just super, super valuable, even more really than
00:16:03.800 nutmeg and pepper. And it does have a very, very mild anaesthetic type quality to it. You know,
00:16:08.920 if you hold a clove on a gum that's hurting, a tooth or a gum that's hurting, you just put it in your
00:16:14.680 mouth and it will numb it slightly. And so in a world with zero anaesthetic, that's, that's like,
00:16:21.080 that's great. If you live in a world where you've got pain wherever, and there's nothing that can be
00:16:26.360 done about it, literally nothing or almost nothing. And there's the odd other, you know, herbal remedy
00:16:30.920 and things that are possible, but cloves are sort of the best. Then that's great. Even to this day,
00:16:35.800 people use it for like a mild toothache. This is what Pigafetta wrote. He said, quote,
00:16:40.520 The clove tree is tall and as thick as a man's body or thereabouts. Its branches are spread out
00:16:46.280 somewhat widely in the middle, but at the top, they have the shape of a summit. Its leaves resemble
00:16:51.720 those of the laurel, and the bark is of a dark colour. The cloves grow at the end of the twigs,
00:16:57.160 10 or 20 in a cluster. Those trees generally have more cloves in one side than on the other,
00:17:02.680 according to the season. When the cloves sprout, they are white, when ripe red, and when dried,
00:17:08.600 black. They are gathered twice a year, once at the nativity of our Saviour, and the other at the
00:17:14.200 nativity of St John the Baptist, for the climate is more moderate at those two seasons. When the
00:17:19.800 year is very hot and there is little rain, these people gather three or four hundred Bajas in each
00:17:25.080 of these islands. I think a Baja is about a hundred pounds, so that's quite a lot or loads really. Those
00:17:30.360 trees grow only in the mountains, and if any of them are planted in the lowlands near the mountains,
00:17:35.880 they do not live. The leaves, the bark, and the green wood are as strong as the cloves.
00:17:40.520 If the latter are not gathered when they are ripe, they become large and so hard that only their husk
00:17:46.040 is good. No cloves are grown in the world except in the five mountains of these five islands. Almost
00:17:51.880 every day we saw a mist descend and encircle, now one and now the other of those mountains,
00:17:57.160 on account of which those clothes become perfect." End quote.
00:18:00.680 And just quickly to say they do trade for and get some nutmeg as well, but it's all about
00:18:05.560 it's all about cloves. So okay, they do that as quickly as possible then. They really do want to
00:18:10.840 get going as quickly as possible. They're not, you know, they've had too many bad incidents where
00:18:15.480 sticking around for too long and getting too involved in politics is just dangerous. Ultimately,
00:18:22.920 bottom line, it's just dangerous for them. So they basically take on board 1400 pounds of cloves,
00:18:30.440 in the two ships. You know, cloves are very, very light, especially when dried. So to have 1400
00:18:37.160 pounds of it, that's loads. They basically fill up the ships with cloves, more or less. A bit of nutmeg
00:18:43.880 and a bit of other things, but mainly cloves. Now they do this quickly over just a few days,
00:18:48.680 maybe a week, maybe 10 days, something like that, which in terms of the early 16th century is
00:18:54.920 lightning quick. If you enjoyed that preview, please consider heading over to lotusseaters.com
00:19:00.840 to watch the full unabridged video.