PREVIEW： Epochs #232 ｜ Magellan： Part XIII
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Summary
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
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Hello and welcome back to Epochs, where this shall be the last episode, the final installment
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of my story all about Magellan's terrifying circumnavigation of the globe. Okay, last time
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we left off, if you remember, they basically just finally reached the actual Spice Islands
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in Indonesia. So let's just pick up the story straight from there, shall we? A little bit
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of a description from a slightly later chronicler, a Portuguese man from just a few years later.
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He described the Spice Islands, these five islands in Indonesia, like this. He said, quote,
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The shape of most of these islands is that of a sugar loaf, with the base going downward
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into the water, surrounded by reefs, at little more than a stone's throw. At ebb tide, one
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can go there on foot. One can put into the islands through some channels in the reef,
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which outside is very high, and there is no place to anchor except in certain small sandy
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bays, a dangerous thing. They look gloomy, somber and depressing. That is always the way
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they strike the onlooker at first sight, for always, or nearly always, there is a large
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blanket of fog on their summits. And for the greatest part of the year, the sky is cloudy,
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which makes it rain very often. And if it does not, everything withers but the clove tree,
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which prospers. And at certain intervals, there falls a dismal, misty rain. Some of these islands
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spit fire and have warm waters like hot springs, and they are so thickly crowded with groves
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as to look like one big mass of them, and they are therefore hiding places for evildoers.
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The soil is black and loose, and in places there is clay and gravel, which is unstable because it
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lies on the rock, where it does not take hold. And however much it may rain, the water stands only
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a while before it is absorbed. So yeah, these are volcanic islands. So it's like the very volcanic
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rich soil which absorbs all the water, and it rains loads. So it's very, very fertile. Barbosa himself,
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from this expedition, said, the hills in these five islands are all of cloves. So yeah, when they get
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there, they realise that it's true, it's all true, but about cloves anyway. There's other islands in the
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region that have more pepper or more nutmeg. But for cloves, these islands really are just completely
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covered with them. Okay, so, but they are inhabited, remember, there's the Al-Manzur, the ruler, and there
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are all sorts of peoples on these various islands. So it's not the case that our Spanish expedition can
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turn up and just pick lots and lots of cloves and leave again. They have to negotiate with the natives
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and El-Manzur. And if you remember, towards the beginning, I talked about the Treaty of Tor de Silias,
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which is where the Pope, the Spanish and the Portuguese decided to split the world up in a
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certain arbitrary way. Anyway, these spice islands do lay in the Portuguese part of the world. And even
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though a lot of the sailors are Portuguese, it is a Spanish expedition, isn't it? It's the Castilian
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expedition. It's King Charles of Spain, who this whole expedition is done in the name of.
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So, strictly speaking, they're sort of breaking the rules. Strictly speaking, these are Portuguese
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possessions. As far as Manuel, the King of Spain is concerned, they're in his waters, his territory.
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So that is a bit of a worry. And if you remember, right at the beginning of the expedition, when they
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were still in the Atlantic, they were being hunted by Portuguese ships, Portuguese military ships,
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even privateer type ships. And so there's always the possibility, and this definitely will come up,
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there's always the possibility that Portuguese ships could, could intercept them or take them down or
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attack them and board them and things. Obviously, Portuguese ships will be coming from the west.
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They won't have followed them across the Pacific because Magellan's the first European ever to have
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done that. But they're now in waters that may have Portuguese ships in it. It's a possibility,
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a distinct possibility. But okay, so generally speaking, Magellan's, what remains of Magellan's
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expedition, if you remember, we're now down to just two ships, the Trinidad and the Victoria.
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They want to trade for clothes as quickly as possible and get going as quickly as possible.
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They're done, very much done with staying over and enjoying feasts and enjoying the women and trying
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to learn the language and just taking it easy. No, no, they don't want to do any of that.
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They want to trade as quickly as possible and get going. They've had enough of getting involved in
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the inter-Ireland politics in Southeast Asia. So yeah, they just want to trade and be gone.
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But there is, there is one thing to mention. There was an old friend of Magellan and of Spain,
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an explorer who had gone there years before arriving from the west again, obviously, called Francisco
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Sorral. And this Sorral had been the one, if you remember, quite near the beginning again,
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who was an actual friend or acquaintance of Magellan, had somehow got word back and sent letters back to
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Iberia saying to Magellan, it's all true. Down in Southeast Asia, the Moluccas, they're real,
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they're full of spices. And so as far as they know, as far as our expedition knows, he's still there.
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And he's sort of famous, well, very, very famous. Again, these men are a bit like astronauts or something,
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they're famous. And so they think he's still there, or he is sort of still there. And they
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want to rendezvous with him. The last they heard, he was actually in one of these five islands.
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He should be right here. And they want to rendezvous with him, they want to pick his brain,
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they want to just meet him for the sake of it. But they also hope that he might lead them,
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he might be their new Magellan. He could be their new leader. And surely he wants to go home by now,
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back to Europe and be hailed as probably the most experienced and most famous explorer of all time.
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Surely he will want that. So they want to do that. But they hear that he had died just a few months
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before. He had been there, he was there, but he died just a few months before. Now, exactly what he
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died of isn't 100% clear. It seems that maybe he got involved in inter-Ireland politics and strife,
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and that he got wounded and killed, just like Magellan. In fact, the parallels are kind of striking.
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At one point, the Sarau had pledged allegiance to one of the islands and had gone to sort of fight
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another island. He'd gone to fight against the island of Tidor, and he'd forced the king of Tidor
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to give up one of his own sons as a hostage. Now that's a classic, old, ancient even strategy,
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that you take hostages, prisoners of extremely important people, even a royal family, in exchange
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for keeping the peace. Like, we'll take good care of your son as a hostage, we'll take him away,
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he's our captive, but we'll treat him well. He may even be raised in another royal palace. He's not just
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going to be put in a cell and tortured or anything, but we're going to take him, and in exchange for
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that, you keep the peace and don't be aggressive. Because if you do, we will just kill him or torture
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him or something. So, and sometimes that has worked very, very well. So anyway, Sarau attempted to do
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that, did that, but it sort of backfired on him a bit. Well, backfired on him entirely, because
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apparently, in the end, at some point, somehow, we don't have all the details at all of exactly how
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this went down, but the people of Tidor managed to poison him. And yeah, so he died. And if they'd got
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there, if Magellan's expedition, what's left of it, had got there a few months earlier, they might have
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been able to rendezvous with the great, famous Francisco Sarau, but he's gone now, so that's
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off the table. Lawrence Burgreen says this, quote, the fleet's officers realised that Sarau's death
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contained disturbing echoes of Magellans. Each had taken sides in a protracted struggle between two
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island kingdoms, and each had acted harshly in his dealings with the enemy. Eventually, the warring
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tribes formed common calls, and the formerly heroic outsider paid for his bold deeds with his life.
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These cautionary tales reminded the officers to resist the temptation to fight anyone else's
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battles. Despite their sorry history, the unhappy inhabitants of these two islands
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hoped that the distant but powerful king of Spain, about whom they had heard,
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could bring lasting peace, where their own efforts had failed, end quote.
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Okay, so when they find out about Sarau, it's just one more example to them of, right, we just want
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to get our spices and get the hell out of here. We're not interested in anything else now. It's
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really single-minded, get our spices and get going, get home, just try and survive. Just a side note,
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Pigafetta talks of the women of Indonesia, and he calls them ugly. Apparently, he hardly has ever used
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that word to describe women, but he does call them ugly, and that the women of the Philippines are
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beautiful, but the women of Indonesia are ugly. There you go. Don't shoot the messenger. That's just
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what Pigafetta said in the early 16th century. Moving on. We're told that trading took place with,
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quote, astonishing speed. Pigafetta wrote that, quote, we carried almost all our goods thither,
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and left three or four men to guard them. We immediately began to trade in the following manner.
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For ten brasas of red cloth of very good quality, they gave us one baha of clothes, which is
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equivalent to four quintals and six libras. And Berggrin says, a quintal of clothes equaled 100 pounds
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in weight, that is, and was the most important unit for measuring the value of a spice shipment,
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end quote. So I won't bore you with too much of the details, because we do get lots and lots of
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details about the exact weights of things, and like exactly what was traded for exactly what weight,
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and how much that weight would be, when freshly picked, and when dried, and what that would be
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worth back home, and all sorts of these things. The bottom line is that they got it for, they got,
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they were able to fill their holes for a steel. They were able to trade things like beads and cloth,
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and, you know, trinkets, things like scissors and knives, which, you know, aren't worth
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very much, for these clothes, which are worth more than their weight in gold. So, so yeah,
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we're told that over several days, trading continued, quote, at a feverish pace, end quote.
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Yeah, we're told that they traded cloth quite a lot, drinking cups, they traded some silver,
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all for clothes, 150 knives, 50 pairs of scissors, caps, 40 caps, and also some bronze. So you can
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imagine in the European mind, oh, we can swap some caps, cloth caps, for clothes. I mean, what a crazy
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deal that is. But those things were of value to the inhabitants of these Indonesian islands. So there
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you go. On the 13th of November, we're still in the year 1521, by the way, on the 13th of November,
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a man turns up, a Spanish man, Pedro Alfonso Dolorosa. And he had been one of Sorrel's
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companions. He just turns up, he just paddles up to their ship, sort of out of nowhere, on his own.
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And they obviously recognise him immediately as a European. And he tells them who he is,
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and they're aware of him, they've heard his name before. And so he's known, he's very,
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very experienced. And he's, he knows everything firsthand, this time firsthand, all about Sorrel,
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and all those adventures. And he tells them that these waters do have Portuguese ships in them,
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searching for them. Their expedition, which left like three years ago from Europe, is famous,
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and no one's really heard hide nor hear of them over those three odd years. But still, Portuguese
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ships are in that region. And if they find them, it will, there will be trouble. He tells them that
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that's the case. In fact, the Portuguese authorities had been pursuing the armada around the globe,
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obviously not across the Pacific, but everywhere else. And so he tells them, he tells them this,
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he sort of raises the alarm. And he tells them that he knows, he's aware that the Portuguese,
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King Manuel, has actually been sending ships to and from the Spice Islands for like 10 years or so.
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Now that's news to the Spanish. That's news to even Portuguese sailors in this Spanish expedition.
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That was like a proper state secret. Only a few people knew that that was the case. Even Magellan
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didn't know that was the case. But it does explain why, why Manuel had refused to let Magellan,
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like four different times, Manuel would refuse to let Magellan do his transatlantic stroke South American
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expedition. Because he didn't want, he didn't trust Magellan enough to keep the secret. And he didn't
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want it to be possible to get to the Indies westwards. Because he had it locked down, going eastwards.
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You know, going across the bottom of Africa, across the Indian Ocean, across the bottom of India, and then
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that way. The Portuguese had that locked down and that was good enough for Manuel and that's what he wanted.
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Wanted to keep his monopoly on that. So it makes, you know, at this point it makes sense why he treated
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Magellan the way he had and why it's absolutely in the Portuguese interest to, if they can, not let
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any of this expedition or word of it ever get back to Europe, that that's possible. And so all this is
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fascinating, of course, to our men in the Magellan expedition. And so apparently they just kind of
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grill him, well it's not, it's not an interrogation, but they grill him for like a day and a night.
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And they give him loads of drink to like, you know, make sure he just keeps talking. And they
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get as much info, loads and loads of information out of him. Berggren says this, quote, the officers
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of the Armada applied Pedro Alfonso de la Rosa with alcohol. So the revelations came thick and fast.
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Not until three o'clock in the morning did the exhausted wanderer reach the end of his tale.
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Amazed and persuaded by his stories, the officers begged him to join their number by,
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quote, promising him good wages and salaries, quote. A man without a country, he agreed. After eluding
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the agents of the Portuguese crown for so long, he would live to regret his decision, end quote.
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So he does just sort of agree to join them. And just to end that story real quick, when they do go
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to leave, when Magellan's expedition does go to leave the Spice Islands, he sort of prevented from
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doing so. This de la Rosa is prevented from doing so at the last moment. So just to finish off his little
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story. And he doesn't get to go home with them. But there you go. And at some point, another king
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from a place called Gilolo, a king called Isusu, turns up and he demands to see Magellan's ships fire
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off their guns. He knows enough of Spanish and Portuguese technology to know that they would have
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guns. And he loves to see them. And they do do a demonstration for him. And apparently he took great
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pleasure in it and delighted. This time they're not scared. They sort of love it. They think it's great.
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OK, so quick word about cloves themselves then, because this is sort of the key thing.
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This is what it's been all about. Berggren says this. Later that day, after the de la Rosa incident,
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later that day, Pigafetta finally had his chance to examine cloves carefully. These aromatic,
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humble bushes had inspired the voyage and had cost so many lives and moved the destinies of empires
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around the world. Kingdoms in the east and west alike depended on them for economic support,
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and they provided the incentives for the emerging world economy. Centuries before Magellan,
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the Chinese had imported cloves, which were believed to have medicinal value. They were also
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used to flavour food and to sweeten breath. Europe found even more applications for the clove.
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In essence, when applied to the eyes, it supposedly improved vision. Its powder,
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when applied to the forehead, supposedly relieved fevers and colds. If added to food,
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it supposedly stimulated the bladder and cleansed the colon. If consumed with milk,
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it supposedly made intercourse more satisfying. It was miraculous, precious and wonderful in all
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respects." So again, it's just really, it's just super, super valuable, even more really than
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nutmeg and pepper. And it does have a very, very mild anaesthetic type quality to it. You know,
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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
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mouth and it will numb it slightly. And so in a world with zero anaesthetic, that's, that's like,
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that's great. If you live in a world where you've got pain wherever, and there's nothing that can be
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done about it, literally nothing or almost nothing. And there's the odd other, you know, herbal remedy
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and things that are possible, but cloves are sort of the best. Then that's great. Even to this day,
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people use it for like a mild toothache. This is what Pigafetta wrote. He said, quote,
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The clove tree is tall and as thick as a man's body or thereabouts. Its branches are spread out
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somewhat widely in the middle, but at the top, they have the shape of a summit. Its leaves resemble
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those of the laurel, and the bark is of a dark colour. The cloves grow at the end of the twigs,
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10 or 20 in a cluster. Those trees generally have more cloves in one side than on the other,
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according to the season. When the cloves sprout, they are white, when ripe red, and when dried,
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black. They are gathered twice a year, once at the nativity of our Saviour, and the other at the
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nativity of St John the Baptist, for the climate is more moderate at those two seasons. When the
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year is very hot and there is little rain, these people gather three or four hundred Bajas in each
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of these islands. I think a Baja is about a hundred pounds, so that's quite a lot or loads really. Those
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trees grow only in the mountains, and if any of them are planted in the lowlands near the mountains,
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they do not live. The leaves, the bark, and the green wood are as strong as the cloves.
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If the latter are not gathered when they are ripe, they become large and so hard that only their husk
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is good. No cloves are grown in the world except in the five mountains of these five islands. Almost
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every day we saw a mist descend and encircle, now one and now the other of those mountains,
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on account of which those clothes become perfect." End quote.
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And just quickly to say they do trade for and get some nutmeg as well, but it's all about
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it's all about cloves. So okay, they do that as quickly as possible then. They really do want to
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get going as quickly as possible. They're not, you know, they've had too many bad incidents where
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sticking around for too long and getting too involved in politics is just dangerous. Ultimately,
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bottom line, it's just dangerous for them. So they basically take on board 1400 pounds of cloves,
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in the two ships. You know, cloves are very, very light, especially when dried. So to have 1400
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pounds of it, that's loads. They basically fill up the ships with cloves, more or less. A bit of nutmeg
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and a bit of other things, but mainly cloves. Now they do this quickly over just a few days,
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maybe a week, maybe 10 days, something like that, which in terms of the early 16th century is
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