Pacific Voyages: The Story of Sail in the Great Ocean

By Gordon Miller

“Few artists are also historians, and few historians have the talent to illustrate the people and events they study. [Gordon Miller’s] paintings of ships under sail, wrecked on a lee shore, in storms and in cities are luminous.”—Pacific Yachting

In Western myths and imagination, the Pacific is the home of soft, warm, gentle trade winds, idyllic island lagoons and waving palms—the exotic earthly paradise of escapists, adventurers and romantics. Until James Cook showed otherwise, eighteenth-century Europeans also believed this ocean to contain a great southern continent of untold riches and beauty. The islands of the South Pacific can indeed be enchanting, their charm often exceeding expectations, but as European mariners realized when they first arrived here in the sixteenth century, the Pacific Ocean is also a region of ferocious tropical cyclones, treacherous, reef-littered atolls, wearying doldrums and mind-numbing distances.

This book is maritime artist and historian Gordon Miller’s tribute to the humble little ships that first ventured across the great Pacific, and the brave sailors that manned them. It is a brief, selective and condensed story of the charting, exploitation and occupation of the Pacific Ocean, mostly in small, wooden ships, with only wind and human muscle for power. These maritime pioneers united North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, the entire Pacific Ocean, all the coasts that surround it, and all the islands within.

Even confined to the last four centuries of oceangoing sail, this is a large and complex story—a story brought to life by Miller’s carefully researched text and masterfully rendered maritime paintings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
• Release date: Jul 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9781771623483

Gordon Miller

Gordon Miller is a distinguished maritime artist and illustrator. In his youth he worked as a seaman, sailing the West Coast from Alaska to Seattle. Later, he was chief designer for both the Vancouver Maritime Museum and Vancouver Museum. Since 1977, he has freelanced with commissions from institutions such as the UBC Museum of Anthropology, Parks Canada, the National Film Board and the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa. His work has been used by many publishers, including Canadian Geographic and National Geographic. His paintings appear in collections in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver. He lives in Vancouver, BC.

Book preview

Pacific Voyages

An expansive ocean of rolling waves. The sky is an orange sunset and a lone bird flies on the horizon.

Pacific Voyages

The Story of Sail in the Great Ocean

Gordon Miller

Douglas & McIntyre

Text copyright © 2023 Gordon Miller

Art © Gordon Miller

1 2 3 4 5 — 27 26 25 24 23

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, [e-mail].

Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd.

P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0

www.douglas-mcintyre.com

Maps by Gordon Miller

Edited by Noel Hudson

Indexed by Martin Gavin

Dust jacket design by Dwayne Dobson

Text design by Roger Handling / Terra Firma Digital Arts, terrafda.com

Printed and bound in South Korea

Supported by the Government of Canada

Supported by the Canada Council for the ArtsSupported by the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council

Douglas and McIntyre acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Pacific voyages : the story of sail in the great ocean / Gordon Miller.

Names: Miller, Gordon, 1932– author.

Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220479003 | Canadiana (ebook) 2022047902X | ISBN 9781771623476 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781771623483 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Pacific Ocean—Discovery and exploration. | LCSH: Explorers—History. | LCSH: Sailing ships—History.

Classification: LCC DU19 .M55 2023 | DDC 919.04—dc23

For

Sam and Jeff

Megan and Eric

Ben and Leah

Kennedy and Brianna

and

Nolan

James

Leila

Emma

A three-masted ship with torn sails in a stormy ocean, with a few rays of sunlight breaking through the storm clouds.

Dangerous Seas

(Watercolour, 22 x 30)

After sailing out of Magellan Strait and into the Pacific, a violent storm drove Golden Hind south and east far below Cape Horn. That lonely and stormy stretch of waters would later be called Drake Passage.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: The Ocean

1. The People of the Canoe

2. The Lure of Cathay

3. The Magical Powers of Spice

4. Ferdinand Magellan, First Around

5. The Spanish Lake

6. The Search for Terra Australis Incognita

7. Enter the English: Elizabeth’s Sea Dogs

8. The Dutch Challenge

9. Return of the English

10. The Russians and Northern Seas

11. Enlightened Voyages

12. Breadfruit and Mutineers

13. A Continent Emerges

14. The Russians in the Pacific

15. The North Pacific Fur Trade

16. Little Ships in the North Pacific

17. Australia and New Zealand

18. Science Under Sail

19. Seas of Slaughter

20. An Ocean of Commerce

21. The Clippers

22. The Heyday of Sail

23. The Mavericks

Appendix: The Ships

Afterword

Acknowledgements

Selected Bibliography

Index

Preface

Watercraft are among the oldest human creations, possibly predating the domestication of animals and the invention of the wheel. When the first hunter-gatherers began their long journeys out of Africa, they would have encountered streams too deep to wade across or too wide to swim. At first they may have used logs or loose rafts of reeds; but over many millennia, and in every part of the world, ever more sophisticated watercraft would evolve, until by the fifteenth century there were vessels capable of sailing anywhere in the world.

Until the middle of the twentieth century, ships were the usual means of world travel. Until the age of steam, most of the world’s cargo was carried in sailing vessels. These ships, the result of centuries of development and refinement, bore explorers, traders, hunters and adventurers across the uncharted seas of the Earth. Eventually, the merchant sailing ship connected the world’s far-flung trading centres, and from their zenith until well into the twentieth century their masts dominated crowded anchorages.

Rudimentary steamships improved rapidly, and by the early nineteenth century, steam began to supplement sail. By the 1880s pure steam vessels were challenging sail on most global routes, and by the early twentieth century, steam had replaced the sailing ship on all but the longest and least valuable trade routes. For the first half of that century, interrupted only by the two world wars and barely slowed by the Great Depression, great liners and humble tramps linked the world’s trading centres.

Until the middle of the twentieth century, North Americans assumed international travel would involve a sea voyage. There were scheduled sailings from eastern Canada and the US to Europe, and from the West Coast to Australia, New Zealand and the Orient. The great liners offered speed, luxury and glamour to those who could afford first class, and convenience and reliability to those who couldn’t.

Air travel put paid to the liners and almost all thought of sea travel. Today, travellers prefer sitting in uncomfortable metal tubes for the convenience of getting almost anywhere in the world in a few hours. Although more than ninety per cent of global trade still goes by sea, ships of any kind barely enter consumer consciousness.

When I moved to Vancouver in 1950 the waterfront was a vibrant hive of activity. The salty tang of the sea mingled with smells of hot steam, coal smoke, diesel exhaust and fresh fish, amid a cacophony of train whistles, hooting steamers, mewing gulls and the shriek of block and tackle from freighters at the docks. It was a lively mix of international passenger and cargo vessels, coastal freight and passenger ships, tugs, fishboats and ferries. In those days you could wander unchallenged almost anywhere on the wharves. Now the port is hidden behind chain-link fences, and gate passes and hard hats are requirements of entry. Today, the ships are mostly large and utilitarian, devoid of romance or character, and—except for the massive and grotesque cruise ships—of little interest to the general public.

This book is my tribute to the humble little ships that first ventured across the great oceans and to the brave sailors that manned them. It is a brief, selective and condensed story of the European discovery, charting, exploitation and occupation of the Pacific Ocean, mostly in small wooden ships, with only wind and human muscle for power. These pioneers discovered the continents of North and South America, Australia, the entire Pacific Ocean, and all the islands within it.

Even confined to the last four centuries of ocean-going sail, this is a large and complex story. My abbreviated account owes everything to the scholars, artists, historians and scientists who have described it, and to the seamen who kept the logs and journals from which this narrative was assembled. Their accounts don’t always agree, so I have chosen those that I believe reflect the most probable version of each event, and I take full responsibility for any errors in my conclusions.

A wide, busy dock on a sunny day: A black steam train runs along tracks adjacent to the dock, emitting a small, black cloud; several horse-drawn carriages are on the dock, as well as piles of lumber and coal and some barrels; a steamship approaches in the distance, and a large sailboat is tied to the dock, its brownish-red sails still aloft.

CPR Wharf, Vancouver, 1887

(Watercolour, 22 x 30)

Vancouver became the western terminus of Canada’s first transcontinental railway at the same time as the sailing ship was being replaced by steamers. An easier and faster route to the Orient, the goal of four centuries of European dreamers, was finally achieved. Loading at the wharf is Abyssinia, the first vessel chartered by the Canadian Pacific Railway company for their Oriental service. She is a steamship, still unwilling to rely on her engines alone.

A stormy sea: choppy, dark waves and a grey sky.

Introduction:

The Ocean

Almost 70 per cent of Earth is covered by water, half of it in just one body of water, the Pacific Ocean. For the purposes of this story, the Pacific Ocean includes Australia and New Zealand, all the islands of Southeast Asia, the South China Sea, the Sea of Japan, and the North and South Pacific, from the Bering Sea to Antarctica.

This immense sea covers nearly a third of the Earth’s surface. It is big enough to contain all the continents, with almost enough area left over for another Africa. The average depth is 14,000 feet, and here lie Earth’s deepest valleys and highest mountains. At its widest it measures nearly 11,000 miles across, and from the Bering Sea to Antarctica is another 10,000. This is the vast, unexplored world that awaited the unsuspecting sixteenth-century sailors approaching Cape Horn from the east or crossing the Indian Ocean from the west.

Observed from space, and from a viewpoint over the equator at 165° west longitude, Earth would appear to be almost entirely water. Visible on the extreme edges are the eastern coasts of Asia, the Aleutian Islands, the western shores of North America and a small part of Central America. On the bottom left, most of Australia is visible, plus all of New Guinea and New Zealand. Antarctica is barely visible, and South America is entirely out of sight. All the rest is ocean, with thousands of volcanic islands and coral atolls scattered across its watery expanse. This is the Pacific Ocean, by far the largest geographical feature on Earth, its existence entirely unsuspected by the peoples of Europe, until 1513.

In Western myth and imagination, the Pacific is the home of warm, gentle trade winds, idyllic island lagoons and waving palms, the exotic earthly paradise of escapists, adventurers and romantics. Until its exploration by James Cook, eighteenth-century Europeans believed the Pacific contained a great Southern Continent of untold riches and beauty. The islands of the South Pacific can indeed be enchanting, their charm often exceeding expectations, but as the first sixteenth-century mariners would discover, the Pacific Ocean was also a region of ferocious tropical cyclones, treacherous, reef-littered atolls, wearying doldrums and mind-numbing distances.

Planet Earth in space, with a view of the expansive Pacific ocean. The continent of Australia is visible in the lower-left corner of the planet, and the western edge of North America is narrowly visible at the top-right edge of the planet.

Chapter

1

The People of the Canoe

About 60,000 years ago, small groups of early humans began drifting northward from Africa. These tiny bands of Stone Age hunter-gatherers, adept at crude stone tool manufacture, were at the start of the longest and greatest human migration in history. Over the next 40,000 years they would occupy most of southern Europe and Asia, from the British Isles to China, eventually reaching the western shores of the Pacific Ocean.

This was a period of extreme climate change, and early in the great migration the Earth began to cool. During periods of maximum glaciation, sea levels dropped dramatically; many islands that today are surrounded by water were then part of adjacent lands, and open waters were reduced to passages navigable by primitive watercraft. All the continents except Australia and Antarctica were connected, and by 50,000 years ago humans had settled in Japan as well as the islands of Southeast Asia and New Guinea. As early as 50,000 years ago, in what may have been the first navigation of open water in human history, the thirty-seven-mile expanse of ocean separating Australia from Southeast Asia was crossed.

Toward the end of maximum glaciation, northern groups in eastern Siberia began crossing to what is now Alaska. By 14,000 years ago, the west coasts of the Americas were settled as far south as the tip of Tierra del Fuego. Homo sapiens now occupied most of the habitable lands on Earth, with one exception: the distant islands of the Pacific.

The first European venturers into the Pacific were amazed to find most of the widely scattered islands already inhabited by Indigenous peoples who had only their legends and their canoes to explain their presence. When Europeans had as yet barely sailed beyond sight of land, these oceanic wanderers had discovered and colonized an area of ocean greater than North and South America combined. Their history and motivations are still subjects of intense speculation by historians and anthropologists, but a general chronology has been accepted based on DNA sequences and linguistic, archaeological and botanical evidence.

---

The world’s first truly maritime people entered the western Pacific from Southeast Asia during the last Ice Age. New Guinea was inhabited by a dark-skinned Stone Age people who had migrated out of Malaysia. They were later joined by brown-skinned bands from the north, from Indonesia, the Philippines, China and Taiwan. Over many millennia, these two groups melded, developed superior tools, and, on the few islands with suitable clay, created distinctive pottery. The first water crossings may have been on bamboo or log rafts, or in simple dugout canoes, but by 40,000 years ago they had created watercraft capable of short offshore passages. Over many centuries, small, adventurous bands from the shores of New Guinea sailed north, east and south, and by 1000 BCE they inhabited all the islands of Micronesia and Melanesia, including the New Hebrides, Solomon Islands and Fiji.

These first voyagers into the western Pacific were descendants of an Old World people who had lived at the mouths of the great rivers of Southeast Asia and who likely were the first to domesticate plants and animals. Because the islands they were attempting to colonize had no indigenous mammals, they introduced dogs, pigs and fowl as food sources. Their crops, first cultivated from sprouts, were also carried with them. Bananas, plantains, taros, yams, coconuts, pandanus, bamboos, sugar cane and breadfruit were introduced everywhere they went and became, with fish, the mainstays of the islanders’ diet.

A map of Earth's continents is surrounded by thirty-six different boats. There are canoes, small sailboats and large sailboats. The map has several colourful lines drawn on it, across the ocean and along the coasts of the continents.

Early World Migration

When the first European seafarers sailed into the Pacific in the sixteenth century, they discovered well-established Indigenous groups living along the continental shores, as well as on almost all of the widely scattered islands and atolls. Each maritime group had developed its own unique watercraft, built from available materials for the local conditions. Some were suitable only for coastal waters and hunting and fishing, but many made long offshore passages of discovery and migration.

Koryak kayak, Kamchatka Peninsula

Baidarka, Alaskan Aleut

Umiak, Alaska and Bering Sea

Yakutat canoe

Bella Coola canoe

Head canoe, Haida

Northern canoe, Haida and Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl)

Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) canoe

Salish canoe, southern BC and Washington State

Columbia River canoe

Chumash plank canoe, southern California

Miwok reed boat, central California

Cayapa canoe, northern Ecuador

Islas de Cedros reed boat, Mexico

Reed boat, northern Peru

Reed boat, southern Peru

Paita, northern Peru

Barista, northern Peru

Yaghan bark canoe, Patagonia

Guayaquil raft, Ecuador

Hawaiian voyaging canoe

Polynesian voyaging canoe

Tongan fair-weather canoe

Pahi, Tuamotu Islands

Tahiti island canoe

Popo, Caroline Islands

Te Puke, Solomon Islands

Waka Tana, New Zealand war canoe

Tongan double canoe

Pahi, Society Islands

Arab dhow, Indian Ocean

Taiwanese bamboo raft

Chinese junk, south coast

Chinese junk, north coast

Japanese junk

Ainu lashed canoe

Nothing certain is known about the ancient canoes, but there is no question about their seaworthiness or sailing ability: distances of over 500 miles were navigated, and everything necessary for survival and colonization was carried in them. The simple dugout was the basis of the form, using a balancing outrigger for stability and to provide counter-leverage against the pressure of wind on a sail. They were fast and manoeuvrable, seaworthy, easily paddled or sailed and easily beached. The single outrigger, found throughout Polynesia, Micronesia and most of Melanesia, was the most common. The double outrigger was employed mostly in the seas west and south of the Philippines. Stability and greater carrying capacity were achieved by connecting two hulls together to form the double canoes that were most often used on later deep-ocean voyages. Using only stone or shell tools and local materials, builders shaped and hollowed logs, fastened planks on top, and added sculpted bow and stern pieces to the ends. Planks were fastened with braided sennit or twisted cord of coconut fibre, and the seams were caulked with immature coconut husks and gum from the breadfruit tree. Canoes came in all sizes, depending on use, and varied in detail depending on place of origin, but the basic concept remained the same. Sails, woven from finely plaited pandanus leaves, also varied in size and shape from region to region, but the final product was an elegant, efficient and beautiful craft that enabled them to harvest food from the sea, freed them from their secluded island homes, and provided access to the vast ocean that surrounded them.

The Polynesians

More than 3,000 years ago, little groups of voyagers sailing from the settled islands in the western Pacific discovered the archipelagos of Tonga and Samoa, and it was on these islands that the unique language, culture and physical traits of the first and greatest of all seafaring peoples evolved. They were labelled Polynesian by eighteenth-century French scientists, and unlike the mixed racial groups in Micronesia and Melanesia, they had one recognizable language and were generally tall, fair-skinned and muscular. They lived in small family groups scattered around their island homes, and over time developed the skills and technology necessary to make long ocean voyages.

In the last millennia BCE, about 1,000 years before the foundation of Rome, Polynesians ventured into the open Pacific. With no written language, metal tools or navigational instruments, small groups of men and women sailed into the unexplored seas to the south, southeast and north. By the thirteenth century CE, they had discovered and settled most of the islands of Oceania, from New Zealand in the south to Hawai‘i in the north, and far to the east, tiny, isolated Easter Island. There, they flourished, innocent of a greater world around them, for over 1,000 years.

The vessels that had carried them to Tonga and Samoa were improved and enlarged until they became the refined and beautiful craft that would transport them to the farthest reaches of Oceania. Each canoe was named and had significance to the community. Large, sophisticated and seaworthy, they carried everything required to spend many weeks at sea and to start a life on newly discovered islands.

A sailboat with a single sail, in the shape of a triangle, with the broad base up and the pointed tip down, sails against a orange-blue sky. Several people who are not wearing shifts are aboard the ship, and two are paddling at the back on either side. There is a small cabin at the middle of the boat and the hull consists of two narrow hulls, like a catamaran. The front and back of both hulls are curved upwards, the back about twice as much as the front.

Voyaging Polynesians

(Oil on paper, 15 x 22)

Canoes for deep-ocean voyages were double-hulled and likely between 60 and 70 feet long. The hulls were connected by a wide platform where everything needed to sustain them on long passages was stored. The Polynesians developed a sophisticated system to track their position at sea, using the stars and sun for keeping to a course, and the shape of waves to indicate the presence and location of new islands.

Chapter

2

The Lure of Cathay

Trade has long been a human preoccupation. The desire for material gain drove merchants to risk the dangers of the Silk Roads and sailors to brave unknown seas and long voyages across the world’s oceans. And not only necessities filled their holds, but luxuries—silks for Roman wives, spices for English kings, or furs for Chinese emperors. This desire for the rare and exotic motivated almost all Pacific voyages in the early age of sail, and is still a force at work today.

Mysterious Cathay has long been a powerful magnet for westerners. Since Roman times, the incredible quality, variety and artistry of Oriental goods have fascinated Western cultures, and it was the hope of profiting from these luxuries that lured fifteenth-century mariners away from European shores. Expecting to reach Cathay, they sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean, discovered the Americas, rounded Africa and South America, and crossed the Indian and Pacific Oceans to reach Southeast Asia and China (Cathay).

Nine large ships, two in the foreground, sail away, propelled by several large, square sails on four masts per boat. The sails are yellow and have numerous horizontal lines across them. Long, narrow, red flags trail from the masts and there are stylized red and yellow faces painted on the ship sterns. The ship hulls are colourful and have horizontal bands of different colours and shades, such as green, red, white and black, along the length of their hulls.

Marco Polo

(Watercolour, 15 x 22)

Around 1291 the Polos were finally allowed to leave China, and they sailed as part of a fleet of fourteen junks carrying a Mongol princess to Persia. Their sea voyage back to Venice would have been down the South China Sea, through Sunda Strait, then along the traditional monsoon track across the Indian Ocean to Ormuz.

There has been seaborne trade between East and West for at least two millennia. In Solomon’s time, Phoenician traders made voyages to the East for gold and silver, and not long after, Persian ships were reported in the Malay Archipelago. They crammed their holds with ivory, apes, and peacocks, sandalwood, cedarwood and sweet wine. As early as 200 BCE, Chinese junks, trading through Malaysia and into the Indian Ocean, reached India, Arabia and the African coast. Over the following centuries, departing from the shores of East Africa to the northern China Sea, Arab, Indian and Chinese ships worked the Indian Ocean’s dependable monsoons to make annual trading voyages between the Red Sea and China. By the ninth century CE the expanding Muslim empire occupied Spain, North Africa, Arabia and Persia, and was influential down Africa’s east coast as far as Sofala. Setting up their own trading stations, they gained control of all commerce in the Indian Ocean, and Arab ships made their way through the Strait of Malacca to the East Indies and as far as Canton, in China. Into this active and robust trading world, the first Portuguese sailed early in the sixteenth century, searching for the source of cinnamon and nutmeg.

Marco Polo

The earliest westerners to see the Pacific went not by sea but by land, and the first popular written descriptions of China to reach Latin Christendom were provided by the western world’s first adventure-travel writer, the Venetian Marco Polo. He was in China for almost seventeen years, and thirty years after his return to Venice he dictated his memoirs to a writer named Rustichello of Pisa while they languished together in a Genoa jail. It is one of the epic travel journals of all time, and Marco Polo’s vivid descriptions of the rich and complex cultures of the Orient were a revelation.

The Polos were a family of Venetian merchants who in 1260 braved the perils of the Silk Road, travelling into Muslim and Mongol territories and eventually reaching China and the imperial court of Kublai Khan. In 1271 Marco Polo accompanied his uncle and father on their second trading enterprise. In China he enjoyed the favour of Kublai Khan and was his emissary on many imperial missions. Although technically he didn’t sail in the Pacific, Marco Polo was aware that he was on the western shores of a large ocean. He knew of lands offshore to the east, possibly Taiwan and Cipangu (Japan), and he made a voyage to the East Indies.

In reality Marco Polo was a captive of Kublai Khan, and when he was finally allowed to return home in 1299, he followed a long-established sailing route from eastern China through the Strait of Malacca to India and on to Hormuz, in the Persian Gulf. It was an ancient pattern of trade in which Indian and Arab merchants congregated at Malacca to exchange furs, wool, wood, hemp, tar, copper, zinc, lead, iron, silver and slaves for luxury goods: spices, silks and precious decorative wares from the Orient. These riches they carried back to India and on to Egypt or to Venice and eventually to the rest of Europe.

Marco Polo’s narrative may have engendered the idea that the farthest lands of the known world could be reached by sea, for when Columbus headed west in 1492, he firmly believed the first land he encountered would be China.

Chapter

3

The Magical Powers of Spice

On September 25, 1513, the Spanish conquistador Vasco Nuñez Balboa, trekking across the Isthmus of Panama from the Atlantic side, emerged on an open mountaintop and saw what no European had seen before. Below him stretched a limitless expanse of ocean, and because his view across the isthmus was southerly, he named it Mar del Sur (the South Sea). With the characteristic arrogance of the time, he claimed the ocean and all it contained for Spain, in the names of the kings of Castile, present and future. The events that led to this auspicious moment had been brewing far away for more than a century.

Fifteenth-century Europe had long emerged from the Dark Ages and was about to enter a remarkable period of expansion, exploration and enlightenment. Europeans had enjoyed the fruits of trade with India and the Orient since Roman times, but they still had only a vague and romantic notion of the region’s geography, customs and religions, ideas mainly derived from tales told by Persian and Arab traders, who had visited China since at least the seventh century. Although Marco Polo had vividly described the wonders of the Orient, to westerners everything east of the Euphrates was still a mystery, though a source of expensive and exotic luxuries. For the next 300 years the riches of the Orient were the magnet that excited adventurers, mainly Christians, to risk their lives in search of sea routes to eastern shores.

A map of the Pacific Ocean. North Pacific Ocean and South Pacific Ocean are labeled. There are three lines across the ocean. The blue one goes from central America to the Philippines. The green lines goes from the southern tip of South America to the Philippines. The red line also goes from the southern tip of South America to the Philippines.

In medieval Europe, spices were literally worth their weight in gold. They made putrefying meat palatable, were believed to cure physical disorders, were used in perfumes and as aphrodisiacs, and were essential to embalmers. And they were only found in one small region in Southeast Asia. Nestled in the tropical seas between Celebes and New Guinea lie the fragrant and spice-rich islands of the Moluccas. South of Ceram are three tiny islands called the Bandas. With a combined area of only forty square miles, they were the only place in the world where nutmeg grew. Almost impossible to find in modern atlases, in the fifteenth century these tiny islands were the obsession of European traders, and controlling access to them became the intense focus of both Spain and Portugal, and later the Dutch and English.

The long and dangerous overland routes connecting the Christian world to India and China were controlled by Mongols or Muslims who kept the source of their treasures a secret and extracted fees at every opportunity. Western traders had long dreamed of the riches to be won by sailing directly to the spice isles around Africa, and it was Portugal that took the first tentative steps into these uncharted seas. As early as 1419, Portuguese mariners had made regular voyages into the eastern Atlantic, and under the encouragement of Henry the Navigator they slowly extended their voyages down the west coast of Africa. After Bartholomew Dias doubled the southern tip of Africa in 1488, the way to the wealth of the Indies was revealed, and in the years 1497 to 1499 Vasco da Gama, financed by the king, sailed the first European fleet to India and back.

After the voyage of da Gama, the Portuguese quickly exploited what they now believed was their exclusive right to this route to India. They never occupied large territories. Instead, they relied on well-armed ships and fortified posts to protect their lucrative trade, and by 1512 their vessels were returning to Lisbon laden with spices. By 1520 Portugal had driven out Muslim and Indian competitors and now dominated the seas of southern Asia. In 1543 their ships reached Japan, and regular trade began. In less than a hundred years, Portugal had grown from a small, resource-poor country bordering an uncharted, hostile ocean, to a rich and influential power. Their dominance of the spice trade was to last only until the middle of the seventeenth century, when they were forced out by the Dutch and the English.

Christopher Columbus

In the meantime, Christopher Columbus, a Genoese mariner and Portuguese citizen trained in Portuguese ships, believed that the shortest route to the spices was west across the Atlantic. In 1485 he presented his idea to the king of Portugal, but was rebuffed. He renounced his Portuguese citizenship and took his proposal to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, where he was given a much friendlier reception. In 1492, with royal blessing and support, his party crossed the Atlantic to the Bahamas in the Pinta, Niña and Santa María. He explored part of Hispaniola and Cuba, then, firmly believing he had reached fabled Cathay, returned to Spain with little gold but much enthusiasm. The Spanish rejoiced in the belief that they now possessed a western route, uncontested by the Portuguese, to the riches of the Spice Islands. In 1494, papal approval was given to the Treaty of Tordesillas, which divided the entire undiscovered world between Portugal and Spain. Unbeknownst to them, this included the largest ocean in the world, and two continents: one containing a city larger than London or Paris; the other, an organized civilization stretching farther than the Roman Empire.

Chapter

4

Ferdinand Magellan, First Around

An extraordinarily ambitious and confident soldier and navigator was about to change the course of history. Born around 1480 to minor nobility in Portugal, Fernão Magalhães was orphaned around the age of eleven and sent to the royal court in Lisbon, where he later became a junior officer in the Portuguese army. As a king’s soldier, he participated in campaigns on the African coast and in India. In 1511 he was part of the fleet that captured Malacca, which controlled the western sea route to the Spice Islands, and he was with the fleet dispatched from Malacca to those islands.

Magellan, as he is remembered by the English, returned to Portugal a seasoned soldier and competent navigator, nurturing the idea that the Moluccas could be reached from the east if a passage around the American continents could be found. Several times he offered the king of Portugal his services to search for a route but, like Columbus, was repeatedly rebuffed. The king disliked Magellan and eventually told him he was free to offer his services elsewhere. Magellan renounced his Portuguese nationality and in October 1517 took his proposal to the Spanish court in Seville.

Several large ships sail against an orange-blue sky. One ship is in the foreground, it's five sails billowing forwards. There are red symbols resembling crosses on three sails. The ship has three masts.

Atlantic Sunset

(Watercolour, 15 x 22)

Magellan’s fleet of five little ships on their first night at sea, at the beginning of a momentous voyage, the first circumnavigation of the globe. Two years and ten and a half months later, only Victoria would return, and of the 250 sailors who had sailed on September 20, 1519, only eighteen would survive.

Spain had just emerged from centuries of domination by the Moors and was burning with religious fervour and national pride. It was also reaping the benefits of its conquests in the New World and was keen to extend its territories and to bring the Catholic faith to the rest of the world.

Just as Columbus had done, Magellan promised Spain a new, uncontested route to the Spice Islands. He was given a much warmer reception at the Spanish court and was granted a Royal Charter on March 22, 1518, with the finances to pursue his dream. Eighteen months later, on September 20, 1519, the five small ships of the Armada de Molucca sailed from the Guadalquivir River into the Atlantic.

The fleet consisted of Victoria (under Magellan’s command), San Antonio, Trinidad, Santiago and Concepción, all small, armed merchantmen. Santiago was a caravel, the rest probably naos: stubby, slow, three-masted vessels, square-rigged on the fore and main masts, and lateen-rigged on the mizzen. All were old and patched, with ribs soft as butter, according to Alvarez da Costa, the Portuguese ambassador. And, unknown to Magellan, all were poorly provisioned. On board was a Venetian nobleman adventurer, Antonio Pigafetta, whose daily journal provides the most detailed account of the epic voyage.

The same ships that appeared in the previous painting are now sailing towards the viewpoint against grey skies. The ship that is closest is firing a cannon. The same red, cross-like symbols appear on all the sails.

Momentous Day

(Watercolour, 15 x 22)

Wednesday, November 28, 1520, we debouched from that strait, engulfing ourselves in the Pacific Sea, wrote Antonio Pigafetta. Reduced to three ships, Magellan’s little fleet was about to face one of the most appalling ocean passages in history. Their first safe anchorage was 6,000 miles to the west, and before they reached it they would be reduced to eating rats and the leather chaffing gear from the masts.

March 31, 1520, found them anchored in Port San Julian, on the southern coast of Argentina, preparing to wait out the winter. Magellan’s voyage to this point had been far from easy. The Atlantic crossing was beset by fierce gales and maddening calms. Because Magellan was Portuguese, the young Spanish hidalgos commanding the other four ships resented and disputed his authority, and he had to put down a mutiny in the Atlantic. In Port San Julian, the mutinous feelings came to a head. Two Spanish captains, Mendoza and Quesada, conspired to seize three of the ships. Magellan’s reaction was swift, brutal and decisive. Two days later, when the mutiny was quelled, Mendoza—whose throat had been cut—was drawn and quartered. Quesada and five others were condemned to death, but only Quesada was immediately beheaded. The rest were kept at hard labour for the rest of their stay. Captain Cartagena learned nothing from this episode. He and a chaplain, Pero Sanchez de Reina, were caught stirring up the men to further mutiny and were left behind when the fleet sailed, never to be seen again. The corpses of Mendoza and Quesada were hung in gibbets on Gallows Hill, where their remains were still visible when Drake arrived fifty-eight years later.

Magellan’s troubles were not over. While careening the ships in San Julian Bay, it was discovered that they had been cheated by the chandlers in Spain. Instead of provisions for a year and a half, they had barely enough for six months. Santiago was dispatched to look for anything to supplement their supplies but was caught in a storm on a lee shore and lost, further reducing the expedition’s meagre resources.

During the frigid weeks at anchor, a very tall, almost naked man appeared on shore, dancing and singing and throwing dust on his head. He was received with friendly gestures and presents. More people, including women, soon joined. They were all tall and wore only llama skins for warmth. Heavy skins wrapped around their feet and ankles gave them the appearance of having very large feet and earned them the name Patagones (Big Feet). Relations deteriorated when Magellan tried to abduct some of them. A crewman was killed in the attempt, and afterwards the Patagonians were understandably hostile to any Europeans.

The four remaining ships left Port San Julian in August and continued south, exploring every indentation on the coast, looking for a westward-trending strait. October 21 found