journeys of the great explorers - columbus to cook (booklet).pdf

8/22/2019 Journeys of the Great Explorers - Columbus To Cook (Booklet).pdf

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Professor Glyndwr WilliamsUNIVERSITY OF LONDON

JOURNEYS OF THE

GREAT EXPLORERSCOLUMBUS TO COOK

COURSE GUIDE


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Journeys of the Great Explorers:Columbus to Cook

Professor Glyndwr (Glyn) WilliamsUniversity of London

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Journeys of the Great Explorers:

Columbus to Cook

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Executive EditorDonna F. Carnahan

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Director - Matthew Cavnar

COURSE GUIDE

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Lecture content 2004 by Glyndwr WilliamsCourse Guide 2004 by Recorded Books, LLC

72004 by Recorded Books, LLC

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#UT043 ISBN: 978-1-4025-8200-4

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Course Syllabus

Journeys of the Great Explorers:

Columbus to Cook

About Your Professor ......................................................................................................4

Introduction ......................................................................................................................5

Lecture 1 The World Before Columbus ....................................................................6

Lecture 2 The Voyages of Christopher Columbus ..................................................12

Lecture 3 The Voyage of Vasco da Gama and the

Sea Road to the East............................................................................18

Lecture 4 The First Circumnavigation:The Voyage of Ferdinand Magellan ........................................................24

Lecture 5 The Second Circumnavigation:The Voyage of Francis Drake..................................................................30

Lecture 6 The Tools of Discovery............................................................................36

Lecture 7 Life at Sea................................................................................................42

Lecture 8 Voyages of Delusion:The Search for the Northwest Passage ..................................................47

Lecture 9 The Pacific Ocean:The Great Unknown ................................................................................52

Lecture 10 The Rambling Voyages of William Dampier ........................................57

Lecture 11 Vitus Bering and the Russian Discovery of America ..............................62

Lecture 12 The Pacific Voyages of James Cook ......................................................68

Lecture 13 The Revolution in Navigation and Health................................................75

Lecture 14 The World After Cook ..............................................................................80

Nautical Terms ..............................................................................................................85

Course Materials............................................................................................................86

Recorded Books ............................................................................................................87


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4

Dr. Williams has been a professor of history at Queen Mary, University ofLondon, since 1974, and was appointed Emeritus Professor in 1997. He hastraveled and lectured in the United States, Canada, Australia, the WestIndies, and Jamaica and has held visiting appointments at many universitiesoutside Britain. Among his awards and honors are a D. Litt. from MemorialUniversity, Newfoundland; a D. Litt. from La Trobe University, Melbourne; theElizabeth Laird Distinguished Lectureship at the University of Winnipeg(1992); and the Caird Medal of the National Maritime Museum, London,awarded for services to maritime history (1994). Among the named lectures

he has given are the E.G.R. Taylor Lecture (London, 1978), the Caird Lecture(London, 1995), the Bernard Bailyn Lecture (Melbourne, 1999), and the JohnKemble Memorial Lecture (The Huntington Library, 2000). In July 1999, hewas presented with a volume of essays, Pacific Empires, by colleagues and

former students, published in his honor by Melbourne University Press.

Dr. Williams is vice president of the Hakluyt Society and a member of theeditorial boards of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, the

Mariners Mirror, the Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History, the OxfordCompanion to Exploration, and the History of Cartography (University of

Chicago Press). In 2001-2002, he served as historical consultant on the BBCtelevision series, The Ship, on Captain Cooks first Pacific voyage.

Dr. Williams research and writing have been mainly on the exploration ofthe Pacific and North America. His dozen books and thirty articles includeVoyages of Delusion: The Search for the Northwest Passage in the Age of

Reason, The Prize of All Oceans: The Triumph and Tragedy of Ansons

Voyage Round the World, The Voyages of Captain Cook, The Great South

Sea: English Voyages and Encounters 1570-1750, and Voyages to HudsonBay in Search of a Northwest Passage 1741-1747, with William Barr. Hiscurrent commitments include work on the Hakluyt Societys multivolumeedition of The Malaspina Expedition 1789-1794 and the editing of a

collection of papers to be published in 2004, Captain Cook: Explorationsand Reassessments.

PhotographcourtesyofGlyndwrWilliams

About Your Professor

Glyndwr Williams


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Introduction

ne of the most dra-matic periods in

world history is the

age of Europes discovery ofthe world from Columbusand da Gama in the late fif-teenth century to the voy-ages of James Cook in theeighteenth century. Theextent of the changes canbe seen by comparing thepre-Columbian maps, whichshowed no knowledge ofeither the Americas or thePacific, with those of 1800,

which in terms of projection, scale, and content approximate todays maps. Inthese lectures, the most important discovery voyages, the individual character-istics of their commanders, and the endurance of their crews will be described.Interspersed with accounts of individual voyages will be lectures that explainthe more general and technical aspects of the voyages: improvements in shipdesign and navigation, constraints of wind and current, living conditions onboard ship, and problems of health and discipline. Special attention will be

paid to the controversies that developed from some of these voyages.

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isc

In addition to the readings and resources included in this guide, the resources

below will enhance your overall knowledge of the Age of Exploration.

Further Readings

New Worlds: The Great Voyages of Discovery 1400-1600 by Ronald H. Fritz(2003). An up-to-date, well-illustrated survey.

Encyclopedia of Exploration to 1800 by Raymond John Howgego (2003). A mas-sive reference work with biographies of all the worlds significant explorers up tothe early nineteenth century.

The Age of Reconnaissance by J.H. Parry (1981). Still the best short account ofthe early European discovery voyages and their background.

The Times Atlas of Exploration (1991). A valuable aid with a skillful mix of textand maps.

Periodicals

Among scholarly journals that publish articles on voyages and voyages areMariners Mirror, American Neptune, Northern Mariner, and Great Circle. ImagoMundi is a leading journal on the history of cartography.

Website

Many of the original journals and accounts of the explorers discussed in thiscourse have been published in scholarly, annotated editions by the HakluytSociety, London.

http://www.hakluyt.com


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orld maps of the fif-teenth century were

filled by three great landmasses: Europe, Asia, and Africa.They showed no sign of the

Americas or of Australia, and therewas a massive preponderance of

land over sea. There were tradingand other exchanges between thethree known continents, but little inthe way of direct contact.

Most lucrative was the overlandtrade in Asian spices and silks,dominated at its consumer end byVenice on one side of theMediterranean and Egypt on the

other. This trade was brutally inter-rupted when the Mongol con-quests of the thirteenth centuryunder the leadership of GenghisKhan spread destruction acrosshuge areas of Asia from China toPersia, and at its high-water markeven reached the Balkans and theMiddle East. However, once the

fighting died down, much of Asiawas left under the unified controlof the Mongols, and this madelong-distance travel slightly easier,especially as the Mongols estab-lished a system of posts wheretravellers could change horses.

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Before beginning this lecture you may want to . . .Read John Larners Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World.

Consider this . . .

1. Did Norse sailors reach America 500 years before Columbus?

2. Why did Europeans think of the Atlantic as an island-filled ocean?

3. Why was the fifteenth-century rediscovery of the work of a second-century geographer important?

LECTUREONE

Lecture 1:

The World Before Columbus

0 THE TREASURES OF THE INDIES

Centuries before Columbus sailed, Arabs

had well-established trade routes on bothland and sea as far east as the Moluccasand as far south as present-day Kenya.These routes had proven economicallysuccessful not only to the Arabs, but alsoto their European trading partners aroundthe Mediterranean.

The bazaars of Cairo, Jerusalem, andBaghdad displayed sacks of nutmeg, pep-

per, mace, cinnamon, cloves, and otherexotic, palate-enhancing spices. Silk, cot-ton, and colorful dyes made their way tothe fashion-conscious aristocracy through-out Europe.

Not least of all, Europeans set out on dan-gerous expeditions in search of adventureand fame along with wealth and title spon-sored by monarchs wishing to extend their

realms and reap further fortune. Thus, theAge of Exploration was born.

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By the fourteenth century, merchants from Genoa and Venice had opened adirect trade with India and China. Few of these left any record of their travels,the exception being the Venetian merchant Marco Polo.

Soon after Polos time, major changes began to take place in the Mongolempire. The western Khans became Muslim and blocked Christian travellersmoving through their domains. In the mid-fifteenth century, the Buddhist Mingdynasty established itself in China and took up a consistently antiforeignstance. In Europe, Polos account continued to be read, but it described an

Asian world that had since changed dramatically.

Generally, Europeans regarded the outside world with apprehension andsuspicion. Outside the battlements of medieval Christendom swirled misty

and monstrous shapes: giants, troglodytes, men with six arms, unipeds, her-maphrodites, cannibalsaberrant, sub-human figures moving on the edge ofthe known world. Columbus wrote almost apologetically after his voyage of1492, I have so far found no human monstrosities, as many expected.

Amerigo Vespucci, describing his explorations along the coast of SouthAmerica, made up for this with lurid details of polygamy, human sacrifice, andcannibalism among the native inhabitants.

As far as Africa was concerned, European contacts were limited to itsMediterranean littoral, where European merchants traded and European

mercenaries served in the Muslim armies. The first recorded attempt toexplore the coast of West Africa was made by the Vivaldi brothers fromGenoa in 1291, but neither that nor a later attempt by sailors from Majorca in1346 succeeded.

The east coast of Africa had been reached by Chinese fleets in the earlyfifteenth century, but there is no conclusive evidence that they rounded theCape of Good Hope. How far south Africa extended, and indeed whetherthere was a sea passage around its tip or whether it was joined to a frigidsouthern continent, was a matter of speculation.

In terms of general European knowledge of the outside world, there had notbeen much development from ancient times, when three continents wereknown, and there were vague reports of further lands in the antipodes (which,however, no one had seen). There was certainly no anticipation of huge con-tinents across the ocean west of Europe.

In the medieval period, there were reports of several voyages out intothe Atlantic. The earliest of these concerned the Island of Seven Cities, sup-posedly founded by seven bishops who fled west across the ocean from

Portugal at the time of the Moorish invasion in the eighth century. By the fif-teenth century, maps showed this island in various parts of the Atlantic, oftenwith the name Antilla (the opposite island).

Another story was that of the Irish saint, Brendan, who in the sixth centuryundoubtedly made voyages that took him to island groups lying off the Britishmainlandthe Shetlands and the Hebrides and perhaps the Faroes. By


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about the year 1000, the story of his voyages appeared in a more elaborateform, which took him to wondrous landsranging from Iceland to theCaribbean islands.

In a different category altogether were the voyages from Norway onEuropes northern edge, which have come down to us in the form of sagas or

folk tales. The Norsemen, hemmed in on the narrow coastal strips ofScandinavia, went to sea in search of land and plunder in open, square-sailed ships. They reached Iceland, then Greenland in the tenth century, andat the end of the century lands west of Greenland.

We now know for certain that there was a Norse settlement on the northeastcoast of Newfoundland, excavated in the 1960s. The Norse were the firstEuropeans known to have discovered parts of America, and this five cen-turies before Columbus. The American settlement or settlements were proba-bly short-lived, and climactic changes and Inuit incursions also led in the end

MARCO POLO

Travelling with members of his family, Marco Polo reached China and the courtof the Great Khan, Kublai Khan. Marco spent seventeen years as an official of theMongol ruler, and during this time he continued to travel widely through landstotally unknown to Europeans.

In the 1290s, he eventually returned to Venice by seafrom China to Java,India, Persia, and Constantinople, and during a spell as a prisoner of war, wrote anarrative of his travels that was soon translated into all the main European lan-guages. It was a mix of fact and fiction, detailed observation and fanciful elabora-

tionso much so that some at the time and since have queried whether Polo evermade the travels described. His most recent biographer (John Larner) has arguedpersuasively that he did, and certainly there can be no doubting the impact thathis description of the riches of the East had on his contemporaries and those whocame later. It was first printed in 1483, and it is known that Columbus possesseda copy, which survives with his handwritten notes in the margin, although whetherthese were made before or after his first voyage is not certain.

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LECTUREONE

Marco Polo and

family members arehonored by KublaiKhan with a royalprocession atoptrained elephants.

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to the abandonment of theGreenland colony.

Ironically, while tales about theSeven Bishops and St Brendancontinued to circulate in late

medieval Europe, knowledge of theNorse discoveries vanished. It wasa sign perhaps of the distance, bothgeographical and intellectual,between Scandinavia and theMediterranean.

The medieval belief that the west-ern ocean was full of islands wasreinforced by the voyages of

Mediterranean sailors in the four-teenth century through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the open Atlantic, fol-lowed by Portuguese seamen. They found a succession of islands or islandgroupsMadeira, the Canary Islands, the Azores. Some were identified withthe islands of myth and legend, but more often those islands were pushedfarther west into the ocean so that maps showed two island chainsone ofactual islands, discovered and mapped, the otherinfinitely shifting andchangingof islands we know existed only in the imaginationAntilla, theIsland of Seven Cities, the Fortunate Isles of St Brendan, the Isle of Brazil.

Farther west still were lands described by Marco PoloCipangu (Japan)and Cathay (China).

Columbus had sailed to Iceland in 1477, possibly in a Bristol ship, at a timewhen Bristol merchants were looking for islands in the Atlantic. In 1481, twoships left Bristol to search for the Isle of Brasile, and there has been somespeculation that they actually reached some part of Americaeleven yearsbefore Columbuss voyage.

Away from the world of practical seamen, the fifteenth century was markedby the rediscovery of the writings and maps of the second-century geograph-er Ptolemy. By the 1480s, there were printed copies of his world map, whichrepresented one view of the world just before the great age of seaborneexploration. Africa was shown joined to an Antarctic continent, so that theIndian Ocean was landlocked. And it was, of course, a world without

America. In compensation for the lost continent, the Old World of Asia andEurope was elongated, and because the size of the globe was underestimat-ed by about 25 percent, the two errors made it appear that western Europeand eastern Asia were not impossibly far apart.

Even closer in time and outlook to Columbus was Martin Behaims globe of1492the earliest surviving terrestrial globe. This showed an Atlantic Oceanfilled with a familiar mix of islands stretching westwardthe Canaries, Antilla,and so on, then the great island of Cipangu and the smaller one of Cathay,and finally an unexplored north-south coastline, that of Asia. The way wasopen for Columbuss first voyage.

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Great monsters inhabited the minds, if not the

seas, of the earliest explorers and sailors.

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LECTUREONE

MARTIN BEHAIM

Martin Behaim was born October 6, 1459, in Nrnberg, Germany.Behaim is best known as the geographer who invented the NrnbergTerrestrial Globe.

After traveling to Portugal around the year 1480, Behaim served as

an advisor on navigation to King John II. Some credit him as the firstto introduce the brassastrolabe (wood models were in use at the time). Behaim, assisted bypainter Georg Glockendon, completed his globe in 1492. While inaccu-rate, his globenevertheless stands as an important entry in the history of navigation.The globe is now kept in the German National Museum in Nrnberg.

(Source: Martin Behaim. Encyclopdia Britannica. 2004. Encyclopdia BritannicaPremium Service.)

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What was Columbus likely to have known about the world before his voyageof 1492?

Larner, John. Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World. New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press, 1999.

Bentley, Jerry H. Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts andExchanges in Pre-Modern Times. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Bovill, Edward William. The Golden Trade of the Moors: West AfricanKingdoms in the Fourteenth Century. Princeton, NJ: Markus WienerPublishers, 1995.

Fernndez-Armesto, Felipe. Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonisation

from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987.

Jones, Gwyn. The North Atlantic Saga: Being the Norse Voyages of Discovery.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Levathes, Louise. When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the

Dragon Throne, 1400-1433. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Phillips, J.R.S. The Medieval Expansion of Europe. 2nd edition. New York:Oxford University Press, 1998.

Rossabi, Morris. Voyager from Xanadu: Rabban Sauma and the First Journeyfrom China to the West. Tokyo, Kondasha, 1992.

Anonymous. The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America. Narrated by

Norman Dietz and George Guidall. UNABRIDGED Recorded Books, 1990.3 cassettes/3.5 hours.

Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar Nuez. Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America.Narrated by George Guidall. SELECTIONS Recorded Books, 1994.3 cassettes/4.5 hours.

Polo, Marco. The Travels of Marco Polo. Narrated by George Guidall.

SELECTIONS Recorded Books, 1994. 9 cassettes/12 hours.

To order Recorded Books, call 1-800-638-1304 or go to

www.modernscholar.com. Also available for rental.

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FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING

Essay

Suggested Reading

Other Books of Interest

Recorded Books


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he daring crossing of theAtlantic in 1492 by the sonof a Genoese weaver,

Christopher Columbus, proved tobe the most famous discoveryvoyage in history.

Columbuss first Atlantic voyagewas the result of individual perse-verance and much misunder-standing of world geography. Hewas looking not for a new conti-nent, but for an old one, for the

Asia and its wealth so vividlydescribed in Marco Polosaccount. His grand design wasbased on two fundamental mis-conceptionsthat the earth wasabout 25 percent smaller than itactually is and that Asia extendedmuch farther east than it does.

By 1484, Columbus had drawnup his project, but it was turneddown by Portugal, France, andSpain. It was Spain, however,

newly united under Isabel ofCastile and Ferdinand of Aragon,that paid most serious attentionto Columbuss grand design.

After various committees ofexperts had reported against hisplan, the monarchs intervened togive it their support.

Before beginning this lecture you may want to . . .

Read Samuel E. Morrisons Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life ofChristopher Columbus.

Consider this . . .

1. Was Columbuss reputation deserved?

2. Why did Columbus cling to the notion that his new discoverieswere Asian?

3. Did Columbuss visionary nature obscure his skill as a practical seaman?

Lecture 2:

The Voyages of Christopher Columbus

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0 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

(1451-1506)Columbus was born about 1451 in Genoa

in what is now Italy. The date of his birth isin doubt, as no written record of it or hisbaptism exists. His father, Domenico, was aweaver and keeper of a city gate throughpolitical connections. Susanna Fontana-rossa, his mother, was the daughter of aweaver. Columbus was the oldest survivingchild of the union. He had two brothers,

Bartholomew and Giacomo (Diego inSpanish), and a sister, Bianchinetta.

Columbus traveled first to Portugal andthen to Spain to make his way in life. Hispursuit of social elevationand wealthprovided him the necessary motives for hislater journeys.

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EARLY COLUMBUS

In a biography by his son Ferdinand,Columbus took to the sea at the age offourteen and followed it ever after. Thevoyages of his earliest years at seawere confined to the Mediterranean

Sea and ports of call along theRepublic of Genoas trading network.

On a merchant voyage in 1476 des-tined for the British Isles, the ship onwhich Columbus sailed was sunk bypirates just off the west coast ofPortugal. Columbus survived by cling-ing to an oar and washed up in Lagos.This proved fortuitous, as the home of

Prince Henry the Navigator was the portfrom which many of the early Portugueseexplorers sailed. The intrepid youth learnedmuch while there.

Columbus made his way to Lisbon and for a timewas a cartographer there with his younger brother,Bartholomew. In 1477, he sailed on another Genoese ship toBristol in England and (most likely on a British ship) to Galway in Ireland andThuletodays Iceland.

During 1478-79, Columbus traveled again to England and to the islands ofthe eastern Atlantic, including the Azores, the Canaries, and Madeira, wherehe met and married Dona Felipa Moniz Perestrello in 1479. In 1482 and 1484,Columbus made two voyages to So Jorge da Mina on the west African coast.Columbus lived in Madiera for a number of years before his most famous voyagesof exploration.

(Source: Zvi Dor-Ners Columbus and the Age of Discovery, William-Morrow and Co., Inc., 1991.)

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The decision to fit out an expedition was made, much of the finance comingfrom a Genoese banker and a treasury official. Columbus himself was toreceive a share (one-tenth) of the profits made from his discoveries, togetherwith the title of Admiral of the Ocean Sea, which showed that Columbus wasnot sent to look for new continents, but rather for islands that would provide

stepping stones on the new route to Asia.The First Voyage, 1492-1493

For all its portentous consequences, Columbuss first crossing of the Atlanticwith three small vessels was a low-key affair. The little fleet left the Canarieson September 6, 1492, and sailed west into the unknown. It was a smooth,uneventful voyage, though there is evidence of crew anxiety about theirreturn as the weeks passed.


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Landfall was finally made on October 12 at a small island, probably in theBahamas, whose identity has been hotly disputed. Watlings Island (nowknown by Columbuss name of San Salvador) is the favourite, but there areother contenders, such as Samana Cay.

For Columbus, dreaming of Asian riches, the native inhabitants wereunimpressivepoor in everything, he noted, and as naked as the daythey were born. Even so, to him they were Indians, a name that was immedi-ately adopted.

As he headed south, he reached the large islands of Cuba and Hispaniola,more populous and varied than the tiny islands of the Bahamas, but still notobviously Asian. Columbuss flagship, the Santa Maria, was wrecked or scut-tled off Hispaniola and the crew were left behind to establish a settlement(none survived). Columbus sailed for home in his two remaining vessels, tak-ing with him some natives and specimens of animal, bird, and plant life fromthe Caribbean to prove that he had found land across the Atlantic.

The Second Voyage, 1493-1496, and the Third Voyage, 1498-1500

Columbus remained convinced that the islands he found on this and suc-ceeding voyages were part of an Asian archipelago, that they were theIndies. However, he made an interesting comment when he reached theSouth American mainland on his third voyage. I believe that this is anotherworld, hitherto unknown, he wrote. Whether or not Columbus had reached

outlying parts of Asia or hitherto unknown lands, there was no mistakingSpains determination to exploit his discoveries.

Columbuss second voyage in 1493 was made with seventeen ships and1200 or more settlers, and soon an ambitious programme of settlement andexploitation was under way.

For the rest of his life, Columbus awkwardly tried to combine further explo-ration with his role of governor of the newfound lands. He was more success-

Landfall:

*San Salvador, Bahamas

October 12, 1492

*The exact location is still a matter

of controversy.

Outbound Track

Return Track

The First Voyage of Columbus

August 3, 1492March 15, 1493

The First Voyage of Columbus

August 3, 1492March 15, 1493

Landfall:

*San Salvador, Bahamas

October 12, 1492

*The exact location is still a matter

of controversy.

Graphi-Ogre - France

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ful in the first, as he criss-crossed the Caribbean and reached the SouthAmerican mainland on both his third and fourth voyages. The first voyage isthe one that secured his fame, but the amount of detailed exploration he car-ried out on his next three voyages was remarkable. Still, he was sent homefrom his third voyage in chains, despite the grand title that he held as Viceroy

and Governor General of the Islands and Mainland of Asia and the Indies.The Fourth Voyage, 1502-1504

Columbuss fourth and last voyage was another attempt to reach Asia. Hecarried with him written credentials to show to any Portuguese he met in

Asian waters, and he had Arab interpreters on board for the moment hereached seas dominated by Muslim ships. But he once again faced opposi-tion and mutiny. He returned to Spain for the last time in 1504, just before thedeath of his patron Queen Isabel, and when he died in 1506, he was anembittered if wealthy man. He had discovered, without realising, a new conti-

nent, and, as one scholar has pointed out, was for a time governor of moreterritory than even the Great Khan whom he had sought.

After Columbus

In 1500, a Portuguese trading fleet under Pedro Alvares Cabral, bound forIndia, was blown off course and reached Brazil. At the same time other expedi-tions were exploring the same region. The Florentine-born navigator, AmerigoVespucci, not only made voyages to Brazil, but put forward inflated claims inprint to his own prowess and insisted that the southern lands he had discov-

ered were part of a New World, Mundus Novus.

In 1507, the year after Columbuss death, Martin Waldseemullers map paidtribute to Vespucci by marking the name America across South America,which was shown as a great landmass floating in the ocean east of Asia. Soonthe name extended over Central and North America as well, though Spain forlong continued to use the term las Indias, the Indies.

Seamen in the North Atlantic also found lands that seemed to bear no rela-tion to descriptions of Asia. The Venetian-born navigator John Cabot was

convinced that Asia and Europe lay nearer to each other in northern latitudesthan in the tropics, and in 1497, with the support of Henry VII of England, hesailed from Bristol in a single small vessel and headed out into the Atlantic.

After a months voyage, Cabot crossed the great cod banks of Newfoundlandto land somewhere on the northeast coast of America, probably on the eastcoast of Newfoundland.

On a follow-up voyage the next year, Cabot and a small fleet of ships waslost at sea, but he was soon followed into northern waters by the Portuguesebrothers, Gaspar and Miguel Corte-Real, who reached Greenland,

Newfoundland, and Labrador.The definitive voyage from this point of view was the French one command-

ed by Giovanni da Verrazzano, who in 1524 sailed along 1500 miles of theNorth American coastline from South Carolina to Nova Scotia. By now therewas no doubt that a new continent existed.

Exploration was followed by conquest and exploitation. The Spanish con-quest was a brutal exercise of armed might over native peoples from the


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AMERIGO VESPUCCI(1454-1512)

An Italian navigator andexplorer involved in severalearly voyages to the newworld, Amerigo Vespucciwas the navigator of Ojedasexpedition of 1499-1500 andmade the claim of discover-

ing a New World.

Caribbean islands to Mexico and Peru. In Europe, there was a shift of powerfrom the Mediterranean to the Atlantic as the influx of American silver broughta marked if temporary increase in power to Spain, and finally the emergenceof rival imperial powers in the form of the Dutch, French, and English.

In todays postcolonial world, the exploits of Europeans overseas in the fif-

teenth and sixteenth centuries are regarded with disapproval. Some stillregard the explorers as heroic figures, innocent of the crimes againsthumanity perpetrated by many who followed them. Columbus Day is still cel-ebrated in the United Statesregardless of the fact that Columbus neverreached any part of North America and indeed refused to believe in the exis-tence of an American continent. More critical commentators point out thatthe motives of the explorers were to find riches, acquire land, and savebenighted souls for God. They were men of their age, conscious agents ofan aggressive imperialism.

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Has Columbuss importance been exaggerated?

Morrison Eliot, Samuel. Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher

Columbus. New York: Little, Brown & Company, 1991.

Columbus, Christopher. The Diario of Christopher Columbuss First Voyage.

Oliver Dunn and James E. Kelley, Jr. (eds.). Norman, OK: University ofOklahoma Press, 1989.

Columbus, Ferdinand. The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus by HisSon Ferdinand. Benjamin Keen (trans.). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers

University Press, 1959.

Fernndez-Armesto, Felipe. Columbus. London: Duckworth Publishers, 1996.

Lestringant, Frank. Mapping the Renaissance World: The GeographicalImagination in the Age of Discovery. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1994.

Morison, S.E. The Great Explorers: The European Discovery of America(Columbus, Cabot, Magellan, Verrazzano). Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1978.

Pope, Peter E. The Many Landfalls of John Cabot. Toronto: University of

Toronto Press, 1997.

Sale, Kirkpatrick. The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the

Columbian Legacy. New York: Plume, 1991.

1. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/columbus1.html

Extracts from the diaries of Christopher Columbus on-line from the MedievalSource Book site.

2. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/columbus2.html

Columbuss letter to the Queen and King of Spain, 1494, on-line from theMedieval Source Book site.

3. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1497cabot-3docs.html

Three documents regarding John Cabots Atlantic crossing in 1497 from wit-nesses whose information may have come from Cabot directly.

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Essay

Suggested Reading


Websites to Visit


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Before beginning this lecture you may want to . . .Read Sanjay Subrahmanyams The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama.

Consider this . . .

Why was Portugal more interested in exploring the coast of West Africathan in crossing the Atlantic?

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ive years after Columbus firstcrossed the Atlantic, thePortuguese nobleman and

soldier, Vasco da Gama, made thelonger voyage around the Cape ofGood Hope and into the commer-cial world of the Indian Ocean. The

two voyages have always beenlinked, for their repercussions wereimmense. In his famous book of1776, The Wealth of Nations,

Adam Smith wrote, The discoveryof America, and that of a passageto the East Indies by the Cape ofGood Hope are the two greatestand most important events record-

ed in the history of mankind.During the fourteenth century,

Europeans reached what may becalled Europes offshore islands,lying west of the Strait of Gibraltarand the northwest coast of Africa:the Canary Islands, Madeira, andthe Azores. Portugal, under its ableand ambitious King John I (1385-

1433), took a more serious interestin the islands. Overseas ventures,especially those directed at theMuslim world, were an offshoot ofthe crusading movement, which hada strong appeal to the turbulentPortuguese nobility. The conquest

Lecture 3:

The Voyage of Vasco da Gama and the

Sea Road to the East

f

0 VASCO da GAMA(1469-1524)

The early life of Vasco da Gama is largelyunknown, but his first major foray into nauti-cal matters occured in 1492, when KingJohn II of Portugal dispatched da Gama tosieze French ships in the ports of Setbaland Algarve.

After the death of Estvo da Gama, whohad been appointed by King John II to leada Portuguese fleet to open a sea route to

Asia, Vasco took his place, and the stagewas set for his voyages of exploration.

(Source: Vasco da Gama, 1st Count da Vidigueira.

Encyclopdia Britannica. 2004. EncyclopdiaBritannica Premium Service.)

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of Ceuta in Morocco across the Strait of Gibraltar in 1415 gave Portugal afoothold on the African continent as well as its first overseas possession, andthe campaign brought to the fore the Kings favourite son, Prince Henry (Henrythe Navigator).

Prince Henry was a man driven by the lure of economic expansion, by a cru-

sading impulse, and not least by the desire for personal glory. In territorialterms, his priority was the nearby Atlantic islands, which brought Portugalcontrol of some of the more important islands in the Canary, Madeira, and

Azores groups.

Given that the islands now controlled by Portugal pointed out into theAtlantic, the next step might seem to be westward exploration towards thoseislands of rumour that might be stepping-stones towards Asia.

If Henry had followed this line of thought, then it might have been Portugal

and not Spain that crossed the Atlantic well before Columbus. But Portugalsfoothold in Morocco, on the edge of the Muslim world, exerted a differentkind of pull. First, it alerted Henry to the riches, including gold, carried by the

Arab trade routes across the Sahara. Second, some geographers speculat-ed that south of Cape Bojador a great strait cut Africa in two, and that shipscould sail through it to the fabled Christian kingdom of Prester John inEthiopia. For Prince Henry, this conjured up the possibility of a militaryalliance with Prester John that would outflank the Muslim world and makehim the greatest crusader of all. It was with these varied motives in mindthat Henry sent Portuguese vessels to begin the exploration of the unknowncoast of West Africa.

Starting in the 1420s, small craft pushed their way down the African coast.The northwest winds raised a thundering surf onshore, threatening danger toany vessel that got too close, and sending tremors of worry to crews abouthow they might return against the wind. When Cape Bojador was at lastrounded in 1434, it was some sort of triumph that the commander not onlymanaged to land but also picked some sprigs of rosemary.

Further progress was shown by the capes that appeared on the maps: in the

1440s, Cape Blanco (Branco) and then Cape Verde. This last was the west-ernmost point of Africa, and also marked the transition from the desert land-scape of the northwest coast to the more heavily populated and luxurianttropical lands of the Guinea coast.

By mid-century, a trading post had been established on Arguin Island nearCape Blanco, and in all about fifty Portuguese ships had sailed beyond thatand south of Cape Bojador. They brought back a little gold and ivory, buttheir main saleable cargo consisted of slaves seized along the coast. It wasthe beginning of a mass trade that brought high profits at an enormous cost

in human misery, and in later times this region would carry the ominous nameof the Slave Coasts.

Before Prince Henry died in 1460, the coastal stretches of the Gambia werereasonably well known, though the limitations of Portuguese knowledge canbe seen in the fact that there was still a lingering belief that a strait or greatriver might cut through from the coast all the way east to the land of PresterJohn. The trade in slaves and gold, though not of huge proportions, was


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enough to divert atten-tion from further explo-ration, and not until1469 was the south-ward movement

resumed.Then the Portuguese

pushed steadily east-ward in the Gulf ofGuinea, past the deltaof the Niger River, oneof the worlds greatwaterways, until thecoast turned south at

Fernando Po. Fromthere it stretches morethan two thousandmiles south, and asthe Portugueseworked their way alongit all thoughts of atranscontinental water-

way to the land of Prester John vanished, to be replaced by hopes of finding

a sea route to India.As Portuguese caravels got farther south and crossed the Equator, the idea

of circumnavigating Africa and crossing the sea on the other side of the conti-nent to India took hold. In 1482, John II sent Diogo Co on what was clearlya discovery expedition, which passed the outlet of the Congo River andreached Cape St Mary on the coast of Angola. On a further voyage in 1485,Co reached Cape Cross in latitude 22S, but still the coast trended south.

The final expedition sent by John II along the African coast was the mostimportant, that of Bartholomew Dias. He sailed across rather than around the

Gulf of Guinea, thus saving much time, and kept heading south past CapeCross. Both wind and current were against him, so he stood well out to sea.When he picked up the westerlies of the South Atlantic, they took him eastand past the southern tip of Africa. His landfall was east of the Cape of GoodHope near Algoa Bay. It was a historic moment, for the Indian Ocean laybefore Dias. Uneasiness among his crew forced him to turn back, and it wason the return voyage that he first sighted the cliffs of the great cape that hecalled the Cape of Storms but which (tradition has it) was renamed the Capeof Good Hope by the king.

It was during this time that John II sent overland travellers to report backboth on Ethiopia and India. There can be no doubt that by the early 1490soverland travels and Diass voyage had transformed Portuguese knowledgeof the route to India. An immediate follow-up to Diass voyage might haveseen the Portuguese arrive in India before Columbus found his own Indiesacross the Atlantic, but this did not occur. John II died in 1495, and it was leftto his young successor, Manuel I, to mount the expedition of Vasco daGama, the belated rival to Columbuss first voyage.

RonaldH.

Fritze,

2003,

SuttonPUblis

hing,

Ltd.


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Unlike Columbus or Dias, da Gama had no obvious credentials as a naviga-tor; he was a member of the minor nobility, a soldier, and a diplomat, and hisappointment was a sign that the forthcoming voyage was viewed as much asa diplomatic embassy as one of discovery. He left Portugal in July 1497 withfour ships, two specially built for the voyage, and a selection of trade goods.

The most novel aspect of the outward voyage was that instead of huggingthe African coast, da Gama struck boldly out in a southwest direction fromSierra Leone, heading for the still unknown coast of Brazil before turning eastacross the south Atlantic and towards the Cape of Good Hope. It was a bravedecision, for it meant that the ships were out of sight of land for three months(compared with the five weeks of Columbuss first oceanic crossing), but ittook advantage of the prevailing winds, and variants of his great arc, swing-ing out into the south Atlantic before turning back towards Africa, became theestablished route.

Once round the Cape of Good Hope, da Gama passed the farthest point ofDiass voyage ten years earlier and sailed north along the coast of Natal andinto an area dominated by Arab ships and traders. At Malindi, da Gama per-suaded an Arab pilot to guide him across the Indian Ocean to the Malabarcoast of India. Within a month, in late May 1498, the little fleet reachedCalicut, capital of a Hindu state and an important centre for the spice trade.The voyage had taken almost eleven months.

Da Gamas stay in Calicut was marked by misunderstanding and disappoint-ment. Having looked in vain along the east African coast for Prester John and

his Christian followers, da Gama now mistook the Hindus of Calicut forChristians. His attitude was arrogant and uncompromising, and out of keep-ing with his poor selection of trade goods, which were rejected with scorn bythe traders of Calicut. After three months, he sailed for home, losing two ofhis ships and half his men before returning to Lisbon at the end of August1499. He had shown that there was a continuous sea route from Europe toIndia, an alternative to the overland route between India and theMediterranean, but it was long and costly.

Nevertheless, King Manuel decided to follow up the reconnaissance voyageof da Gama with a much larger trading expedition under Pedro AlvaresCabralthirteen ships and fifteen hundred men. Among his captains wasBartholomew Dias. After leaving Portugal in March 1500, Cabral followed aneven more exaggerated arc out into the South Atlantic than da Gama had,and in doing so sighted the coast of Brazil. This chance discovery laid thefoundation for Brazils eventual incorporation into the Portuguese empire.Storms battered the fleet as they tried to sail round the southern tip of Africa(Diass ship was among those lost), and when Cabral reached Calicut he hadonly six ships left.

Friction with local Muslim merchants soon escalated into something like full-scale hostilities. Luckily for Cabral, other ports on the coast were willing totrade, and he returned home with a lucrative cargo of spices.

His voyage was followed by an even larger expedition, commanded oncemore by Vasco da Gama. It became a byword for death and destruction, andpaved the way for a permanent Portuguese military presence in the Indian


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Ocean. The lofty, ocean-going Portuguese ships, carrying cannon, outgunnedthe lighter local craft, while on land divisions between Muslims and Hindus

weakened opposition to the European intruders. Under Alfonso deAlbuquerque, Portugese ships captured key points on the sea road to theIndies: Ormuz in the Persian Gulf, Goa on the west coast of India, andMalacca, which controlled the vital strait between the Indian Ocean and theChina Sea. Sailing farther east still, the Portuguese reached their main goal,the Moluccas (the fabled Spice Islands), while to the north they establishedthemselves, somewhat uneasily, in Macao just off the Chinese mainland, andeven more precariously in Japan.

In an amazingly short period of time, the Portuguese had outflanked the tra-

ditional overland routes by which spices and silks reached the Mediterraneanand were poised to open up a direct, seaborne trade between the producingregions of the East and Europe. What some historians have termed theVasco da Gama era of Asian history had begun.

The Voyage of Vasco da Gama

July 8, 1497 September 9, 1499

OutboundTrack(white

arrows)

ReturnTrack(smallyellow

arrows)

da Gama anchors

at Capocate, near

Calicut, India,

May 20, 1498

da Gama anchors

at Capocate, near

Calicut, India,

May 20, 1498

LECTURETHREE

The Voyage of Vasco da Gama

July 8, 1497 September 9, 1499



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Did Henry the Navigator deserve his title?

Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Alvares, Francisco. The Prester John of the Indies. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1961.

Anonymous. A Journal of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama, 1497-1498.

London: Hakluyt Society, 1898.

Correa, Gaspar. The Three Voyages of Vasco da Gama and his Viceroyalty

from the Lendas da India. Henry E.J. Stanley (trans.). London: Hakluyt

Society, 1869.Diffie, B.W. and Winius, G.D. Foundations of the Portuguese Empire 1415-

1580. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1977.

Disney, A.R. and Booth, Emily, eds. Vasco da Gama and the Linking of Europe

and Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Hart, Henry H. Sea Road to the Indies: An Account of the Voyages and Exploitsof the Portuguese Navigators, Together with the Life and Times of Dom

Vasco da Gama, Capito-Mor, Viceroy of India, and Count of Vidigueira.

New York: Macmillan, 1950.

Russell, P.E. Prince Henry the Navigator: A Life. New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press, 2000.

1. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1497degama.html

Notes from Vasco da Gamas trip from Africa to India, 1497-1498 CE, fromthe Modern History Sourcebook maintained by Fordham.

2. http://www.mariner.org/

The Mariners Museum website, which has a searchable database withshort biographies of explorers and a helpful timeline.

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Read F.H.H. Guillemards The Life of Ferdinand Magellan and the FirstCircumnavigation of the Globe.

Consider this . . .

How did Magellans voyage contribute to the building of Spains Pacificempire?

+ + +

s Europeans in the earlysixteenth century slowly

became aware of theexistence of a great continentacross the Atlantic, they alsorealised that between the unex-pected landmass, soon to be

called America, and Asia lay avast ocean. The first Europeanexpedition to cross that ocean,and to give it a name, wasMagellans. His was a discoveryventure to rival Columbuss, andlike Columbus, he was facedwith difficulties that at timesthreatened to overwhelm him.

The first European approachesto the Pacific, by the Portuguesein one hemisphere and theSpaniards in another, took placewithin a few months of eachother. In 1512, Portuguese ves-sels left Malacca, which hadbeen seized by Albuquerqueonly the year before, and sailed

through the Java Sea to theMoluccas, the Spice Islands.Here the Portuguese intruderswere in the border area betweenthe Indian and Pacific oceans,though they had no knowledgeof the extent of the oceanstretching away to the east.

Lecture 4:

The First Circumnavigation:

The Voyage of Ferdinand Magellan

a

0 FERDINAND MAGELLAN(14801521)

Born into Portuguese nobility, Magellanenlisted in the fleet of Francisco de Almeidain 1505. Three years later, he took part inthe Battle of Diu, which gave Portugaldominion over most of the Indian Ocean.

After King Manuel of Portugal refused to

increase Magellans pension, due in part toreports of erratic behavior, Magellan offeredhis services to King Charles I of Spain. Thediscovery of the Strait of Magellan laybefore him.

(Source: Ferdinand Magellan. EncyclopdiaBritannica. 2004. Encyclopdia BritannicaPremium Service.)

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Ferdinand Magellans Voyage, 1519-1522

The Voyage of

Ferdinand Magellan

August 10, 1519

September 6, 1522

Magellan Killed

on Mactan Island

in the Phillipines,

April 27, 1521

Magellan Killed

on Mactan Island

in the Phillipines,

April 27, 1521

The Voyage of

Ferdinand Magellan

August 10, 1519

September 6, 1522


The next year, and many thousands of miles away, came the celebratedsighting of the Pacific Ocean by the Spanish adventurer Balboa. The chroni-cler Oviedo tells the story of how in September 1513 Balboa crossed the

Isthmus of Panama from the Caribbean and, having gone ahead of his com-pany, climbed a hill with a bare summit, and from the top of that hill saw theSouth Sea . . . he fell upon his knees to the ground and gave great thanks toGod for his mercy.

In 1519, Magellan was appointed captain-general of a Spanish squadronthat left Spain for the South Atlantic in search of an entrance somewherenear the unexplored tip of South America that would take ships into theSouth Sea and across to the Spice Islands. Such a route would challenge thehypothesis of Ptolemy, the Alexandrian scholar who in about AD 150 had

visualized a great southern continent that was joined to Africa and Asia. Itshould also be noted that the choice of a Portuguese commander reflectedthe experience Portuguese seamen had gained of oceanic sailing.

Magellans fleet of five vessels coasted the shores of South America southof Brazil until at the end of March 1520 they reached the harbour of SanJulin in latitude 49S in Patagonia, where Magellan decided to see out thesouthern hemisphere winter. There the simmering discontents of his Spanishcaptains at their foreign-born commander came to a head, and Magellanfaced conspiracy and mutiny. One of the ringleaders was killed in a skirmish,another was executed, and two were maroonedto face certain death.

There was some contact with the local inhabitants, whose size led theSpaniards to name them Patagonian (big feet). The voyages chronicler,

Antonio Pigafetta, began the long saga of the Patagonian giants when hedescribed natives so big that the head of one of our men of a mean staturecame but to his waist. Two hundred and fifty years later British and Frenchdiscovery expeditions were still searching for the giants of Patagonia.


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Magellan was pre-pared to sail southas far as latitude75S, if necessary,to find a passage,

but not far south ofSan Julin he founda gap in the desolatecoastline in latitude

5230S. This was

the entrance to thetortuous, 350-milestrait that still bearsMagellans name.

Battling againstsqualls, desertions,and shipwreck,

Magellan got through the twists and turns of the strait in thirty-seven days toreach the placid waters of an ocean that he (or his chronicler) named thePacific. Picking up the southeast trade winds, Magellans three remainingvessels followed a slanting route across the ocean. For fifteen weeks theysailed across trackless waters, sighting only two small uninhabited islands onthe way. Pigafetta described the horrors of the final stages of the crossing:

Having in this time consumed all their biscuit and others victuals, theyfell into such necessity that they were forced to eat the powder that

remained thereof being full of worms and stinking. Their fresh water

was also putrefied and became yellow. They did eat skins and pieces

of leather which were folded about certain great ropes of the ships.

Nineteen men died, and many others were incapacitated before in March1521 the ships reached Guam in the North Pacific. Farther west, in thePhilippines, Magellan unwisely became involved in struggles between localrulers, and in April he and nearly thirty of his men, overconfident in the supe-

riority of their firearms, were killed.The remaining two ships sailed south to the Moluccas, where they traded for

spices before parting company. The Trinidad, barely seaworthy, tried to claw

its way back across the Pacific to the known ports of the Panama Isthmus,but after sailing far north was forced back to the Moluccas, where the crewwere made prisoner by the Portuguese. Magellans flagship, the Victoria, nowcommanded by Juan Sebastian del Cano, continued to sail west, through thePortuguese-claimed waters of the Indian Ocean, and round the Cape of GoodHope. It reached Seville in September 1522 with a full cargo of spices, but

with only eighteen of those who had set off three years before left on board.In the following months, another seventeen straggled back, to make thirty-fivein all who had completed the first circumnavigation of the globe.

One historian has written, No other single voyage has ever added so muchto the dimension of the world, and dimension is the key word, for revelationof distances rather than of new lands represented the true importance ofMagellans voyage. The tracks of his ships across the Pacific showed the

Magellans probable route

through the strait.Clip

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daunting immensity of the ocean, where a voyage of almost four months wasmarked by the sighting of only two specks of land. The voyage proved thatPtolemys concept of a landlocked southern ocean was wrong, and showedthat the underestimated Ptolemaic proportions of the globe, so helpful toColumbuss arguments thirty years before, might also be in error.

To the huge problem of reaching the Moluccas from across the Pacific,either through the Strait of Magellan, or from the new Spanish ports onMexicos Pacific coast, were added diplomatic uncertainties about whetherthe Moluccas fell within the Portuguese or Spanish spheres of influence aslaid down by the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. The issue was resolved whenthe Treaty of Zaragoza (1529) assigned the Moluccas to Portugal.

Shut out from the Moluccas, Spanish attention turned north to thePhilippines, which were without spices but were near to China and its exoticproducts. The way was prospected by the voyage of Lpez de Villalobos

(1542-5) from Mexico, who gave the islands their present name, although hegrossly underestimated their distance from Mexico. In the 1560s, theSpaniards conquered and settled the Philippines, and discovered thatbecause of the prevailing winds the best route back to Acapulco lay along agreat semicircular track to the north, three thousand miles north of the flatterand more direct westbound track. This would soon become the regular traderoute of the galleon sailing from Manila (founded in 1571 as the capital of thePhilippines) with Chinese silks and porcelain to Acapulco. There the galleontook on silver for the return voyage.

It was the Spaniards in South America who were the first to mount a sus-tained search for the lands thought to lie far out into the Pacific, and in 1565

Magellans death on Mactan Island

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a scheme was put to the Viceroy of Peru to find some islands, calledSolomon, which lie over opposite Chile. Two years later an expedition led by

Alvaro de Mendaa left Peru in search of these islands. After two monthssailing across the ocean, the ships reached a large island that they namedSanta Isabel, and then came across other islands just south of the Equator

that they named the Isles of Solomon. Initial friendly relations with theislanders were followed by misunderstandings, suspicion, and violencetoset a pattern for the region that was to endure for centuries. The expeditionreturned home by way of Mexico, but with so uncertain an estimation ofwhere they had been that the Solomons were to be lost for another twocenturies. Mendaas hope of returning to the area to found a colony werethwarted, and not until 1595 did he sail west again. He failed to find theSolomons, and when he touched at the Marquesas the slaughter of two hun-dred islanders made an ominous beginning to the relationship betweenEurope and Polynesia.

However flawed in its navigation, the first Mendaa expedition marked thebeginning of a remarkable sequence of Spanish explorations in the Pacific.When Mendaa limped into port in Mexico after his first voyage, the localreaction to his description of islands with no spices, gold, or silver was disap-pointing and disparaging. Even so, officials speculated that the islands mightprovide a base for the discovery of the mainland, where it is reported thatthere is gold and silver.

Within fifty years of Magellans voyage, the outlines of Spains new Pacific

empire were visible. Its eastern rim along the American coast had beenexplored from the Strait of Magellan to Mexico. From Peru silver was beingshipped along the coast to Panama on the first stage of its journey to Spain.Farther north, New Spain looked both east and west, for its precious metalswent back to Europe by way of Vera Cruz, but by the 1570s it was tappingthe wealth of the Orient by way of Manila. Through diplomatic treaty andpapal bull, buttressed by exploration, conquest, and settlement, Spainclaimed an ocean whose lands and waters covered one-third of the surfaceof the globe. It seemed indeed to be The Spanish Lake.

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What effect did Magellans voyage have on contemporary notions about thesize of the globe?

Guillemard, F.H.H. The Life of Ferdinand Magellan and the First

Circumnavigation of the Globe. London: G. Philip and Son, 1890.

Amherst, William A. and Basil Thomson (eds.). The Discovery of the Solomon

Islands in 1568. London: Boydell & Brewer, Ltd., 1996.

Bergreen, Laurence. Over the Edge of the World: Magellans Terrifying

Circumnavigation of the Globe. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.

Parr, Charles McKew. So Noble a Captain: The Life and Times of Ferdinand

Magellan. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1953.

Pigafetta, Antonio. Magellans Voyage: A Narrative Account of the First

Circumnavigation. R.A. Skelton (trans.). New York: Dover Publications, 1994.

Silverberg, Robert. The Longest Voyage: Circumnavigation in the Age of

Discovery. Athens, NY: Ohio University Press, 1997.

Spate, O.H.K. The Pacific Since Magellan, Vol. I, The Spanish Lake.Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1979.

Wilson, Derek. The Circumnavigators. New York: M. Evans and Company,

1989.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1519magellan.html

A firsthand account of Ferdinand Magellans voyage around the world.

Bergreen, Laurence. Over the Edge of the World: Magellans TerrifyingCircumnavigation of the Globe. Narrated by the author. ABRIDGED

Recorded Books, 1990. 4 cassettes/6 hours.

To order Recorded Books, call 1-800-638-1304 or go to

www.modernscholar.com. Also available for rental.

29


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Before beginning this lecture you may want to . . .Read Harry Kelseys Sir Francis Drake: The Queens Pirate.

Consider this . . .

What were the long-term effects of Drakes voyage on the Spanish empirein the Pacific?

+ + +

he expeditions sent westinto the Pacific from Peru,such as that of Mendaa in

1567, seemed to mark the nextstage of expansion in what nowappeared to be a Spanish lake.It was at this moment that the

process was interrupted by theunexpected intrusion of Englishseamen into the great ocean,notably the voyage ofFrancis Drake.

As relations between the Englandof Elizabeth I and the Spain ofPhilip II worsened, plans weremade in England for ventures into

the South Sea. Behind them werethose expansionist, militantlyProtestant members of Court andCouncil who saw both materialand spiritual profit in attackingSpain in the New World. Whilesome pinned their hopes on find-ing a Northwest Passage thatwould take ships into the Pacific

well away from Spanish centres ofpower, others thought in terms of amore direct confrontation by wayof expeditions through the Straitof Magellan.

The late 1570s saw expeditionsfollowing both routes. Martin

LECTUREFIVE

Lecture 5:

The Second Circumnavigation:

The Voyage of Francis Drake

t

0SIR FRANCIS DRAKE(1540-1596)

By all accounts, Francis Drake led aremarkable life. Early exploits in theCaribbean and along the coasts of Centraland South America to raid the Spanish Mainhad netted him fame and fortuneand mis-fortune. Drake lost two brothers to yellowfever on an expedition in 1573.

After his famed circumnavigation from1577 to 1580, Drake continued to play animportant role in English seafaring adven-tures, including the defeat of the Spanish

Armada in 1588.

Drake, like his brothers, died of yellowfever on a later expedition. He was buriedat sea in a lead coffin.

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Frobisher made three voyages to BaffinBay, where his search for a sea routearound or through the North Americancontinent became diverted by his hopesof finding gold in the Arctic. But another

expedition that left England at this timerepresented a more aggressive aspect ofEnglish interest in the Pacific. Its choiceas commander of Francis Drake was sig-nificant, for his reputation was that of abold raider of the Spanish Main whosenarrow escape from death in a Spanishambush at Vera Cruz had left him with anobsessive desire for revenge. LikeFrobishers voyages, Drakes was private-ly organized. The syndicate that financedit included men close to the Queen, andpossibly even the Queen herself, but itwas not a government venture as such.

For so celebrated a voyage, the motivesbehind Drakes voyage are hazy and dis-puted. A draft plan for it was discoveredin the 1920s, but so badly damaged by

fire that only parts of it were legible. A keyphrase indicated that Drake was to saillooking for trade and profit along the saidcoast aforename, but any previous men-tion and naming of that coast has disap-peared in the flames. For some scholars,it was a reference to the coast of thegreat unknown southern continent, andcertainly projects to discover that mightyland mass were being mooted at thistime. Others, more persuasively, see thecoast as being the Pacific shores ofSpanish America, and that from thebeginning the object of the voyage was aplundering raid in the South Sea. In anyevent, the voyage went well beyond theoutlines suggested in the draft plan; itwas to be a full-blooded challenge to theSpanish position in the Pacific, for as

Drake said, he came for a greater pur-pose than that of seizing vessels.

Drake sailed from Plymouth late in 1577with five vessels. The largest, his flagship

Pelican, later renamed the Golden Hind,was about 150 tons in burthen and 70feet in length, with 18 guns and 80 or so

QUEEN ELIZABETH I AND

PHILIP II

Queen Elizabeth I of Englandpresided over one of the greatestperiods of English history. Duringthis period, England launched itsmassive program of colonization,established a dominant navy, and

became a major European power.King Philip II of Spain was one of

Queen Elizabeths many suitors.She refused an offer of marriagefrom Philip in 1559. Spain wouldbecome Englands main enemy,and English sailors were encour-aged to interrupt Spanish shippingand disrupt Spains dominance ofthe sea.

In 1588, King Philip launched hismighty Spanish Armada againstEngland, only to see it defeated bythe skill of English leaders, includ-ing Francis Drake, and by violentstorms. The defeat of the Spanish

Armada both increased Englishpower in Europe and decreasedSpanish dominance of the sea,

though war with Spain continueduntil Elizabeths death.

(Source: The Columbia Encyclopedia,Sixth Edition. Copyright 2003 ColumbiaUniversity Press.)

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men. Her armament and largecrew would make her more than amatch for any Spanish vessel shewas likely to meet in the SouthSea. That this was the destination,

and not Alexandria in Egypt, ashad been announced, was kept aclose secret until the ships werewell out to sea.

By the time that Drake reachedthe first rendezvous appointed forthe expedition on the coast ofChile, more than a year after leav-ing Plymouth, only his own vessel

was left. Casualties, self-inflictedand otherwise, had affected theventure from the moment thatDrake had executed ThomasDoughty at Port San Julian inPatagoniaon the spot whereMagellan had executed his muti-

neers almost sixty years earlier. From PortSan Julian, the little fleet, now only three

ships, headed for the Strait of Magellan.They threaded their way through in six-teen days, compared to Magellans thirty-seven, but it was still not an easy pas-sage. On September 6, 1578, the shipsreached the open waters of the Pacificand headed north, but two days onto thenew course a furious storm broke over theships and continued for fifty-six days.

When the storm finally subsided, theGolden Hind was alone. During the

storms fury the vessel had been drivensouth back across the western mouth ofthe Strait of Magellan and into anunknown group of islands. This was thefirst indication that the south shore of thestrait, Tierra del Fuego, might not be thenorthern edge of a continental landmass.

Drake had not sailed right round Tierra delFuego, and whether the most southerly ofthe islands he reached, named by himElizabeth Island, is todays HendersonIsland, or Cape Horn fifty miles to thesoutheast, is uncertain. It was not until1616 that a Dutch expedition roundedCape Horn to prove that there was anoth-

THOMAS DOUGHTY

Thomas Doughty was not only afriend of Francis Drakes, he wasa good friendor so it seemedwhen they set sail together in1577. Doughty was also a favoredcourtier of Queen Elizabeth I.

After heavy storms caused count-less delays in Drakes progressalong his intended route, Doughty

mutinied. He persuaded many inDrakes crewmen who had beenworn out by the seemingly endlessdays fighting the stormsto followhis lead and revolt againsttheir captain.

Drake, however, was able toregain control of his men and hadDoughty put in chains until theyreached the coast of South

America. Once there, Drake helda trial at which Thomas Doughtywas duly convicted and sentencedto death. He was beheadedshortly thereafter.

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LECTUREFIVE

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er and less tortuous way into the South Sea than that through the Strait ofMagellan.

As he sailed along the coast of Chile, Drake, with the help of his youngcousin John, kept a careful record of the main features of the coast and itsharbours. Prisoners taken from Spanish ships recalled how he kept a great

book in which he entered details of the navigation, and how when he cap-tured ships his first action was to seize the charts and navigational instru-ments. To exploit local knowledge of unknown coasts was a sensible andobvious expedient, but Drakes actions seem to go beyond that. They are fur-ther confirmation that the voyage was one of reconnaissance, with a view tolater exploitation, as well as a plundering expedition.

As Drake raided the little settlements along the coast and seized tradingvessels, he accumulated silver and gold valued at 447,000 pesos. Then offPeru he heard that the Nuestra Seora de la Concepcion, laden with silver,

had sailed for Panama two weeks earlier. Just north of the Equator theGolden Hind came up with the slow-sailing treasure ship. Virtually unarmed,

and with twenty-six tons of silver in her hold, the Spaniards offered only tokenresistance. Two more prizes were taken in Mexican waters, one laden withChinese silks and porcelain offloaded from the Manila galleon, the other car-rying pilots and charts for the transoceanic route to the Philippines.

The whole tenor of the expedition had changed. The Golden Hind, with itstreasure on board, was now vulnerable in turn. The question now was thebest route home. The coasts of Spanish America were on the alert from

Mexico to Chile. Even if the Golden Hind could pass unscathed through thosehostile waters, Drake would be faced with the hazards of the return passagethrough the Strait of Magellan. Two other possibilities remained. One was tosail west through the ocean, through the Moluccas and into the Indian Ocean,and so around the Cape of Good Hope and home. Magellans men hadshown that this was practical. The other possibility was the beguiling butuncertain alternative of sailing north in hope of finding the NorthwestPassage, and so by a short passage passing back into the Atlantic.

Of all the events of the voyage, the events of the summer of 1579 are themost baffling. Drake came home by the same route as Magellans Victoria, butbefore that he had sailed three thousand or more miles north. He may havebeen looking for the entrance to the Northwest Passage, or, less ambitiously,for a favourable wind to take him across the Pacific, or simply for a harbourwhere he could refit out of reach of the Spaniards. How far north Drake sailedis uncertain; one account says 42N, another 48N, almost to the present U.S.-Canada border. One scholar has recently argued that the latitude in one jour-nal was altered from its original 53N, which would have taken the ship near

Alaska, and would certainly point to an intention of returning by a NorthwestPassage. Faced with cold and fog at sea, Drake turned back south, and founda harbour probably near San Francisco where the expedition stayed for fiveweeks.

There relations with the local Indians appear to have been good. Allegedly attheir initiative, Drake took possession of New Albion, as he called it, in thename of the Queen during some sort of coronation ceremony. Not for the firstor last time, there seems to have been a gulf of mutual incomprehension

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LECTUREFIVE

between what may have been simply the welcoming rituals of the nativeinhabitants and the gloss put on them by the European visitors. But on themaps, at least, New Albion was to have a long lifea standing challenge, ifonly on paper, to Spanish claims of dominion over the whole Pacificseaboard of the Americas.

In July 1579, Drake sailed out into the Pacific once more, heading for theMoluccas. His first landfall, after sixty-eight days at sea, was probably atPalau (east of the Philippines). From Palau, Drake turned west towardsMindanao before turning south to the Moluccas, where he signed treaties withlocal rulers. His stay in the Spice Islands, and his observations there, were tobe of importance in encouraging the establishment of the English East IndiaCompany in 1600. From the Moluccas, Drake sailed into the IndianOcean and around the Cape of Good Hope intothe Atlantic.

In September 1580, the Golden Hindarrived back at Plymouth having complet-ed the second circumnavigation of theworld. With fifty-six out of the originalcrew of eighty or so on board, the voy-age was an astounding achievement interms of seamanship, navigation, andwillpower.

As Drake came into home waters,

there was no heros welcome for himfrom the government, for the air washeavy with Spanish protests. Despite ameeting with the Queen, during whichDrake presented her with his journal andchart, it took six months before he wasknighted on board the Golden Hind in the

Thames.

As a feat of navigation, Drakes voyage enhancedthe reputation of English seafarers in the years before thedefeat of the Spanish Armada. It opened the possibility of breaking into thespice trade of the eastern seas, or into the newly revealed trade trianglebetween Canton, Manila, and Acapulco. Above all, it revealed to future gener-ations of privateers and buccaneers the wealth and vulnerability of theSpanish empire in the Pacific.

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In what ways did Drakes voyage challenge the idea of the Pacific as TheSpanish Lake?

Kelsey, Harry. Sir Francis Drake: The Queens Pirate. New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press, 2000.

Bawlf, Samuel. The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake: 1577-1580. Boston,

MA: Walker & Company, 2003.

Drake, Francis. The World Encompassed. W.S. Vaux (ed.). London: HakluytSociety, 1981.

Williams, Glyndwr. The Great South Sea: English Voyages and Encounters

1570-1750. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.Wilson, Derek. The World Encompassed: Drakes Great Voyage 1577-1580.

London: Allison & Busby, 1998.

1. http://www.adam-matthew-publications.co.uk/collect/p157.htm

Collection of papers relating to various sea voyages, including FrancisFletchers narrative of Drakes second voyage.

2. http://www.bartleby.com/33/41.html

Sir Francis Drakes Famous Voyage Round the World by Francis Pretty,one of Drakes gentlemen at arms.

3. http://www.americanjourneys.org/aj-032/summary/index.asp

Document relating Drakes firsthand account of his voyage.


Essay

Suggested Reading


Websites to Visit

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LECTURESIX


Read Carlo M. Cipollas Guns, Sails, and Empires: TechnologicalInnovation and European Expansion 1400-1700.

Consider this . . .

How did inadequate technology lead to wildly inaccurate assumptions aboutthe size and shape of the world?

+ + +

he voyages of discoverywould not have been possi-ble without significant devel-

opments in both ship design andnavigational instruments. Not untilthe fifteenth century were theretechnical developments that

enabled seafarers to make longvoyages with some confidence.

New ship designs brought togetherthe techniques of northern andsouthern European shipbuilders. Innorthern waters, the standard trad-ing vessel was the cog. Broad ofbeam and clinker-built (that is, withits planks overlapping), the cog had

a mast or masts carrying a squaresail. The disadvantage of the cogwas that its simple square rig made it difficult, often impossible, to beatagainst contrary winds. In the Mediterranean, the norm was the carvel-built(that is, with flush planking) narrow galley, with its banks of oars, fast andmaneuverable, but hopelessly inadequate for oceanic voyaging.

During the fifteenth century, Iberian shipbuilders began to develop craft thatcombined some of the characteristics of both types. There was the caravel,with slim hull and shallow draught of a galley, but propelled by great lateen

(or triangular) sails, which allowed it to sail close to the wind. The early car-avels were used by the Portuguese in their explorations along the coast ofWest Africa and proved to be handy and seaworthy vessels. Their small size(about fifty tons, usually), lack of cargo space, and fragile build made themless suitable for long oceanic voyages, where a square rig, usually supple-mented with a lateen sail on the mizzen mast, was introduced.

Lecture 6:

The Tools of Discovery

t

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An early Portuguese caravel.


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37

In 1492, Columbuss favourite vessel was not his flagship the square-rigged

Santa Mara, but the smaller Nia, with square and lateen sails. Da Gamas

voyage to India in 1497 was made with three ships and one caravel, whileMagellans fleet of five vessels included no caravels. The caravel was notsuitable for the longer voyages of exploration, and still less for the voyages ofexploitation that followed. Both living and cargo space were limited, and theirhull timbers could not support cannon of any weight.

In time a larger and stouter vessel, the carrack, was developed with thesame hybrid rig and became the standard oceangoing vessel. Although notprimarily a fighting ship, its timbers were strong enough to bear the weight ofcannon, and these proved devastating against local shipping in the IndianOcean and elsewhere. The carracks developed by the Portuguese for theireastern trade, and the galleons used by the Spaniards on their Atlantic andPacific routes, were often huge and rather unwieldy ships, with some mon-sters of as much as 2,000 tons burthen. These, of course, were not suitablefor exploration, where smaller and lighter craft were looked forranging in

type according to nation and region to be explored: brigs, fast naval sloops,heavily built bomb vessels (for work in the Arctic), and the shallow-draughtconverted colliers used by James Cook.

Before oceangoing voyages could be undertaken with any confidence,improved navigational instruments were necessary. On such voyages, a navi-gator who operated with traditional methods would be able to determine theposition of his ship or the location of any land sighted only by combining com-pass bearings with the estimated distance travelledand both elements weresubject to error. Only when a reliable method had been developed to give lat-itude and longitude would a ships position be known with any confidence.

Because the Portuguese voyages down the coast of Africa in the fifteenthcentury were in a north-south direction, knowledge of latitude rather than lon-gitude was the important factor, and it seems to be on these voyages thatastronomical instruments to measure latitude were first used. One of the mostprominent stars in the night sky was the Pole Star, and because it lay on anortherly bearing, its angle above the horizon would indicate how far south a

Columbuss ships: (l. to r.)

Pinta, Santa Mara,

and his favourite, the Nia

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LECTURESIX

ship had sailed. Experienced navigators could judge this by eye, but fromabout the middle of the fifteenth century instruments such as the simplequadrant were developed to give a more accurate reading.

As ships sailed farther south, the Pole Star got lower in the sky, and by theEquator it disappeared altogether and seamen generally used the altitude ofthe sun to judge their latitude. This was a more difficult and complex businessthan using the Pole Star, for not only could a navigator not sight his instru-ment direct on the sun, but the question of the suns declination had to betaken into account. To cope with these problems, new instruments were

developedthe astrolabe and later the back-staffwhile land-based astrono-mers, firstly in Portugal, provided tables showing the declination of the sun.

The seemingly insurmountable problem was that of determining a ships lon-gitude, and this became a crucial factor as voyages began to be made east-west into the Atlantic and then across the Pacific. In principle, the solution tothe problem was known as early as the 1530s, when Gemma Frisius pointedout that if a reliable clock set to the time at the port of departure was carriedon board ship, the difference between that and local time (as determined by

ASTROLABE

Probably invented by early Greeks, the astrolabe has been called the most sig-nificant invention prior to the telescope. Followers of Islam in Arab countries whoused the device to locate the direction of Mecca improved on the earlier, simple

designs by adding intricate scrollwork and useful symbols on the rete, the cut-away disk on most of the instruments. The static portion of an astrolabe hasengraved on it indicators for local star coordinates. The rete was rotated to showthe sky at a specific time. A navigator skilled in the use of an astrolabe could, withlimited accuracy, determine his location on the planet.

(Source: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition Copyright 2004 Columbia University Press.)

An astrolabe of Arabic or Yemeni origin. A more sophisticated astrolabe of thetype used by Sir Francis Drake on hiscircumnavigation of the globe, 1577-1580.

Both

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noon observation of the sun) would showthe longitudinal difference between thedeparture point and the ships current posi-tion. But until the development of chronome-ters in the eighteenth century, no clock exist-

ed that could keep accurate time during thebuffetings of long sea voyages.

Instead, for all practical purposes, naviga-tors determined their longitude by dead reck-oning. This would seem a straightforwardenough matter, for the basic informationneeded was simply a ships course andspeed. But these were subject to numerousfactors, and an error in calculating any one

of these could produce significant, some-times catastrophic errors.

During the long oceanic crossings of thePacific, where ships might be out of sight ofland for months at a time, and where thestrength of the deep currents was difficult togauge, cumulative errors could make non-sense of dead reckoning. As we have seen,this lay behind the navigational problems of

the Mendaa expedition of 1567-8, whichso underestimated the westward drift of thePacific Ocean current that the run from thePeruvian coast to the Solomons was givenas 5,242 nautical miles instead of 7,309.Little wonder that the return voyage tooklonger than expected!

To sail to an unknown coast, to observe itsposition, and to record its profile, was only

the initial part of the process of discovery.The next stage was the dissemination ofthe newly gained knowledge, and this pre-sented its own difficulties. There might bepolitical and commercial reasons whyreports of discoveries should not be publi-cized, and international exchanges of infor-mation were often slow and grudging. Thepublication of the reports, journals, and

charts of the navigators soon became astandard part of the exploration process,especially when it redounded to the greaterglory of the nation involved.

So in the seventeenth century, the Dutchdiscoveries in the Eastern Seas and thePacific were displayed in the great tessellat-

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EXTRACTS FROM

THE 1492 JOURNAL OF

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

Pledging Ferdinand and Isabellaprior to his first voyage in 1492

that he would . . . keep anaccount of the voyage, and writedown punctually every thing weperformed or saw . . . Columbus(in the third-person voice) detailedsome of the navigational difficultieshe experienced on his voyage.

Sunday, 9 September. Sailed this

day nineteen leagues, and deter-

mined to count less than the true

number, that the crew might not bedismayed if the voyage should

prove long. In the night sailed one

hundred and twenty miles, at the

rate of ten miles an hour, which

make thirty leagues. The sailors

steered badly, causing the vessels

to fall to leeward toward the north-

east, for which the Admiral repri-

manded them repeatedly.

Sunday, 30 September. Continuedtheir course west and sailed day

and night in calms, fourteen

leagues; reckoned eleven.Four

tropic bird

journeys of the great explorers - columbus to cook (booklet).pdf

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