Product Description

The astonishing tale of the first sea voyage to circumnavigate the entire globe. Magellan's dramatic maritime expedition in 1519 discovered the straits that enabled Europe to trade with the Eastern spice islands and changed the course of history. In an era of intense commercial rivalry between Spain and Portugal, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese navigator sailed to explore the undiscovered parts of the world and claim them for the Spanish crown in one of the largest and best-equipped expeditions ever mounted in the Age of Discovery. Yet of the fleet of five vessels under his command, only Victoria was to return to Spain after three harrowing years, her captain murdered, more than two hundred of her sailors dead from scurvy, torture, execution and drowning, and a small, ravaged crew that survived to tell the extraordinarily dramatic story. What emerged was a tale of mutiny, of orgies on distant shores, of claims of cannibalism, of death and disease, of missionary zeal and base cruelty, and of incredible discoveries: the earth was indeed round, the Americas were not part of India, the earth was covered mainly by oceans, and a new route that allowed Europe access to the fantastic wealth of the Eastern spice islands. Indeed, despite the devastating loss of life and vessels, the Victoria sailed back laden with enough cloves and other spices for the expedition to be considered a remarkable financial success. Accomplished despite the fact that European mariners were exploring a world that was unmapped and misunderstood, where superstition held sway and there were real fears that you could literally sail over the edge of the world, that sea monsters lurked in the briny depths, or that if you passed the equator, the ocean would boil and scald you to death, this was a truly spectacular achievement. The shockingly explicit diaries of Antonio Pigafetta reveal much of the story. This is a many-layered book -- a voyage into history, a tour of the world as it was emerging from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, an anthropological account of exotic tribes and a chronicle of a desperate grab for political and commercial power. It is also a gripping adventure story, compelling and full of suspense and drama.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #146947 in Books
• Published on: 2004-12-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Review
'A superb real-life thriller.' New York Times 'The gripping story of a 60,000-mile ocean voyage!by turns sorrowful, violent, and promiscuous!' Los Angeles Times 'A vivid account of Magellan's starcrossed voyage.' Kirkus Reviews 'Illuminating the age of discovery, Bergreen writes this powerful tale of adventure with a strong presence and rich detail.' Publishers' Weekly 'Mr. Bergreen delivers torture, suffering, starvation and bloody frays with almost loving zeal.' Washington Times 'Prodigious research, sure-footed prose and vivid descriptions make for a thoroughly satisfying account!it is all here in the wondrous detail, a first-rate historical page turner.' New York Times Book Review

The Scotsman, 31 January 2004
'a compelling account of a great voyage of discovery and a thrilling adventure.'

The Spectator, 7 February 2004
'well researched and clearly written...eloquent...Bergreen's narrative makes compelling reading.' - Raymond Carr

Customer Reviews

A XVI CENTURY ODYSSEY
Mr. Bergreen writes with style and learning; it is an excellent book and the narrative makes for compelling reading. He describes the conditions of the Age of Discovery and the motivations that drove men to take great risks in the expectation of great rewards. He brings to life the myths and superstitions that seafarers of the time believed in, the fear of the unknown, the perils at sea, the hopelessly unseaworthy condition of the ships, scurvy, mutiny, betrayal and all that happens when 234 sailors set out and only 18 return. The first voyage around the globe lasted two weeks short of three years and they sailed some sixty thousand miles, which was some fifteen times longer than the distance covered by Columbus in his first voyage to the New World, thirty years before.

The book contains a useful cast of the principal characters; excellent notes on sources, a scholarly bibliography and a useful index. Each chapter is headed by remarkably apposite quotations from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".

The book needs to be read, not as a biography of Magellan, but as an account of the first circumnavigation of the globe. Given the number of survivors it is not surprising that witnesses' first hand accounts are few and far between. Antonio Pigafetta, from Vicenza, a loyal supporter of Magellan who had been taken on as a supernumerary, left a very detailed journal and this is the principal direct source. Francisco Albo, a pilot, left a log book and Gines de Mafra, a navigator, who was captured by the Portuguese and incarcerated in Lisbon for five further years, left some memoirs written long after the event. No wonder then that it is Pigafetta who leaps from the page and comes across as a very interesting personality. His book, "A Narrative Account of the First Circumnavigation", translated by R. A. Skelton, becomes irresistible reading as soon as the last page of "Over the Edge of the World" has been turned.

Magellan - Fernão de Magalhães, (the captain-general's Portuguese name, his origins being important for the understanding of events), appears as a figure seen through a mist, perhaps because his journals and papers were "lost" after his death on the island of Mactan in the Philippines. This was the first, and last time, that Magellan interceded in a tribal war at the behest of one of the chieftains and, together with many others, got killed for his pains. It remains one of the great mysteries of history why he decided to trust this particular chieftain. His at times erratic and irrational behaviour leads one to wonder whether he was quite stable.

Shortly afterwards, the same chieftain invited surviving members of the crew for a banquet at which a massacre took place which cost the lives of a further 27 Europeans.

Apart from his two wills, written before his departure from Seville, no direct word from those years has come down through the ages. He seems to have been in conflict most of the time: with King Manuel I of Portugal in the first instance; with the officials in Seville during preparations for the voyage and, not least, with his Spanish captains and crew. In the words of Mr. Bergreen, "his erratic behaviour - sometimes beneficent, sometimes menacing, occasionally both - suggests that his accomplishments had gone to his head and caused him to take an increasingly zealous approach to religious matters". Judging the man by his actions rather than by what is said of him, to me he came across as a manic-depressive in the clinical sense. And this included his cunning. His great virtue was his considerable skill as a navigator and his ability to understand sea charts. He was a man of great individual courage and determination, but his leadership qualities are questionable. Admittedly, he was dealt a very poor hand:- the centuries old rivalry, not to say enmity, between the Spanish and the Portuguese, which persists in the psyche of the two nations to this day, made it difficult for him to command captains and crew imposed on him by the Spanish King's eminence grise, Archbishop Fonseca.

The resentment between the Spanish and the Portuguese permeates the story at all levels. The Spanish King, Charles I, practically insolvent, needed money to get himself elected as Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire and restore the Spanish finances with the huge profits from the spice trade. The king of Portugal, Manuel I, protected by Treaty and multiple marriages between the two royal families, was keen to safeguard an important State secret: the illegal trade in spices that Portugal had enjoyed since 1513, when a warehouse with light fortifications had been established in Ternate in the Spice Islands.

This explains the peculiar tensions between the two monarchs that come across in Mr. Bergreen's book, in particular the Portuguese king's mistreatment of people engaged in Magellan's enterprise and the rather aloof detachment of the Spanish king.

What has great resonance are the parallels with the world as it is today. Spices, like oil, are the economic engine; navigators, facing unknown terrors, are the astronauts; caravels and galleons, the former manoeuvrable and the latter with large capacity for carrying goods, are the spacecraft. Interference in tribal disputes a long way from home, are the Middle East of today, the results not being much different.

Mr. Bergreen gives us many gems:
- Did you know that Magellan's slave, Enrique of Melaka, might in fact have been the first man to circumnavigate the globe, albeit in multiple voyages?
- That the Armada passed over the Mariana Trench, 36,000 ft. below the Ocean surface and therefore deeper than Everest is high?
- That the importance of the International Date Line, though known, was first realised at the end of this voyage and was still being adjusted as recently as 1995?
- That, in addition, they were the first to see a llama or guanaco, a penguin, a seal, two of our closest galaxies (the Magellanic clouds), the extent of the Earth?

I wish that I had written this book.

My Book of the Year!
This is a superbly written book which I found difficult to put down. I feel I can add but little to the review already posted here. It is a brilliant historical narrative about the first circumnavigation of the world when, among other aspects, it was not known just how 'wide' the Pacific Ocean was and just when landfall would be made after leaving the Americas. The secondary title refers to a 'Terrifying Circumnavigation' and indeed it was: this is not a tale of noble heroes but of mutinies, shipwrecks, murder, executions, massacres, drowning, starvation, bigotry, betrayal ... all human life is here! The book is so well produced with index, notes, maps, bibliography and at the beginning a 'cast list' of the men and the ships: ideal, if like me, the reader finds non-English names hard to remember. Mr Bergreen has achieved something few writers are able to: writing interesting history.

Simply Magnificent
How 260 men set out from Seville in September 1519 to find a new route to the Spice Islands, and how a mere 18 returned having completed the first circumnavigation of the globe after nearly 60,000 miles and three years is an epic story that has found a worthy author. Laurence Berggreen rewards the reader by marrying scholarly research with eloquent, readable prose.

There is no attempt to portray the achievement as heroic, astounding though it was. This is an account of hardship, disease, torture, murder, betrayal, but it is also a vivid tale of discovery and observation of previously unknown places, people and things. Framing it all, and giving the narrative a shape that might translate to a novel, is the rivalry between Spain and Portugal for commercial domination of the oceans.

Even as the end is almost within reach, there is no certainty of success for the single remaining ship of the five that set out. Berggreen writes, "... the weather continued to batter the boat by night too, so there was no rest for the crew, nor safe harbour, nor cooking fire, nor soft dry blanket, nor guarantee that their misery would end any time soon ... And so they tried again and again, fleeing for their lives, hoping to cheat death just one more time."

This is history as thriller. Simply magnificent.