Magellan's Voyage Round the World

About this book

In 1519 five Spanish ships under the Portuguese captain Ferdinand Magellan sailed west to reach the Spice Islands. The young Italian Antonio Pigafetta sailed with them and kept a journal: the giants of Patagonia, a mutiny, the passage through the stormy strait that now bears Magellan's name, the crossing of the vast Pacific, on which the starving crew ate leather and rats, the arrival in the Philippines, where Magellan was killed in battle on Mactan in 1521, the Muslim kingdoms of Brunei and the Moluccas, and the return of a single ship, the Victoria, with eighteen survivors in 1522.

Context and significance

It was the first voyage around the world, and Pigafetta noticed that the survivors had lost a day on the way. This translation, published by the Hakluyt Society in 1874 and edited by Lord Stanley of Alderley, adds other accounts by contemporaries. Compare the conquest of Mexico in The Memoirs of Bernal Díaz del Castillo.

About the author