The Portuguese contributed greatly in early exploration and navigational genius

Apr 08, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
In reference to our Portuguese citizens who still live and work in Guyana, the public ought to know that in maritime history, the Portuguese contributed greatly in early exploration and navigational genius.
All Portuguese should be proud of this period in their history because Portuguese kings and their master sailors conquered the worst seas and battered down the idea that the world was flat and the oceans were small; they pushed the limits of endurance; discovered signs in the stars, on the land they sailed by and in the seas, and secured the eternal respect of the world for their great seamanship in laying the foundations of the modern world.
It all started with the first efforts by Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) who pushed the exploration of the South Atlantic and the coast of Africa and started the trend of the later great explorations of Pêro da Covilhã (1460-1545) who was the first to reach India overland and referred to as the Portuguese Marco Polo; Bartholomeu Dias (1450-1500), the first naval explorer to go around the Southern tip of Africa in 1488, sailing through some of the worst seas in the world, and back to Portugal ; Vasco de Gama (1460-1524) all the way to India in 1498, until then the greatest seafaring saga in history, de Gama travelled with his fleet of 4 vessels, 3200 nautical miles and 93 days just in the first stage of getting to Eastern Africa through the treacherous straits at Africa’s southern tip.
Vasco de Gama went on to cross the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean to reach Calicut in south India and established a sea route between East and West, changing both Eastern and Western history.
The final and most important Portuguese contribution to our modern world  as  we know it today was Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage which achieved  the great circumnavigation of the world by the Armada de Molucca , probably the greatest voyage of discovery the world has ever known, as heroic as the best fiction could conjure, changing our planet forever.
Magellan was a product of the previous century of Portuguese domination of maritime exploration and the tradition of Portuguese mariners was legendary and heroic, exactly the characteristics Magellan were to show on this epic voyage which set the stage and opened the curtain on the modern history of our world, affecting the human race forever.
Today, as we use the internet and are connected instantly with anywhere in the world, we should remember Magellan who, under the most extremely hazardous conditions, led his armada ”over the edge the world” and established the first primitive base of world communication.
Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521) was born in northern Portugal and was a sailor who had wide experience on explorations on Portuguese ships, even sailing to the East to the famed Spice Islands.
But he  had to get backing from the Spanish court and King Charles to fund his expedition after the Portuguese crown refused to back his proposed trip, on more than one occasion;  to find a passage(straits) from the Atlantic Ocean (which was then known as the Ocean Sea) to the Pacific Ocean (thought of as a little ocean), to explore the new ocean and to bring back spices, mainly cloves, from the Moluccas or the Spice Islands, which was known to exist from land and sea expeditions previously completed from the east. No-one had ever gotten there from the West.
From the time this armada of five ships left Spain it was endangered by Portuguese ships looking to seize them and try Magellan for treason because he was sailing under a Spanish flag.
In addition, the threat of mutiny was ever present, because the Spanish officers in the armada were furious that a Portuguese was the commander of this expedition which contained sailors from Spain, Portugal, France, Greece and even one from England.
Luckily, the Italian, Antonio Pigafetta, who really was a gentleman-adventurer and was along “for the ride”, kept a detailed journal of the whole epic voyage and was one of only eighteen survivors on the only surviving ship to return home after three years – after sailing approximately 60,000 miles.
His journal was the source for establishing the greatness of Magellan with detailed daily notes on the entire heroic circumnavigation of the world.
On September 20, 1519 , Captain General Magellan sailed his armada of 250 men from Spain in  five barely worthy ships, the largest a mere 125 tons, down the Western African coast (to avoid capture) and then across the Atlantic using his instincts and navigational experience he had gained before.
After two months of open sea from the Canary Islands, the armada reached the eastern tip of Brazil where they then sailed southwestwards down the coast of Brazil seeking the legendary straits by probing different rivers which would take them to the western side of South America and the other ocean (Pacific), but each ended in disappointment.
In March 1520, Magellan, facing raging seas and cold weather as the southern winter set in, decided to wait it out in a bay, Port San Julian, where mutiny by three Spanish captains and their ships, forced him to take drastic and bold action by boarding and seizing one ship and then blockading the mouth of the bay to prevent the escape of the other two. Eventually one ship was overcome as it tried to escape and the other surrendered.
Shortly after that incident, the Santiago, one of the ships, was wrecked while exploring the coast and the survival of the crew became the stuff of legend as they had to get ashore and make a painful overland march through inhospitable terrain to get back to the armada at Port San Julian – not one of the lost crew perished.
Magellan told his entire crew that he’d rather die than turn back after the men demanded a return to Spain.
Finally, after sailing down the coast of what is now Chile, Magellan found the passage to the “other” ocean; a passage which was maze-like and dangerous with dead-ends and sudden violent storms.
The passage took 38 days to navigate 334 miles between the two oceans. During this ordeal, Magellan discovered that the food which had been packed on the ships in Spain was not the amount paid for – the merchants had robbed the fleet and the food supply was less than a third of what should have been stored.
Also, during this crossing, one of the ships deserted the armada and eventually returned to Spain, spreading false information.
The Armada finally entered the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday Nov.28, 1520, due to the iron courage against the elements and the deft mastery of the sailors by Magellan.
Today that location is known as the Magellan Straits, one of the worst stretches of water in the world.
Once on the Western coast of the new ocean, Magellan’s mastery of winds and currents led the armada on a journey of 3 months and 20 days to cover 12,000 miles on an ocean which they named the Pacific because the whole trip was on calm waters with the trade winds at their backs.
This journey was one of hunger, thirst and disease as scurvy decimated the crews of the three remaining ships. At last, on March 6, 1521, they sighted land and finally were able to get fresh water and food on what is now the island of Guam.
After one week of sailing from Guam, Magellan brought his armada to the island of Samar in the Philippines where the armada rested and reconditioning was done on the ships.
A few weeks later, on the island of Mactan, Magellan was tricked by the King of that island and his landing party attacked on the beach.
Magellan made sure that all his men were safely away on the longboats while he alone fought off the attacking tribal warriors but was cut down by spear thrusts, poisoned arrows and scimitar cuts, falling dead on the Mactan beach on April 27, 1521.
After Magellan’s death, the armada reached the Spice Islands and loaded up to capacity with cloves but soon, one of the ships had to be destroyed because of terrible leaking and of the two ships left only one, the Victoria, loaded with spices, made it back to Spain through an extremely hazardous journey west through pirate-infested waters and terrible seas around the Horn of Africa.
The last leg of this journey was made with the sailors (just 18 men left alive) pumping water out of the leaking ship.
Astonishment at the arrival on Sept.8, 1522, was universal in Spain because the armada  had been given up for lost.
The value of the cloves on board was enough to pay off all the investors of the voyage and the surviving sailors.
Magellan’s  feat was the climax of the Age of Discovery and he faced rougher seas, negotiated more treacherous passages and found his way across a broader ocean than any other explorer had, even though mutiny, disease and leaking ships stalked him all the way.
Near the Antarctic pole where Magellan navigated the straits from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the observation was made on that journey, that there were many small stars in the sky “which have the appearance of two clouds of mist”.
In fact these “clouds” are billions of stars enveloped in a blanket of gaseous substance which today are known as the Magellanic Clouds, huge markers in the world’s southern skies and named after one of the world’s greatest discoverers.
Cheddi(Joey)Jagan (Jr.)

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