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Historian Laurence Bergreen has previously written biographies of such diverse figures as Al Capone, Louis Armstrong, James Agee and Irving Berlin, as well as books about space exploration and network broadcasting. So he might seem an unlikely candidate to tackle the epic story of Ferdinand Magellan's three-year voyage around the world (1519-1522) --- the trip that proved once and for all that the earth was round, corrected wildly inaccurate notions of where continents and ocean lay, and affected global geopolitics down to the present day.
Well, unlikely candidate or not, Bergreen has done a superb job. This is one of the most consistently readable, deeply researched and scrupulously fair historical narratives to come around in a long time. The people involved --- on shipboard, in royal palaces, on desolate seashores, on primitive islands --- come alive on the page. Landscapes and seascapes alike are vividly rendered. Customs and lifestyles of remote tribes are presented without condescension. Magellan himself becomes a fully rounded human being, a baffling mixture of fearless, resourceful mariner and foolishly pugnacious religious fanatic.
Magellan was a Portuguese who wanted to sail to the fabled Spice Islands for the glory and commercial advantage of his country. Rebuffed by Portugal's king, he offered his services to the ambitious King Charles I of Spain, Portugal's great rival on the high seas. Charles sent him off in 1519 at the head of an armada of five proud ships.
As most people know, Magellan himself never made it all the way. He was killed in a needless battle with natives on a small Philippine Island, largely through his own foolish meddling in a local quarrel and his vindictive hatred of anyone who refused to accept Christian baptism. Four of his ships were destroyed during the three-year, 60,000-mile trip. Of the 260 men who set out from Spain, only 18 made it back, emaciated and starving. Magellan himself ended up despised posthumously by both Portugal and Spain.
Bergreen tells this story in large part through the writings of several surviving eyewitnesses, most notably a young Italian named Antonio Pigafetta, who left a wonderfully detailed and eloquent memoir of the entire trip. Bergreen fleshes out these on-the-spot accounts with the writings of previous historians, his own research and --- a historian's privilege --- some shrewd projection of 500-year-old events into present-day terms. Going to sea in 1519 was "the Renaissance equivalent of becoming an astronaut;" the expedition's return was "the Renaissance equivalent of winning the space race."
Bergreen is also good at evoking landscapes visited by Magellan's men --- the brooding, icy desolation of Tierra del Fuego, the decadent luxuriousness of various Pacific islands, the treacherous sea lanes around the Cape of Good Hope. Also stressed is the racial tension between Spaniards and Portuguese on board ship that bred several attempts at mutiny (at least one of them successful) and a constant undercurrent of cutthroat seaborne politics.
Magellan was able to survive all of this by imposing his iron will on officers and crew. Once he was killed, a crisis of leadership engulfed the expedition and nearly caused it to fail utterly.
As Bergreen fleshes out this extraordinary story, the reader can learn much about such things as methods of torture employed, bizarre sexual practices encountered, worldwide weather patterns, details of flora and fauna along the route, and the constant jockeying for advantage between the two great maritime superpowers of the day. If an interesting digression is called for, Bergreen delivers it, but not at suffocating length (an example: the story of the little-known Chinese "Treasure Fleet" that had been trading with the Spice Islands long before Europeans got there).
Only one minor criticism is worth noting: One wishes there were better maps, especially of the passage through the Strait of Magellan at the southern end of South America. The endpaper maps, while colorful, are hardly adequate.
--- Reviewed by Robert Finn
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