This remarkable narrative brings the entire expedition to life. What Magellan’s expedition achieved and what Pigafetta saw and recorded so well, forever changed our concept of the world and vastly enlarged our knowledge of it. On the far side of the Pacific, the fleet discovered the Marianas archipelago, and some three hundred leagues further west, the Philippines.
In addition to recording shipboard life and navigation maneuvers, Pigafetta documented the night sky and cosmology, plants and animals, indigenous cultures and customs, languages and the geography of lands and seas never before seen by Europeans. In travel writing, one often must recreate the first moment of newness, that fresh sense of awe, on the page for the reader Pigafetta does it again and again, by reveling in odd and odder bits of detail.” Skelton (formerly Superintendent of the Map Room at the British Museum), who prepared the excellent translation and commentary for the reprint of Pigafetta’s book, notes in its Introduction that Pigafetta “brought to his task of recording a capacity for keen observation, sympathetic interpretation, and expressive communication of experience, which enabled him to produce one of the most remarkable documents in the history of geographical and ethnological discovery.” Another scholar wrote “It is a work that is intent on wonder. I’ve also provided a two-page spread from Pigafetta’s book to give you a sense of its beauty.ĭr. The map depicts the southern part of South America, including the Strait of Magellan, discovered on the voyage. Amoretti published the Italian text with notes in 1800, and a French translation the following year. Amoretti (1741–1816) was an Italian priest, writer, scholar, and scientist, who, as a conservator at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, discovered the manuscript, which was long thought to be lost. Shown here (#2) is Pigafetta’s map of the Strait of Magellan, as reproduced in Carlo Amoretti’s 1800 edition of the only Pigafetta manuscript in Italian. Pigafetta’s journal became the basis for his 1525 travelogue, The First Voyage Around the World, which he designed and illustrated. Pigafetta also made 23 beautiful, hand-drawn color maps, a complete set of which accompanies each of the manuscripts. His accounting of the expedition is the only complete narrative of the expedition that exists and is considered one of the most important geographical documents of the Age of Discovery.įour manuscript versions of Pigafetta’s journal survive, three in French and one in Italian. Fortunately for us, Pigafetta not only survived the harrowing voyage but he recorded “all the things that had occurred day by day during our voyage” in wondrous detail. One of the survivors, Antonio Pigafetta (#1 above), a young Italian nobleman and diplomat had joined the voyage as a volunteer, eagerly embracing the role of personal assistant to Magellan and served as official chronicler of the expedition. Magellan was not among the survivors, having been killed in the Philippines, a tragic victim of his own religious conversion zeal and bellicosity in the face of indigenous resistance. Of the 237 sailors who departed from Seville in 1519, only 18 returned aboard the Victoria. The rest of the fleet was gone: the Santiago shipwrecked, the San Antonio overtaken, the Concepcíon burned and the Trinidad abandoned.
On September 8, 1522, the crew of the Victoria cast anchor in the waters off of Seville, Spain, having just completed the first circumnavigation of the world.
EPostcard #94: Magellan’s Chronicler: Antonio Pigafetta
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