This week marks the 504th anniversary of the departure from Spain of the expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan that first circumnavigated the globe. The three-year voyage was beset by one disaster after another, including multiple mutinies, starvation, scurvy, violent clashes with indigenous people in the lands they visited and deadly storms. Magellan himself only made it as far as the Philippines before being killed in battle by Mactan warriors who were resisting forcible conversion to Christianity. Of the five ships that started out, only one made it all the way around the world, with only 18 survivors out of the original 270 men on board.
Based in Huelva in Spain, a not-for-profit organization called the Nao Victoria Foundation was established in 1991 with a mission to build full-sized replicas of historic ships from the Age of Discovery to serve as floating museums. Its first project was the Nao Victoria, explained project manager Brenda Parra: “That’s the one that made it back.” A nao is the Spanish name for a square-sailed trading ship known in English as a carrack, the predecessor of the galleon.
In 2018, the Nao Victoria Foundation completed the 14-year construction of a replica of the Trinidad, Magellan’s capitana or flagship, the original of which was destroyed by a storm in Tinate in the Molucca islands in 1522, after having been seized by the Portuguese. On Monday, September 18, the Nao Trinidad arrived at the Rondout waterfront in Kingston, where it will remain docked at the Hudson River Maritime Museum and open to the public for deck tours through October 8. Built of iroko and pine, the ship weighs 200 tons, measures 29 meters long and 8 meters wide, with four masts, five sails and five decks. Visitors have access to most sections of the ship, whose exhibits and interpretive materials provide a grounding in the expedition’s hair-raising history.
The primary goal of Magellan’s expedition was to find a western route to the Moluccas, then known as the Spice Islands, and bring back a cargo of cloves, which in the early 16th century were worth their weight in gold. Although Magellan himself was Portuguese, he couldn’t persuade his own government to finance his voyage. But Spain’s young king, Charles I, was seeking an alternative way to access the lucrative spice trade in the South Pacific, since the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas had drawn a line dividing the Atlantic that granted Portugal control of the eastern routes to the Indian Ocean that went around Africa.
King Charles and his advisors wanted to establish exactly where the “antimeridian” of the Tordesillas meridian was located, dividing the globe into two hemispheres. In particular, they wanted to know which dominant naval power could legally lay claim to the Moluccas, according to the treaty. (In 1529, seven years after Magellan’s death, the Treaty of Zaragoza ceded the spice-rich archipelago to Portugal; Spain got a hefty cash settlement out of the deal.) To resolve the geographical dispute, the Spaniards needed documentation of the distance around the world.
Unfortunately, the mostly Spanish crews of the five ships of the Armada del Maluco didn’t trust their Portuguese commander, who sailed closer to the shoreline than many sailors deemed safe because he knew that the Portuguese king had sent two fleets of caravels in pursuit, intending to disrupt their expedition and arrest Magellan. Tensions ran high on board, and several attempted mutinies were put down, with considerable bloodshed.
One ship, the San Antonio, actually deserted the expedition in the middle of the Strait of Magellan, turning tail and heading back to Spain instead of showing up at a designated rendezvous point. Another, the Santiago, had already been wrecked by a storm on the coast of Patagonia. Following Magellan’s death, and a subsequent massacre of 27 of his crew on the island of Cebu, the Concepción was deliberately scuttled in the Philippines; battle, starvation and scurvy had killed too many of the sailors to manage all three remaining ships.
The new captain of the Trinidad, Gonzalo Gomez de Espinosa, decided to head back northeast across the Pacific to New Spain (Mexico) with a load of cloves, but was stymied by the summer monsoons and returned to the Moluccas, only to be captured by the Portuguese and wrecked by a storm while in port. Piloted by Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano – its original captain, Luís Mendoza, having been killed during a mutiny attempt – the Victoria finally made it back to Spain in September 1522. Fortunately, several survivors had kept written records of the tumultuous expedition, including a Venetian named Antonio Pigafetta. The detailed account by diarist Ginés de Mafra, one of only four of the crew of the Trinidad to make it back to Europe, was not discovered until 1920.
Despite much bloody strife and often-horrific conditions – such as having to eat ox hides soaked in seawater, because they hadn’t anticipated the Pacific Ocean being so large and laid in sufficient provisions – the Magellan expedition achieved its primary mission, as well as many historic firsts: discovery of the Strait of Magellan, naming the Pacific, first European contact with the Philippines. They described new species of animals encountered in Patagonia, including guanacos and penguins. Upon reaching the Cape Verde islands on their return voyage, the crew of the Victoria were the first travelers to realize that crossing the not-yet-named International Date Line put them a day ahead of the calendar they’d been keeping. And in 1577, Sir Francis Drake used Magellan’s route as a template for England’s first successful circumnavigation of the globe.
Want to learn more – especially about the harsh realities of life on board a 16th-century seagoing vessel, where only the captain had an actual cabin and most of the crew had to sleep on the open deck? Tours of the Nao Trinidad are being conducted from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays until October 8. Tickets are priced at $15 for adults and $5 for children aged 5 to 12; children under 5 get in free. A family pass (two adults and three children) is available for $35. Ticketholders will be able to access the Hudson River Maritime Museum for the discounted rate of $5 per adult and free for children.
Tickets may be purchased online at www.hrmm.org/naotrinidad or in person at the docks. Purchasing advance tickets online is strongly recommended.
Join the family! 
