Oh, man, was I crazy. To think that I could explore the Spice Islands, I mean. I lost tons of men, I didn't gain any really useful information, and I died. My name is Ferdinand Magellan (born Fernao de Magalhaes of Portugal in 1480), and I was an explorer for King Charles V of Spain. I worked as a Portuguese Queen's page before offering my services (navigating services, that is) to King Charles, who let me sail Spain's land and explore the unknown. My journey started on September 20, 1519, and I landed in Brazil and reached Rio de Janeiro on December 13. My men and I also found San Julián where we encountered these natives that we called Patagoes. HOLY MADONNA! They had huge feet! That's what patagoes means, "big feet". Around this time, my fellow captains fought against me for making decisions without them. If they let me be, then I wouldn't have had to kill them! It was definitely their fault. We traveled through a little strait between South America and Antarctica. We named it the Strait of Magellan. How awesome is that? Yup, pretty awesome. After a month of turbulent waters and stormy weather that tossed us around the boat to and fro, we reached calm, peaceable waters. We named it the Pacific. Bam! Just like that, we named something else! So much power! Anyway, we reached a place that people know as Guam, but my men died from scurvy and starvation and thirst just before we restocked. I feel for them. Later, we reached a massive chain of islands called the Philippines, which we claimed for Spain. Yeah, no big deal. That was some cool chizz there. Being the social butterfly that I am, I tried to make friends with the chief of the island of Cebu. I took some of my men and we used force to make a leader from another island to acknowledge Spain's rule like the Chief of Cebu did. I ended up dying, so I would NOT suggest taking only 60 men to use force as a means of taking control. So I never made it to the Spice Islands, but whatever, no biggie. The only thing that my crew got from this journey was a butt-load of valuable spices when they reached Moluccas (some other islands). I don't think those spices were worth it if I had to die along the way. Well, it's not like the other side got off clean; We all lost men, and those people will probably hate us now. After that nothing big happened. It's pretty disappointing that only one of the five boats that we started with returned back to Seville. At least we're known for being the first people to circumnavigate the globe.
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Sources:
http://ancienthistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1698649?terms=ferdinand+Magellan
http://ancienthistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/983984?terms=ferdinand+Magellan
http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/bic1/ReferenceDetailsPage/ReferenceDetailsWindow?failOverType=&query=&windowstate=normal&contentModules=&mode=view&displayGroupName=Reference&limiter=&currPage=&disableHighlighting=true&displayGroups=&sortBy=&source=&search_within_results=&action=e&catId=GALE%7CAAA000035107&activityType=&scanId=&documentId=GALE%7CK1631004182
Scarlett C.
So what if you never made it to the Spice Islands, you NAMED thingsI What did you want to accomplish at the Spices Islands specifically? Well things ended badly for the both of us, but at least your crew received something at the end of all of this, I lost all of my money, reputation, and dignity before dying!
ReplyDelete-Hernando Cortez
PS: You ARE crazy. No wonder you're dead.