Over the Edge of the Edge: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe
Laurence Bergreen, 2004
HarperCollins
512 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780060936389
Summary
Ferdinand Magellan's daring circumnavigation of the globe in the sixteenth century was a three-year odyssey filled with sex, violence, and amazing adventure. Now in Over the Edge of the World, acclaimed author Laurence Bergreen, interweaving a variety of candid, first-person accounts, some previously unavailable in English, brings to life this groundbreaking and majestic tale of discovery that changed many long-held views about the world and the way explorers would henceforth navigate its oceans.
In 1519 Magellan and his fleet set sail from Seville, Spain, to find a water route to the Spice Islands in Indonesia, where the most sought-after commodities—cloves, pepper, and nutmeg—flourished. Most important, they were looking for a passageway, a strait, through the great landmass of the Americas that would lead them to these fabled islands. Laurence Bergreen takes readers on board with Magellan and his crew as they explore, navigate, mutiny, suffer, and die across the seas. He also recounts the many unusual sexual practices the crew experienced, from orgies in Brazil to bizarre customs in the South Pacific. With a fleet of five ships and more than two hundred men, they had set out in search of the Spice Islands. Three years later they returned with an abundance of spices from their intended destination, but with just one ship carrying eighteen emaciated men. They suffered starvation, disease, and torture, and many died, including Magellan, who was killed in a fierce battle.
A man of great tenacity, cunning, and courage, Magellan was full of contradictions. He was both heroic and foolish, insightful yet blind, a visionary whose instincts outran his ideals. Ambitious to a fault and not above using torture and murder to maintain control of his ships and sailors, he survived innumerable natural hazards in addition to several violent mutinies aboard his own fleet—and it took no less than the massed forces of fifteen hundred men to kill him.
This is the first time in nearly half a century that anyone has attempted to narrate the complete story of Magellan's unprecedented circumnavigation of the globe—to tell this truly gripping and profoundly important story of heroism, discovery, and disaster. A voyage into history, a tour of the world emerging from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, an anthropological account of tribes, languages, and customs unknown to Europeans, and a chronicle of a desperate grab for commercial and political power, Over the Edge of the World is a captivating tale that rivals the most exciting thriller fiction. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—February 4, 1950
• Where—N/A
• Education—Harvard University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Laurence Bergreen is a historian and biographer who lives in New York City.
A Harvard graduate, he worked in journalism, academia and broadcasting before publishing his first biography, James Agee: A Life. He has also written biographies of Irving Berlin, Al Capone, and Louis Armstrong.
Bergreen has also written on historical subjects, including Voyage to Mars: NASA's Search for Life Beyond Earth, a narrative of NASA's exploration of Mars; Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe; Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu; and Columbus: The Four Voyages.
Bergreen has also written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Newsweek and Esquire. He taught at The New School in New York, and served as Assistant to the President of The Paley Center for Media. Bergreen frequently lectures at major universities and symposia, and is a Featured Historian for The History Channel.
In 2007, Bergreen was asked by NASA to name some geological features surrounding the Victoria crater on Mars, based on places Ferdinand Magellan visited. In 2008, Bergreen was a keynote speaker at NASA's 50th anniversary event in Washington, D.C. (From Widipedia.)
Book Reviews
Prodigious research, sure-footed prose and vivid depictions make for a thoroughly satisfying account of the age in which Iberian seafarers groped their way around the world. Binding it all together is the psychology of Magellan's flawed leadership, the source of constant tension in his fleet. Driven by a fanatical dream to find the Spice Islands, Magellan was a frustrated Portuguese nobleman sailing for the king of Spain and a complicated man with absolute power of life and death over his crew. Almost five centuries after embarking on his world-changing voyage, he emerges here in the hands of a capable biographer who is simultaneously attracted and repelled by his excesses.
W. Jeffrey Bolster - Wall Street Journal
In Bergreen's hands, however, [Over the Edge of the World is] a great adventure story, complete with enough plot elements—political intrigue, sexual adventurism, travelogue—to keep anyone happy, even those of us with no interest in navigation.
Alan Greenblatt - National Public Radio
Journalist Bergreen, who has penned biographies of James Agee, Louis Armstrong, Irving Berlin and Al Capone, superbly recreates Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan's obsessive 16th-century quest, an ill-fated journey that altered Europe's perception of the planet: "It was a dream as old as the imagination: a voyage to the ends of the earth.... Mariners feared they could literally sail over the edge of the world." In 2001, Bergreen traveled the South American strait that bears Magellan's name, and he adds to that firsthand knowledge satellite images of Magellan's route plus international archival research. His day-by-day account incorporates the testimony of sailors, Francisco Albo's pilot's log and the eyewitness accounts of Venetian scholar Antonio Pigafetta, who was on the journey. Magellan's mission for Spain was to find a water route to the fabled Spice Islands, and in 1519, the Armada de Molucca (five ships and some 260 sailors) sailed into the pages of history. Many misfortunes befell the expedition, including the brutal killing of Magellan in the Philippines. Three years later, one weather-beaten ship, "a vessel of desolation and anguish," returned to Spain with a skeleton crew of 18, yet "what a story those few survivors had to tell—a tale of mutiny, of orgies on distant shores, and of the exploration of the entire globe," providing proof that the world was round. Illuminating the Age of Discovery, Bergreen writes this powerful tale of adventure with a strong presence and rich detail. Maps, 16-page color photo insert.
Publishers Weekly
Bergreen (Voyage to Mars; Louis Armstrong) applies his successful writing skills to this inside story of what really happened during Magellan's epic, three-year circumnavigation of the globe. On September 6, 1522, of the five vessels that began the historic voyage, only one (the Victoria) sailed into the Spanish port of Sanlucar de Barrameda, holding a mere 18 survivors from the original crew of 260. Bergreen provides a gripping, first-rate story of the harrowing journey, the death of Magellan and nearly his entire crew, and the loss of three of the ships (one had already returned to Spain). Bergreen bases the text on exhaustive research into over 500-year-old original and secondary source documents from five languages, including the extensive eyewitness account by Antonio Pigafetta, the official chronicler of the voyage. Readers will be thrilled by Bergreen's superb, lively writing. The work nicely updates Tim Joyner's ten-year-old Magellan and provides a readily accessible, general history of this important event in world history that will also attract interest in academia. Highly recommended for all libraries. —Dale Farris, Groves, TX
Library Journal
Ferdinand Magellan's ship was the first to circumnavigate the globe. While the accomplishment is recognized as a historic milestone, less known are the details of that voyage around the world.... Fascinating reading for history buffs, and a great story that rivals any seagoing adventure. —Gavin Quinn
Booklist
A vivid account of Magellan's star-crossed voyage around the world nearly five centuries ago. Fond of epic adventures and odd ducks alike, Bergreen (Voyage to Mars, 2000, etc.) finds a nice blend of the two in Ferdinand Magellan's life and career. Considered a tyrant by some, a traitor by others, and often in trouble with one legal authority or another, Magellan seemed driven by a need both to serve the powerful and to make himself rich and/or famous in the bargain; he also had a habit of tripping himself up and making powerful enemies, racking up charges of selling provisions to the Arab enemy in one war and earning mistrust for abandoning his native Portugal for the chance to command an expedition for archrival Spain. Magellan's skills as a soldier and apparent lack of fear in promoting his aims—if matched by a deeply provisional knowledge of the world beyond Iberia—eventually won him the exclusive contract to find the fabled Spice Islands and claim the lands he found for Christianity and Spain. Thanks to bad luck, poor skills on the human-relations front, and some unfortunate missteps at sea, Magellan found himself confronting near-constant mutinies great and small; he survived them only to die, in 1521, in the Philippines after picking a fight with the natives in a misguided attempt to prove his omnipotence. Bergreen, citing Magellan's shipmate and chronicler Antonio Pigafetta, suggests that the Captain General's ever-quarrelsome crew deliberately failed to come to his aid—"or their officers ordered them to stay put," effecting an easily disguised mutiny by another name. Only one of the Magellan armada's ships made it back to Spain, and 200 sailors died on the voyage. Still, Bergreen writes, the expedition had an important effect not only in pointing the way to the Spice Island trade, but also in dispelling reigning myths about "mermaids, boiling water at the equator, and a magnetic island capable of pulling the nails from passing ships." Very nicely written through and through, and a pleasure for students of world exploration.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
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Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Over the Edge of the World:
1. How does Laurence Bergreen present Ferdinand Magellan to readers? What kind of man is Magellan? How would you describe him? Was he "the man for the job"? In other words, did Magellan's character traits and personality make him suitable for leading this voyage of discovery?
2. What were the political and economic justifications for the expedition? Why was even a small sack of spices valuable to a sailor?
3. Talk about the role of nationalism—between the Spaniards and Portuguese—and how it undermined the voyage? What about King Manuel of Portugal? Why was he so intent on interfering with Magellan?
4. Did you find helpful Bergreen's discussion of the Pope's demarcation of Spanish and Portuguese spheres of control? Were you able to follow the author's explanation?
5. Did Bergreen's use of primary sources enhance or detract from your reading experience? What do they bring, if anything, to the narrative? Did you at times wish for more maps to trace the route? Was the NASA photograph of the Magellan Strait helpful?
6. Bergreen's descriptive passages detail both the beauty and brutality of the natural world. What were some of the descriptions that most struck you? Perhaps the glaciers in the Strait of Magellan? What else?
7. Talk about the ordeal of living on a ship in the 16th century: everything from the lack of fresh water to violent weather and bedbugs? What would you have found most difficult?
8. Magellan's armada suffered multiple mutinies. What were the reasons for the rebellions? Do you find yourself in sympathy with the crew or with Magellan?
9. What role does religion play in the expedition. How was the crew, for instance, affected by the Inquisition? What about religion's role in the Philippines?
10. What happened on the Philippines that led to Magellan's death? For a man as prudent and disciplined as Magellan, how did he find himself embroiled in a contest between two tribes?
11. Many of his crew watched Magellan from their ships as he was slaughtered in the surf in the Philippines. Antonio Pigafetta, the voyage's chief chronicler, implies that more might have been done to save Magellan's life. Why didn't the crew come to his rescue?
12. What affect did the expedition have on Europeans' perception of the world? How they view the world prior to the sail of the Molucca Armada...and after its return?
13. Despite the destruction of all but one ship, was the voyage "successful"? What impact did it have on Spain's economy? (Was it worth the heavy cost, in human terms, to bring a supply of spices to Europe? What, for instance, were cloves used for?)
14. You might say we, too, are in an "age of discovery"—voyaging into the unknown in spaceships rather than sea ships. In what way, if any, can the courage of astronauts be compared to that of 16th-century sea explorers? Are the two comparable?
15. Laurence Bergreen writes in the prologue, "They had survived an expedition to the ends of the earth, but more than that, they had endured a voyage into the darkest recesses of the human soul." What does Bergreen mean by that remark?
16. Follow-up to Question #15: Joseph Conrad wrote about that very theme 300 years later in The Heart of Darkness. Is it a universal human trait—that, once lost, alone, and "unanchored" from society, humans descend into the soul's dark recesses? Hypothetical question: would our behavior today be different from—or similar to—that of 16th-century explorers if we encountered beings on another planet?
17. What did you enjoy most about this historical biography? Did Bergreen's prose readily engage you? Did the author make the era come alive? Did you find the digressions and asides interesting? Of did you find the work bogged down by too much detail?
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