Here’s what happened to the Rajah Almanzor, Cano, Espinosa, and other characters after they left the pages of Magellan’s Navigator.
Rajah Almanzor – Rajah Almanzor’s fears were realized when the Portuguese and their Ternate allies joined forces and attacked Tidore. The Rajah Almanzor fled into Tidore’s mountains. The Spanish did send a second Armada to the Moluccas with Cano as its Pilot Major. Only one ship from this Armada, the Santa Maria de la Victoria, arrived in the Moluccas during 1526. (See Cano below.) Nonetheless, these Spanish were enough to leave the Portuguese and Ternate balanced against the Spanish, Tidore, and the Rajah of Bacchian. This stalemate ended when Emperor Charles V on April 23, 1529 relinquished all claims to the Moluccas for 350,000 ducats in the Treaty of Saragossa. The Emperor Charles was desperate at this time for money to support his European empire. (Therefore, because Portuguese King Manuel refused to pay Magellan a half ducat per month stipend, causing him to go to Spain, his successor King João III ended up paying 350,000 ducats.) The Portuguese and Ternate then overwhelmed Tidore. Almanzor fled to his larger ally, the Rajah of Bacchian. His final fate is not certain, although one account has a Portuguese physician poisoning him.
Juan Sebastián el Cano – Cano received many honors from King Carlos. Nonetheless, he had domestic problems with children from two different women. There is a record of a petition to King Carlos for a guard because of threats to his life. In 1525 Cano was Pilot Major of the Loaísa’s seven-ship fleet to the Spice Islands, the first fleet to retrace the track Magellan had blazed. He was also captain of the Sancti Spiritus. The crew of this fleet was predominantly Basque, which should have led to a more cohesive fleet than Magellan’s armada. Cano’s piloting skills were not up to the task. He was initially unable to find the entrance to the Straits of Magellan and once he did find the straits, a storm wrecked his ship. Of the six remaining ships, one deserted in the straits. It wrecked off Brazil. Sebastian Cabot rescued a few of its survivors. (See Michael de Rodas.) A storm blew another ship out of the strait into the Atlantic, where it vanished. Cano took four and half months to navigate the straits, as compared to five weeks for Magellan.
Once in the Pacific Ocean a storm separated the four remaining ships. One was lost, another, the smallest, managed to reach Mexico. The flagship, with Loaísa and Cano proceeded alone. Scurvy took a high toll in the voyage across the Pacific. Loaísa died first. Cano died a week later two-thirds the way across the Pacific. The flagship reached Tidore with around a hundred men. The fourth ship managed to sail to Mindanao in the Philippines, where it wrecked. Three of its men survived.
Magellan’s fleet had its difficulties, but it fared much better than this second fleet. This is true even considering Magellan was sailing into the unknown, while Cano’s fleet had the knowledge of Magellan’s voyage. Magellan’s success is a testament to his skills and preparation, and Cano’s lack of them.
Rajah Checchili of Ternate – Prince Checchili had an uneasy peace with the Portuguese. Tensions rose after the Portuguese constructed a fort on Ternate. The Portuguese took several of Prince Checcili’s younger brothers as hostages in the fort along with his mother. Prince Checchili died childless in 1529, likely another victim of poison.
Pilot Major Estéban Gómez – Despite the questionable circumstances of Pilot Gómez’s return with the San Antonio, he remained employed as a pilot for the Casa de Contratación. In 1524, he searched for a northwest passage to the Indies. He sailed along the coast of North America from Florida to Canada, but returned in 1525 with no success. He then became a West Indies slaver. In 1535, he was a pilot on the Mendoza expedition to the Rio de la Plata. The last written record that mentioned him is in 1537 at the Rio de la Plata. At that time, he was old for the times at fifty-three years of age.
Gonzalo Gómez de Espinosa – Espinosa was first held prisoner in the Moluccas, but then transferred to Cochin, the hub of Portuguese India. Da Gama had returned to India as viceroy. He was not about to let the Spanish interloper free. After da Gama’s death, Espinosa was allowed to depart for Lisbon with the Ginés Mafra and Hans Bergen, only to be thrown in prison on their arrival in Lisbon in July, 1526. Hans Bergen died there. Espinosa was released in early 1527 after the personal intervention of the Emperor Charles V with his now brother-in-law King João III of Portugal. Espinosa was reunited with his wife after eight years apart. Emperor Charles received him in May, 1527 and granted him a pension in reward for his services. After the usual Spanish bureaucratic snafus, this started in 1529. He also inherited the small estate of Hans Bergen who had died when in prison with Espinosa in Lisbon. The last known record of Espinosa is in 1543, when at age sixty he was living in Seville.
Ginés Mafra – He was one of the four survivors of the Trinidad to return to Spain. He was released from a Portuguese prison in 1527 after his papers, including all the Trinidad’s roteiros were confiscated. He had an audience with the Emperor Charles V and then returned home to find his beloved wife Fidelia had remarried. She had sold his house and all his property.
A few years later Ginés returned to the sea. In 1536, he was pilot major of a fleet in the Pacific Ocean operating from the Americas. Ginés sailed as a pilot in a six-ship expedition bound to Asia from Mexico. The expedition discovered many islands and gave the Philippines their current name. None of the ships and few of the men ever returned to Spain. There is no record of Ginés Mafra returning and he is presumed one of those lost, but how, where, and when is not known.
Manual – The Spanish scribe Herrera writes of a Moluccan on the Victoria: “One of these was so sharp, that the first thing he did was to inquire how many reals a ducat was worth, and a real how many maravedis, and how much pepper was given for a maravedi; and he went from shop to shop to get information of the value of spices.” This had to be Manual. He had learned too much, and, unlike his countrymen, was not allowed to return to his homeland.
Álvaro Mezquita – This somewhat inept cousin of Magellan was released from prison in 1522, upon the return of the Victoria. He returned to Portugal.
António Pigafetta – Pigafetta was miffed at not being one of the two chosen to accompany Cano to the first audience with Charles V. Pigafetta went to the Emperor Charles V’s court on his own and presented him with his written record of the circumnavigation of the globe. No record remains of this book. He was paid his wages in arrears and his share of the Victoria’s cargo. He then went to visit the Portuguese King João III, followed by King Francis in France, where he presented another book to his fellow Italian, the Queen Mother, Marie Louise of Savoy. He returned to his home in Vicenza, where he recreated his book for publication. He completed it in 1524 in Rome, where he was invited to an audience with Pope Clement VII.
Pigafetta then became a knight-errant of the Order of Saint Rhodes and vowed to defend Christianity from the Moslem Turks. At this point, the written record ends. He is believed to have died as a member of the Order fighting the Turks.
Pigafetta’s original folio is lost. Four copies are left. Three are in French and one in Italian. There are differences between the four, as might be expected as they were copied and mistakes when made translating from Italian to French. Albo’s log gives a much more precise, but sparse, description of the voyage. Pigafetta gives a much more in-depth description of the people, places, flora, and fauna that he encountered. He does lapse into fanciful travelogue recounts of tall tales told to him by natives during the voyage. His folio also suffers from being written after the fact, which introduces some inaccuracies as to the timing of some events. His account is remarkable in that very few members of the crew are mentioned by name other than Magellan. Cano is not mentioned.
Giovanni de Polcevera – Polcevera, along with Espinosa, Ginés, and most of the other surviving Trinidad sailors were taken from Ternate to Cochin, India in 1525. Permission to return to Europe was denied them. Polcevera befriended some fellow Genoese sailors in the service of Portugal in late 1525, and sailed for Lisbon. He was discovered by Portuguese officers and put ashore in Mozambique. There he remained with little food or clothing until he died of disease in Mozambique in 1526 at age fifty-eight.
Michael de Rodas – Michael sailed in 1525 as Pilot Major of a fleet to the Moluccas under Sebastian Cabot. Michael’s appointment was made by King Carlos over the objections of Cabot. Cabot was a prickly character who got along with few people. He marooned Michael on an island off Brazil along with Martín Méndez, the clerk of the Victoria. Both are believed to have died attempting to reach the mainland.
Tupas – Tupas became rajah of Cebu upon Humabon’s death. He was still rajah in 1565 when Michael López de Legazpi’s expedition reached Cebu. Tupas resisted Legazpi, but his men were overwhelmed by superior Spanish firepower. Tupas survived to negotiate a treaty. His defeat marked the beginning of the long Spanish occupation of the Philippines.
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I like to write characters, or read about characters, with a rich backstory. I know writers who construct elaborate backstories for all their major characters. The question is then how, or even if, this backstory is revealed to the reader. I think this is best done slowly
kennethdschultz 