Another fallen idol: the myth of Ferdinand Magellan debunked

Who would you choose to judge you long after your death? How about a professional historian? How about Felipe Fernández-Armesto? Much lauded and read, this professor of history at Notre Dame, Indiana is the author of many books including short histories of humankind and the world and longer ones of exploration, Hispanic America and the year 1492. As you begin Straits, his account of the life and voyages of Fernando de Magallanes, known in English as Ferdinand Magellan, the explorer credited with the first European navigation from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the straits at the tip of South America in 1520, you may quail at the thought of his searing judgments.

He can be waspish, uncompromising and cutting. Explorers were liars, seafarers are generally irresponsible and today’s graduates ‘find modesty an encumbrance and accuracy a superfluity’. He tells us that Magellan did more than just fail:

He drove on to disaster when failure was already obvious… He made lethal mistakes. He never considered – let alone accomplished – the circumnavigation of the world; but common opinion continues to credit it him for it.

Our judge has an entertainingly low regard for common opinion, swiping at the ‘vulgar errors’ of less acute historians and scarcely modest about his own expertise: ‘I undertake the closest reading ever of the texts that are available… I can show more of what Magellan was like than any of my predecessors.’

What follows is rigorous, deft and entertaining history, though I did feel anxious on Magellan’s behalf as this investigation into his character and conduct proceeded. I’ve done a bit of exploring myself, I thought – and may be judged by someone like Felipe Fernández-Armesto. The book depicts the world Magellan knew, which most of us do not at all.