Dear Editor,
With reference to our Portuguese citizens who still live and work in Guyana, the public ought to know that in maritime history, the Portuguese contributed greatly in terms of early exploration and navigational genius. All Portuguese should be proud of this period in their history, because Portuguese kings and their master sailors conquered the worst seas and battered down the idea that the world was flat and the oceans were small.
They pushed the limits of endurance; discovered signs in the stars on the land they sailed past and in the seas; and secured the eternal respect of the world for their great seamanship in laying the foundations of the modern world.
It all started with the first efforts by Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) who pushed the exploration of the South Atlantic and the coast of Africa and started the trend of the later great explorations of Pero da Covilha (1460-1545) who was the first to reach India overland, and referred to as the Portuguese Marco Polo; Bartholomeu Dias (?-1500), the first naval explorer to go around the southern tip of Africa in 1488, sailing through some of the worst seas in the world, and back to Portugal; Vasco da Gama(1460-1524) all the way to India in 1498, until then the greatest seafaring saga in history. Da Gama travelled with his fleet of 4 vessels 3200 nautical miles for 93 days just in the first stage of getting to eastern Africa through the treacherous straits at Africa’s southern tip.
Da Gama went on to cross the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean to reach Calicut in south India and established a sea route between East and West, changing both Eastern and Western history. The final and most important Portuguese contribution to our modern world as we know it today, was Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage, which achieved the great circumnavigation of the world by the Armada de Molucca, probably the greatest voyage of discovery the world has ever known, as heroic as the best fiction could conjure, changing our planet forever. Magellan was a product of the previous century of Portuguese domination of maritime exploration and the tradition of Portuguese mariners was legendary and heroic, exactly the characteristics Magellan were to show on this epic voyage which set the stage and opened the curtain on the modern history of our world, affecting the human race forever. Today, as we use the internet and are connected instantly with anywhere in the world, we should remember Magellan who, under the most hazardous conditions, led his armada “over the edge the world,” and established the first primitive base of world communication.
Magellan(1480-1521) was born in northern Portugal and was a sailor who had wide experience on explorations on Portuguese ships, even sailing to the East to the famed spice islands. But he had to get backing from the Spanish court and King Charles to fund his expedition after the Portuguese crown refused to back his proposed trip to find a passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
He set out on September 20, 1519 with an armada of 250 men from Spain and five barely seaworthy ships. Finally, Magellan found the passage to the “other” ocean, now known as the Magellan Straits. Also, during this crossing, one of the ships deserted and eventually returned to Spain, spreading false information; at an earlier stage another ship had been wrecked.
On the island of Mactan, Magellan was tricked by the King of that island and his landing party attacked on the beach. Magellan made sure that all his men were safely away on the longboats while he alone fought off the attacking warriors, but he was cut down by spear thrusts, poisoned arrows and scimitar cuts, falling dead on the beach.
After Magellan’s death, the armada reached the Spice Islands and loaded up to capacity with cloves, but soon one of the ships had to be destroyed because of terrible leaking and of the two ships left only one, the Victoria, loaded with spices, made it back to Spain after a hazardous journey.
The last leg of this journey was made with the sailors (just 18 men left alive) pumping water out of the leaking ship. Astonishment at the arrival on September 8, 1522 was universal in Spain because the armada had been given up for lost. The value of the cloves on board was enough to pay off all the investors of the voyage and the surviving sailors. Magellan’s feat was the climax of the Age of Discovery.
Editor, near the Antarctic pole where Magellan navigated the straits from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the observation was made on that journey, that there were many small stars in the sky “which have the appearance of two clouds of mist.” In fact these “clouds” are billions of stars enveloped in a blanket of gaseous substance which today are known as the Magellanic Clouds, huge markers in the world’s southern skies, named after one of the world’s greatest explorers.
Yours faithfully,
Cheddi (Joey) Jagan (Jr)
