Part II · The Winter of Patagonia
Chapter 7
Port San Julián
Port San Julián, Patagonia
Wintering at Port San Julián, three of the five ships rise against Magellan. By morning he has them back: Luis de Mendoza is stabbed, Gaspar de Quesada beheaded, and Juan de Cartagena kept under guard.
Why did it take eight months to get from the mutiny to the strait?
Because winter came first. The mutiny broke out on the night of 1 April 1520, as the southern winter was setting in, and Magellan kept the fleet at Port San Julián until 24 August, repairing the ships and waiting for better weather. In May the scout ship Santiago was wrecked looking for a way south. The fleet then waited almost two more months at the Santa Cruz river for spring. It reached the mouth of the strait on 21 October, and the passage itself took 38 days, until 28 November. No one knew for sure where the strait was, or whether there was one, so they had to search the coast as they went.
31 March 1520
The harbour is long and narrow. The tide runs so far out that the ships sit on mud at low water, but they are safe from the western gales. They name it Port San Julián. Magellan announces that they will spend the winter here, which turns out to be five months, and that rations will be cut.
It is the worst news he could give. The men are already cold, tired and hungry, and nobody knows how far away the strait is, or whether it exists. The Spanish officers have spent eight months resenting a Portuguese commander who will not share his plans, and some of them suspect him of secretly serving Portugal. Now he is asking them to spend the winter at the edge of the world on short rations.
Pigafetta, loyal to his captain, covers this part of the story in a few lines. “As soon as we had entered the port,” he writes, the captains “plotted treason in order that they might kill the captain-general.” The details come from the trial records and the chroniclers.
Palm Sunday, 1 April 1520
On Palm Sunday, Magellan invites all his captains to hear Mass on shore and dine with him afterwards. Only one comes: Álvaro de Mesquita, his cousin, whom he has made captain of the San Antonio. The others stay on their ships.
That night Gaspar de Quesada, captain of the Concepción, and Juan de Cartagena, freed from custody, lead about thirty armed men in boats across the dark harbour to the San Antonio. They storm aboard, seize Mesquita and put him in irons. The ship’s master, a Basque named Juan de Elorriaga, refuses to give up the ship and is stabbed several times. He will die of his wounds months later.
By dawn the mutineers hold three of the five ships: the San Antonio, the Concepción, and the Victoria, under the treasurer Luis de Mendoza. Magellan has only his flagship and the little Santiago. The rebels send him a message. They will obey him again, they say, if he agrees to take their advice and treat them properly. What they mean is that the fleet belongs to Spain, not to him.
2 April 1520
Magellan answers with a trick. He seizes the boat that carried the rebels’ message. Then he sends his alguacil, the fleet’s master-at-arms, Gonzalo Gómez de Espinosa, across to the Victoria with five men and a letter ordering Mendoza to come to the flagship.
Mendoza reads the letter and smiles, as if to refuse. As he does, Espinosa stabs him in the throat with a dagger. Another man strikes him in the head, and he falls dead. At the same moment a second boat comes alongside with fifteen picked men under Duarte Barbosa, Magellan’s brother-in-law. Before the Victoria‘s crew understand what has happened, the ship is Magellan’s.
Now he has three ships to their two. He moves the Trinidad, the Victoria and the Santiago to the mouth of the harbour, blocking the way out. That night the San Antonio, her anchor cable cut or dragging, drifts down towards the flagship. The flagship opens fire and grapples her. Quesada is taken. By morning the mutiny is over.
April 1520
The punishments are meant to be remembered. Mendoza’s body is dragged ashore, cut into quarters and put on display as a traitor’s. Gaspar de Quesada is sentenced to death. His own servant, Luis de Molino, who had joined the mutiny, is offered his life if he will act as executioner, and he beheads his master. Quesada’s body is quartered in turn.
About forty men are sentenced to death with them. But Magellan cannot sail his ships without them, so he pardons them and puts them to hard labour in chains through the winter instead: working the pumps, cutting wood, scraping the ships’ hulls in the freezing mud. One of them is a Basque named Juan Sebastián Elcano, the master of the Concepción. Remember his name.
Juan de Cartagena, the man most responsible, was appointed by the king himself, and Magellan will not execute him. He will be dealt with later. Pigafetta’s own account of all this is muddled. He names the wrong man as quartered and the wrong man as marooned. It is one of the few places where his memory, or his sources, seem to fail him. Or perhaps he simply preferred not to dwell on it.
April–May 1520
Winter settles on Port San Julián. The crews build a shelter on an island in the harbour for the blacksmiths and the stores. The carpenters haul the ships over to scrape and caulk their hulls. The men fish and gather shellfish, including long mussels, missiglioni, which sometimes hold small pearls.
On the plains inland, hunting parties see what Pigafetta calls ostriches (they are rheas), along with foxes, sparrows, and rabbits much smaller than European ones. There is incense, he adds. On the top of the highest hill they plant a cross as a sign that the land belongs to the king of Spain, and they call the summit Monte de Christo.
What they do not see, for two whole months, is people. The country seems completely empty. The men tell each other that nothing could live in a place so bare and cold.