Part IV · The Pacific Sea
Chapter 13
The Peaceful Sea
The Pacific Ocean
Out of the strait, the fleet meets no storms in all the weeks that follow, so they call the ocean the Pacific, the peaceful sea. At night Pigafetta describes the clouds of stars now named after Magellan.
December 1520
At first the new ocean seems to reward them. According to the log kept by the pilot Francisco Albo, the ships run north along the coast of Chile for more than two weeks, putting the cold behind them, before they turn northwest into open water.
The winds are steady and gentle, and the sea is smooth. There are no storms, none at all, in all the weeks to come. So they call it the Pacific, the peaceful sea. “In truth it is very pacific,” Pigafetta writes, “for during that time we did not suffer any storm.”
He passes the long days watching a hunt. Three kinds of big fish, dorado, albacore and bonito, chase the flying fish the sailors call colondrini. When the flying fish are found, they leap from the water and glide farther than a crossbow can shoot, for as long as their fins stay wet. The hunters race along underneath, following their shadows, and snatch them the moment they fall back into the sea. “It is in fine,” he says, “a very amusing thing to watch.”
Christmas 1520
At night, the sky is strange. “The Antarctic Pole is not so starry as the Arctic,” Pigafetta writes. There is no bright star to steer by in the south, as the North Star serves in the north. Instead he sees many small stars clustered together that look like two clouds of mist, a little apart from each other and rather dim.
He also sees a cross of five very bright stars, placed exactly in relation to one another.
The compass behaves oddly too. Its needle still points to the north, but weakly, wavering “hither and thither.” When Magellan asks the pilots whether they are keeping to the course laid down on the charts, they all answer, “By your course exactly as laid down.” He tells them they are wrong, which Pigafetta says was true, and that the needle must be corrected, because this far from its own pole it is not drawing as strongly.
It is Christmas, the first of three Christmases these men will spend at sea. Nobody records how they kept it.
January 1521
Day after day, the ships run fifty, sixty or seventy leagues before the trade wind. The horizon stays empty. The sea stays blue. Nobody on board has any real idea how wide this ocean is. The globes and charts they learned from placed Asia only a few hundred leagues beyond the New World, so every sunrise should bring land, and none does.
The food that seemed enough in the strait runs short. The biscuit has been in the hold for more than a year, and it is going bad. The water in the casks is turning. The wine is finished. The dried fish from Santa Cruz is eaten.
Pigafetta says little about these weeks, and perhaps there was little to say. The ships sail on in company, the Trinidad‘s stern lantern burning each night for the others to follow, and everyone waits for the lookout to call.
24 January 1521
On the 24th of January the lookout finally calls land: a small, low island with trees and birds. The men crowd the rails. But when the ships come in close to anchor, the lead finds no bottom. There is no anchorage, and no sign of water or people. There are only birds, trees, and sharks circling the ships.
They name it San Pablo, and they sail on. Pigafetta places it at fifteen degrees south.
It is a cruel thing to find after eight weeks at sea, an island that offers nothing. And it tells Magellan something he does not want to know. His calculations had put the Moluccas close by. They are not close. The ocean is far bigger than any map said, and every day he has been wrong about it has cost him food he cannot replace.