Chapter 10
The River of Santa Cruz
Río Santa Cruz, Patagonia
After nearly five months at Port San Julián the four remaining ships sail on, leaving behind Juan de Cartagena and the priest Pedro Sánchez de Reina, marooned for plotting against Magellan.
24 August 1520
At the end of August, after nearly five months in Port San Julián, the four remaining ships leave the harbour. Two men stay behind.
Juan de Cartagena, the king’s inspector-general, has been kept under guard all winter since the mutiny. With him is a priest, Pedro Sánchez de Reina, who has been caught stirring up the crew again. Magellan will not hang a royal appointee or a man of the church, so he has both of them put ashore on the empty coast with a supply of bread and wine, and sails away. They are never heard of again.
The fleet goes only a short way south, to the mouth of the river where the Santiago was wrecked. Pigafetta places it at fifty degrees and forty minutes south. Spring has not come yet. Magellan decides to wait there for better weather before pushing on into the unknown.
September 1520
The river of Santa Cruz is not much kinder than San Julián. Furious winds rake the anchorage, and Pigafetta says the ships nearly perish there, “but God and the holy bodies aided them.”
They stay about two months, taking on water and wood and fishing. The fish are a cubit long or more, covered in scales, and very good to eat. Whatever can still be salvaged from the wreck of the Santiago is brought aboard. The men dry fish and store it, knowing they will need everything they can carry.
Before leaving, Magellan and every man in the fleet confess and take communion. Pigafetta writes that they did it “as true Christians.” It is also how men prepare for something they may not survive.
18 October 1520
On the 18th of October the ships sail south again, following a low coast. Nobody knows what lies ahead, or how far.
Magellan has told his officers what he means to do if the land does not break. Pigafetta records it: if they had not found the strait, “the captain-general had determined to go as far as seventy-five degrees toward the Antarctic Pole.” That would have taken them down into seas choked with ice, farther south than any ship had ever been. Pigafetta had heard that at that latitude in summer there is almost no night, and in winter almost no day.
The men do not want to hear this. They are already farther south than any European has sailed on this side of the world. The spring gales tear at the rigging, and the ships have not truly dried out in months. But the captain-general’s mind is made up. They will find the passage or go to the bottom of the world looking for it.
They sail for three days.