Chapter 8
The Wreck of the Santiago
Río Santa Cruz, Patagonia
Sent south to scout the coast, the Santiago is driven ashore by a gale at the Santa Cruz river. Two of her men walk back to San Julián for help, and her crew is brought back overland.
22 May 1520
While the fleet sits out the winter, Magellan sends his smallest ship south to explore the coast ahead. The Santiago sails under João Serrão, a Portuguese veteran of the Indies and the best seaman among the captains.
Some twenty-four leagues down the coast, Serrão finds the mouth of a large river and spends some days there, fishing and hunting seals. Then, as the Santiago works her way out of the estuary on the 22nd of May, a sudden gale catches her and drives her ashore. The ship breaks up in the surf. By a miracle, and that is Pigafetta’s word, every man aboard reaches land “not even getting wet.”
They are safe, but stranded: more than thirty men on a frozen, empty coast, with a few supplies washed up from the wreck and no way to tell the fleet. Two of them volunteer to walk back to San Julián for help. There is no path and there are rivers to cross, and the southern winter is at its deepest.
Early June 1520
The two men take about eleven days to make the journey, living on plants and roots and sleeping in the open. They stagger into the camp at San Julián half dead.
Magellan sends a relief party overland at once with bags of biscuit, enough for two months, Pigafetta says. The food has to be carried, because the stranded men have been living on whatever washes up from the wreck, and pieces of the ship are found every day. The way is twenty-four leagues, “or one hundred millas,” rough and full of thorns. The men are four days on the road, sleeping in the bushes at night. There is nothing to drink but ice, which causes them the greatest hardship.
Slowly, in small groups, the Santiago‘s crew is brought back to the fleet. The ship is gone for good. The survivors are shared out among the four ships that remain, and Serrão is given command of the Concepción, whose captain, Quesada, is dead.
Then one day, on the shore of the harbour at San Julián, a man appears. He is dancing.