Magellan’s Real Circumnavigation, Enrique of Malacca Taken as Slave
Schoolchildren around the world are taught the name Ferdinand Magellan[1] — “the first person to circumnavigate the globe” — many in grade school and again high school. But few people know Magellan’s story, that he was killed in the Philippines halfway through that circumnavigation, and moreover, that he still came within 2,600 kilometers of fully circling the earth.
Only one of the five ships that departed Seville in August 1519 returned to the Spanish city in September 1522, and with only 18 of the (roughly) 260 original crew. Magellan was killed halfway, in April 1521 on the island of Mactan (modern-day Philippines).
A decade earlier, though, Magellan traveled halfway around the globe in the other direction, around the southern tip of Africa to Eastern Africa and India. Magellan was serving the Portuguese king, not as a sailor so much as a minor nobleman (fidalgo) and soldier of fortune.
In 1509 Magellan sailed with the first Portuguese fleet to reach Southeast Asia, visiting the city of Malacca,[2] a wealthy trade hub on the Malay Peninsula. The Europeans’ did not fare well on this debut in the region — news of Portuguese atrocities in India and East Africa preceded their arrival. The sultan of Malacca initially welcomed the small fleet, but days later staged an ambush that trapped a work party onshore, cut off from escape.
Reports said Magellan, onboard ship, was one of the first crew to discover the attack and he personally rowed a longboat directly into the fray. Diving into the fight, he apparently helped save his friend Francisco Serrão and lead a number of the Portuguese back to the ships.
A year and a half later, in 1511, Magellan returned as part of a much larger fleet led by Portugal’s viceroy in Asia, Afonzo de Albuquerque, a man known for brutal vengeance. Although far outnumbered and facing the Sultan’s dug-in cannon and guns, the Portuguese easily crushed the city’s defenses, forcing the Sultan to flee.
The invaders then sacked the city, pillaging the homes of wealthy Muslim merchants. Their booty included gold bars, jewels, wonders from China, and slaves — including a teenage boy Magellan claimed and rechristened Enique.[3]
Not long after, Magellan’s friend Francisco Serrão sailed with a small fleet and became the first in the Portuguese drive to reach the Moluccas[4], or Spice Islands, in modern-day (eastern) Indonesia. There he wrote letters to Magellan describing a tropical paradise rich in spices, and Magellan became fixated on joining his friend. In a return letter to Serrão, Magellan wrote:
“God willing, I will soon be seeing you, whether by way of Portugal or Castile, for that is how my affairs have been leaning …”
And Magellan set out to do just that, to join Francisco Serrão in the Moluccas, but instead of traveling 2,600 kilometers east from Malacca to the Moluccas, Magellan wound up turning around and taking the long way, a scenic route certainly, westbound around much of the earth.
Magellan’s slave and interpreter, Enrique of Malacca, traveled the entire distance with him, and Enrique may have gone on.
Read Part II, coming soon.
By John Sailors, Enrique’s Voyage
Notes:
1. Ferdinand Magellan is the English name, pronounced with a hard G in British English. Magellan’s name in Portuguese: Fernão de Magalhães. In Spanish: Fernando de Magallanes.
2. Malacca in Malay is Melaka.
3. Enrique’s original name is unknown. Enrique is the Spanish of the Portuguese Henrique. The English equivalent is Henry. Somewhere over time historians added “of Malacca,” which Magellan listed in his will as Enrique’s place of origin: “…my captured slave Enrique, mulatto, native of the city of Malacca …” (In his will, Magellan freed Enrique upon his death.) In more recent times Enrique has also been called Henry the Black and Panglima Awang, the latter a name given to him by Harun Aminurrashid (1907–1986), Malay author of the popular historical novel of that name.
4. Known in history as the Molucca Islands, or Spice Islands, they are known today as the Maluku Islands. Located in modern-day (eastern) Indonesia, they include the islands of Ternate, Tidore, and Banda, which were important sources of nutmeg, mace, and cloves. Magellan’s fleet was called the Armada de Molucca. Next to the city of Malacca, the trade hub on the Malay Peninsula, these names must be confusing to people unfamiliar with related topics.
Images:
Top: Ferdinand Magellan, Library of Congress.
Correia’s Malacca: By Gaspar Correia — Lendas da Índia, first published by the Academia Real de Ciências de Lisboa in 1858–1863, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50328659.
By CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69085633.
© 2022 by John Sailors. All rights reserved.
