Over the Edge of the World: Magellen's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe Read Online Free PDF

had sailed for Portugal, and Magellan was probably influenced by Duarte’s accounts of his journey. At the same time, Magellan began to woo Diogo’s daughter Beatriz; the relationship developed very quickly, and they married before the year was out. Suddenly, Magellan had an important sponsor in Seville, as well as a financial stake, because Beatriz brought with her a dowry of 600,000 maravedís. She might have been pregnant at the time of their marriage; the child, named Rodrigo, was born the following year.
     
    G uided by the Barbosa family, Ferdinand Magellan prepared to persuade the powerful Casa de Contratación, or House of Commerce, to allow him to undertake his audacious voyage. Founded in Seville on January 20, 1503, by Queen Isabella, the Casa managed expeditions to the New World on behalf of the crown, and carried out its administrative chores with the bureaucratic zeal for which the Spanish were famous. At the time of its founding, the Casa de Contratación was housed near the Seville shipyards, in the Atarazanas, or arsenal, but to emphasize its authority, Queen Isabella moved it to the royal palace itself, the Alcázar Real. The Casa’s role quickly expanded from collecting taxes and duties to administering all aspects of exploration, including registering cargoes and proclaiming rules for the outfitting of ships and their weapons. Within a few years of its founding, the Casa began giving instructions to captains, and imposing punishments for smuggling, which was ever present. Soon the Casa functioned as a maritime court, adjudicating contract disputes and insurance claims for all voyages to the New World. The Casa even administered cosmography, maintaining and updating the padrón real, or royal chart, which served as a master copy for charts distributed to all ships leaving Spain. By 1508, the Casa acquired a piloto mayor, pilot major or chief pilot, who administered a school of navigation to train navigators and sailors who wished to advance themselves. (The very first piloto mayor was Amerigo Vespucci, who gave his name to the Americas.)
    The Casa de Contratación was controlled by one man, who was neither a navigator nor an explorer. Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, the bishop of Burgos, had served as Queen Isabella’s chaplain and had managed Columbus’s expeditions even before the Casa came into existence. A cold, manipulative bureaucrat who jealously guarded his power, Fonseca made himself essential to all Spanish expeditions to the New World. Anyone wishing Spain’s backing would have to obtain Fonseca’s blessing—which, as legions of explorers would testify, was also a curse.
    Columbus and Fonseca despised one another and fought bitterly. Fonseca was forever trying to get Ferdinand and Isabella and their successors to ignore the claims of independent entrepreneurs such as Columbus and to exert complete control over the expeditions that Spain sent to the New World. This meant, of course, that Fonseca would control the expeditions, and reap the full benefits from their trading. In the midst of the dispute, Columbus physically attacked Fonseca’s accountant, kicking and assaulting him as a proxy for Fonseca himself. Nevertheless, Fonseca gradually exerted his will over Columbus, and by the time Magellan appeared on the scene, the balance of power over trading privileges had shifted decisively from the explorer to the crown. Magellan, and others in his position, would have to settle for what the crown granted them—still a fortune beyond imagining—rather than establishing their own foreign trading empires. There could be no expedition to the Spice Islands without the backing of Fonseca and his Casa de Contratación.
    When Magellan approached representatives of the Casa de Contratación and declared that he believed that the Spice Islands were located within the Spanish hemisphere, he was telling them exactly what they wanted, indeed, needed to hear. Peter Martyr, a chronicler with access to the