A Brief Summary of the First Voyage Around the World

By: Antonio Pigafetta

On September 8, 1522, the crew of the Victoria cast anchor in the waters off of Seville, Spain,
having just completed the first circumnavigation of the world. On board was Antonio Pigafetta, a
young Italian nobleman who had joined the expedition three years before, and served as an
assistant to Ferdinand Magellan en route to the Molucca Islands. Magellan was dead. The rest of
the fleet was gone: the Santiago shipwrecked, the San Antonio overtaken, the Concepcion burned
and the Trinidad abandoned. Of the 237 sailors who departed from Seville, eighteen returned on
the Victoria. Pigafetta had managed to survive, along with his journal—notes that detailed the
discovery of the western route to the Moluccas. And along the way, new land, new peoples: on
the far side of the Pacific, the fleet had stumbled across the Marianas archipelago, and some
three hundred leagues further west, the Philippines.

Pigafetta’s journal became the basis for his 1525 travelogue, The First Voyage Around the
World. According to scholar Theodore Cachey Jr., the travelogue represented “the literary
epitome of its genre” and achieved an international reputation (Cachey, xii-xiii). One of
Pigafetta’s patrons, Francesco Chiericati, called the journal “a divine thing” (xl), and
Shakespeare himself seems to have been inspired by work: Setebos, a deity invoked in
Pigafetta’s text by men of Patagonia, makes an appearance in The Tempest (x-xi).

First Voyage, Cachey points out, is intent on marveling at what it encounters—and therein lies
much of its appeal. It is a work that is intent on wonder. On astonishment. In travel writing, one
often must recreate the first moment of newness, that fresh sense of awe, on the page for the
reader; Pigafetta does it again and again, by reveling in odd and odder bits of detail. We watch
Pigafetta wonder at trees in Borneo whose leaves appear to walk around once shed, leaves that
"have no blood, but if one touches them they run away. I kept one of them for nine days in a box.
When I opened the box, that leaf went round and round it. I believe those leaves live on nothing
but air.” (Pigafetta, 76). We marvel, in the Philippines, at sea snails capable of felling whales, by
feeding on their hearts once ingested (48). On a stop in Brazil, we see an infinite number of
parrots, monkeys that look like lions, and "swine that have their navels on their backs, and large
birds with beaks like spoons and no tongues"

In First Voyage is great gulf between what Pigafetta sees and what Pigafetta knows. I grew up, in
the Marianas, hearing about this gulf. It is part of why travel writing can be so fraught for me
now. On reaching the Marianas after nearly four months at sea with no new provisions,"The
captain-general wished to stop at the large island and get some fresh food, but he was unable to
do so because the inhabitants of that island entered the ships and stole whatever they could lay
their hands on, in such a manner that we could not defend ourselves." (27). The sailors did not
understand that this was custom, that for the islanders, property was communal and visitors were
expected to share what they had.
“When we wounded any of those people with our crossbow shafts, which passed completely
through their loins from one side to the other, they, looking at it, pulled on the shaft now on this
and now on that side, and then drew it out, with great astonishment, and so died; others who
were wounded in the breast did the same, which moved us to great compassion. [...] We saw
some women in their boats who were crying out and tearing their hair, for love, I believe, of their
dead.”(27)

Magellan named the archipelago Islas de los Ladrones, the Islands of Thieves. The name would
stick for the next three hundred years, long after the islands were absorbed into the Spanish
empire. The name, the bold, condemnatory stroke of it, has long been anchored to my past, to
those old history lessons. There is no feeling in it but rage. So I was surprised to see, in
Pigafetta's text, the sailors moved to compassion. They seem to understand, in that moment of
astonishment, that the islanders are defenseless against the unknown.

From the Marianas, the fleet moved on to the Philippines. They linger there, exploring the land,
exchanging gifts with the chiefs, observing the people. And I know what's coming for the people;
I know that we're seeing, through Pigafetta, the hush of a world just before it changes, wholly
and entirely. And there is Pigafetta, marveling, at the coconuts and the bananas and the naked,
beautiful people. It's happening even now in the text, as the Filipino pilots are captured to direct
the way to the Moluccas, the way to the spices. There is Pigafetta, roaming and cataloging and
recording, caught up in the first flush of a new world, and as I read I can start to hear my father
describing his country, wondering at it, my father traveling as a young man up and down Luzon,
across the sea to the Visayas, across the sea to Mindanao. I can hear the ardor and the sadness
and the terror and the delight. I can hear the wonder. I can feel the pulse to move.

I suppose this is what great travel writing gives us: a way to wholly enter a moment, a feeling, a
body. A way to be changed. I can be my father, marveling at his country, our country,
transformed by its vast expanse. I can be Pigafetta, on the deck of the Trinidad, moved to write
from shock and wonder. And I can be the woman on a boat in the Marianas, crying out of love
for the dead.