A Basque, he was born in 1487 in Guetaria, Gipozcua. The Basques had a long seafaring tradition and by the time Elcano attained adulthood he was steeped in maritime lore. An adventurous man, he participated in military expeditions against Algiers in North Africa and fought in Italy.
We later find him as a merchant captain operating out of Seville. Running into debt, he broke the law when he surrendered a Spanish ship to Genoan bankers. Charles I of Spain agreed to pardon him, but only on condition that he sign on as an officer in the upcoming exploratory expedition of Ferdinand Magellan.
Elcano and the Magellan Expedition
Ferdinand Magellan was a portuguese mariner who had taken Spanish nationality after falling out with the Portuguese royal family. He approached King Charles I in the hopes of gaining funding for a proposed expedition to find a westward route to the riches of the East Indies. Charles agreed and on 20 September, 1519, Magellans fleet of five ships - San Antonio, Concepcion, Santiago, Trinidad and Victoria - sailed into the Atlantic. Elcano was on board.
The 270 members of the expedition were a motley lot, including Spanish, Portuguese, French, German and English. Consigned to small ships in bad condition, battered by rough seas as they made their sluggish way across the Atlantic, and already filled with fear and apprehension for the vast unknown before them, it wasn't long before talk of mutiny began to spread through the fleet.
On April 2, 1520, Elcano participated in an attempted mutiny whilst the fleet was anchored off Patagonia, on the southern tip of South America. Magellan crushed the mutiny and had the ringleaders executed in brutal fashion, although Elcano was spared. He spent the next 4 months of the voyage in chains, performing hard menial labour. Magellan finally relented and gave him command of the Concepcion.
The fleet finally rounded South America in late November 1520. After the icy storms of Tierra Del Fuego, they were heartened by the calm seas which lay before them. Armed with fresh optimism and sure the worst lay behind them, they sailed blithely onward into the vast immensity of the ocean which Magellan named Mar Pacifico.
Four months later, starving, wracked by scurvy and with many of the expedition dead, they limped into the Marianas Islands. With water and food putrid, the explorers had been forced to lick dew from the decks, and devoured rats they caught in the ships bilges. But life improved once the surviving 3 ships made the East Indies ( the Santiago was wrecked off South America and the San Antonio had returned without orders to Spain).
Elcano and the Victoria
Magellan died on April 27, 1521, in a battle with the natives of Mactan. Elcano assumed overall command. With too few men to man 3 ships, the Concepcion was burnt. Elcano divided the Victoria and the Trinidad in the Moluccas. The Trinidad attempted to return to Spain via South America, but was forced to return to the Spice Islands after half her crew died, where she was subsequently captured by the Portuguese.
Elcano sailed the Victoria westwards across the Indian Ocean, rounding the Cape of Good Hope on May 6, 1522. Twenty more men perished from malnutrition and hunger before Elcano made the relative safety of the Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic. From there, he set forth on the last leg of the voyage, arriving in Spain on September 6, 1522. Out of 271 men, 232 never made it home.
Magellan had never intended to circumnavigate the globe - it was Elcano, perhaps with the horrid memories of his Pacific crossing still fresh in his mind, who had decided to sail westward around Africa and so on to Spain. He received a coat of arms for his pains, and went on to sail in another ill-fated Spanish expedition to the Moluccas. Elcano died of scurvy on August 4, 1526.
Resources:
To the Ends of The Earth Journeys of the Great Explorers, Jon Balchin, Arcturus Publishing Ltd, 2005
