MARINER OF OLD SPAIN

Evening Star, Issue 18139, 1 December 1922, Page 3

MARINER OF OLD SPAIN

FIRST ROUND THE WORLD. EARLY SEA VOYAGING. It is just 400 years since a little rolling ship, with thirty-one men on board, steered unsteadily into the port of San Lucar do Bamuneda, dropped anchor, fired salvoes of tiny artillery, and set the joy-bells of Spain ringing. * The tottery little ship was the Santa Victoria; her captain was Sebastian Del Cano, and she and ho were the first ever to sail round the world. The crowning achievement of navigation, accomplished thirty years after Columbus first crossed the Atlantic and fifty years before Drake' set out for his world voyage, has been celebrated in Spain with pomp and majesty worthy of the 400th anniversary. The man who performed the actual feat celebrated differently. On the day that followed their return to port ho and Ids crew landed, and bare-headed and barefooted, carrying tapers in their hands, they marched in humble procession through the, streets to church, there to return thanks to God for safely bringing them out of perils such as no man had ever before successfully confronted. But the great inspirer of the voyage, noble Magellan, ho of the fiery imagination and herioc heart, was not there to share the triumph. Ho lay dead in the Philippines, where ho hat): perished in the endeavor to implant in heathen breasts a love of God driven home at the point of the sword. Sebastian Del Cano was one of his lieutenants, and completed the voyage as captain of the Santa Victoria, a man secure in an immortality of, fame. Yet—was ever a greater irony ?—this man whom wo now all honor was a mutineer! He mutinied against his chief, Magellan. When Magellan was setting forth upon his voyage as the representative of Spain, his own sovereign, King Emanuel of Portugal, vainly sent assassins to murder him; and now at sea with the way through America found and the great Pacific seen and sailed, half the crews rose in rebellion, with Del Cano as one of their leaders. Had the rising succeeded the ships would have returned the way they came, and history would be differently written, without the names of Magellan and Del Cano. The mutiny failed under Magellan’s iron will. They did cross the Pacific; they did cat the leather from the mast, as Magellan said they should. Ho died; Del Cano sailed home in glory.

The man who had first sailed round tho world perished in a later and inconsiderable expedition, and one fancies tho noblehearted Magellan will forgive him at tho last Great Assize .

For, in spite of his attempted treachery, it was a wonderful feat that he accomplished. The one ship of the five that came back, the tottery, leaky Santa Victoria, was a mere oockleboat of a craft, with tho strangest equipment. Each ship had one cow, and ample provision was made for the souls of men in the way of religious observances. But their bodies do not seem to have counted much, for there was only one doctor for the whole fleet, and all tho medicines were in one vessel. The barrels, jars, and other vessels for foods and drinks cost more than the ship that did the voyage, and the wine itself nearly twice as much as the Santa Victoria.