Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, Laurence Bergreen (4.0)
This is a fascinating story with far more politics and internal strife than I ever imagined. The dangers of the journey – mainly trying to find the Spice Islands by going west and finding a strait that would cut through South America, which meant taking large ships to uncharted areas- was dangerous enough. Now top it with a large proportion of the sailors being Spanish and not wanting to follow their Portuguese Captain-General, and you have a mutinous situation from the very beginning. Also add a King of Portugal who wants to stop the fleet (Magellan went to him first, but he declined to support his countryman at the time) and sends out his own ships to stop them. Overall, as arrogant and wrong footed as Magellan could be, you definitely felt sorry for someone with so much working against him and felt somewhat relieved that he eventually gets the discovered straits and even two galaxies named after him! I both enjoyed and learned a lot reading this book.
No comments:
Post a Comment