Magellan's Voyage: Part 3 - Mutiny and the Aftermath

Having left their first encounter with natives around Christmas time, Magellan and Co. were back on the water again. Their mission now was to find a passage through South America to the (unbeknownst to them) massive waters of the Pacific Ocean on the other side. Unfortunately, a longing to pack up and go home, a distaste for being led by a Portuguese man instead of a Spaniard, and a lack of food was riling up the sailors once again.

That, and Magellan had a guy killed.

A modern depiction of Magellan
from a Filipino movie. The actor?
Get ready for this. I am not making
this up. His name is
Dingdong Dantes. I also discovered
he has an album called "The
Dingdong Dantes Experience".
This is the greatest day of my life.

You see, people back then weren't very... accommodating to alternative lifestyles, so to speak. Magellan got word of two men who were partaking in some private extracurricular bedroom activities. Unfortunate for these two lovebirds (or more likely lust-birds considering that seems to be an issue on these endless voyages) it was a high-level crime to do so. Like, execution level stuff. Magellan carried it out. The problem is that didn't play well, even though Magellan was in his right. Of course, one such man would most gleefully step in to show the rest of the crew that Magellan was not fit to lead.

Carefully stoking the fires of rebellion, Cartagena, our antagonist in the story if there ever was one, brought mutiny back to the Armada de Molucca. This one was much more organized and had strong backing, as three of the five ships were suddenly against Magellan. In the second outright murder on the ship thus far, one of Magellan's loyalists (keep in mind he did have a number of Portuguese men on board that would back him almost for certain) was stabbed by the mutineers. This put Magellan in a difficult position; such a crime would have to be severely punished, but three of the ships is essentially his armada. If he were to defeat them somehow how would he punish them? So he hatched a plan.

Pretending to send a group of messengers to hear the mutineers' demands (which were heading back home to Spain which would effectively bring Magellan to utter disgrace and ruin him in both status and finances) with the message of surrendering immediately. Of course, that was their secret mission - what they pretended was to be willing to join the mutineers. Helped aboard the ship, they met with the leader of the mutiny on one boat and promptly stabbed him. The rest of the boat, seeing their leader drop in a bloody heap, backed down and gave up - probably while those rather brave loyalists were wetting their weird diaper-pants as they would be severely outnumbered on that boat.

With one boat down Magellan set his sights on the next. Sending a small team out at night, they cut the lead rope anchoring the ship so it would drift towards Magellan's two loyalist ships which allowed them to set up a delightfully easy ambush. It was pretty close by the time they realized they were right by their enemies, and while they tried to turn tail and get out of there, it was too little too late. They were already within the captain general's grasp and after a few shots of cannon fire to scare them they backed down, put the mutinous captain in chains, and surrendered.

The "wooden horse" is on the left. That won't mean anything
until later in this blog, so keep reading. But trust me, it's a
bad, bad thing.

So here's the thing about mutiny. With no law out on the ocean, the power really belongs to the man that has the most strength and backing. If the captain lets that slip, then he's probably going to be killed. This means that to maintain that order the captain has to have a very strong show of strength to ensure that mutiny won't happen again. It's not like back home - if they tried to pull this stunt, they would simply be taken in by whatever old-school version of police they have pretty quickly. But out at sea with nothing to enforce it, and with records of the incident typically written by the victor, there's no threat from higher powers. That means that when mutinies happen, they not only have to be squashed, but squashed with such vitriol that they could never occur again.

So Magellan went to end it. Magellan, a man that's working on behalf of Spain. Spain, a place that had just began the Inquisition.

One mutineer captain was tied to the ship's capstan (the giant cylinder that with pulleys that move the ropes) and literally ripped apart. Another was tortured by strappado, a technique of tying one's hands behind their back and lifting them on the ground - occasionally tying weights to their feet, which they used in this case. That man actually survived, and went back to work on the ship eventually, in great pain and likely a little taller. Another was literally sliced in two by the "wooden horse", another torture device that has a triangular-prism shaped space for the man to sit upon the top of,

A statue depicting strappado.
Those tortured in this manner
would need hours in an epsom
salt bath.

 leading him to be cut right in half. Yet another was killed by having a thin cloth forced down his throat with a light stream of water - which sounds OK until you realize that when it would be pulled up it would be bloody and the man would suffocate from it. I think Jack Bauer threatened a dude with that once. The last to be executed was killed by his own man who was given freedom in exchange for slaughtering him. His beheaded body was then drawn and quartered. As if this wasn't enough - personally I think that would have done the trick - he impaled the bodies, or whatever was left of them, on pikes and left them along the coast. Magellan does not mess around.

With all the captains dead he still had two large issues. One, there were fourty other people that helped with the mutiny. They were given hard labour in exchange for execution, as he couldn't afford to lose that many men. Second, there was the issue of Cartagena. Being the king's man it would be a serious risk to execute him with the rest. It would likely spell bad news for Magellan upon his return (assuming he lives to see the day) but he had to do something.

Magellan's hand was forced when Cartagena tried - I kid you not - a third mutiny so close after the second one. At this point Magellan has enough of it (mutiny on me once, twice or three times, shame on me...) and ditches Cartagena and a priest he was working with on a deserted island to fend for themselves. That's where their story ends in the history books. Considering they were left without supplies in a land that's full of cannibals, I think it's fair to piece together what happened to the two of them.