Prologue

My name is Mark West, and I am an English historian specializing in the era of European voyages to India, the New World, and the Pacific, commonly referred to as the Era of Discovery. I have a PhD in History from Kings College, Cambridge, an MA in Spanish from Salamanca University, with specialization in medieval Spanish literature, and post-doctoral experience of research in the Archivo General de Indias (Archives of the Indies) in Sevilla.

Two years ago, in the Archivo, I was researching the first circumnavigation of the world between 1519 and 1522, generally erroneously attributed to Fernando Magellan, but actually completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano after the death of Magellan in what is now the Philippines. The documents that relate to the life of this man are scarce although there are accounts of the voyage written by some of the survivors who arrived back in Sevilla in 1522. For example, the account of the voyage by the Italian Antonio Pigafetta fails to credit Elcano with command of the one ship that completed the voyage after the death of Magellan, probably because of his devotion to Magellan, and his inability to forgive Elcano for taking part in the mutiny against Magellan in the port of San Julián in Patagonia in 1519. However, in addition to having access to these accounts, I had the incredibly good fortune to stumble by chance on an account of the life of Elcano written by the scribe Andrés de Urdaneta, whose record of the death of Elcano and of his last will and testament can be found in the Archivo. For centuries, this document was previously unknown until I found it miscatalogued as an account of the life of Urdaneta.

In fact, at the age of 17, Urdaneta accompanied Elcano as his personal servant on his second voyage to the Maluku islands (Moluccas or Spice islands in present day Indonesia). He wrote down the last will and testament dictated by Elcano in 1526 as he lay dying, and until my discovery, this was believed to be one of the few surviving documents relating to the life of Elcano.

However, my discovery opens up new avenues for historians to explore regarding the life of Elcano.

This is my translation from medieval Spanish to English, and my interpretation of that document which I have spent the last two years preparing for publication. For the benefit of my readers, I have taken the liberty of converting weights and distances from those used in the original to their modern equivalent. Therefore, although the use of kilos would not exist until after the French Revolution, it makes sense to use them to describe weights. However, I have not converted terms used for money as the value of monetary units does not remain constant, so any conversion I might make could soon be out of date. In addition, although Italy did not exist as a country at the time covered by this narrative, I have used the term to signify the territory now known as Italy.

The following is the translation of the introduction of the original document.

My name is Andrés de Urdaneta and I swear on the Holy Bible, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and all the saints that this account of the life of the captain and navigator, Juan Sebastián Elcano, is a true account and record of the words he dictated to me during our voyage to the Maluku islands between 1525 and 1526.