Chapter 1

I was born in Getaria, a fishing village in Gipuzkoa, in 1487. Gipuzkoa is a province situated between Bizcaia and France on the Bay of Biscay in Euskal Herria or the Basque country (pais vasco) as it is known to outsiders. My parents were Domingo Sebastián de Elcano and Catalina del Puerto, and I was the fourth of the eight children they had. In addition, my father had a daughter out of wedlock. My native tongue is Euskara (Basque), but from an early age I learned to speak and understand Castilian as that was the language of the Kingdom of Castile which ruled my homeland. As well as Euskara and Castilian, by the time I was 20, I was able to communicate in Portuguese and I spoke Italian well and even some Arabic because of the voyages I was involved in as a young man.

My father was a wealthy man who made his fortune from trading and shipping. In fact, he was noted as the thirteenth highest taxpayer in Getaria in 1500. However, that was also the year that he died and left my mother, Catalina, to raise the children.

My early childhood was unremarkable, but, unlike many of my friends, because my father had money, I had been sent to school where I learned to read, write, and to communicate in Castilian. Then at the age of 13, my education at school ended abruptly after my father died as there was not enough money to pay the school fees of myself and my younger siblings. However, that was when my education as a mariner began. My father had owned a ship of 200 tons that he used for trading in the Mediterranean Sea, but neither my brothers nor I were old enough or with enough experience to take charge of her. Therefore, it was decided that we should all be apprenticed to master mariners in order to learn about the ways of the sea with the ultimate aim of taking charge of my father’s ship and carrying on the business of trading in the Mediterranean.

Although I was relatively young, I was strong, so my mother arranged with the captain of one of the ships that my father had often dealt with to take me as an apprentice and to teach me about the marine life. As Getaria is a fishing and trading port, it was normal for young boys to become mariners. Indeed, my three younger brothers also followed in my footsteps and became skilled mariners. They are present on this expedition to the Maluku islands.

The captain who agreed to take me as his apprentice was a man of about 50 years of age. He was a typical Basque in both speech and appearance. His language was laced with curses and foul language in his native Euskara and Castilian, and he had the typical Basque facial feature of a large hooked nose and square jaw. His name was Juan and because of his temperament no one dared ask for his family name, so he was known as Juan de Hondarribia because he was originally from the town of Hondarribia, situated on the river Bidasoa which forms the border between France and Spain. But now he was based in Getaria, and his ship was a fishing vessel of about 10 tons weight called the Santa Maria. This type of vessel was built especially for fishing in the waters of the North Sea where there were very good fishing grounds because fishing in the Bay of Biscay was becoming harder as the catches were smaller with every passing year. The older fishermen often talked about how they were able to return home with holds full of fish after only 2 or 3 days away from port. When I joined the crew of the Santa Maria at the age of 13 as a general helper, it had become necessary to seek fish much further north. Fortunately, we had heard of a fishing ground to the north and west which some called the Grand Banks.

The first European to sail to the Grand Banks and return with the news that the fish were so abundant there that they could be scooped from the water in baskets was Giovanni Caboto whose voyage in 1497 was financed by King Henry VII of England. Although Caboto was from Venice, he was financed by the English who called him John Cabot and gave him resources to try to find a sea route from England to China known as the North-West Passage. The voyage of Columbus in 1492 that discovered the existence of a New World had alerted the English to the possibility of finding new trade routes. However, the agreement between Spain and Portugal to control the seas meant that England was unable to benefit from the newly discovered lands, so King Henry was advised that it should be possible to reach China by sailing north. However, because of the sea ice that blocked the way, Cabot failed to find this route that would have allowed England to trade directly with China without having to depend on trading with intermediaries in the Ottoman Empire or sailing around the coasts of Africa until reaching India, but he reported the existence of large quantities of fish in the Grand Banks, which started a rush to the area in search of fish. The area he described was rich in all kinds of fish, but especially in a large fish called bacalao or cod in English. This fishing ground was where boats from my homeland, from Portugal, from Baiona in Galicia, from Bretonia in the land of the French, and from England all spent weeks and usually months fishing for bacalao which we dried, salted and packed in barrels in order to preserve it.

However, the weather in the North Sea was often very rough and storms were frequent in winter, so only the bravest or, as some said, the most foolish or most desperate spent the winter attempting to catch fish in that area. Many fishing boats left their home ports but never returned, and the families of the crew were left to manage their lives in whatever way they could. Nevertheless, the catches of bacalao made many men rich, so merchants were willing to finance expeditions in search of bacalao.

Juan de Hondarribia had experience of how hard the winters could be in the North Sea, so in that season he did not risk fishing in the Grand Banks. Instead, the main use of the Santa Maria was to sail to Bordeaux in the land of the French and take on board an untaxed strong liquor called eau de vie in the French language. This was similar to the liquor made in the Rio Oja area in the Kingdom of Navarre from the grapes that they grow there, but the eau de vie was highly valued by rich people in my town. This liquor was probably not better than what was produced in Rio Oja, but because it came from the Kingdom of the French, it appealed to the vanity of people who wanted to let everyone know how rich they were.

So, my apprenticeship gave me experience of fishing in far distant seas and also of trading. I learned quickly and by the age of 15 I had graduated from general helper and was already an experienced mariner and fisherman.

In 1502, when I was 15 years old, and already an experienced sailor, we spent the summer months from the beginning of the season in April fishing and catching bacalao using our baited fishing lines in the Grand Banks. On arrival at the place of fishing within sight of the shore, the carpenter demonstrated his value by constructing a wooden platform fixed firmly over the ocean on the starboard side of the ship. Then he anchored several half-hogshead sized barrels with double bottoms to the platform. These were our stations from which we caught cod.

Then the ship was anchored and held in position with the barrels on the side of the ship facing away from the prevailing wind, so that the fishing lines would not become entangled under the hull of the ship. Depending on the strength of the wind, the ship might be turned so that the fishing always took place from the sheltered side of the boat. Finally, the crew were divided into three groups. The three groups rotated tasks daily so that the arduous work was shared equally by all including the captain, the pilot, the carpenter and the boatswain or ship’s mate. Even the cook had to take a turn on one of the teams, apart from the actual task of catching the fish.

The fishing lasted from dawn to dusk. Those men assigned to catch the fish were dressed in a leather covering that protected them from neck to knees, so that water falling from the cod they caught or the sea spray would not penetrate their clothes. They climbed into their allotted barrels and stayed there hour after hour enduring the cold and only leaving their posts to snatch a quick meal when the captain relieved them from their work himself.

The fish were caught using tarred lines about 80 fathoms long (160 metres). These lines were weighted by a lead of about 5 kilos. At the end of the line, a finer line was attached, and the hooks were attached to this finer line. The hooks were baited with small fish, or the heads or innards of cod they had already caught. As cod are predators and eat other fish, it was not difficult to entice them onto the hooks by moving the lines around in the water. After more than one cod was hooked, the line was hauled up and the fishermen killed them by piercing the back of their necks with a spike. Then their stomach was opened if the fisherman needed more bait. Finally, the tongue was cut out and the fish was thrown into a communal bin on the deck. The tongues were considered a delicacy and they were salted for sale ashore, but more importantly, they served as a means of counting how many fish each man had caught that day. At the end of the day, the captain made a record of each man’s catch which would determine his pay at the end of the voyage.