A Spicy Tale

A people without knowledge of their history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.

~ Marcus Garvey

I'm a bit of a history buff. It comes in handy since some of my Mia Marlowe novels are set in other time periods. When I travel, I not only visit the places to which we go, I usually half-close my eyes and imagine them in another century as well.

Lately, I've been thinking about Ferdinand Magellan. It's only natural since we'll also be circumnavigating the world. (Oh, all right. For you purists out there, our point of origin is Missouri, and we'll be embarking the Pacific Princess in LA and disembarking in Ft. Lauderdale. But if you count driving, flying and cruising, we'll still be going all the way around the earth. We just aren't making the trip solely by water.)

Our itineraries aren't quite the same though. Here's the route Magellan's small fleet took:

That's right. He commanded a fleet of five vessels, the largest of which was the Trinidad. It was a 110 ton square-sailed ship. (By comparison, the Pacific Princess, which is rather petite for a cruise ship, weighs in at 30,277 tons!) Between the five ships, there were about 270 crewmen from several different countries.

Magellan left Spain hoping to find a westward route to the Spice Islands. The point was to avoid going around the Cape of Good Hope. Instead, he encountered the more treacherous waters of Cape Horn, where the Pacific and Atlantic meet with fury, icebergs and strong currents. He became the first European to navigate the strait that was later named for him, but not the first to map it. On older charts, the Strait's opening was noted. It was labeled the Dragon's Tail.

Magellan's voyage was plagued by mutiny, storms that resulted in the loss of ships and crew, starvation, and unfriendly natives. Magellan himself was killed in the Philippines. Of the 270 sailors who began the journey, only 18 limped home almost three years after the voyage started in the Victoria, the smallest ship of the fleet.

Why did they go to all that trouble? For saffron, nutmeg, ginger and mace. The irony of it is that once stable trade routes were established to reach the source of those spices, the prices of the commodity fell. Spices were desirable and therefore wickedly expensive because they were rare and exotic. It is the perversity of human nature to want what we don't have, and to reject those things easily within our reach.  

Had Magellan survived the voyage, and had he proven that a westward route to the Spice Islands was more cost effective than going around Africa, King Charles I would have granted him:

• Monopoly of the discovered route for 10 years
• Appointment as governor of the lands and islands found, with 5% of the net gains
• A fifth of the gains of the voyage
• The right to levy 1000 ducats on upcoming trips
• Granting of an island, apart from the 6 richest, from which he'd receive 15%

Magellan certainly set out to enrich himself when he embarked on circumnavigation of the globe. And that's kind of our goal for the trip, too, but my version of enrichment is much different from his. 

Experience is the spice I'm after.

I want to revel in the beauty and raw power of the oceans of this earth. I want to watch the southern stars wheel overhead in an inky sky. I want to immerse myself in other cultures, and learn how peoples of other lands think, how they live, what they believe. I want to meet my fellow travelers on board in the hope that they'll become our friends and share in our adventures.

That's what I call enrichment. And I can't wait!