Quotes from Laurence Bergreen

King Charles followed the advice, and Magellan and Faleiro retained his backing in spite of pressure from Portugual.

As proof, the sole cable protecting them from disaster held until dawn, when the storm finally relented.

they had arrived at the Strait of Magellan

Later, an English ship caught sight of the abandoned beasts swimming in the dark green sea on a journey to oblivion.

If a sailor devoted years of his life to getting there and back, and if he managed to bring home a small sack stuffed with spices

Columbus physically attacked Fonseca's accountant, kicking and assaulting him as a proxy for Fonseca himself.

who relied on hearsay or the artful blending of hearsay with fact. If Pigafetta had any idea of emulating Polo

seventy-five degrees or more, as your lordship

legitimately or not, he could sell it for enough to buy a small house; he could live off the proceeds

the balance of power over trading privileges had shifted decisively from the explorer to the crown.

he would present phenomena as he observed them with his own eyes.

Elizabeth sat for a portrait designed to capture the grandeur of the occasion. In the painting

the rest of his life. An ordinary seaman might attain a modest degree of wealth

settle for what the crown granted them—still a fortune beyond imagining

Magellan had a well-painted globe in which the entire world was depicted," wrote Bartolomé de las Casas

With this entirely factual approach, Pigafetta broke with a tradition that reached back to antiquity.

From this time on, Drake became a preoccupation for the Spanish, who condemned him as a "Lutheran heretic

rather than establishing their own foreign trading empires.

And on it he indicated the route he proposed to take.

During those brief days in the Canaries, Magellan busied himself with the final provisioning of his fleet.

her right hand gently, even protectively, rests on a globe to symbolize her newly acquired power in world affairs.

Magellan's conception of the world he planned to explore was fatally inaccurate.

He worked quickly—too quickly, as he would later discover to his horror

Like most explorers of the Age of Discovery, his ideas about the size of the globe, and location of landmasses