Quotes from Laurence Bergreen

he made out a broad sandbank strewn with the skeletons of whales—a suggestion that he had come across a migration route

the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Drake, intensely annoyed by this challenge to his command

Members of the Casa failed to see how Magellan could avoid trespassing on Portuguese interests by sailing west until he reached the East.

The gray water churned angrily where competing tides vied with one another

Striving for perfection is a good and worthwhile effort. Expecting to actually attain perfection can kill you.

convened a court that hastily found Burroughs guilty of desertion and pronounced the sentence: death.

Vasco da Gama retraced Dias's route around the tip of Africa and reached Mozambique on the southeastern coast;

Magellan referred the distinguished members of the Casa to a clause in the Treaty of Tordesillas

the way became narrower, they thought it was a river

there he replenished his supplies and sailed farther east to establish an ocean route to India.

allowed Spain or Portugal the freedom of the seas to reach lands belonging to one empire or the other.

Da Gama received a royal appointment as viceroy of India

Magellan served at the pleasure of his Castilian captains, rather than the other way around.

then, with mounting excitement, recorded that the wide mouth turned into a narrows farther ahead.

set the stage for endless challenges to Magellan's authority, in other words, for mutiny.

water and strong currents, appearing to be a strait and the mouth of a big gulf that might be discharging into it.

The food represented a considerable investment: 1,252,909 maravedís, nearly as much as the cost of the entire fleet

Magellan ordered his ships to sail into the gulf, and when they were well within its embrace

Vasco da Gama came to believe that he had been inadequately rewarded for his service to the crown.

and that figure covered just enough food to see them through the first leg or two of the voyage.

saw it: the outlet leading west, just as he prayed it would. Magellan had finally found his strait.

What a strange land this was, where the giants were peaceful and the birds terrifying.

Elizabeth crossed the Sargasso Sea without incident