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A Ship of Dreams |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / FEATURED BOOK: Napoleon Baccino Ponce de Leon's Five Black Ships |
| Author: Barbara Mujica |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 10/1/1994 |
| Size: 4,206 Words, 25,301 Characters |
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What kind of men abandoned peaceful villages, comforting hearths, and loving wives to sail into uncharted waters in search of a chimera? What kind of men defied logic and common sense to follow a visionary with clandestine objectives?
In this era of political correctness it has become fashionable to denigrate the achievements of the Spanish and Portuguese explorers, to claim that they were motivated solely by greed and the desire to impose corrupt European ways on idyllic Native American societies. However, in Five Black Ships, a highly poetic, elegantly written novel, the Uruguayan writer Napoleon Baccino Ponce de Leon offers another view of the discoverers: They were human beings like we are, with dreams and fears, hopes and misgivings. They were adventurers, lured by their fantasies, captivated by the unknown. And, in the case of the men who accompanied Magellan, they were above all mariners, men more at home on the sea than on land, men passionately attached to their vessels and to the voluptuous, unpredictable ocean.
The story of Magellan's voyage is well known. On September 20, 1519, five ships left the port of Seville and sailed down the Guadalquivir River and out to sea, thereby initiating the journey that would revolutionize existing concepts of geography and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was possible to reach the East by sailing west. The Portuguese navigator Fernao de Magalhaes--Magellan, in English--had requested funding from the Portuguese Crown for his project to seek a westward route to the Spice Islands. When the king rejected his scheme, Magellan renounced his Portuguese nationality and turned to Charles I of Spain, who agreed to fund the expedition.
Magellan sailed down the coast of Africa and then crossed the Atlantic to South America, where he explored the Rio de la Plata estuary. Unable to find a water passage across the continent, he was forced to winter in San Julian, in what is now Argentina, where the fleet remained for six months. During that period one ship was wrecked and a faction mutinied. Finally, after quelling the rebellion, Magellan continued, only to lose another vessel to desertion. Then, on November 28, 1520, the three remaining ships made their way through the torturous waterway known today as the Strait of Magellan and into the Pacific Ocean.
After experiencing a period of exasperating calm with no wind to propel the ships forward, the fleet finally reached the Mariana Islands on March 6,1521; ten days later Mage...
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...d for the entire expedition.
However, as Baccino makes abundantly clear throughout his novel, the facts are not what counts. Historical information on Magellan's feat is easy enough to find. What truly matters is the real story of human anguish and triumph behind the data in the chronicles and history books, and this is what Napoleon Baccino Ponce de Leon brings so wonderfully to life.
(2,554 of 25,301 characters)
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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