A World Lit Only by Fire Chapter 3

A World Lit Only by Fire Chapter 3

Why in the world, which he now proved was round, did Ferdinand Magellan decide to risk his life in a lofty endeavor that clearly would have held minor context based on all his other achievements? It’s hard to understand why a man with so much candor and worldly experience would go against common mental capacity and undertake a poorly executed mission. Magellan told his crew of his promise to relinquish an enemy of their new ally when asked about their delayed departure. Taking on this enemy seems a bit out of character of the Magellan of previous pages. The facts in the text lead me to thinkthat there’s more to this historical context. Maybe his crew became overrun with jealousy based on his achievements. He was now going above and beyond the sovereignty of their mission andturning it into a religious manifestation. Is it possible that part of his loyal crew overran him in body and designation with a violent mutiny and painted an almost unlikely story of his demise?
One scenario could be that his ill-fated mission to destroy the Lapulapu didn’t occur the way it has been told, or maybe it never happened at all. What if the crew organized a successful mutiny and left Magellan dead in the Philippine Sea so they could begin to head westward toward circumnavigation and their own circumstances of how history would be told. The crew then would have been left with many months and nautical miles between the Philippines and Spain to formulate a tale of Magellan’s demise that would please every ear. Of the 265 that set sail, only 18 made it back to Spanish port. Any people who held guilt of the truth could easily have been executed at sea if they made any gesture of going against their cover-up. After all, the ‘capitan’ that led them back was none other than Juan Sebastian del Cano, who in an interesting spin of events, had been spared the fate of his fellow mutineers back on the east coast of South America.
Of the 18 that made it back to Spain, how many of those...

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