In 1519 Magellan and his fleet of five ships set sail from Seville, Spain, to discover a water route to the fabled Spice Islands in Indonesia, where the most sought-after commodities - cloves, pepper, and nutmeg - flourished. Three years later, a handful of survivors returned with an abundance of spices from their intended destination, but with just one ship carrying eighteen emaciated men. During their remarkable voyage around the world the crew endured starvation, disease, mutiny, and torture. Many men died, including Magellan, who was violently killed in a fierce battle.
This is the first full account in nearly half a century of this voyage into history: a tour of the world emerging from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance; a startling anthropological account of tribes, languages, and customs unknown to Europeans; and a chronicle of a desperate grab for commercial and political power.
Explorer Ferdinand Magellan risked everything to find Indonesia's fabled Spice Islands and their abundance of cloves, pepper, and nutmeg. He left his native Portugal to lead a fleet of five ships under the banner of Spain, subjecting his family to mistreatment back home. He eventually lost his life and the lives of many of his crew members, but his belief in sailing west to find the East was vindicated. Laurence Bergreen's account of Magellan's historic journey reads with the excitement of a novel backed by painstaking detail. Bergreen's reading, which at times sounds like a college lecture, doesn't match the passion of his writing, but the story of Magellan's journey still makes this a compelling audiobook. J.A.S. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
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