Juan Sebastián Elcano (Elkano in modern Basque; also known as del Cano; – 4 August 1526) was a Spanish navigator, ship-owner and explorer best known for having completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth in the ship Victoria on the Magellan expedition to the Spice Islands. He received recognition for his achievement by Charles I of Spain with a coat of arms bearing a globe and the Latin motto Primus circumdedisti me (You were the first to circumnavigate me).
Despite his achievements, information on Elcano is scarce and he is the subject of great historiographical controversy, because of the scarcity of original sources which illuminate his private life and personality. although it is difficult to be sure: Enrique Santamaría shows that his lack of dexterity when signing his name leads him to leave gaps between the letters, so sometimes he signed "del ca no". interprets the surname Elkano from Basque. Between the suffixes -ano and -no, he provides arguments for the latter, the diminutive suffix. He proposes that the first part of the surname is elge. Mitxelena reconstructs the previous form of this elge, and argues that the surname Elkano developed from the association of these two morphemes and that it is also a toponym. It exists in different areas of the Basque Country as a minor place name, but also as the name of a village in Navarre.
Family
Juan Sebastián Elcano's mother was Catalina del Puerto or Catalina Portu, and his father was Domingo Sebastián Elcano. The Portu or Puerto were a powerful family of clergy and scribes. Elcano's grandmother, Catalina's mother, was Domenja Olazabal. Formerly it was believed that she belonged to a noble family of the Tolosa area. Apparently Elcano also had a half-sister, María, Domingo's illegitimate daughter.
Elcano had two children: a son, Domingo Elcano, with María Hernández de Hernialde in Getaria, and a daughter, María, with a woman called María Bidaurreta in Valladolid. In his will, he bequeathed 100 ducats to his son's mother, María Hernández de Hernialde. To his daughter he left 40 ducats, conditional on her coming to live in Getaria before she was 4 years old.
Family social position and economic status
thumb|Modern engraving of Elcano, c. 1854
Some historians have said that the Elcanos were a family of maritime transporters who operated in the Mediterranean. Their ownership of a vessel is suggested by the amount of taxes the family paid the Crown in 1500.
Some 19th century sources say that the Elcano family belonged to the nobility, but this is questionable. Elcano asked the king for the right to bear arms, a privilege of the nobles, and for his brothers to accompany him on his next expedition, indicating that the Elcano brothers, on their father's side at least, were neither nobles nor hidalgos, and that the Portus, on their mother's side, were probably not nobles either. However, the Olazabal family on his grandmother's side may have been hidalgos, but since nobility was not inherited in the matrilineal line, the Portus, through Catalina the daughter of Domenja, would not be hidalgos nor would be the Elcanos, the grandchildren of Domenja.
Fernandez de Navarrete states that, in addition to being a fisherman and a mariner, Elcano acted as a smuggler on board a French ship, but no original sources are given to confirm this. Some biographies point out that the Elcano family experienced economic hardship because Elcano's father died young and his mother had to support eight siblings, This was an immense fortune, an amount equivalent to the salary of a sea pilot for 20 years, as compared to the 23½ maravedis paid by his father in municipal taxes. Of that fortune, 104,526 maravedis was his shipmaster's and captain's wage, while the rest was earned by selling the cloves imported from the Moluccas.
Biography
Birth
thumb|House where Elcano is said to have been born. Although there is presently a plaque there that alleges such, it is unlikely.
The date of Elcano's birth is unknown, but it can be inferred with a fair amount of certainty that his year of birth was 1486 or 1487. Spanish historiographers have written that he was 42 years old when he sailed with Magellan in 1518, which would place his birth year in 1476. However, before setting sail Elcano himself had confirmed that he was "approximately" 32 years old, as recorded in a document of August 1519; therefore, it is reasonable to believe that he was born in 1486 or 1487. At that time the Basques were called 'Vizcaínos' or 'Biscayans'. It has been deduced from indirect information that the Basque language was his mother tongue, but it is unequivocally true that he also communicated in Spanish, as can be seen in the letters he wrote to the king, and in the interrogations he underwent in Seville and in Valladolid. It appears that he could read Latin as well, because the two books referred to in his will were written in that language.
Early life
Little is known about Elcano's youth. As a young man he owned a large ship and sailed in the Mediterranean. He sold the ship to the Savoyards to resolve legal problems he had incurred because the king had not paid him a salary for 'services rendered' on the kings's orders. It is often repeated, for example, that in 1509 he participated in the conquest of Oran, in the Mediterranean, under the direction of Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, commanding his own his two-hundred-ton ship. Having sailed under extreme conditions, only 21 people arrived in Seville, 18 Europeans and 3 Moluccans.
To complete the round-the-world voyage, they had to sail After three years of rough passages, most of the sailors had died. A few made it back alive, but 147 men lost their lives, three-fifths of those who had set sail from Seville. This figure is a reflection of the number of unforeseen events, difficulties and vicissitudes they encountered during the voyage. Fifty-five of those who sailed on the return voyage were deserters coming from South America on the first part of the voyage aboard the San Antonio. They had not circumnavigated the world because they decided to retreat to the Strait of Magellan. Others who returned would spend some time in Asia or Cape Verde, although they later managed to get to Europe; thus they also could claim, once they disembarked in Spain, that they had sailed around the world. In other words, in addition to the 17 sailors who arrived in Seville along with Elcano, more sailors would sail around the world, albeit later, and not in the same vessels.
In addition to Elcano, the expedition included 34 other Basques,
Spice Islands
thumb|upright=1.3|right|The course of the Magellan expedition
thumb|[[Victoria (ship)|Nao Victoria, a replica of Elcano's ship, in Punta Arenas in southern Chile.]]
Elcano participated in a fierce mutiny against Ferdinand Magellan before the convoy discovered the Strait of Magellan, the passage between mainland South America and Tierra del Fuego. His life was spared by Magellan and after five months of hard labour in chains he was made captain of the carrack. Santiago was later destroyed in a storm. The fleet sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to the eastern coast of Brazil and into what is now Puerto San Julián in Argentina. Several months later they discovered a passage now known as the Strait of Magellan located in the southern tip of South America and sailed through the strait. The crew of San Antonio mutinied and returned to Spain. On 28 November 1520, three ships set sail for the Pacific Ocean and about 19 men died before they reached Guam on 6 March 1521. Conflicts with the nearby island of Rota prevented Magellan and Elcano from resupplying their ships with food and water. They eventually gathered enough supplies and continued their journey to the Philippines and remained there for several weeks. Close relationships developed between the islanders and the Spaniards, who began to evangelize and convert the Cebuano tribes to Christianity; they also became involved in tribal warfare between rival Filipino groups on Mactan Island. thumb|Route of the Spanish expedition through the Spice Islands. The red cross shows the location of [[Mactan Island in the Philippines, where Magellan was killed in 1521.]]
On 27 April 1521, Magellan was killed and the Spaniards defeated by natives in the Battle of Mactan in the Philippines. The surviving members of the expedition could not decide who should succeed Magellan. The men finally chose a joint command with the leadership divided between Duarte Barbosa and João Serrão. Within four days these two were also dead, killed after being betrayed by the host at a feast given by Rajah Humabon. The mission was now teetering on the edge of disaster, and João Lopes de Carvalho took command of the fleet, leading it on a meandering journey through the Philippine archipelago.
During the six-month listless journey after Magellan died, and before reaching the Moluccas, Elcano's stature grew as the men became disillusioned with the weak leadership of Carvalho. The two ships, Victoria and Trinidad, finally reached their destination, the Moluccas, on 6 November. The men rested and reprovisioned the ships in this haven, then filled their holds with the precious cargo of cloves and nutmeg. On 18 December, the ships were ready to leave, but Trinidad sprang a leak, and could not be repaired. Carvalho stayed with the ship along with 52 others hoping to return later.
Victoria, commanded by Elcano along with 17 other European survivors of the 240-man expedition and 4 survivors out of 13 of the Timorese men, continued its westward voyage to Spain traversing the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. They reached Sanlúcar de Barrameda on 6 September 1522.
Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian scholar, was a crew member of the Magellan and Elcano expedition, and later wrote several documents concerning its events. According to Pigafetta the voyage covered 14,460 leagues – about .
Elcano under Magellan's leadership
Ferdinand Magellan was the expedition leader, its captain-general (capitán-general). Being Portuguese, he had traveled in his youth through South Asia with the Portuguese army, getting to know those islands, finding safe harbors and places to stay and establishing his mastery of the maritime routes for trade. As a result of those experiences, Magellan knew the exact location of the Moluccas islands, then called the "Spice Islands", or at least he made King Charles V believe this. He claimed, wrongly, that they were in the Castilian hemisphere, following the Treaty of Tordesillas. He was appointed captain-general because he had this information, and this is also the reason he was responsible for planning the expedition's route to the East Indies. The relationship between Magellan and Elcano quickly became strained, precisely because Magellan did not want to show anyone the route and did not want to reveal exactly where the Moluccas were. to avoid Portuguese India, and crossing the equator into the southern hemisphere. By going so far south, they also managed to avoid the opposing monsoon winds blowing from Africa that time of year. On March 18, the crew sighted an island that Elcano named Desesperanza ("Despair"; later known as Ile Amsterdam), At last Elcano made the sailors a dangerous proposition: to round the cape close to the coast. On the one hand there was the danger that the storms would drive them into the shore, and on the other, if they avoided that fate, that they might encounter the Portuguese on the eastern side of the cape. They pressed on, sailing westward in the Indian Ocean, close to the African coast, and at last managed to round the cape and head northward off the continent's western coast. He went on to highlight the extreme hardships undergone during the expedition. Elcano did not forget the members of the crew captured in Cabo Verde by the Portuguese, begging the king to initiate all necessary actions leading to their release. He ends the letter with commentary about their discoveries, the roundness of the world, setting sail to the west and coming back from the east. He would spend three years in Valladolid, near the Court. There he joined María Bidaurreta (in some sources De Vida Urreta) and had another daughter.
Charles V granted Elcano an augmentation of his coat of arms featuring a world globe with the words Primus circumdedisti me (Latin: "You first encircled me"). However, this augmentation has been contested, as Elcano was not previously a member of the nobility. Elcano claimed three gifts from the king as a reward for his achievement, namely an annual pension of 500 ducats which he never received, two armed men to escort him and an official statement pardoning him for the sale of his ship to the Savoyard bankers. Following Elcano's death and after lengthy lawsuits, his mother Catalina del Puerto never managed to obtain any of his pension. By 1567, after she too had died, Elcano's heirs and other relatives continued to demand that the pension be honored. His male heirs were given the hereditary title of Marquis of Buglas, i.e., Negros Island in the Philippines. In the modern era, the country with the most people surnamed "Elcano" is currently the Philippines.
Relations with Portugal
The king of Portugal, John III, filed a piracy complaint against Elcano for theft of the cargo of cloves from the Moluccas, as they were part of his domains, and for his escape from Cape Verde with the precious cargo. He petitioned the King of Castile to return the cloves and to arrest and punish Elcano. King Charles V disregarded the request and protected Elcano.
Portugal and Castile both claimed the Moluccas Islands. The need to revise the Treaty of Tordesillas was not easy to resolve. Without knowing the exact size of the world, it was difficult to place those islands in a certain area. The key was to fix the location of the anti-meridian relative to the meridian established in the Treaty of Tordesillas, the two meridians forming a great circle that divides the earth into two hemispheres, to determine on which side of the antimeridian the Moluccas Islands were located. Meetings to resolve the matter were held in 1524 in the towns of Elvas and Badajoz along the border between Spain and Portugal. Five of the six Basques who circumnavigated the world participated in these assemblies.
To accurately establish this antimeridian, each of the Crowns assembled the best cosmographers of the time. Each delegation appointed three astronomers or cartographers, three sea pilots and three mathematicians. The Spanish delegation also appointed Fernando Colón, son of Christopher Columbus, with the objective of determining the location of the Moluccas. The negotiating team included Sebastian Cabot (Sebastián Caboto), Juan Vespucio, Diogo Ribeiro, Estêvão Gomezs, Simón Alcazaba and Diego López de Sigueiro.
In the Badajoz-Elvas assemblies, the most authoritative voice of the Castilian delegation was Elcano himself, who devoted himself to his work as a cosmographer. He brought to these meetings a sphere of the world he made himself, on which some accounts say he had marked the trajectory of the round-the-world voyage. These meetings were unsuccessful because the attendant parties were unable to agree on the exact location of the Moluccas Islands, as it could not be deduced from the ships' logs, and in any case the Portuguese did not recognize Elcano's authority. It is not known exactly why, but suddenly Elcano and the pilot Estêvão Gomes were absent from those meetings on March 15, 1524. Shortly thereafter, on May 20, 1524, the king pronounced his support of Elcano, as it was said that there were those who wanted to harm him (the royal charter speaks of "wounded, dead or crippled"), and three days later, on May 23, 1524, the assembly met again in Badajoz, but without Elcano. The conjecture is that he was threatened by the Portuguese in the case of the alleged piracy in the Moluccas. By October 1524 Elcano was in the Basque Country preparing for a second expedition to the Moluccas. They were sent by Charles V to claim the Indies in his name, a venture that was irksome to Portugal.
The expedition, financed by German international banking and merchant families, the Fuggers and the Welsers, sailed from A Coruña in July 1525. It consisted of four carracks, two caravels and a patache, with 450 sailors to crew them. Its purpose was securing a military foothold in the Maluccas, and forming alliances with the native rulers to gain control of the local spice trade with the establishment of a base for the Spanish Crown's mercantile and colonial agents.
Although Elcano had more experience, the king chose García Jofre de Loaísa as commander of the expedition because he was a nobleman, his status in line with the royal objective of establishing a Castilian authority in the Moluccas. Elcano was accompanied by his brothers Martín Pérez, Ochoa Martín and Antón Martín, his nephew Esteban Mutio, and his brother-in-law Santiago de Guevara, captain of Santiago.
Elcano's influence was evident in the preparations for the expedition. Of the seven ships, four had been built in Basque territory and the number of natives of the Gipuzkoan coast in the crew had increased considerably, including those in positions of responsibility, compared to the first expedition. Many of them were close to Elcano.
The expedition faced numerous misfortunes. Before reaching the strait, two vessels were lost because they couldn't find its entrance. The Sancti Spiritus, piloted by Elcano, ran aground in a storm and was abandoned, with its men being distributed among the other ships, and the San Gabriel deserted the expedition, returning to Castile after sailing up the Brazilian coast. The remaining ships completed their passage through the Strait of Magellan on 26 May 1526, and set out for the Pacific crossing. A storm scattered the ships on June 2 and only one, Victoria, remained. Another of the ships ended up in Zihuatanejo, Mexico.
Death
The ship continued to the Moluccas in poor condition, and the crew suffered the ravages of scurvy. The accountant Alonso de Tejada, the pilot Antonio Bermejo and thirty-two other crew members died. Finally, General Loaisa himself died on 30 July. Elcano then took command of the navigation, and was named captain-general, a position he had been promised by the king from the beginning. After a short time he died of scurvy, probably on 6 August 1526. All his relatives who accompanied him also died, except, perhaps, his brother Ochoa Martín, who may have been aboard the ship that landed at Zihuatanejo. In one of the documents that appeared later in Laurgain, dated January 29, 1529, the king calls "Johan Ochoa Martínez del Cano" to go on the expedition of Simón de Alcazaba to the Moluccas. If this referred to Elcano's brother, then he was still alive in 1529. Before dying, Juan Sebastián had made a will – one of those signing as a witness was Andrés de Urdaneta.
On August 7, Elcano's body was wrapped in a shroud and tied to a board with ropes. Afterwards, it was placed on the deck of the ship while the surviving men recited the "Lord's Prayer" and the Ave Maria (Hail Mary). When they finished, a weight was tied to the shroud, and Alonso de Salazar, the new captain general of the Army, nodded his head. The four sailors tilted the plank over the gunwale until the weight of the corpse caused it to drop into the sea. All seven witnesses to the will were Basques, which is surprising, given the situation and the location in the middle of the Pacific, a clear indication of trust and solidarity among them. These two books were left to Andrés San Martín, his pilot cosmographer who disappeared on the circumnavigation, if he should be found alive. This suggests that in the second expedition Elcano was still hoping to find a companion lost in the first expedition. as if they had two different authors. Another chronicler of the time who read these two texts, Fernandez de Oviedo, alluded to the parity between the texts of Elcano and Transylvanus: "It is almost him", he wrote.
Basque philosopher Ekai Txapartegi defends the proposition that Transylvanus's text was written by Elcano, asserting that its description of the island of Borneo as a utopia and its depiction of the customs of the inhabitants reveals the humanist aspect of his political thought, as well as his opposition to the expansionist ambitions of empire and warlike kings, and the imposition of the Christian faith on peaceful pagan societies. A similar approach is defended by Enrique Santamaría. According to the Basque historian Xabier Alberdi Lonbide, Elcano was relegated to a secondary role in French and Spanish historiography of the 19th century and there remains a minor figure. Lonbide writes that the maritime heritage of the Basque Country generally has been consigned to oblivion in British, French, and Spanish historiography, and that Basque historiography has not managed to overcome this situation, although in the Basque Country Elcano is regarded as the most universal representative of Basque culture, and he has greater stature.
Elcano, deleted from History
[[File:Journal of Magellan's Voyage p77.png|thumb|A page from Pigafetta's book, in French. The only surviving copy of the book seems to be a translation to Italian from the French translation.
Nor did the book, Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo, by Antonio Pigafetta, the Venetian scholar who sailed with Magellan and who was among the 18 men that survived the expedition and returned to Spain, mention Elcano. In its received form, his chronicle exaggerates his own role, perhaps explaining why in Italian historiography Elcano disappears and Capitano Pigafetta himself appears as an important character. The historical conception of a Spanish nation as presented by Navarrete has subsequently been propagated by historians of other nationalities, and remained a dominant view internationally for many years. submitting as proof that in the rigorous Valladolid inquiry concerning the circumnavigation, Elcano responded in a humble, modest way to the thirteen questions he was asked. Cánovas believed that the foralists used a distorted history to defend their politics and, for this reason he wanted to minimize the role of the Basques and the Navarrese in Iberian history. Thus, he tried to disappear not only Elcano, but also Blas de Lezo, Churruca, Andrés de Urdaneta, and Legazpi from this history, establishing a damnatio memoriae. In view of this, several initiatives such as the Elkano Foundation have arisen, both to complete the history and perpetuate its memory and to plan the celebration of the event.
As part of the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the first circumnavigation of the Earth on September 6, 1522, the Basque Maritime Museum, with the support of the Elkano Foundation, has published a new book: Elcano y el País Vasco. Cómo se hizo posible la primera vuelta al mundo (June 2022).
Elcano in art
There is no description or contemporary artwork depicting Elcano, and all artworks depicting him were made centuries later, often with ahistorical elements in their composition and featuring anachronistic clothing.
Paintings
<gallery mode="packed" heights="180px">
File:Juan Sebastian Elkano Ignacio Zuloagaren irudimenezko koadroa.jpg|Juan Sebastian Elcano, and his birthplace, Getaria by Ignacio Zuloaga. The man depicted is the doctor, Pío Gogorza.
File:A055a160 0688.jpg|José Ferrer de Couto's 1865 engraving
File:Las Glorias Nacionales, 1852 "Juan Sebastian Elcano". (4013953698).jpg|Las glorias nacionales, by the printer Luis Tasso, 1852.
File:A055a160 0706.jpg|José Ferrer de Couto's engraving
File:“Elkanoren eskaintza”, E. Salaberria.jpg|Elkano's gift, by Elías Salaberria, 1924.
</gallery>
Banknotes
<gallery mode="packed" heights="160px">
500 pesetas - 1931 01.jpg|500 peseta, 1931, based on Elias Salaberria's painting
500 pesetas - 1931 02.jpg|500 peseta, 1931
Banco de españa - 5 pesetas - 1948.jpg|Note of 5 pesetas from 1948, based on Ignacio Zuloaga's painting
</gallery>
Sculptures
<gallery mode="packed">
File:Juan Sebastian Elkanori monumentua Getarian.jpg|Elcano's statue in Getaria (1881)
File:Barcelona. Passeig de Gràcia 60 (Olano House). Façade sculpture- Juan Sebastián Elcano (1884). Francesc Font, sculptor (15032047824).jpg|Sculpture at Passeig de Gràcia, Barcelona
File:Detalle del monumento a Juan Sebastián Elcano.JPG|Monument in Seville
File:Getaria - Estatua de Juan Sebastián Elcano (Carlos Palao, 1861) 2.JPG|Sculpture by Carlos Palao in Getaria
File:Monumento_a_Elcano_en_Getaria_(Gipuzkoa).jpg|Monument dedicated to Elcano in Getaria
File:San Sebastian - Diputacion Foral de Gipuzkoa 09.jpg|Palace of Gipuzkoa, San Sebastián
</gallery>
Cinema
In 2019, Elkano, lehen mundu bira, an animated film directed by Ángel Alonso was released in Basque, Spanish, and English. In 2020 another animation movie by Manuel H. Martin called El viaje más largo was presented in Sevilla. In 2022 Amazon Prime broadcast the series Boundless, with Álvaro Morte as Elcano.
In 2022 the movie Uncharted mentioned him. The movie is based on his journey with the Magellan Expedition.
See also
- History of the Philippines
- Spanish training ship Juan Sebastián de Elcano