Victoria or Nao Victoria (Spanish for "Victory") was a carrack famed as the first ship to successfully circumnavigate the world. Victoria was part of the Spanish expedition to the Moluccas (now Indonesia's Maluku Islands) commanded by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan.
The carrack () was built at a Spanish shipyard in Ondarroa. Along with the four other ships, she was given to Magellan by King Charles I of Spain (later Emperor CharlesV of the Holy Roman Empire). Victoria was an 85-tonel<!--not English tons--> ship with an initial crew of about 42. The expedition's flagship and Magellan's own command was the carrack Trinidad. The other ships were the carrack San Antonio, the carrack Concepción, and the caravel Santiago.
The expedition began from Seville on 10 August 1519 with five ships and entered the ocean at Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain on September 20. However, only two of the ships reached their goal in the Moluccas. Thereafter, Victoria was the only ship to complete the return voyage, crossing uncharted waters of the Indian Ocean under Juan Sebastián de Elcano's command to sail around the world. She returned to Sanlúcar on 6 September 1522.
According to a notarial document dating from 1518, the ship had been used in previous years for trade between Castile and England. Royal Castilian officials bought the ship at a set price of 800 gold ducats, a figure at odds with the estimation on the ship's real value provided by the accountant of Magellan's expedition, and accepted by the owners only against their will. Antonio Pigafetta's and other reports state that Luis de Mendoza and Gaspar Quesada, captain of Concepcion, were executed and their remains hung on gallows on the shore.
Juan de Cartagena, captain of San Antonio, was marooned on the coast. According to Pigafetta, after Magellan's death on 27 April 1521, at the Battle of Mactan, remnants of the fleet tried to retrieve his body without success. Thereafter, Duarte Barbosa, a Portuguese man who had sided with Magellan in facing the mutiny, and João Serrão were elected leaders of the expedition. On 1 May 1521, they were invited by Rajah Humabon of Cebu to a banquet ashore to receive a gift for the king of Spain. At the banquet, most of the crew were killed or poisoned, including Duarte Barbosa and João Serrão, whom the natives wanted to exchange for Western weapons, but was left behind by the remaining crew. Pilot João Carvalho, who had survived the trap, then became the captain of Victoria. In August, near Borneo he was deposed and Juan Sebastián Elcano became captain for the remainder of the expedition.
Returning crew
Out of an initial crew of 260 people, only 18 returned to Seville with the Victoria. This was due to a scarcity in food, and a deadly outbreak of scurvy. Others had sailed back with the Santiago, which deserted near the Strait of Magellan. Yet others would return in the following months and years after having been made prisoner by the Portuguese.
They were:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! scope="col" | Name
! scope="col" | Rating
! scope="col" | Nationality
! scope="col" | Hometown
|-
| Juan Sebastián Elcano || Master || Basque || Getaria
|-
| Francisco Albo || Pilot || Greek || Chios
|-
| Miguel de Rodas || Pilot || Greek || Rhodes
|-
| Juan de Acurio<!-- Acuario? --> || Pilot || Basque || Bermeo
|-
| Antonio Pigafetta || Supernumerary || Venetian || Vicenza
|-
| Martín de Judicibus || Chief Steward || Genoese || Genoa
|-
| Hernando de Bustamante || Barber surgeon || Castilian || Alcántara
|-
| Nicholas the Greek || Mariner || Greek || Nafplion
|-
| Miguel Sánchez || Mariner || Greek || Rhodes
|-
| Antonio Hernández Colmenero || Mariner || Andalusian || Ayamonte
|-
| Francisco Rodrigues || Mariner || Portuguese || Seville
|-
| Juan Rodríguez || Mariner || Castilian || Huelva
|-
| Diego Carmena || Mariner || Galician || Baiona
|-
| Hans of Aachen || Gunner || German || Aachen
|-
| Juan de Arratia || Able Seaman || Basque || Bilbao
|-
| Vasco Gómez Gallego || Able Seaman || Galician || Baiona
|-
| Juan de Santandrés || Apprentice Seaman || Castilian || Cueto
|-
| Juan de Zubileta || Page || Basque || Barakaldo
|}
Three of these survivors left written records. Elcano wrote a letter to the Emperor on the very day of his return with a brief summary of the trip, and provided additional information to authors such as Maximilianus Transylvanus. Francisco Albo kept a log book with the ship's positional data for every day of sailing. Antonio Pigafetta wrote a detailed first-person account of the voyage. His work, which he began compiling in 1522, was partially published in France around 1525 under the title "Le voyage et nauigation".
Voyage
The long circumnavigation began in Seville in 1519 and returned to Sanlúcar de Barrameda on 6 September 1522, after sailing , of which was largely unknown to the crew. On 21 December 1521, Victoria sailed on from Tidore in Indonesia alone because the other ships left the convoy due to lack of rations. The ship was in terrible shape, with her sails torn and only kept afloat by continuous pumping of water. Victoria managed to return to Spain with a shipload of spices, the value of which was greater than the cost of the entire original fleet.
Victoria was later repaired, bought by a merchant shipper and sailed for almost another fifty years before being lost with all hands on a trip from the Antilles to Seville about 1570. "though taking a slightly different route".
To commemorate the five hundredth anniversary of the first circumnavigation, the Fundación Nao Victoria, commissioned another replica of the nao from the Palmas de Punta Umbría shipyards. It was launched on February 11, 2020, with the destination of becoming a permanent exhibition next to the Torre del Oro. The replica arrived in Seville on March 9, 2020.
In 2006, to celebrate the bicentennial of Chile, an entrepreneur from Punta Arenas founded a project to build a replica of the ship. The search for the original plans of Nao Victoria took longer than expected and the project was delayed from 2006 to 2009. The replica was completed by 2011.
Bibliography
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