At Sea, East of Uruguay, 10/25/2017, National Geographic Orion
Aboard the
National Geographic Orion
Atlantic Isles
Continuing on a south-westerly course, we have arrived off the coast of Uruguay, an interesting nation state created as a buffer state between Portuguese-speaking Brazil to the north and Spanish-speaking Argentina to the south of the strategically important River Plate. Ferdinand Magellan explored this huge river estuary in 1520, hoping in vain for a sea passage around South America, but he had to sail considerably further south before navigating the channel that now bears his name.
The Spanish explorer Juan Días de Solís is credited with founding the city of Montevideo in 1516 on the north bank of the River Plate; he died in the same year and the city has a historic theatre named after him. The area has been strategically important into modern times, a vital route way to and from the Potosi mines along which gold and silver flowed, the latter providing the Spanish name Rio Plata, and providing access by sea for land-locked Paraguay. Captain FitzRoy in command of HMSS Beagle surveyed the estuary extensively, providing ample opportunity for the young Charles Darwin to investigate the rich fossil record of the Argentine hinterland. In 1939, the British audaciously sank the German Panzerschiffe Admiral Graf Spee in the opening months of the Second World War.
Like Columbus before him, Magellan was sailing these waters in the hope of finding a sea route to Asia. This evening our Asian Buffet Dinner appeared to reference this maritime history; more prosaically, it seems that we now have a surplus of rice and a shortage of potatoes in the ship’s stores after eighteen days at sea.
David studied history at the University of York in England and theology at the University of Wales. Research in the field of religious history (at Cardiff) followed on naturally. He has spent most of his professional life teaching history, most recen...
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This was the final day of an extraordinary voyage that has brought us some 6,762 nautical miles from Europe via Africa to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America. Today we departed Punta Arenas , where the central square has a large monument depicting a proud Ferdinand Magellan surveying a new land imperiously from the shoulders of the native people, tribes of varying ethnicities that Captain FitzRoy of HMSS Beagle later called Fuegian, from their hinterland in Tierra del Fuego . We sailed the Magellan Strait , named after the first European explorer to chart his way through the maze of channels that link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans . Magellan, from Portugal but sailing under the patronage of the Spanish king, took six weeks to navigate these waters, entering the strait on October 21, 1520 near Islas de Virgenes before, in the words of Pigafetta (a Venetian employed to keep a journal of the voyage), “we debouched from that strait, engulfing ourselves in the Pacific Sea.” “Pacific” was to be an enduring misnomer, as Magellan was fortunate with the weather. He had become the first European to reach and name Tierra del Fuego , after the fires that the native peoples lit everywhere, including in their canoes. On this day, 487 years ago, All Saints’ Day 1520, he passed through Estrecho de Todos los Santos, before finally, after 373 nautical miles, reaching Cape Desire on November 28th. Our use of the term Magellanic for birds and stars in the southern hemisphere also dates from this voyage. Magellanic penguins, of the kind we saw yesterday at Isla Magdalena, were well described by Reverend Francis Fletcher aboard Golden Hind anchored at Puerto Deseado in 1578: “Great store of strange birds which could not flie at all, nor yet runne so fast that they could escape us with their lives; in body they are less than a goose, and bigger than a mallard, short and thicke sette together, having no feathers, but instead thereof a certaine hard and matted downe; their beakes are not unlike the beakes of crowes, they lodge and breed upon the land, where making earthes, as the conies doe, in the ground, they lay their eggs and bring up their young; their feeding and provision to live on is the sea, where they swimme in such sort as nature may seeme to have granted them no small prerogative in swiftnesse, both to prey upon others and themselves, to escape from any others that seeke to seize upon them; and such was the infinite resort of these birds to these ilands, that in the space of a day we killed no less than 3000.” Francis Drake passed through these waters in that year becoming the first man to successfully lead an expedition of circumnavigation, since Magellan was killed on the island of Cebu in today’s Philippines before completing the voyage. Drake became a Protestant hero to rival Columbus and Magellan in the English national imagination and his patron was Queen Elizabeth, the “Virgin” Queen. As a protestant she felt under no obligation to be bound by the Catholic Treaty of Tordesillas, of which Pope Alexander VI had divided the New World between the two rival Catholic powers of Spain and Portugal. Elizabeth was eager to establish her own colonies in the New World. To strengthen her claims her advisor, Dr. John Dee, leaked various “fake news” stories claiming that the Welsh (the Tudors were a Welsh dynasty as was he) had discovered America before Columbus and that Welsh vocabulary could be found amongst native peoples in the Americas, north and south. In Drake’s widely read account of his voyage World Encompassed (1628) he describes “birds that our Welsh sailors do call penguins.” This particular example has persisted to this day in respectable dictionaries where the etymology of “penguin” is still given as Welsh, pen meaning “head” and gwyn meaning “white.” Unfortunately for Dr. Dee, who had never seen a penguin, they have black heads; the true etymology derives from the Latin word for “plump” or “fat,” for these birds were considered a delicacy by hungry sailors.
Today was a very special day. When we awoke to the beautiful and unnaturally glassy waters of Punta Arenas harbor, we knew our excursion ahead to Isla Magdalena (home of one of Chile’s favorite penguin encounters) was blessed!
We have finally left the open ocean behind. Gone are the tropics, the blue water, and the endless horizon. We awoke today to sunny but cool temperatures and to land! Most people take for granted always seeing land. But for us on this journey it has been a long time. To see distant snowcapped mountains, buildings, trees, and especially cars certainly seemed weird. Like always, the crew bedazzled us with their preparations for Halloween. Delicious pumpkin soup was a good indication of what was going on today. The pumpkin carving contest started it off, with a mind-blowing array of creativity. Soon the costumes appeared, followed by the entertainment……well, you had to be here to understand. It was too incredible to share with those of you who were not here.
