Pacific Ocean Stories

Today we know how beautiful the Pacific Ocean is – and its islands scattered around. Some tourists may enjoy the beautiful beaches there nowadays. But for the first circumnavigator, the Spaniard Ferdinand Magellan (1480 – 1521), the discovery ended as disaster…

title=”~ Piece of Paradise ~ A small Maldivian atoll seen on the way to Mauritius – photo by ρrakaz (Digital Monk) / Prakash Bajracharya, kindly sent to my group BLOG IT!, click on the picture to enter his galleries on Flickr.com
My fragment about Magellan:
If Magellan had not possessed this concrete character, mankind would have to wait a century longer for a complete circumnavigation. When his five Spanish ships started, the journey were disturbed less by adverse winds, shrunken supplies or the endless searching along the coast of South America, than through continuing subversions among the five captains of the project. Only an almost psycho-pathological shrewdness of Magellan, an unbreakable self-esteem and an enviable loyal faith into the project of earth-circumnavigation possible to all directions could overcome all hesitations and setbacks. The same character (to be always ready for revenge, with too much self-esteem) brought the early death to Magellan – just in his happiest moment, when he had been able to sit back on a golden Philippine throne: after he just had found the slip through into the Pacific Ocean! But absolutely he wanted to prove that he, armored with only a small number of sailors, were able to force an insignificant island with applied spear throwers to give him reverence: Sadly he was not able to get out off his rat race for victory: So he was miserably massacred wading in the water. The ending was not exactly of papal dignity – the beginning of the enterprise entirely…
related:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan
+
http://www.amazon.de/review/R2XA9YDWOC9D1J
+