Vicente C. de Jesus
Magellan’s Circumnavigation
The notion Magellan was first to circumnavigate the globe stems from the argument that when in 1521 he reached Mactan in the Philippines at longitude 124°E he had overlapped by at least 6 degrees longitude his earlier visit to Banda in 1511 at 130°E.
The flaw in this assertion is that there is no evidence Magellan ever reached Banda. No firsthand account mentions Magellan having reached Banda or Ambon, at longitude 124°E, as member of the expedition under Antonio d’Abreu. In The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires (2 vols., London, Hakluyt Society, 1955), his name is not mentioned as having been with Abreu who commanded Santa Catarina and Francisco Serrão, captain of Sabaia.
Samuel Eliot Morison states Magellan commanded the third ship, a caravel(The European Discovery of America, The Southern Voyages 1492-1616, New York, Oxford University Press, 1974, p. 317). He cites no authority. A note in F.H.H. Guillemard's biography of Magellan, page 67, Damião de Góes and Gaspar Corrêa states the third vessel in the Abreu expedition was commanded by Simão Afonso Besagudo. The farthest this notion, that Magellan commanded the third ship, can be traced is to Bartolome Juan de Leonardo y Argensola, a 17th century Spanish historian who asserts the notion on his own authority.
This myth has acquired the patina of truth through countless repetition without regard as to sources and its veracity.
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Please read and become familiar with the Wikipedia Manual of Style before editing again. Thanks. BaseballBaby 05:43, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
helpme
editIn the article titled "Gatighan" which I wrote, there are two things I'd like clarified: 1. How do I edit it to conform with Wikipedia standard? 2) Someone tried to slip a huge change which if allowed to stay negates the whole point of my article which is about an island where Magellan's fleet hove to sometime around April 5, 1521. The person--he/she didn't sign--who inserted the change insists Gatighan is not an island but a cape, i.e., an extension of land jutting out into the water as a projecting point. This confusion stems from the title of a map in the Nancy-Yale manuscript of the Antonio Pigafetta account. I have an extended explanation of how the confusion came about in the Discussion page of the Gatighan article. I'm afraid the fellow will come back and reinsert his entry. How do we stop this? Thanks!
- To conform to Wikipedia standard, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikify and Wikipedia:Manual of style among other policies and guidelines.
- When there is a disagreement like that, first of all you need to find reliable published sources which support your side of the argument. Then you discuss it on the talk page (which you get to by clicking "discussion") of the article, and try to reach consensus among all editors.
- If the person seems to have gone away and is not discussing it on the talk page, you can just change it back to the way it was. You can click "history" and remove (revert) a change by someone else by clicking "undo" next to their edit. If theirs is not the most recent edit, "undo" might not work. You can revert to an earlier version by clicking on that version, then clicking "edit". It will warn you that you're editing an earlier version, and then you just fill in the edit summary, something like "reverting to version of ..." and click "save". It's easy -- but not always the right thing to do. See for example the three-revert rule.
- You can put the page on your watchlist. Click "watch" at the top of the page. Then, whenever you click "watchlist" at the top of the screen, you'll see a list of any pages on your watchlist that have been changed in the past couple of days. That can help you keep tabs on the article so you can discuss with the other editor and/or change it back.
- Feel free to leave a message on my talk page if you have any further questions. --Coppertwig (talk) 04:20, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
- I'm not sure exactly what the person meant by cleanup. Maybe the article isn't focussed enough. You say that Gatighan is only mentioned on one map. Then how can you have that whole list of references and write a whole article on it? That might have something to do with it. --Coppertwig (talk) 04:25, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
- Also we have the policy assume good faith. You can revert someone's edit, but don't call it vandalism unless it clearly was not intended as an improvement. --Coppertwig (talk) 14:44, 25 December 2007 (UTC)