During the pre-Facebook era of the early 2000s in Sarasota (Florida), I always heard from my volunteers returning from a cruise. They raved to me about the wonderful Filipino crew they met on the trip.
I am not surprised now. Today’s Filipino hospitality crew and officers of commercial ships and tankers unmistakably descend from seafaring Austronesians. The maritime farmers who sailed between 3,000 and 2,500 BCE from Taiwan first landed in what is now the Philippines.
Linguistic, botanical, and genetic evidence show that the Philippine islands were the staging ground for the Austronesian expansion to the Pacific and Indian oceans. Their descendants reached the Easter Islands by 800-1200 CE and settled in Madagascar between 500-800 CE. They likely hopped onto South America around 1100 CE, before the Europeans arrived.
This knock for maritime migration also manifested in 18th-century Filipinos. Later known as “Manilamen,” they sailed across the Pacific to Mexico and then settled in the bayous of Louisiana. Sometime between 1763 and 1765, these Filipino sailors escaped the brutal forced labor in the Manila-Acapulco Galleon, the ships that brought goods from Asia to Europe via Mexico. The sailors jumped ship in the Gulf of Mexico and fled to Louisiana.
There they built stilt houses. They survived through fishing and shrimping in the Gulf. Eventually marrying locals, they established a Filipino settlement in the Bayou Saint Malo in present-day St. Bernard Parish. They got there before America’s independence in 1776, and Louisiana became a state in 1812.
Adventure Came Easy
Sailing, navigation, and survival skills could have easily been passed on from one generation to the next. After all, Austronesian migrants settled on the coasts of many scattered islands. They thrived on fisheries and marine resources. Even for boys and teens, sailing interisland seas would have been equivalent to driving down the road for courtship, commerce, or entertainment.
Open seas would have just been another challenge, like today’s superhighways leading to destinations beyond the horizon. These voyages were certainly perilous. But the potential gain from discovering new information or supply sources could have been as tantalizing as the promise of the profit from exploring space today.
The same unbroken lineage of maritime knowledge must have equipped and motivated the first human who circumnavigated the world in 1521. Enrique de Malacca was cast in the same Austronesian mold as his seafaring ancestors. Recorded in history as the slave boy of Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521), Enrique was “acquired” in 1511 in Malacca, in today’s Malaysia.
Enrique is said to have been sold into slavery as a boy. He was in Malacca, likely a teen, when the Portuguese captured the bustling port city and disrupted life in the Sultanate of Melaka.
With his language skills and knowledge of other islands, Enrique could have also been recruited by the Portuguese Magellan or promised adventure if he were to become his indentured servant.
Sailing Around the World
Enrique sailed to Portugal with Magellan shortly after becoming his slave in 1511. Eight years after living in Europe, Enrique sailed from the port in Cadiz, Spain, on September 20, 1519. He was on board the flagship “Trinidad” with his master, the captain general, who led the five-ship fleet with 270 men. Their destination was the Moluccas (Maluku) Islands in what’s now Indonesia. Cloves, nutmeg, and mace grew nowhere else but in these islands. And spices then were worth equal to or greater than their weight in gold.
Perhaps like the rest of the crew, young Enrique expected to profit from Magellan’s success in finding a western sea route to the spice islands. When Constantinople, the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire, fell in 1453, the Ottoman Empire gained control of the Silk Road gateway to Europe. That made Asian spices rare and expensive in Western Europe, especially for the Portuguese and Spaniards, who also used them for medicine. Magellan set out to prove that he could sail West to the Spice Islands in the East.
Before embarking on this quest, Magellan wrote a will dated August 24, 1519. It stipulated that Enrique, his “captive slave” described as a “mulatto” native of Malacca, be released from bondage when Magellan died. It included a bequest of 10,000 maravedis (the Spanish Empire’s currency).
Enrique could have been aware of the will’s content. Given his roots, he knew the journey’s risks, its rewards, and his contribution to its success, just like Magellan did.
Arriving Home
A year and a half after leaving Spain, they sighted the island now known as Samar, Philippines. Having spent 99 days crossing the vast Pacific, they were starving and sick of scurvy. Magellan ordered tents pitched on the uninhabited island of Homonhon on March 17, 1521.
Nine men on a boat from nearby Suluan Island came to see them. The exchange was friendly, and with sign language, the Europeans communicated their needs. The island men brought them food.
Enrique first appeared in the writings of the expedition’s chronicler, Antonio Pigafetta, 11 days later, on March 28, 1521. By then, they were on the island of Limasawa. In the English translation of Pigafetta’s journal posted by the Philippine Diary Project, he wrote:
“On Thursday morning, March 28, as we had seen a fire on an island the night before, we anchored near it. We saw a small boat the natives call boloto, with eight men aboard, approaching the flagship. A slave belonging to the captain-general who was a native of Sumatra, formerly called Taprobane, spoke to them, and they immediately understood him.”
Indispensable
Based on Pigafetta’s log, the Europeans were well received in Limasawa. They were led to the bigger island of Cebu, a trading hub. There, the chieftain Rajah Humabon, his family and subjects “converted” to Christianity on April 14, 1521. Enrique, now referred to as “interpreter” by Pigafetta, was indispensable.
In fact, Filipino scholars believe that Enrique must have originally been from around Cebu to have effectively translated concepts like Christian monotheism, political alliance, and submission to some faraway king. He communicated Magellan’s words well enough to be understood. He could comprehend what the Cebuanos were saying to relay them back to Magellan in simultaneous interpretation.
The loyal Enrique was reportedly by Magellan’s side when his master decided to take down Humabon’s rival, Lapu-Lapu. There on the shallow shores of Mactan Island, Enrique and Pigafetta were injured. Magellan was killed.
After Magellan’s death on April 27, 1521, Enrique must have expected to be freed. Instead, the new co-commanders of the fleet, Duarte Barbosa and João Serrão, refused to honor Magellan’s will. Enrique became the new captain Barbosa’s slave.
Three days later, on May 1, 1521, Pigafetta wrote that the newly baptized Humabon “sent word to the commanders (Barbosa and Serrão) that the jewels he had promised to send to the king of Spain were ready, and that he begged them and their other companions to come to dine with him that morning, when he would give them the jewels.”
The Banquet
Piagfetta did not join the party ashore. He wrote that on board, they heard loud cries. “We immediately weighed anchor and, discharging many mortars into the houses, drew in nearer to the shore; while discharging [our pieces], we saw João Serrão in his shirt, bound and wounded, crying to us not to fire any more for the natives would kill him.”
“We asked him whether all the others and the interpreter were dead. He said that they were all dead except the interpreter. He ( Serrão ) begged us earnestly to ransom him with some of the merchandise; but João Carvalho, his boon companion, [and others] would not allow the boat to go ashore, so that they might remain masters of the ships.”
“But João Serrão, still weeping, asked us not to set sail so quickly, for they would kill him, and he swore to God that on Judgment Day he would demand the soul of João Carvalho, his comrade. We immediately departed; I do not know whether he died or survived.” Pigafetta wrote.
In the same journal entry, Pigafetta listed 160 names of body parts, plants, animals, greetings, and numbers. He called them “Words of those heathen people.” The lexicon is still phonetically recognizable today. The accuracy in the translation points to Enrique’s proficiency in Cebuano (the language) beyond its mutual intelligibility with Malay, the trade network’s lingua franca.
But Enrique was not only fluent in tides and weather. Savvy in interisland commerce, he likely read political dynamics too. He could navigate open waters by observing birds and stars. And he probably knew which plants were poisonous or long-lasting. By 1521, he also understood Magellan’s world very well.
To the Europeans, Enrique was the nameless slave boy they erased from the narrative. But he circumnavigated the world before anyone else did. And he lived to tell the tale, in the language of his Austronesian ancestors.
