San Antonio (ship)

Also known as: Nao San Antonio — her designation in the fleet lists · St. Anthony — the English form used in the Stanley translation of Pigafetta · The deserter of the Strait of Magellan

Society

Definition

The San Antonio (often styled the nao San Antonio) was the largest of the five ships with which Ferdinand Magellan’s armada left Spain in 1519 — rated at 120 tonels, against the Trinidad’s 110, the Concepción’s 90, the Victoria’s 85, and the Santiago’s 75 — and the only one of the five to abandon the expedition, slipping away through the Strait of Magellan under her pilot Estêvão Gomes in late 1520 and reaching Spain in May 1521, more than a year before the Victoria completed the first circumnavigation. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition, Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account)

Her desertion deprived the fleet of its biggest storehouse for the Pacific crossing, yet carried back to Seville — with the tortured captain Álvaro de Mezquita in irons — the first testimony about the voyage, hostile to Magellan at that. This entry treats the ship; the municipality of San Antonio in Northern Samar is a separate subject with its own entry in this wiki. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition, Wikipedia — Estêvão Gomes)

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Also Known As

Nao San Antonio — her designation in the fleet lists
St. Anthony — the English form used in the Stanley translation of Pigafetta
The deserter of the Strait of Magellan

Examples and Analogies

The fleet’s storehouse: at 120 tonels with roughly 55 men, the San Antonio was the armada’s supply ship as much as a fighting vessel; her flight left three ships to cross an unknown ocean on reduced stores. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition)
Verified expedition data:
Rating: 120 tonels — the largest of the five ships
Complement: about 55 men; the fleet totalled 237 when it left Seville
Captain at departure: Juan de Cartagena; succeeded by Antonio de Coca and, from December 27, 1519, by Álvaro de Mezquita, Magellan’s cousin
Outward voyage: mustered at Seville’s mole August 10, 1519; sailed from Sanlúcar de Barrameda September 20, 1519
First seizure: the Easter mutiny at Puerto San Julián, midnight of April 1, 1520
Desertion: late October 1520, while exploring the strait found on October 21, 1520
Return: reached Seville on May 6, 1521, one account giving May 8, with the fifty-odd survivors of her complement
Aftermath: six-month inquiry in Spain; no mutineer charged; Mezquita jailed for a year (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition, Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account)

Usage Scenarios

1. Studying Command and Mutiny

The San Antonio is the spine of any study of discipline in the armada: Cartagena’s relief of command, the Easter rising at San Julián, the beheading of Quesada, and finally Gomes’s desertion — every stage in the erosion of Magellan’s authority played out on this one deck. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition, Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account)

2. Reconstructing the Fleet’s Logistics

Because she was the largest hull, tonnage and complement counts for the San Antonio anchor the expedition’s logistics — what the fleet could carry into the Pacific after the Santiago’s wreck and her own flight. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition)

3. Reading the Primary Accounts

The ship is a lesson in source criticism: Pigafetta reports the seizure of “the St. Anthony” from the loyalist side, the Genoese pilot supplies Gomes’s motive and Mezquita’s fate — against the deserters’ testimony that reached Spain first. (Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account, Wikisource — The Genoese Pilot’s Account)

Strategies

Keep the two seizures apart: the April 1520 mutiny at San Julián and the late-October 1520 desertion inside the strait are distinct events involving the same ship — the first a rising put down by Magellan, the second a successful escape — and conflating them is the commonest error in popular retellings. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition)
Weigh the pilot’s motive: the Genoese pilot’s account explains that Gomes, a Portuguese pilot who had sought his own discovery commission from Charles V, was “a great enemy” of Magellan — context that colors the deserters’ testimony afterward. His later 1524–1525 northern voyage, on which he named the Hudson the “Rio de San Antonio,” shows the desertion did not end his standing with the Crown. (Wikisource — The Genoese Pilot’s Account, Wikipedia — Estêvão Gomes)

Security and Safety Measures

Magellan’s countermeasures: the suppression of the Easter mutiny — Mendoza killed on April 2, Quesada beheaded on April 7, Cartagena marooned in Patagonia with a priest — restored the command discipline the San Antonio’s later flight would again breach. (Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account, Wikipedia — Magellan expedition)
Testimony under duress: the record of Mezquita’s torture into a signed statement on the Atlantic return is a caution — the first accounts of the expedition to reach Europe were extracted evidence, not disinterested narrative. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition)

Historical Context

The armada of five ships and 237 men mustered at Seville’s mole on August 10, 1519 and sailed from Sanlúcar on September 20, 1519 in search of a western passage to the Spice Islands — an enterprise whose diplomatic frame, the Treaty of Tordesillas, has its own entry in this wiki. The San Antonio sailed under Juan de Cartagena; after Cartagena challenged Magellan’s navigation on the Atlantic crossing he was relieved, and command passed to Magellan’s cousin Álvaro de Mezquita. (Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account, Wikipedia — Magellan expedition)

At Puerto San Julián, where the fleet wintered about five months, the masters plotted: on the night of April 1, 1520, some thirty armed men with faces blackened boarded the San Antonio under Cartagena and Gaspar de Quesada, stabbed the master Juan de Elorriaga — who died of his wounds months later — and with the treasurer Luis Mendoza held three of the five ships. Magellan recovered the fleet within days: Mendoza killed on April 2, Quesada beheaded on April 7, Cartagena abandoned ashore. The Santiago’s storm-loss of May 22, 1520 had cut the fleet to four when, on October 21, 1520, the strait later named for Magellan was found. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition, Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account)

Sent ahead with the Concepción to explore the channels, the San Antonio never rejoined — Magellan, leaving letters and a prescribed course at the point of separation, sailed on. Her crew, led by Gomes, overpowered and wounded Mezquita, put him in irons, and turned the ship back through the strait and across the Atlantic, one of the two Patagonian captives aboard dying of the heat on the way. The remaining three ships entered the Pacific on November 28, 1520; the San Antonio reached Seville on May 6, 1521, where the six-month inquiry freed the deserters, jailed Mezquita for a year, and cut off the finances of Magellan’s wife Beatriz, placed under house arrest with their son. (Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account, Wikisource — The Genoese Pilot’s Account, Wikipedia — Magellan expedition, Wikipedia — Estêvão Gomes)

Challenges and Controversies

The Mutineers’ Version

The first European narrative of the expedition was the deserters’: testimony portraying Magellan as reckless and tyrannical. The inquiry freed them all and punished their prisoner instead — a record to be read against the loyalist accounts of Pigafetta and the Genoese pilot. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition, Wikipedia — Estêvão Gomes)

The Date of Arrival

The standard date of the return to Seville is May 6, 1521, but one account gives May 8; even the desertion’s endpoint rests on conflicting records. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition)

The Ship After 1521

What became of the hull — refitted, sold, or laid up — is not established in the standard accounts, which follow the men but fall silent about the vessel; any claim of confiscation of ship or cargo should be treated as unverified. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition)