Concepción (ship)

Also known as: Nao Concepción — her designation in the fleet lists · The Conception — the English form used in the Stanley translation of Pigafetta · The third ship of the Armada de Molucca — her position in the tonnage ladder · The mutineer's ship — the shorthand her captain's San Julián role earned her

Society

Definition

The Concepción was a Spanish carrack (nao) of 90 tonels — about 108 toneladas, or roughly 54 English shipping tons — built for the Crown of Spain at a recorded construction cost of 228,750 maravedís, the middle-rated hull of the five ships of the Magellan expedition: smaller than the San Antonio (120 tonels) and the flagship Trinidad (110), larger than the Victoria (85) and the Santiago (75). (Wikipedia — Concepción (ship), Wikipedia — Magellan expedition) She left Seville on August 10, 1519 with a complement of about forty-four under Gaspar de Quesada, with Juan Sebastián Elcano — the future completer of the circumnavigation — sailing as her boatswain. (Wikipedia — Concepción (ship))

Her two claims on history bracket the voyage. At the Patagonian winter anchorage of San Julián in April 1520, her captain Quesada was one of the leaders of the Easter mutiny against Magellan — suppressed with Quesada’s beheading. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition, Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account) And in the Philippines, after Magellan’s death at Mactan on April 27, 1521 and the May 1 massacre at Cebu, the fleet — its survivors too few for three ships — took everything serviceable out of her and burned the Concepción near the head of the island of Bohol on May 2, 1521, in Pigafetta’s own words: “seeing that our crews were too much reduced in number, so that they were not sufficient for managing all the three ships, we burned the Conception after transporting into the other two all that it contained that was servicable.” (Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account, Wikipedia — Magellan expedition)

Identities

Authority	Value
Wikipedia	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concepción_(ship)
Wikidata	Q31891375
DBpedia	https://dbpedia.org/page/Concepción_(ship)
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	N/A
Library of Congress Subject Headings	Voyages around the world
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A
Google Scholar	https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Concepci%C3%B3n+carrack+Magellan
ConceptNet	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

Nao Concepción — her designation in the fleet lists
The Conception — the English form used in the Stanley translation of Pigafetta
The third ship of the Armada de Molucca — her position in the tonnage ladder
The mutineer’s ship — the shorthand her captain’s San Julián role earned her

Examples and Analogies

The fleet’s middleweight: at 90 tonels the Concepción was neither the storehouse (San Antonio) nor the flagship (Trinidad) nor the light hulls (Victoria, Santiago) — the all-purpose middle ship, sent exploring channels in the strait and kept on until manpower, not seaworthiness alone, decided her end. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition)
A hull converted into crew: the burning of May 2, 1521 worked like cannibalizing a machine for parts — her stores, gear, and men redistributed to the Trinidad and Victoria so that two ships could be manned properly instead of three badly. (Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account)
Verified documentary data:
Rating and build: 90 tonels (about 108 toneladas, 54 English tons); Crown-built; construction cost 228,750 maravedís, about 2,125 grams of pure gold (Wikipedia — Concepción (ship))
Complement and command at departure: about 44 men; Gaspar de Quesada captain; Juan Sebastián Elcano boatswain (Wikipedia — Concepción (ship))
- The mutiny: night of April 1–2, 1520, at Port San Julián — Pigafetta names the plotters “John of Carthagine, conductor of the fleet; the treasurer, Loys de Mendoza; the conductor, Anthony Cocha; and Gaspar de Casada”; Mendoza killed and quartered, Quesada beheaded and quartered, Cartagena marooned in Patagonia with a priest (Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account)
- The strait: sent ahead with the San Antonio to explore the channels of the strait found on October 21, 1520; the San Antonio deserted, and the remaining three ships entered the Pacific on November 28, 1520 (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition, Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account)
The Pacific and the Philippines: João Serrão commanded her across the Pacific and became joint leader of the expedition after Magellan’s death; at Mactan, April 27, 1521, “there perished with him eight of our men, and four of the Indians”; at the Cebu banquet of May 1, Serrão was left “wounded and bound” ashore (Wikipedia — Concepción (ship), Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account)
The burning: May 2, 1521, eighteen leagues from Zubu (Cebu), “near the head of another island called Bohol,” with 115 survivors of the 277 who had sailed from Seville; João Lopes Carvalho, the expedition’s new leader, ordered abandoned and burnt the ship judged least seaworthy, her hull worm-infested (Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account, Wikipedia — Magellan expedition, Wikipedia — Concepción (ship))

Usage Scenarios

1. Tracing the Five Ships’ Fates

The Concepción is the middle chapter of the fleet’s material ledger — after the Santiago‘s wreck (May 1520) and the San Antonio‘s desertion (November 1520) but before the Trinidad‘s Portuguese capture, the burning that cut the fleet to the two hulls of which only the Victoria reached Spain, the arithmetic this wiki’s Victoria (ship) entry tabulates. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition)

2. Reading the Primary Account

Her end is a set-piece of source criticism: Pigafetta fixes the place (off Bohol, eighteen leagues from Cebu) and the reason (crews too few for three ships) in a single sentence — the passage against which later summaries’ vaguer locations are checked. (Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account)

3. Studying Mutiny and Discipline

The ship is the entry point to the San Julián rising: her captain Quesada was one of its leaders, her boatswain Elcano among the more than forty conspirators pardoned to hard labor, and the punishments that followed — beheading, quartering, marooning — mark the discipline regime under which the voyage survived its first winter. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition, Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account)

4. Philippine Cross-References

For Philippine historiography the ship marks the archipelago’s cost to the expedition: she was burned because Mactan and the Cebu massacre had cut the fleet down — the two catastrophes this wiki’s Battle of Mactan and Magellan expedition entries document — with Bohol her place of rest. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition)

Strategies

Keep the two 1520 crises of the fleet apart: the April 1520 mutiny at San Julián and the October–November 1520 desertion of the San Antonio inside the strait are distinct events — the Concepción belongs to the first (her captain’s rising) and only witnesses the second — the separation this wiki’s San Antonio (ship) entry insists on. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition)
Quote Pigafetta for the Philippine passages: the burning, the Mactan date, and the May 1 betrayal are all fixed in his narrative in datable, locatable sentences — the primary text on which every retelling rests. (Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account)

Security and Safety Measures

Crew arithmetic as safety doctrine: the decision to burn her — three ships’ hulls, two ships’ men — subordinated property to survivability, concentrating the remaining crew where they could actually work the ships through Portuguese waters. (Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account)
The transfer before the fire: “transporting into the other two all that it contained that was servicable” — stores and gear salvaged first — the logistics safeguard that kept the Trinidad and Victoria provisioned after the loss. (Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account)
For researchers: nothing of the hull survives and no wreck has been identified; the ship exists only in the documentary record — Pigafetta, the other accounts of the voyage, and the archival traces of her construction — so any material claim about her should be treated as unverified. (Wikipedia — Concepción (ship))

Historical Context

The Concepción sailed from Seville on August 10, 1519 as one of five ships and roughly 237–277 men, her captain Quesada among the Castilian officers whom Magellan, a Portuguese, had reason to distrust. That distrust played out at San Julián over the Easter of 1520, when Quesada, Cartagena, and Mendoza seized three of the five ships; Magellan recovered the fleet within days, and Quesada was beheaded on April 7. The Concepción passed to new command, probed the channels of the strait in October, crossed the Pacific after November 28, 1520 under João Serrão, and reached the Philippines with the fleet in March 1521. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition, Wikipedia — Concepción (ship), Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account)

Her Philippine month decided her fate. Magellan and eight of his men died at Mactan on April 27; the May 1 banquet at Cebu killed the officers who had replaced them and left Serrão bound on the beach, ransoms refused; and with 115 men of the 277 who had left Seville, João Lopes Carvalho ordered the least seaworthy hull emptied and fired off Bohol on May 2, 1521. The Trinidad and Victoria sailed on with her stores and her people — to Tidore, to the capture of the one and the Spanish landfall of the other — and to the Concepción’s place in the record: the ship the Philippines cost the first circumnavigation, distinct from the municipality of Concepcion in Misamis Occidental that carries the same name in this wiki. (Wikipedia — Magellan expedition, Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account)

Challenges and Controversies

Where Exactly She Burned

The primary text is precise — eighteen leagues from Zubu, near the head of the island called Bohol — yet summaries variously place the burning “at Cebu” or leave the location unnamed; Pigafetta’s wording is the anchor, and the May 2 date is the modern accounts’ reconstruction from his narrative sequence. (Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account, Wikipedia — Magellan expedition)

How Many Men Sailed

Pigafetta counts 237 men in the five ships at departure; the modern accounts print 270 and, for the Seville departure, 277 — the standing variance in the expedition’s manpower reckoning that every figure downstream (including the 115 at the burning) inherits. (Wikisource — Pigafetta’s Account, Wikipedia — Magellan expedition)