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AFTER YOU ANTONIO
by John M. Reed
Public relations, as a field of employment and study in the United States, is generally traced back to the early Twentieth Century, when businessmen found it necessary to respond to attacks by social reformers and muck-rakers of the day. They turned to such early luminaries as George V.S. Michaelis, Thomas Marvin, Herbert Small, George Parker and Ivy Lee. But, what of transnational public relations? Whom can we name as the progenitor of today's peripatetic international practitioners? Every school child knows that Magellan was the first person to circumnavigate the globe. An intrepid Portuguese mariner, he sailed westward from Europe, rounded South America, crossed the Pacific, traversed the Indian Ocean, and returned to Europe via the Cape of Good Hope. Right? Wrong.
The first circumnavigator was a Basque renegade ship's master named Juan Sebastian del Cano. When he guided the battered 85-ton Victoria into Seville on September 8, 1522, after 36 months at sea, he had on board 18 Europeans, 4 Moluccans and 26 tons of spices. One of the surviving Europeans, out of 287 who began the voyage on a five-ship fleet, was a doughty civilian tourist called "Don Antonio, the Lombard" by the crew.Don Antonio, né Antonio Pigafetta, was born, circa 1498, to a patrician family in Vicenza, Italy. After a sound early education, young Antonio wanted to travel (is this beginning to sound familiar?), to see what he described as "the very great and awful things of the ocean." He got a job as secretary to the Papal Ambassador to the Court of King Charles I, in Valladolid, Spain. There he learned that King Charles, with the financial backing of Germany's Frugger family of bankers, was sponsoring an expedition to reach the East Indies, by sailing west. Promoter and commander of the expedition was a disaffected Portuguese minor noble and mariner, turned Speanish citizen, names Ferdnand Magellan. Inveigling letters of introduction and recommendation from the King, young Antonio went to Seville and signed on (to Magellan's initial annoyance), as the only non-seaman, civilian tourist/observer.
On September 20, 1519, the five second-hand ships set sail from San Lucar de Barrameda. At the outset, Antonio became an admirer and confident of Magellan. He served his CEO as log-keeper and amanuensis, ultimately becoming publicist for the voyage. The trip was unbelievably difficult. Three of the five captains mutinied April 1, 1520 while the fleet was wintering on the coast of Patagonia (Argentina). Two captains were killed and one was put ashore. One ship was lost on coastal rocks; another, under mutinous leadership, turned tail for Spain where its turncoat captain spent two years spreading malicious gossip about Magellan (a reputation problem Antonio was later to remedy).
After valiant effort, Magellan found passage through the straits at the bottom tip of South America and entered the vast ocean he named Pacific. Often becalmed and bedeviled by scurvy, the small fleet finally reach Guam in March 1521, and discovered the Philippines to the south shortly thereafter. On April 27, 1521, however, Magellan and 40 of his crew were killed on Mactan Island, near Cebu, and Antonio Pigafetta was wounded. Another ship was lost to damage in the Philippines; the remaining two continued south to the Moluccas. By now, del Cano captained the Victoria and he decided to follow Magellan's original plan, while the other ship, attempting to return to Europe via the Pacific, was captured by a Portuguese squadron. The Victoria, with Antonio aboard, finally arrived back in Spain, with a load of cloves valuable enough to more than pay for the entire expedition.
Antonio's personal cargo was much more important. The day following his arrival in Seville, after giving thanks at two shrines, "barefoot and holding a candle," Antonio went to Valladolid where he presented to King Charles (by now, Holy Roman Emperor), "neither gold nor silver... but a book written by my own hand, concerning all the matters that had occurred from day-to-day during our voyage." From Valladolid, Antonio went to Portugal where he gave a full account of the voyage to King João II and then to France where he delivered the same story to the Mother Regent.
Finally, back in Italy, Antonio wrote several more accounts of the magnificent trip.
It is clear from his writings and actions that Antonio wanted to be a publicist. He wrote of Magellan, "I hope that the renown of such a noble and valiant captain will never be extinguished or pass into oblivion in our time. For among other virtues were his constancy and perseverance even in the most difficult situations. He bore hunger better than all the rest of us. He was expert in navigation and in the making of nautical charts. That this is the truth is apparent, since no one else had so much national genius and fortitude, all the knowledge that enabled him to circumnavigate the world - for he had as good completed his aim when he died - no human having preceded him in this."
Was Antonio a success? Well, the watery passage at the foot of South America is listed on every world map 'The Strait of Magellan'. The two galactic clusters in the Southern Hemisphere, near the Milky Way, are named the Magellanic Cloud. One of NASA's furthermost space probes, an instrument-laden sphere that has passed Venus, is named the Magellan. There is more. Although three other accounts of the circumnavigational voyage exist, written by Italian, Spanish and Portuguese pilots, all references in history books and encyclopedias trace back to Antonio's masterful reports and subsequent publicizing efforts.
While at the Spanish Court reporting to Charles, Antonio passed his story to the Italian Pedagogue, Peter Martyr, who, in turn, instructed his acolyte, Maximillian of Translvania, the natural sone of the Cardinal Archbishop of Saltzburg, to write an account of the expedition in Latin for his father. That letter, dated October 24, 1522, was really the first international press release, unless one counts the Epistles of Paul. It was published in Cologne the following January, and later in Rome, and the story sent shock waves throughout Europe establishing a reputation and territorial claims for Spain plus eternal fame for the ill-fated Magellan. Thus although del Cano received considerable local acclaim at the time, he is lost to history and Antonio's client will be forever remembered.
Antonio, himself, became something of a celebrity but wearied of the attention. Seeking a new international public relations challenge, he entered the monastic Order of he Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem, latterly the Knights of Rhodes, and finally, the Knights of Malta. His new client was the Grand Master, Philippe de Villers l'Ile-Adam. Antonio took his vows in 1530 and died bravely in 1536, defending Malta against attacking Turks. His public relations work on behalf of the Knights was also quite successful, but that is another story.
Antonio's accounts of magellan's voyage contains the not unexpected publicist's hyperbole. He describes a rain-tree in Tenerife that was the sole source of potable water on the island, a tree around which a cloud formed each day at noon, and from whose roots water gushed into nearby cisterns! He tells of giants in Patagonia, provides glossaries of the languages of peoples visited, and reports on a bishop in the Moluccas with forty wives and venereal disease.
All in all, Antonio set high standards for us to follow. He was the first civilian to travel around the world, and he made his client's name an historical, if not a household word. A modest statue of our hero now stands in his hometown of Vicenza, and his name is footnoted or indexed in all accounts of Magellan.
Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth,
but that which is good to the use of edifying,
that it may minister grace unto the hearers.
Ephesians 4:29