Gatighan
Encyclopedia
The isle of Gatighan was a way station
of the Armada de Molucca
under Captain-General Ferdinand Magellan
on their way to Cebu
in Central Philippines
. The name appears only in the map and text of the firsthand account of the Vicentine diarist Antonio Pigafetta
and referred to as an isle at 10° N in the eyewitness report of Francisco Albo, Greek pilot whose logbook is the chief authority for most navigational treatises on the track of the circumnavigation of the globe.
The word Gatighan comes from the Visayan katigan meaning a boat with outrigger or, as verb, to outfit a boat with outrigger. As placename it appears only in Pigafetta's map and no other; it has disappeared totally from maps and geographical literature. The name is incorrectly transcribed as Satighan by Lord Stanley of Alderley (p. 84).
Add two more sentences and that is all of what history has to say of Gatighan. Geographers, navigation historians, and Magellan scholars have tried their hand at a futile guessing game as to which island it is in today's map. R.A. Skelton surmised in 1969 it's Apit or Himuquetan, adopting the surmise of F.H.H. Guillemard, 1890, who said, "It is perhaps Jimuquitan or Apit Island", which was repeated by Andrea da Mosto in 1894 re-echoed in 1911 by Jean Denuce and repeated once more by Leonce Peillard in 1991. The latest to follow Guillemard's lead is Theodore J. Cachey Jr., who in 1995 gave a new spelling to the longer name, "Himuguetan." All of which confirms the saying history may not repeat itself but historians repeat one another's wild guesses. Apit, at 10° 31' N, is a tiny dot in a pilot chart, an atoll
. The only maverick among historians is Samuel Eliot Morison
who thinks Gatighan is one of the Camotes Islands, completely forgetting that Pigafetta has a separate map showing these group of islands. Himuquitan Island directly below Apit at 10° 29' N is jut a teeny bit bigger. Both islands are at least 29 nautical miles (54 km) above Albo's Gatighan. Both are too small to sustain the varied fauna described by Pigafetta.
and Ceylon/Seilani (Panaon Island, the south most end of Leyte). It is almost exactly at the 10° N latitude, reference point of Albo for Gatighan. In 1663, a Spanish missionary, Fr. Francisco Colín, S.J. "christened" this isle, Pigafetta's Gatighan, with an invented name, Dimasawa to signify that this is not the Mazaua named by Antonio de Herrera as the port where Magellan and his men celebrated an Easter mass on March 31, 1521. Colín wrote, adopting the mangled account by Giovanni Battista Ramusio
of Pigafetta, the port of March-April 1521 was Butuan, not Herrera's Mazaua. Five years after, another Jesuit historian, Fr. Francisco Combés, S.J. writing on the evangelization of Mindanao, "rechristened" the same island, giving it a coined word, Limasawa that does not exist in any account of the circumnavigation or in any of 100+ Philippine languages. His Limasawa had as reference point Herrera's Mazaua, and was meant to also indicate negation of Herrera's mention of a mass at that island. Combés does not mention any mass, but talks of the planting of a cross at Butuan. This isle, Dimasaua
or Limasawa, was projected in a world famous map drawn in 1734 in the Philippines by the Jesuit mapmaker, Fr. Pedro Murillo Velarde, plagiarized by leading European cartographers of the time, and copied, a credit to his integrity, by the leading European mapmaker the French Jacques N. Bellin.
, the Augustinian encyclopedist, was director of a library in Milan
. One fine day in 1797 he serendipitously discovered the lost handwritten manuscript of Pigafetta, one of four extant codices and the only one in Italian the rest being French, among the scattered books. This codex is famously called Ambrosiana. Amoretti transcribed it and published his edition, complete with notes, in 1800. In one of his notes he said Pigafetta's Mazaua may be Bellin's Limasawa, unaware that Limasawa/Dimasawa was in fact a complete negation of what Amoretti is asserting. He also further states, as proof of his contention, Limasawa and Mazaua are in the same latitude; in fact Limasawa is in 9° 56' N whereas Mazaua has three latitudes by three separate readings, Pigafetta's 9° 40' N, Albo's 9° 20' N, and the Genoese Pilot's 9° N. Magellan scholars, navigation historians, and geographers who came in the wake of Amoretti uncritically accepted his dictum.
A very simple way to resolve this issue is to pose this question, based on the earlier testimonies of Pigafetta and Albo that it took the fleet almost a whole day of sailing and 80 nautical miles (148.2 km) to reach Gatighan at 10° N latitude. From Limasawa to 10° N, it takes only 4 nautical miles (7 km) not 80 n.m. It takes only less than 30 minutes to sail that distance, not one whole day of sailing.
Brand, Donald D. 1967. "Geographical explorations by the Spaniards." In: The Pacific Basin, A History of Its Geographical Explorations. Herman R. Friis (ed.). New York. Pp. 109-144, 362-375.
Colín, Francisco. 1663. Labor evangelica de los obreros de la Compañia de Jesús, fundacióon y progresos de Islas Filipinas. Pablo Pastells (ed.), 3 vols. Barcelona 1900.
Combés, Francisco. 1667. Historia de las islas de Mindanao, Iolo y sus adyacentes. W.E. Retana (ed.) Madrid 1897.
de Jesus, Vicente C. (2002). Mazaua Historiography. Retrieved February 27, 2007, from MagellansPortMazaua mailing list: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MagellansPortMazaua/files/Mazaua%20Historiography/--http://www.xeniaeditrice.it/mazaua.pdf
Denuce, Jean. 1911. La Question des Moluques et la Premiìre Circumnavigation du Globe. Brussels.
Genoese Pilot. 1519. Navegaçam e vyagem que fez Fernando de Magalhães de Seuilha pera Maluco no anno de 1519 annos. In: Collecção de noticias para a historia e geografia das nações ultramarinas, que vivem nos dominios Portuguezes, ou lhes sao visinhas. Lisboa 1826. Pp. 151-176.
Guillemard, Francis Henry Hill. 1890. The Life of Ferdinand Magellan and the First Circumnavigation of the Globe: 1480-1521. New York.
Herrera, Antonio de. 1601. Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las islas y tierrafirme del mar oceano, t. VI. Angel Gonzalez Palencia (ed.). Madrid 1947.
Morison, Samuel Eliot. 1974. The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages 1492-1616. New York.
Murillo, Pedro Velarde. 1752. Geografia historica de las islas Philippinas...t. VIII. Madrid.
Pigafetta, Antonio. 1524. Various editions and translations:
--1524a. Magellan's Voyage, Vol. II. R.A. Skelton (ed. and trans.) Nancy-Libri-Phillipps-Beinecke-Yale codex. New Haven 1969.
--1524b. Primo viaggio intorno al globo terracqueo, ossia ragguaglio della navigazione...fatta dal cavaliere Antonio Pigafetta...ora publicato per la prima volta, tratto da un codice MS. Della biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano e corredato di note da Carlo Amoretti. Milan 1800.
--1524c. Il primo viaggio intorno al globo di Antonio Pigafetta. In: Raccolta di Documenti e Studi Publicati dalla. Commissione Colombiana. Andrea da Mosto (ed. and tr.). Rome 1894.
--1524d. Le premier tour du monde de Magellan. Léonce Peillard (ed. and transcription) Manuscript 5,650. France 1991.
--1524e. Magellan's Voyage, 3 vols. James Alexander Robertson (ed. and tr.) Ambrosiana Codex. Cleveland 1906.
--1524f. The First Voyage Round the World by Magellan. Lord Stanley of Alderley (ed. & tr.) Manuscript 5,650 collated with Ambrosiana and Nancy-Yale codices. London 1874.
--1524g. The First Voyage Around the World (1519-1522). Theodore J. Cachey Jr. (ed. Based on English text of J.A. Robertson) New York 1995.
--1524h. Pigafetta: Relation du premier voyage autour du monde...Edition du texte français d'après les manuscripts de Paris et de Cheltenham. Jean Denucé (ed. and transcrition of Manuscript 5,650 collated with Mss. Ambrosiana, Nancy-Yale and 24,224) Anvers 1923.
--1524i. The First Voyage Round the World by Magellan. Lord Stanley of Alderley (ed. and tr. of Ms. fr. 5,650 collated with Ambrosiana Ms). London 1874, pp. 35-163.
Ramusio, Gian Battista. 1550. La Detta navigatione per messer Antonio Pigafetta Vecentino. In: Delle navigationi e viaggi... Venice: Pp. 380-98.
Waypoint
A waypoint is a reference point in physical space used for purposes of navigation.-Concept:Waypoints are sets of coordinates that identify a point in physical space. Coordinates used can vary depending on the application. For terrestrial navigation these coordinates can include longitude and...
of the Armada de Molucca
Armada de Molucca
The Armada de Molucca was the name of the fleet led by Ferdinand Magellan in an attempt to find the Spice Islands. It consisted of five ships, Magellan's flagship Trindidad, the provision ship San Antonio, and the smaller ships Concepcion, Victoria, and Santiago.An excellent reference is: "Over...
under Captain-General Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer. He was born in Sabrosa, in northern Portugal, and served King Charles I of Spain in search of a westward route to the "Spice Islands" ....
on their way to Cebu
Cebu
Cebu is a province in the Philippines, consisting of Cebu Island and 167 surrounding islands. It is located to the east of Negros, to the west of Leyte and Bohol islands...
in Central Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
. The name appears only in the map and text of the firsthand account of the Vicentine diarist Antonio Pigafetta
Antonio Pigafetta
Antonio Pigafetta was an Italian scholar and explorer from the Republic of Venice. He travelled with the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and his crew on their voyage to the Indies. During the expedition, he served as Magellan's assistant and kept an accurate journal which later assisted him...
and referred to as an isle at 10° N in the eyewitness report of Francisco Albo, Greek pilot whose logbook is the chief authority for most navigational treatises on the track of the circumnavigation of the globe.
The word Gatighan comes from the Visayan katigan meaning a boat with outrigger or, as verb, to outfit a boat with outrigger. As placename it appears only in Pigafetta's map and no other; it has disappeared totally from maps and geographical literature. The name is incorrectly transcribed as Satighan by Lord Stanley of Alderley (p. 84).
History
After a stay of 7 days, the fleet left the west port of Mazaua early morning of Thursday, April 4, 1521 taking a northwest track, according to Pigafetta, north according to Albo. The ships sailing in good weather negotiated the distance of some 20 leguas or 80 nautical miles (148.2 km) to reach Gatighan at 10° N in 11-13 hours. Here the fleet made a brief stop, long enough for Pigafetta to make very detailed description of the isle's fauna: "In this island of Gatighan are a kind of birds called Barbastigly (Venetian word for flying fox or large bats genus Pteropus that feeds on fruits), who are as large as eagles. Of which we killed a single one, because it was late, which we ate, and it had the taste of a fowl. There are also in that island pigeons, doves, turtledoves, parrots, and certain black birds as large as a fowl, with a long tail. They lay eggs as large as those of a goose, which they bury a good cubit deep under the sand in the sun, and so they are hatched by the great heat made by the warm sand. And when those birds are hatched they emerge. And those eggs are good to eat."Add two more sentences and that is all of what history has to say of Gatighan. Geographers, navigation historians, and Magellan scholars have tried their hand at a futile guessing game as to which island it is in today's map. R.A. Skelton surmised in 1969 it's Apit or Himuquetan, adopting the surmise of F.H.H. Guillemard, 1890, who said, "It is perhaps Jimuquitan or Apit Island", which was repeated by Andrea da Mosto in 1894 re-echoed in 1911 by Jean Denuce and repeated once more by Leonce Peillard in 1991. The latest to follow Guillemard's lead is Theodore J. Cachey Jr., who in 1995 gave a new spelling to the longer name, "Himuguetan." All of which confirms the saying history may not repeat itself but historians repeat one another's wild guesses. Apit, at 10° 31' N, is a tiny dot in a pilot chart, an atoll
Atoll
An atoll is a coral island that encircles a lagoon partially or completely.- Usage :The word atoll comes from the Dhivehi word atholhu OED...
. The only maverick among historians is Samuel Eliot Morison
Samuel Eliot Morison
Samuel Eliot Morison, Rear Admiral, United States Naval Reserve was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history that were both authoritative and highly readable. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and taught history at the university for 40 years...
who thinks Gatighan is one of the Camotes Islands, completely forgetting that Pigafetta has a separate map showing these group of islands. Himuquitan Island directly below Apit at 10° 29' N is jut a teeny bit bigger. Both islands are at least 29 nautical miles (54 km) above Albo's Gatighan. Both are too small to sustain the varied fauna described by Pigafetta.
Location of the island
If you look at Pigafetta's map, Gatighan is the only island mass that straddles between two huge islands, BoholBohol
Bohol is an island province of the Philippines located in the Central Visayas region, consisting of Bohol Island and 75 minor surrounding islands. Its capital is Tagbilaran City. With a land area of and a coastline long, Bohol is the tenth largest island of the Philippines...
and Ceylon/Seilani (Panaon Island, the south most end of Leyte). It is almost exactly at the 10° N latitude, reference point of Albo for Gatighan. In 1663, a Spanish missionary, Fr. Francisco Colín, S.J. "christened" this isle, Pigafetta's Gatighan, with an invented name, Dimasawa to signify that this is not the Mazaua named by Antonio de Herrera as the port where Magellan and his men celebrated an Easter mass on March 31, 1521. Colín wrote, adopting the mangled account by Giovanni Battista Ramusio
Giovanni Battista Ramusio
Giovanni Battista Ramusio was an Italian geographer and travel writer.Born in Treviso, Italy, Ramusio was the son of Paolo Ramusio, a magistrate in the city-state of Venice...
of Pigafetta, the port of March-April 1521 was Butuan, not Herrera's Mazaua. Five years after, another Jesuit historian, Fr. Francisco Combés, S.J. writing on the evangelization of Mindanao, "rechristened" the same island, giving it a coined word, Limasawa that does not exist in any account of the circumnavigation or in any of 100+ Philippine languages. His Limasawa had as reference point Herrera's Mazaua, and was meant to also indicate negation of Herrera's mention of a mass at that island. Combés does not mention any mass, but talks of the planting of a cross at Butuan. This isle, Dimasaua
Dimasaua
Dimasaua, also spelled Dimasawa and Dimasava, was the invented name created by 17th century Spanish missionary Fr. Francisco Colín, S.J., pointing to a tiny isle in southern Leyte whose chief, according to Colín, "gave the most signal service" to Ferdinand Magellan and his crew at the port of...
or Limasawa, was projected in a world famous map drawn in 1734 in the Philippines by the Jesuit mapmaker, Fr. Pedro Murillo Velarde, plagiarized by leading European cartographers of the time, and copied, a credit to his integrity, by the leading European mapmaker the French Jacques N. Bellin.
Carlo Amoretti switches Gatighan with Mazaua
Carlo AmorettiCarlo Amoretti
Carlo Amoretti was an ecclesiastic, scholar, writer, and scientist. He was born in Oneglia, now Imperia in the Liguria region, Italy.He entered the Augustinian order in 1757...
, the Augustinian encyclopedist, was director of a library in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
. One fine day in 1797 he serendipitously discovered the lost handwritten manuscript of Pigafetta, one of four extant codices and the only one in Italian the rest being French, among the scattered books. This codex is famously called Ambrosiana. Amoretti transcribed it and published his edition, complete with notes, in 1800. In one of his notes he said Pigafetta's Mazaua may be Bellin's Limasawa, unaware that Limasawa/Dimasawa was in fact a complete negation of what Amoretti is asserting. He also further states, as proof of his contention, Limasawa and Mazaua are in the same latitude; in fact Limasawa is in 9° 56' N whereas Mazaua has three latitudes by three separate readings, Pigafetta's 9° 40' N, Albo's 9° 20' N, and the Genoese Pilot's 9° N. Magellan scholars, navigation historians, and geographers who came in the wake of Amoretti uncritically accepted his dictum.
A very simple way to resolve this issue is to pose this question, based on the earlier testimonies of Pigafetta and Albo that it took the fleet almost a whole day of sailing and 80 nautical miles (148.2 km) to reach Gatighan at 10° N latitude. From Limasawa to 10° N, it takes only 4 nautical miles (7 km) not 80 n.m. It takes only less than 30 minutes to sail that distance, not one whole day of sailing.
See also
- Antonio de Herrera y TordesillasAntonio de Herrera y TordesillasAntonio de Herrera y Tordesillas , Spanish historian, was born at Cuéllar, in the province of Segovia.-Biography:His father, Roderigo de Tordesillas, and his mother, Agnes de Herrera, were both of good family...
- First mass in the PhilippinesFirst mass in the PhilippinesThe first mass in the Philippines was on Easter Sunday March 31, 1521 in an island named Mazaua by eyewitnesses Antonio Pigafetta, Ginés de Mafra, Francisco Albo, the Genoese pilot, and Martín de Ayamonte, at a location today universally—and mistakenly—believed to be Limasawa, a town...
- Francisco CombésFrancisco CombésFrancisco Combés was a Spanish priest who established Christian monasteries in the Philippines in the 17th century.Combés was born in Zaragoza, Spain. At age twelve, he joined the Jesuit order as a novice at Tarragona, the Roman port city of Tarraconense, located near the coast in the Spanish...
- Ginés de MafraGines de MafraGinés de Mafra was a Spanish explorer who sailed to the Philippines in the 16th century. De Mafra was a member of the expeditions of Ferdinand Magellan of 1519–1521 and Ruy López de Villalobos of 1542–1545.- Voyage to the Philippine Islands:...
- Mazaua
Sources
Albo, Francisco. 1522. Log-Book of Francisco Alvo or Alvaro. In: The First Voyage Round the World. Lord Stanley of Alderley (ed. and trans.). Ser. I, Vol. II, London 1874, Pp. 211-236.Brand, Donald D. 1967. "Geographical explorations by the Spaniards." In: The Pacific Basin, A History of Its Geographical Explorations. Herman R. Friis (ed.). New York. Pp. 109-144, 362-375.
Colín, Francisco. 1663. Labor evangelica de los obreros de la Compañia de Jesús, fundacióon y progresos de Islas Filipinas. Pablo Pastells (ed.), 3 vols. Barcelona 1900.
Combés, Francisco. 1667. Historia de las islas de Mindanao, Iolo y sus adyacentes. W.E. Retana (ed.) Madrid 1897.
de Jesus, Vicente C. (2002). Mazaua Historiography. Retrieved February 27, 2007, from MagellansPortMazaua mailing list: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MagellansPortMazaua/files/Mazaua%20Historiography/--http://www.xeniaeditrice.it/mazaua.pdf
Denuce, Jean. 1911. La Question des Moluques et la Premiìre Circumnavigation du Globe. Brussels.
Genoese Pilot. 1519. Navegaçam e vyagem que fez Fernando de Magalhães de Seuilha pera Maluco no anno de 1519 annos. In: Collecção de noticias para a historia e geografia das nações ultramarinas, que vivem nos dominios Portuguezes, ou lhes sao visinhas. Lisboa 1826. Pp. 151-176.
Guillemard, Francis Henry Hill. 1890. The Life of Ferdinand Magellan and the First Circumnavigation of the Globe: 1480-1521. New York.
Herrera, Antonio de. 1601. Historia general de los hechos de los Castellanos en las islas y tierrafirme del mar oceano, t. VI. Angel Gonzalez Palencia (ed.). Madrid 1947.
Morison, Samuel Eliot. 1974. The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages 1492-1616. New York.
Murillo, Pedro Velarde. 1752. Geografia historica de las islas Philippinas...t. VIII. Madrid.
Pigafetta, Antonio. 1524. Various editions and translations:
--1524a. Magellan's Voyage, Vol. II. R.A. Skelton (ed. and trans.) Nancy-Libri-Phillipps-Beinecke-Yale codex. New Haven 1969.
--1524b. Primo viaggio intorno al globo terracqueo, ossia ragguaglio della navigazione...fatta dal cavaliere Antonio Pigafetta...ora publicato per la prima volta, tratto da un codice MS. Della biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano e corredato di note da Carlo Amoretti. Milan 1800.
--1524c. Il primo viaggio intorno al globo di Antonio Pigafetta. In: Raccolta di Documenti e Studi Publicati dalla. Commissione Colombiana. Andrea da Mosto (ed. and tr.). Rome 1894.
--1524d. Le premier tour du monde de Magellan. Léonce Peillard (ed. and transcription) Manuscript 5,650. France 1991.
--1524e. Magellan's Voyage, 3 vols. James Alexander Robertson (ed. and tr.) Ambrosiana Codex. Cleveland 1906.
--1524f. The First Voyage Round the World by Magellan. Lord Stanley of Alderley (ed. & tr.) Manuscript 5,650 collated with Ambrosiana and Nancy-Yale codices. London 1874.
--1524g. The First Voyage Around the World (1519-1522). Theodore J. Cachey Jr. (ed. Based on English text of J.A. Robertson) New York 1995.
--1524h. Pigafetta: Relation du premier voyage autour du monde...Edition du texte français d'après les manuscripts de Paris et de Cheltenham. Jean Denucé (ed. and transcrition of Manuscript 5,650 collated with Mss. Ambrosiana, Nancy-Yale and 24,224) Anvers 1923.
--1524i. The First Voyage Round the World by Magellan. Lord Stanley of Alderley (ed. and tr. of Ms. fr. 5,650 collated with Ambrosiana Ms). London 1874, pp. 35-163.
Ramusio, Gian Battista. 1550. La Detta navigatione per messer Antonio Pigafetta Vecentino. In: Delle navigationi e viaggi... Venice: Pp. 380-98.