Note 46 — NAVIGATION AND VOYAGE WHICH FERNANDO DE MAGALHĀES MADE FROM SEVILLE TO MALUCO IN THE YEAR 1519.
Henry Edward John Stanley Stanley translation
Amoretti, the editor of Pigafetta, observes, that whilst the fleet was in the river of Santa Cruz, between 50 deg. and 40 deg. South latitude, there was, on the 11th of October, an eclipse of the Sun, “
which
(he says)
the Portuguese and Spanish writers mention, and which is registered in the astronomical tables
:” and he judges it to be an error of Castanheda putting this phenomenon on the 17th of April, and his attributing to Magellan the calculation of longitude of which he speaks. Barros also mentions an eclipse of the sun in April. It is noteworthy that neither our pilot’s narrative nor Pigafetta mentions a phenomenon which still in those times did not happen without causing some impression on men’s minds, or at least without exciting public curiosity.
Lisbon Ac. note.
I am indebted to the courtesy of the Astronomer Royal, Mr. G. B. Airy, for the following information, which confirms Castanheda and Barros: “1520, April 17. There was certainly (from our own calculations) a total solar eclipse about 1.20 p.m. Greenwich time. But in the Art de verifier les dates, in which the extreme Southern eclipses are not included, none is mentioned for April 17: consequently the eclipse was a Southern eclipse, crossing the South Atlantic.”