Magellan and his Sailors

 In Seville we went to the perfect reproduction of the only ship (other than the mutinied one) that returned to Spain from  Ferdinand Magellan's attempt to get to the Spice Islands by sailing West rather than East around the Horn of Africa. 

The ship we walked about was the "Nao Victoria" Magellan's flagship of which he was Captain. 

But alas Magellan was not aboard when the ship 'victoriously returned'. Magellan had left some three years earlier with 5 ships and 247 men. 

The conditions of sailing ships at the time were horrid: very little food on a mission of such an 'exploration': a few pigs, three cows, some chickens, a bunch of flour and a great deal of wine and sherry (no one drank water in the 1500s as it was so foul), then they had dried beans, walnuts and a lot of cheese. 

All of the foodstuff rotted quite quickly and the crossing of the Atlantic was marked by terrible storms. Magellan finally made it around Tiera del Fuego, which I would be nervous to cross today on a modern ship,  and there lost another ship and many men. Mutiny followed though some of it was thwarted. Then more ships were lost. 

In and on the great Pacific the captain and crew were horrified to find that the Spice Islands weren't even  anywhere close as the charts Magellan had got from his friend, had predicted. The ships drifted months and months with almost no supplies and what they had was rotting. 

Given the food situation, rats were at a premium and could command one ducat per dead rat for a man to eat. All the flour to make hard tack biscuits was so foul from rat urine and rife with worms the men could not eat it and could barely choke down the water left in a barrel, it smelled so badly, having turned green and poisonous. Scurvy was rampant and the men fell like flies. 

In those times sailors slept on raw mats on the deck open to wind, rain and waves taking turns doing 4 hour shifts on the treacherous rigging. 

When Magellan stumbled upon the Philippines, he, having thrown his wrong maps into the sea (to the rage of his crew) trusted in the stars and sun and sailed forth to find land and found some. Soon after arrival, he decided to make war against the Philippine inhabitants who didn't agree with the Catholic conversion insistence thing he was into. Some of the inhabitants were 'on board' most were not. 

Convinced of the power of his superior weapons he and an allied tribe attacked a massive force of warriors who had set a trap. Magellan was shot through his leg by a poisoned spear and rallied until he was surrounded and hacked to death by no end of warriors. 

The remaining sailors and crew fled. 

The ship did find the Spice Islands that some Europeans had set up as a base. What happened after that I don't know; only that 3 years after Magellan's grand 5 ships set off, one limped back to Spain. Only 18 out of the 247 men who sailed away years earlier returned to port, but they were so debilitated they could barely walk or talk and trembled incessantly.

I can't understand why men would continue to sail seeing the return of Magellan's crew. 

I have read some not very good explanations about this question, much generated by AI. What the hell was with the tenacity of these men? Why suffer such misery and likely death for what reward?

I think some of it might have to do with the obsessive belief in God and the strange resolute faith of Spain and Portugal. 

However,  I also think most of it was because of gossip: none of the men could read so all they had to go on was the vouch safe of other sailors telling them that countless riches and gold and rewards would meet them at the end of their voyage. Like so many who sailed across giant oceans, they either perished or it was too late for them, as they had no means or money, to try and make it back.