Flat Hal and Flat Halena feel like time travelers bouncing around time.
Events make a lot more sense in order, so let’s slow down a moment.
Ferdinand Magellan — 1520 — Discovered Magellan’s Straits between the Atlantic and the Pacific. (He saw a species of Penguin, named Magellanic for him!)
HMS Beagle — 1831 to 1836 — Captain FitzRoy and Charles Darwin mapped uncharted sections of South America, sailed through Magellan’s Straits, and noted plants and animals.
Ernest Shackleton — 1914 to 1917 — led the Endurance to Antarctica, kept his men alive on the “frozen continent” after his ship sank, and brought his men home alive!
Magellan’s ship circumnavigated the world! It sailed all the way around Earth, proving it wasn’t flat. He discovered that if you sailed West long enough, you would find the “Far East” and eventually come home again.
However, Magellan was a complex man. Unlike Shackleton, he does not come across as a leader who put his people first. Magellan placed the goal above his men, and it cost many their lives. It is no surprise that there were mutiny plots, or that one ship even turned back early!
Magellan was determined to finish the voyage no matter how hard it got. But in the end, Magellan himself did not live to see Europe again.
Some of the things that Flat Friends read felt “expected”. Of course Magellan saw penguins, they are named for him (or by him?) and we had several chances during our voyage to see Magellanic penguins.
Other things made just as much sense, but were a surprise when we read them. Magellan stopped near modern day Rio de Janeiro? We stopped there too! He encountered a river in modern day Uruguay that was so wide he thought it must be the passage he was looking for — did he sail the Rio de la Plata? We did too! When we went to Montevideo and Buenos Aires.
As we finished the book we sat in stunned silence. So much hardship, and conflict… Magellan was so determined to find the passage that now bears his name, but the Flat Friends decided we don’t want to follow his example as a leader. We want to achieve our goal, but not if it means hurting others. Ernest Shackleton is our leader of choice.
