Antonio Pigafetta

1491?-1534

Italian sailor who wrote a classic account of his participation in the historic global circumnavigation begun by Ferdinand Magellan (c.

1480-1521). In 1519, the expedition sailed from Spain with five ships, but its leader was killed in 1521, and the following year only one ship—the Victoria—returned to Spain bearing a handful of men. Pigafetta was among the survivors, and at the behest of King Charles V, he wrote about his experiences in Primo viaggio inforno al globo terraqueo. Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in his 1982 Nobel Prize lecture, praised Pigafetta for "a strictly accurate account that nonetheless resembles a venture into fantasy."