The crew had every reason to be concerned. I read a recent document from a Spanish archive that said Magellan of "first to circumvnet the globe " fame was Portuguese but was sailing under Spanish patronage, and that when he was killed in the Philippines a Spaniard took over and completed the voyage (and the Portuguese were gunning for all of them). Of the five ships, the one with the Spanish captain was the only one which made it. Of the almost 300 crew, only 17 survived. (Too lazy to re-read the document to check my memory, but clearly--due in no small part to scurvy--ocean sailing in the 15th century was not a risk-free activity. It is true that the Chinese had bigger ships and a more robust program, but it was stopped by the Emperor to save money, and in shame the eunuch who lead it burned all his logs. The Polynesians were top navigators, which is why there were people on most islands where the Europeans landed, including New Zealand and Australia. There is--to my mind, anyway--a distinct possibility that the Polynesians did "discover" the Americas, and the Being Strait land bridge was not the only conduit for human incursions. They got to "Easter Island", after all, which is now part of Chile but is really in the middle of the ocean.)
