João Rodrigues Serrão is the Portuguese form of the Spanishname Juan Rodríguez Serrano and more common in English sources,[1] although Antonio Pigafetta—a Venetian who accompanied Magellan's expedition as a supernumerary and subsequently wrote an account of his voyage—considered Serrão notably Spanish.[2] The name is usually shortened to Serrão rather than Rodrigues Serrão. It also appears in some sources anglicized to John Serrano.[2]
Subsequently, Francisco stayed in the East Indies and wrote descriptions of the area to João and Magellan. Finding himself in disgrace in the Portuguese court and thinking Francisco's information suggested the Spice Islands (now Indonesia's Maluku Islands) fell within the Spanish hemisphere created by the Treaty of Tordesillas, Magellan approached the young Spanish king CharlesI (subsequently Emperor CharlesV of the Holy Roman Empire) for funding. When this was granted, Serrão joined Magellan as one of the captains for his expedition.
Serrão captained the Santiago across the Atlantic in 1519. After an attempted mutiny led to the execution or flight of the three other captains, he subsequently commanded the Concepción across the Pacific in 1520. Magellan had hoped to meet Francisco Serrão when he arrived in the Spice Islands but, after the First Mass in the Philippines, he was killed at the 1521 Battle of Mactan while attempting to shore up the power of his convert and ally Humabon, the raja of Cebu. Upon his death, Serrão became joint leader of the expedition with Magellan's in-lawDuarte Barbosa. (Fernando died shortly thereafter on Ternate, also owing to his involvement in local politics.)
Magellan's will had provided for the freeing of his MalayslaveEnrique. Either Barbosa or Barbosa and Serrão together refused to honor this provision, preferring to keep Enrique as their Malay interpreter for the rest of the mission and to return him later to Portugal as the property of Magellan's widow Beatriz Barbosa. Subsequently—probably though not certainly by Enrique's doing—Humabon massacred the Spanish leadership at a feast on Cebu on 1 May 1521 and drove them from his lands, with Enrique surviving and escaping captivity. Serrão also survived the initial trap and reached the island's beach, where he called to the men still on the boats for rescue. João Lopes Carvalho, who became leader of the expedition at this point, feared that the Cebuanos were only using Serrão as bait to lure more men into the massacre and ordered his men not to go to shore. Serrão seems to have been recaptured and killed shortly afterwards.
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