Spice: The History of a Temptation‎

by Jack Turner

Though the Victoria, at only eightyfive tons, was the second-smallest vessel of the expedition, its leaking hold yielded 381 bags of cloves, the legacy of the frantic buying that followed the crew’s arrival at Tidore. The net weight was calculated at 520 quintals, 1 arroba, and 11 pounds: 60,060 pounds, or 27,300 kilograms. There were also samples of other spices: cinnamon, mace, and nutmeg, plus, oddly, one feather (of a bird of paradise?).

In the debit column alongside is a listing of expenses: weapons, victuals, hammers, lanterns, drums “para diversion,” pitch and tar, gloves, one piece of Valencian cochineal, twenty pounds of saffron, lead, crystal, mirrors, six metal astrolabes, combs, colored velvets, darts, compasses, various trinkets, and sundry other expenses. Taking into account the loss of four of the five ships, the advances paid to the crews, back pay for the survivors, and pensions and rewards for the pilot, it emerges that once the Victoria’s 381 bags of cloves had been brought to market the expedition registered a modest net profit. For the investors it was a disappointment, paltry in comparison with the astronomical returns then being enjoyed by the Portuguese in the East; but it was a profit nonetheless. The conclusion must rate as one of accountancy’s more dramatic moments: a small holdful of cloves funded the first circumnavigation of the globe.