About the author: Francisco Albo, botswain and navigator from the island of Rhodes. Originally botswain of the Trinidad in Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition, he then became pilot of the Victoria under the command of Sebastian de Elcano.
As the Journal of Navigation put it,
Among many records of the first circumnavigation of the globe preserved in Spain is the log-book kept by the pilot who brought the Victoria home—under the command of Sebastian de Elcano. This pilot’s name was Francisco Albo. He signed on in the first instance as master’s mate of the Trinidad, Magellan’s own ship, which did not return. Although a native of the island of Rhodes, he was thoroughly grounded in the Portuguese method of navigation—by observation of the noon Sun. It involved the use of a four-year table of declinations, and an English version of this very table and instructions was presented to Henry VIII about 1540 by Roger Barlow, who was urging an English participation in the new discoveries.
A Log-Book of Magellan’s Voyage, 1519–1522, The Journal of Navigation , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , January 1964 , pp. 83 – 87
About the diary: As ELKANO500AGO, an online effort by by the Basque Institute of Geography noted, “The original version in Spanish is in Archives of Indies in Seville and the authors of the blog used the transliteration of Cristóbal Bernal.” The Philippine Diary Project have likewise used Bernal’s version for the Spanish text.
For English, we have used the version published in Wikisource as Log-Book of Francisco Alvo or Alvaro. For these entries, we have, as much as possible, used dates as provided in the manuscript; in other cases, we have used a range of dates suggested by various timelines: these are indicated by being in [brackets] in the entries.
We have also added in [brackets] modern place-names as provided in the Spanish transliteration of Bernal, as well as from the article of Bernad and a few from Blair & Robertsons footnotes (for more on these sources, see The Magellan Expedition and Elcano’s Circumnavigation: 500 Years).