Gatighan - Carlo Amoretti Switches Gatighan With Mazaua

Carlo Amoretti Switches Gatighan With Mazaua

Carlo Amoretti, the Augustinian encyclopedist, was director of a library in Milan. One fine day in 1797 he serendipitously discovered the lost handwritten manuscript of Pigafetta, one of four extant codices and the only one in Italian the rest being French, among the scattered books. This codex is famously called Ambrosiana. Amoretti transcribed it and published his edition, complete with notes, in 1800. In one of his notes he said Pigafetta's Mazaua may be Bellin's Limasawa, unaware that Limasawa/Dimasawa was in fact a complete negation of what Amoretti is asserting. He also further states, as proof of his contention, Limasawa and Mazaua are in the same latitude; in fact Limasawa is in 9° 56' N whereas Mazaua has three latitudes by three separate readings, Pigafetta's 9° 40' N, Albo's 9° 20' N, and the Genoese Pilot's 9° N. Magellan scholars, navigation historians, and geographers who came in the wake of Amoretti uncritically accepted his dictum.

A very simple way to resolve this issue is to pose this question, based on the earlier testimonies of Pigafetta and Albo that it took the fleet almost a whole day of sailing and 80 nautical miles (150 km) to reach Gatighan at 10° N latitude. From Limasawa to 10° N, it takes only 4 nautical miles (7 km) not 80 n.m. It takes only less than 30 minutes to sail that distance, not one whole day of sailing.