Francisco Serrão
Although little is known of his early life, Portuguese explorer Francisco Serrão (? - 1521) travelled east on Francisco da Almeida's 7th Armada da Índia with his cousin Ferdinand Magellan, possibly with his brother João on the Botafogo. Serrão and Magellan may have grown up together as pageboys in Portugal's royal court.
After taking part in Albuquerque's conquest of Malacca, Serrão was second-in-command on Antonio de Abreu's 1512 expedition to the Moluccas, commanding one of the three vessels. Although he lost his ship on the outward voyage, Serrão reached Banda, where Abreu replaced the lost ship with a Chinese junk acquired from a local trader. When the junk foundered in a storm off an uninhabited island near West Ambon, Serrão and his crew commandeered a craft from islanders intent on scavenging the wreckage and made their way to Ambon, where they proved to be valuable allies in a local ruler's struggle against his rival in neighbouring Seram. News of the Portuguese group's military prowess reached Ternate's Sultan Bayan Sirrullah, who recruited Serrão to assist him in an ongoing campaign against the Sultan of nearby Tidore.
Over the next eight or nine years, Serrão became the Sultan's close confidant and military adviser. His letters home reputedly encouraged Magellan's proposal to find a route to the Moluccas that eventually attracted support from Spain's Charles I; his brother João subsequently served as captain of the Santiago on the Atlantic leg of Magellan's expedition and then took the Concepción across the Pacific. Although Magellan had hoped to join Francisco in the Spice Islands, Serrão died under mysterious circumstances in Ternate around the time when Magellan was killed in the Philippines. His brother briefly shared the command of the Magellan expedition with Magellan's brother-in-law Duarte Barbosa before both died during a massacre by the Spaniards' supposed ally Humabon, Raja of Cebu.
