Gatighan


The isle of Gatighan was a way station of the Armada de Molucca under Captain-General Ferdinand Magellan on their way to Cebu in Central Philippines. The location of Gatighan has not been conclusively determined.

Etymology

The word Gatighan comes from the Visayan katigan meaning a boat with outrigger or, as verb, to outfit a boat with outrigger.

Documentation in Armada de Molucca's logbook

The logbook states that the fleet left the west port of Mazaua early morning of Thursday, April 4, 1521. According to Pigafetta, they took a northwest track, however Albo claims they took at northern track. The ships sailed to reach Gatighan at 10° N in 11–13 hours.
During the brief stop on the island, Pigafetta documented the island's fauna: "In this island of Gatighan are a kind of birds called Barbastigly, who are as large as eagles. Of which we killed a single one, because it was late, which we ate, and it had the taste of a fowl. There are also in that island pigeons, doves, turtledoves, parrots, and certain black birds as large as a fowl, with a long tail. They lay eggs as large as those of a goose, which they bury a good cubit deep under the sand in the sun, and so they are hatched by the great heat made by the warm sand. And when those birds are hatched they emerge. And those eggs are good to eat."
On Pigafetta's map, Gatighan is the only island mass that straddles between two huge islands, Bohol and Ceylon/Seilani. It is almost exactly at the 10° N latitude, reference point of Albo for Gatighan.

Attempts to locate the island

Despite many attempts to determine which island was referred to as Gatighan, opinions still vary on the issue. Theories include:
, the Augustinian encyclopedist, was director of a library in Milan. In 1797 he discovered the lost handwritten Ambrosiana manuscript of Pigafetta, one of four remaining manuscripts and the only one in Italian. 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.
Amoretti states that Limasawa and Mazaua are in the same latitude. It has been since determined that Limasawa is in 9° 56' N, whereas three different latitudes have been claimed for the location of Mazaua.