The Wake of Magellan
1997 studio album by Savatage
The Wake of Magellan is the tenth studio album released by the American heavy metal band Savatage. The album was released in September 1997 in Europe and Japan, and in April 1998 in the US.
This is the first Savatage album to have the same lineup as the previous album since Hall of the Mountain King in 1987 and also the last to feature vocals from lead singer Zachary Stevens. The progressive metal band Dream Theater are thanked in the album's liner notes. Dream Theater keyboard player Derek Sherinian and Al Pitrelli went to college together, were both in the band Ethyl Mertz and toured with Alice Cooper for the Trashes the World tour. Pitrelli and John Petrucci also played together on a Japanese release called Guitar Battle.
Story
The Wake of Magellan is a concept album based on two real life events. The first, the Maersk Dubai incident, occurred just over a year before the album was released, when the captain and officers of the ship threw three Romanian stowaways overboard in the middle of the Atlantic. A fourth stowaway was saved by the courageous actions of the ship's boatswain, Rodolfo Miguel, who risked his own life to protect the youth after witnessing the other three murders. The second event regarded the Irish reporter Veronica Guerin, who died fighting the growth of the drug trade in her country. Her death may accomplish what she could not in life.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Wake of Magellan” is 1997 studio album by Savatage. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Wake, Magellan and studio, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “1997 studio album by Savatage” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1038922. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1997, 1998 and 1987.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
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- Expand the search: follow The Wake of Magellan primary sources, The Wake of Magellan archive and Wake research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “The Wake of Magellan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.