This is the true story of how Ferdinand Magellan was credited as the 1st person to circumnavigate the globe. He transformed an ambitious commercial voyage into a truly historic one; turning himself into one of the most celebrated explorers in history. Ferdinand Magellan (1480?-1521) was a Portuguese-born Spanish explorer and navigator, leader of the first expedition to circumnavigate, or sail completely around, the world. He was born in northern Portugal. Magellan set out to reach the East Indies by sailing westward from Europe, which no one was sure could be done. He intended to return by the same route, but after his death his crews found that the prevailing winds required them to keep sailing west, around the world.
View Voyages of discovery - Circumnavigation of Magellan. Video hosted on Guba. During the Age of Discovery (the late 15th and early 16th centuries), Spain and Portugal produced a number of explorers whose discoveries of new lands and peoples expanded the horizonsand bordersof these nations. In this June 1976 article from National Geographic, Australian-born mariner Alan Villiers retraced the route of Portuguese-born Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the first person to circumnavigate the world.
Magellan
A Voyage into the Unknown Changed Mans Understanding of his World
By Alan Villiers
The quiet evening scene in San Julián Bay, on the far southern coast of Argentina, was misleading that night of April 1, 1520. Reflections of five sturdy ships, now more than six months and 6,000 sea miles out from Spain, shimmered on the surface of the bay as the masts and spars rolled slowly under the stars.
The little fleet, bearing fewer than 300 men under the able and ruthless Portuguese soldier-adventurer-seaman Ferdinand Magellan, had come in for winter quarters. As a place to wait the winter out, San Julián suited well. It was sheltered and had fish and fresh water. It also had tribes of friendly wandering ‘giants’big men with huge feet (perhaps just thick grass-filled foot wrappings). Since big feet are patagones in Spanish, Magellan called them Patagonians, and their land Patagonia.
The bay also seemed a convenient springboard for finding the object of the voyage, that rumored but still-undiscovered strait from the Atlantic to the sea of the Indies and the riches of the Spice Islandsif such a road existed. But those weakly rigged, shoelike little ships dared not sail farther into such rough waters in worsening weather. Though no one then knew it, they were approaching the toughest corner of the sailing-ship worldthe savage tip of South America where Atlantic and Pacific meet near Antarctica.
They must wait at least until spring, though Magellan was aware that idleness at anchorage soon swells discontent. There was already plenty of that. Magellan was a Portuguese commanding an expedition for the King of Spain; though he had changed his nationality to Spanish two and a half years before, he still appeared a foreign upstart to the Spaniards accompanying him. What is more, they considered him more fanatic driver than questing seaman, determined to force ships and men to the uttermost ends of the earthfor what? An alleged seaway through to the westward, which, if there, might lead to the Lord knew what! Magellan said to the rich Spice Islands. Maybe.
But here they were at the forlorn end of a barren coast in drafty, cold, uncomfortable ships. They, the ship commanders and senior officers, were gentlemen of Spain, while their leader was this ruthless soldier with a battle-lamed leg, to them a renegade whose own king would not back him. So they planned sudden mutiny there in San Julián, to dispose of him and his ideas once and for all.
The day after the ships anchored, Magellan invited the captains and senior officers of Concepción, San Antonio, Victoria, and the tiny caravel Santiago to dine aboard his flagship, Trinidad. But not one Spaniard came, an obviously coordinated and defiant act. Then they sent a boat to Magellan to announce the independence of three of the ships.
Magellan could deal with that. This was mutiny, punishable by death. Spaniards were by far in the majority in Magellan’s fleet, but King Charles of Spain had given him ‘rights of rope and knife’ over all of themlife and death. Those powers were for use.
That same night Magellan acted. He sent a boat to Victoria’s captain, the noble fleet treasurer Luis de Mendoza, delivering to him an order to report aboard the flagship immediately. Mendoza threw his head back, sneering, and began to laugh.
It was the last thing he did, for the well-briefed messenger instantly grabbed him by the beard, jerked his head farther back, and slashed his throat with a dagger.
Another boatload of Magellan’s men swarmed aboard, and Victoria surrendered immediately. San Antonio, cut adrift as she prepared to sail, was raked by gunfire from Trinidad, and a boarding party led by Magellan himself quickly put her captain, Gaspar de Quesada, in irons. A third mutinous captain, Juan de Cartagena, a favorite of the Spanish king and by his order the conjunta persona, or ‘person jointly responsible’ for the fleet with Magellan, was seized aboard Concepción. The mutiny was over before it got going.
The Italian chronicler, Antonio Pigafetta, sailing in Magellan’s ship, fortunately wrote an account of the first world-circling voyage. His record of the mutiny is stark:
‘The masters of the other
(three) ships conspired against the captain-general to bring about his death.
But the treachery was discovered
the treasurer (Mendoza) was killed by dagger blows, then quartered.
Gaspar Quesada had his head cut off, and then he was quartered. And the overseer Juan de Cartagena
was banished with a (disaffected) priest, and put in exile on that land called Patagoni.’
That’s all. But Magellan’s authority would not be challenged again by would-be mutineers. Trinidad and the little Santiago had remained loyal. Santiago was lost a month later on a coastal surveying passage. But, as Pigafetta wrote, ‘all the men were saved by a miracle, for they were not even wetted.’
It was no miracle, however, that saved Magellan in San Julián Bay. A hesitant leader would have lost everything, but Ferdinand Magellan was a forceful, determined man. Columbus had pioneered what was mainly a simple passage, a sunny trade-winds run to the West Indies. By comparison, this stubborn, grim Portuguese had to drive an unwilling fleet nearly to Antarctica to find a way around Americaand who knew how much farther to reach the Spice Islands.
In those days cloves and other cooking spices were a source of riches, and they grew chiefly in the Moluccas. Magellan’s theory was that these islands lay not far beyond the New World, and sailing this way would be shorter than round all Africa.
Four and a half centuries after Magellan’s voyage, my wife, Nance, and I set out to track the life of this extraordinary man. Near a village named Sabrosa in the hilly north of Portugal, two plaques on a stone house beside a vineyard record that Magellan was born on the site, in or about 1480. He left home, orphaned at age 10 to 12, to be a page at the Portuguese court.
In Seville, Spain’s royal city where later he organized his great voyage, the honors seem reserved not for Magellan but for the Spanish Basque Juan Sebastián del Cano. A young commoner, who was involved in the mutiny of the Spanish officers but whose life was spared, he had no command until Magellan was killed in the Philippines. He survived to bring one tired ship home, with a cargo of cloves that repaid some of the expedition’s costs. A tall statue of del Cano today overlooks Seville.
Despite this overshadowing of Magellan in Seville, my wife and I felt we really were on his trail there. The medieval Tower of Gold he knew still stood. At least one statue (of Santa Maria de la Victoria) that he and his men knew was still there, and greatly venerated.
We drove to the pretty mouth of the Guadalquivir River at Sanlúcar de Barrameda, smiling in the sunshine. It was easy to imagine the Magellan fleet anchored off there in the summer of 1519. The stubby ships’ incredible smallness for the great voyage they were about to begin would astonish the modern mind. The San Antonio was 120 tons (as they were reckoned then), Trinidad 110, Concepción 90, Victoria 85, and Santiago 75. The largest was smaller than the Mayflower, and she was not as big as a modern harbor tug!
From Sanlúcar it was an easy sail for Magellan’s fleet to the Canary Islands, where more provisions and 25 more seamen were brought aboard. Then, perhaps to avoid Portuguese warships sent out to intercept him, Magellan detoured southward along the bulge of West Africa before crossing the narrows of the Atlantic to the Brazilian coast near Recife.
This tropics run was new to Magellan, though he had sailed around the Cape of Good Hope to India and Malacca and back again. But neither he nor anyone else had attempted the dangerous voyage in far southern waters that lay ahead. He had read and heard enough to convince him that a strait existed, and that the Spice Islands lay beyond. But the way through remained to be found.
After two weeks’ rest at Rio de Janeiro, he searched for his strait farther south: in the great estuary of the Rio de la Plata, where Buenos Aires was to flourish, and on down the Patagonian coast. There were obviously no shortcuts toward the East Indies in either of these areas. So onward the fleet groped, ever southward, westing, and the vast land stayed with them.
At last, after leaving San Julián Bay late in the southern winter of 1520, Magellan found the beginning of the way through. The triumphant event occurred on October 21, the Feast of the Eleven Thousand Virgins. Pigafetta’s report is laconic:
‘After going
to the fifty-second degree (of latitude) toward the said Antarctic Pole, on the festival of the eleven thousand virgins, we found by miracle a strait which we called the Cape of the Eleven Thousand Virgins. Which strait is in length one hundred and ten leagues
And it falls into another sea called the Pacific Sea. And it is surrounded by very great
mountains covered with snow.’
As Magelian felt his way through the strait, he sent San Antonio and Concepción ahead to search out points of danger and useful anchorages. On the second such trip San Antonio did not return. Instead, her officers and crew overpowered their captain, doubled back by night, and sailed home to Spain.
According to Pigafetta, the mutineering pilot of the San Antonio, Esteväo Gomes, had one motive for his desertionpure hatred of his Portuguese leader. When he got back to Spain, he made dire charges against Magellanand, though jailed briefly, in the end went unpunished.
Sadly, after searching for the San Antonio for many days, Magellan and his three remaining ships went on through the strait, anchoring or mooring to rocks by night. They were sometimes confused by apparent openings leading nowhere.
It was not all hardship. The weather was generally good. Often the scenery was magnificent, and in the comparatively narrow waters they experienced few of the sudden wind squalls characteristic of the region.
And we called it the Pathagonico strait,’ wrote Pigafetta. ‘In it we found at every half league a good port, and anchorage, good water, and wood
and fish like sardines.
On Wednesday the twenty-eighth of November, one thousand five hundred and twenty, we issued forth from the said strait and entered the Pacific Sea, where we remained three months and twenty days without taking on board provisions or any other refreshments, and we ate only old biscuit turned to powder, all full of worms and stinking of the urine which the rats had made on it, having eaten the good. And we drank water impure and yellow. We ate also ox hides which were very hard because of the sun, rain, and wind. And we left them
days in the sea, then laid them for a short time on embers, and so we ate them. And of the rats, which were sold for half an ecu apiece, some of us could not get enough.
‘Besides the aforesaid troubles, this malady (scurvy) was the worst, namely that the gums of most part of our men swelled above and below so that they could not eat. And in this way they died, inasmuch as twenty-nine of us died
But besides those who died, twenty-five or thirty fell sick of divers maladies, whether of the arms or of the legs and other parts of the body (also effects of scurvy), so that there remained very few healthy men. Yet by the grace of our Lord I had no illness.
‘During these three months and twenty days, we sailed in a gulf where we made a good four thousand leagues across the Pacific Sea, which was rightly so named. For during this time we had no storm, and we saw no land except two small uninhabited islands, where we found only birds and trees. Wherefore we called them the Isles of Misfortune.
And if our Lord and the Virgin Mother had not aided us by giving good weather to refresh ourselves with provisions and other things we had died in this very great sea. And I believe that nevermore will any man undertake to make such a voyage.’
Nance and I did our best to follow in Magellan’s unprecedented tracks. We had the chance of going through his strait in the big cruising liner Gripsholm. What a difference! The lovely 20,000-ton liner offered every comfort of a luxury hotel as she steamed along those wonderfully scenic passages, with the glorious mountains spilling glaciers into the dark waters. Upright and steady, she cruised leisurely through in two days at 18 knots. It took Magellan 38 days in all, as he sailed thrice over a good part of the strait’s 310-nautical-mile length.
At Punta Arenas, partway through the strait, the Gripsholm anchored for a while. I went ashore to salute Magellan’s statue, high on its pedestal in the pleasant town square there
. It is one of the very few statues to the man in the world.
I was pleased to note that the route Magellan so bravely pioneered is being increasingly used, as some oil tankers and bulk ore carriers are so huge that their beam, draft, and length keep them out of the Panama Canal. They have to go south around South America. We sighted several of these monsters of a quarter of a million tons wallowing along like pieces of moving mountain.
Magellan was obviously a seaman who appreciated progress, or he would not have been down there himself, changing the maritime world of his day. I think he would have enjoyed seeing those monster tankers and our cruise ship using his strait.
Ninety-eight days from the strait (or 99the exact dates are uncertain), in March 1521, Trinidad, Victoria, and Concepción reached a good island at last. It had coconuts and sugarcane, tasty fish, bananas, and yamsthe island of Guam, well to the north in the North Pacific.
That tremendous 9,000-nautical-mile sail from South America nonstop to Guam was a magnificent piece of seafaring. Of course the enormity of this ocean had been unknown to Magellan before, or to anyone else in Europe. Only a master mariner of steel will, tremendous competence, and leadership qualities could have kept the ships going.
The fruits and coconuts of Guam came in timejust!to save the cadaverous, staring men, eyes in deep sockets, clothes in rags. The fruit arrested the scurvy, but it went down hard because so many had lost teeth.
The ravaged Magellan must have known that the unforeseen and tremendous length of the passage ended his fondest hopesthe very foundation of his voyage. For this was obviously no practical route to the Spice Islands. The Good Hope route was better and shorter. What he had found was a vast ocean that neither he nor any other European had had any idea existed. Balboa had seen nothing but a few square miles from the mountaintop and beach at Panama. That was sarcely the edge of the bucketand what a bucket! Well, now all men might know far better the size and shape of their world.
As Magellan went upon leaving Guam, we too headed on westward. This time his extraordinary destiny guided him across a remarkably danger-free area of the Pacific, with the northeast trade wind to blow the ships steadily along. After a perfect week’s sail, the horizon was broken by the blue outlines of the Philippines.
In all but direct, continuous sailing passage, both Magellan and the slave Enrique now rated in effect as the first circumnavigators. Enrique had been born in the East. Magellan had seen years of military service there. Together master and servant had sailed to Spain by the beaten track across the Indian Ocean, round the Cape of Good Hope, and into the Atlantic. Now they were back again in the East, having sailed in the opposite direction by Magellan’s new way: over the Atlantic to Brazil, south to the end of America, through the strait, and thence across the great Pacific.
At Cebu in the Philippines, Magellan led his squadron into anchorage, his largest Spanish ensigns spread proudly to the sun. Here they were west of the Spice Islands, the Moluccas. They had come from the westthe first men to demonstrate in person that the world really could be circled.
My wife and I had flown to Manila from Guam in a jumbo jet, which might have carried Magellan’s flagship, less masts, in its enormous fuselage. Now a small aircraft put us down on the islet of Mactan, a mile off Cebu. And there, at Mactan, we found the place where Magellan died.
Pigafetta tells the story:
‘On Friday the twenty-sixth of April Zzula, lord of the aforesaid island of Mattan, sent one of his sons to present to the captain-general two goats, saying that he would keep all his promises to him, but because of the lord
Cilapulapu (who refused to obey the King of Spain) he had not been able to.
And he begged that on the following night he (Magellan) would send but one boat with some of his men to fight.
‘The captain-general resolved to go there with three boats. And however strongly we besought him not to come, yet
at midnight we set forth, sixty men armed with corselets and helmets, together with the Christian king (Humabon, whom Magellan had baptized); and we so managed that we arrived at Mattan three hours before daylight.
‘The captain would not fight at this hour, but sent
to tell the lord of the place (Cilapulapu) and his people that, if they agreed to obey the King of Spain, and recognize the Christian king as their lord, and give us tribute, they should all be friends. But if they acted otherwise they should learn by experience how our lances pierced. They replied that they had lances of bamboo hardened in the fire and stakes dried in the fire, and that we were to attack them when we would.
‘When day came, we leapt into the water, being forty-nine men, and so we went for a distance of two crossbow flights before we could reach the harbor, and the boats could not come further inshore because of the stones and rocks which were in the water. The other eleven men remained to guard the boats.
‘Having thus reached land we attacked them. Those people had formed three divisions, of more than one thousand and fifty persons. And immediately they perceived us, they came about us with loud voices and cries, two divisions on our flanks, and one around and before us. When the captain saw this he divided us in two, and thus we began to fight. The backbutmen and crossbowmen fired at long range for nearly half an hour, but in vain, (our shafts) merely passing through their shields, made of strips of wood unbound, and their arms. Seeing this, the captain cried out, Do not fire, do not fire any more. But that was of no avail. When those people saw this, and that we fired the backbuts in vain, they shouted and determined to stand fast
they fired at us so many arrows, and lances of bamboo tipped with iron, and pointed stakes hardened by fire, and stones, that we could hardly defend ourselves.
‘Seeing this the captain sent some of his men to burn the houses of those people in order to frighten them. Who, seeing their houses burning, became bolder and more furious, so that two of our men were killed near these houses, and we burned a good thirty of their houses. Then they came so furiously against us that they sent a poisoned arrow through the captain’s leg. Wherefore he ordered us to withdraw slowly, but the men fled while six or eight of us remained with the captain. And those people shot at no other place but our legs, for the latter were bare. Thus for the great number of lances and stones that they threw and discharged at us we could not resist.
‘Our large pieces of artillery which were in the ships could not help us, because they were firing at too long range, so that we continued to retreat for more than a good crossbow flight from the shore, still fighting, and in water up to our knees. And they followed us, hurling poisoned arrows four or six times; while, recognizing the captain
they hurled arrows very close to his head.
‘But as a good captain and a knight he still stood fast with some others, fighting thus for more than an hour. And as he refused to retire further, an Indian threw a bamboo lance in his face, and the captain immediately killed him with his lance, leaving it in his body. Then, trying to lay hand on his sword, he could draw it out but halfway, because of a wound from a bamboo lance that he had in his arm. Which seeing, all those people threw themselves on him, and one of them with a large javelin
thrust it into his left leg, whereby he fell face downward. On this all at once rushed upon him with lances of iron and of bamboo and
they slew our mirror, our light, our comfort, and our true guide.
‘While those people were striking him, he several times turned back to see whether we were all at the ships. Then, seeing him dead, as best we could we rescued the wounded men and put them into the boats which were already leaving.’
Magellan’s body was not found or ever seen again by Europeans. Pigafetta writes:
‘After dinner the Christian king
sent to tell those of Mattan that if they would give us the bodies of the captain and the other dead men, we would give them as much merchandise as they desired. And they answered that they would not give up such a man, as we supposed, and that they would not give him up for the greatest riches in the world, but that they intended to keep him as a perpetual memorial.’
Perhaps as an idol? But how? There is no present evidence that such a thing was ever done. A tall column overlooking the bay commemorates the death of Magellan, but in the bright little township a mile or two away, a new bronze statue of Lapulapu, leader of the warriors who killed Magellan, shone in the sun. It seemed that he was now the local hero, which is understandable in the 20th century.
The death of Magellan did not end the voyage, for the surviving ships had still to reach the Spice Islands to buy their homeward cargo of cloves and sail from there another 11,000 miles to complete their circumnavigation of the globe. Of the three surviving ships now in the Philippines, the Concepción was old and wormriddled. As there was also a shortage of manpower from disease and fighting casualties (the company had declined from more than 250 in South America to scarcely 100 in the Philippines), Concepción was burned. Her people and stores were divided among Trinidad, commanded by Capt. Joäo Lopes Carvalho, and Victoria, later commanded by the Basque, Capt. Juan Sebastián del Cano.
When at last they reached the Spice Islands in early November, they began refitting the ships and stuffing them full with cloves in preparation for the long voyage home. But Trinidad sprang a leak, and had to be unloaded again for repairs.
Juan Sebastián del Cano now was captain of the little Victoria. She was filled up, too, but her seams did not open. Life was good in the sunny Spice Islands, but del Cano must have worried and been in a hurry to sail before the Portuguese caught them as interlopers. The monsoon winds would soon change, and the long voyage that del Cano faced offered a grim prospect. He determined to leave without Trinidad; later she would try to recross the Pacific to Panama, but battered by storms she would turn back and eventually be captured by the Portuguese in the Indies and finally wrecked. Neither she nor most of her crew would ever make it home.
From the Atlantic side of the cape, southerly and southeast winds bring square-riggers to the Equator; northeast winds carry them on through the tropics; and westerlies in the North Atlantic blow them to port in Europe. But del Cano knew that was just the route along which the Portuguese might be watching for him. If I were trying to dodge them, I know what I would have done: I would have sailed farther west in the Atlantic than usual. This would have taken a lot of courage, for these were cruelly rough waters. But as a Basque, del Cano was used to tough sailing in the Bay of Biscay, not just the kinder Mediterranean.
The only real trouble he had was when he was forced to put in for provisions at Portugal’s Cape Verde Islands. Unfortunately, or stupidly, a parcel of cloves was sent ashore in exchange. A Spanish ship bringing spices from a Portuguese monopoly! The Victoria had to cut and run, leaving 13 of the crew to their fate in Portuguese hands.
Captain del Cano had to be wary the rest of the voyage, for all that West African coast was more or less under Portuguese control. Keeping well out to sea, he also experienced better sailing winds. Day after day the Victoria sailed northward, going as far west as the Azores. Nearly two months more passed before she arrived off the mouth of the River Guadalquivir at Sanlúcar de Barrameda. This was nearly seven months after leaving the Moluccas, and almost three years since the Magellan fleet had sailed from Seville. No news had come for many months, since the return of the San Antonio, and the ship was quite unexpected.
Here she was, first ship round the world in history! It was a feat so marvelous that all men were astonished. Many a family was also saddened, when the weeks and months and years passed and there came no other little ship from Magellan’s fleet.
The Victoria arrived back in Seville with only 18 of the original crew surviving (though the 13 that had been seized by the Portuguese at the Cape Verde Islands returned later, as did four or five survivors from the Trinidad). Del Cano led all who could walk to the two shrines of Santa Maria de la Victoria and Santa Maria de la Antigua barefoot and carrying tapers, chanting slowly as they passed along the narrow roads, to offer thanks to God. The citizens of Seville stopped to watch the little group pass, wondering at their gaunt solemnity. None of the seamen were now recognizable to those who had known them. They staggered along, rag-covered skeletons, the less emaciated helping the scurvy-stricken. All appeared to be old men, with cadaverous countenances, though the oldest had not turned 40.
Magellan had, of course, long been dead when del Cano led this pathetic homecoming. The circumnavigation, the discovery of the strait, had been his idea, rigorously carried through. Perhaps when he threw his life away in the petty warfare at Mactan, he knew there could be no real homecoming ever again for him, either to Portugal or to Spain. His bloody suppression of the rebellious Spanish officers at San Julián, his relentless driving of ships and men through that harsh strait between Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego and across the uncalculated immensity of the great Pacific afterward, his unconquerable spirit and tremendous zeal that some called ruthlessnessthese were the essential but perhaps unpopular qualities that had made the voyage possible. Probably those qualities could not ever again fit into the quieter life of the land.
Magellan’s widow and only son had died during the time of the voyage. His remaining heirs collected no reward from Charles of Spain for his sacrifice and his achievementsnot even the salary due him.
No greater sea voyage has ever been made than that inspired and organized by Ferdinand Magellan. Nor even now is it as thoroughly appreciated as it should be. A whole great ocean with its isles and island groups added to Western man’s knowledge and the extent of his livable world! And a sailing route right round that world! These were feats of staggering immensity. But recognition was slow. Magellan’s strait and his new ocean were of little immediate use to Europe.
Even today Magellan’s memory is not greatly honored in either Spain or Portugal. His own direct line died out long ago, and the Magalhães family home at Sabrosa has long since disappeared.
But through his voyage and the sustained tremendous vision, competence, and courage that made it possible, the infinitely better known name Magellan shall be remembered with honor while the qualities of vision, faith, competence, and unquenchable resolution are valued on this earth. No one knows where Magellan’s bones may lie, but the results of his tremendous voyage are still with us.
Source: Villiers, Alan. Magellan: A Voyage into the Unknown Changed Mans Understanding of his World. National Geographic, June 1976.
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I'm doing a report on him
I'm trying to find information and this is perfect except some things are hard to understand
Please fix it up a bit and email it to me by february 20