The First Maritime Circumnavigation of the Globe

Overview

Fewer than three decades after Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) made his voyage to the New World, Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480-1521) set sail in 1519 with nearly 600 men and five ships on a voyage to the Spice Islands (East Indies) via a westward route from Spain. Magellan, undervalued by the Portuguese crown, made the trip under the Spanish flag. They crossed the Atlantic, sailed down the eastern coast of South America, rounded the southern tip of the continent through the shortcut now called the Strait of Magellan and named the Pacific Ocean before reaching the eastern shores of Asia. Although Magellan died partway through the trip, one of the five ships in the fleet completed what became the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1522.

Background

At the time of the Magellan voyage around the world, Europeans had known for less than two decades that South America existed, let alone the Pacific Ocean on the other side of the continent. A Portuguese mariner first discovered South America while following a standard maritime practice of sailing the currents of the Atlantic Ocean far to the west before circling back to Africa. In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral (c. 1467-1520) made first landfall on the continent near Salvador, Brazil. Although the land was already occupied with native people, the Europeans as a whole did not view them as having any rights to the continent, and Cabral claimed the land for the Portuguese crown in accordance with a recent treaty between the rivals of Portugal and Spain.

When Magellan set sail in 1519, only six years had passed since the first European crew had actually viewed the Pacific Ocean. Vasco Núñez de Balboa (1475-1519) saw the ocean first in 1513 when he passed through the Darien Isthmus in Central America. He named the ocean the South Sea.

Magellan approached the King of Spain with a proposal for a voyage to the Spice Islands by way of the southern tip of South America. Although he was Portuguese and had sailed under the Portuguese crown for more than a decade, Magellan was under-appreciated in his home country. Denied promotion and falsely accused of corruption, Magellan turned to his country's rival to fund the expedition. The king of Spain agreed. Magellan spent a year preparing, then began the trip on September 8, 1519, with a 560-man crew aboard five ships. The excursion from Spain to South America took three months. Magellan then led the fleet down the east coast, exploring inlets and bays along the way in search of a shortcut across the continent. Finding none, he continued down toward the tip of the continent.

The fleet encountered difficulties almost as soon as it reached South America. In addition to harsh weather conditions that forced the men to overwinter in the southern reaches of the continent, the voyage was fraught with internal bickering, plotting and attempted mutinies. One unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Magellan's command ended with the marooning of numerous crewmembers on the eastern coast of what is now Venezuela along with the beheading of the ship captains behind the plot. The winter season also claimed one of the five ships in the fleet.

When spring came, the fleet started out again. Magellan continued to take the ships in and out of the bays dotting the coast in his quest to find a shortcut across the continent. When his crew became tired of the lost time with these side trips, Magellan fabricated a story about a map describing a shortcut and convinced the crew to try one last time. It was on this exploratory trip that they discovered what is now known as the Strait of Magellan, a channel that, it was later learned, shaved several hundred miles from their voyage around the tip of the continent. While exploring the strait, the crew of one of the four remaining ships mutinied, turned the ship around and set off for home.

The now-three-ship fleet pressed on, entering the Pacific Ocean on November 20. Magellan and his crew dubbed the watery expanse the Pacific, because it was so calm and peaceful in comparison with the Atlantic they had just left.

Magellan wrongly assumed that the Pacific was a small ocean and that they would be in the Spice Islands in a matter of days. Days turned to weeks and to months. Rations dwindled, and sickness followed. Before they struck land on Guam more than three months after they had entered the waters of the Pacific, 19 of the men had died from scurvy.

Their troubles didn't end there. After landing in Guam, some of the native people took one of the ship's boats. It was only after a bloody battle that Magellan was able to take back the boat and set off again. Their next stop was Cebu in the Philippines. Here, Magellan formed what was to become a fatal relationship with the king of the island. The explorer agreed to take part in the king's attack on a nearby island, and died after sustaining wounds from a poisoned arrow, two spears, and at least one lance.

The crew continued without him, making the decision to return home by continuing their westward route into Portuguese waters. Apparently, their desire to return to Spain overrode their fear of the Portuguese. The crew abandoned one of the three ships. Of the two remaining ships, the Trinidad tried to return across the Pacific against prevailing winds, but was forced back. It was captured by the Portuguese and its crew jailed. In 1525, after being released from the Portuguese jail, four members of the ill-fated Trinidad crew found their way back to Spain.

Juan Sebastián de Elcano took command of the other ship, the Victoria. He rounded the Cape of Good Hope and successfully brought the ship back to Spain on September 8, 1522, three years to the day since the voyage set out. The final crew numbered only 18 men. De Elcano received numerous accolades, including honors from the king and a monument in his hometown. The monument consists of a globe with the inscription: "The first one to circle me."

Impact

The Magellan-led journey was important for a number of reasons. Magellan's insistence on exploring the numerous bays along the eastern coast of South America allowed for the creation of detailed maps that allowed future expeditions to find refuge from rough waters and storms. His discovery of the Strait of Magellan became a widely used navigational route around the southern edge of South America. The strait offered shelter from the southern waters of the Atlantic, and also eliminated approximately 500 miles (805 km) from the trip around the continent.

The long voyage across the Pacific Ocean gave Europeans a sense of the sea's massive size. Before Magellan's trip, Europeans were under the mistaken impression that the Pacific was a small body of water that would allow quick passage to the East Indies. Magellan's more-than-three-month voyage helped European mapmakers to not only reveal its true extent (covering a third of Earth's surface), but to understand much more about the relative sizes and locations of Earth's land masses. It also provided evidence of the reaches of the human race. At nearly every site where Magellan landed, he met native people. Almost all of even the most remote islands inevitably carried human populations. These discoveries often proved to be detrimental to the local people, however, as many lost their freedoms and many others lost their lives to the egotistical-thinking members of European nations.

On an economical level, Magellan's voyage opened the doors to trade with the East Indies. Although the route around South America was too long and dangerous to make sense financially, the circumnavigation whetted the European appetite for expeditions and explorations into and beyond the Pacific. Nations stepped up efforts to travel back and forth across the Pacific by way of the Darien Isthmus in Central America or via other shortcut routes. More than four decades after the circumnavigation of the globe, the Spanish discovered a route—known as the Westerlies—to carry their sailing ships back from the East Indies and to the Americas. Although some historians believe that Magellan might have learned of the west-to-east route across the Pacific and was heading northward toward that route when he landed the fleet in Cebu, his intentions died with him on the Philippine island. The discovery of the Westerlies opened the trade route between Europe and the East Indies.

England made the second circumnavigation of the globe in 1577-1580. Francis Drake (c. 1540-1596) led the expedition, which had the purpose of locating a cross-continental strait somewhere around the area now known as northern California. Without luck, Drake rounded the Americas at the southern tip of South America, sailed past the Strait of Magellan and confirmed Magellan's notion that the strait separated the main continent from a large island, now called Tierra del Fuego.

LESLIE A. MERTZ