Ferdinand Magellan

Christopher Columbus is accredited with crossing the Atlantic Ocean and discovering the American continents for Europe. Columbus never went further than the American east coast, however, and it would not be until Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan that a human would dare to circumnavigate the globe. Yet although Ferdinand Magellan's voyage was successful, his company faced many trials; the majority of his sailors did not return to Europe, including Magellan himself.

Ferdinand Magellan Facts

Ferdinand Magellan was born in 1480 into a noble Portuguese family. At the age of 12, Magellan was sent to Lisbon to serve as a page (youth assistant) to Queen Leonora of Portugal. In court, Magellan acquired a formal education in mathematics, astronomy, and navigation, as well as an interest in stories of maritime exploration.

Fig. 1- Portrait of Ferdinand Magellan.

Magellan in the Navy

At the age of twenty-five, Magellan joined the Portuguese Navy on an expedition to India. He would not return for seven years. Under the command of Francisco de Almeida, Magellan ventured to India, East Africa, and Indonesia (also known as East Indies). Magellan took part in multiple battles, including the Battle of Diu in India and the conquest of Malacca in Malaysia.

Ferdinand Magellan returned to Lisbon, Portugal in 1512, but he was not ready to settle. In 1513, he joined a 500 ship fleet in an attack on Morocco to punish the Moroccan king for not paying tribute. The Portuguese were successful, but Magellan's knee was permanently damaged during the fighting.

Magellan Leaves Portugal

While in Morocco, Ferdinand Magellan was accused of illegal trade with the locals, selling back purchased military goods for a profit. While Magellan was eventually found not guilty in Portuguese court, Magellan lost the trust of the royalty. When Magellan petitioned a western expedition to the Spice Islands in Indonesia to King Manuel I of Portugal, the Portuguese King denied him three times. Frustrated with the lack of support, Ferdinand Magellan went to King Charles I of Spain for a solution.

Ferdinand Magellan's Voyage Route

Magellan found hope for his expedition in Spain. King Charles I, grandson of the royal couple who funded Christopher Columbus's oceanic voyage, sponsored Magellan's plan to travel west to the Spice Islands. With five ships and over two hundred men, Magellan's fleet set off from Spain in 1519.

The map below represents the voyage of Magellan's fleet. He traveled west, across the Atlantic, and around South America. Crossing the Pacific Ocean, Magellan landed in Indonesia, beneath the Philippines. A single ship from Magellan's original five rounded South Africa and returned to Spain.

Fig. 2- Map of Ferdinand Magellan's voyage. Source: MesserWoland and Petr Dlouhý, CC-BY-SA-3.0-migrated, Wikimedia Commons.

The Journey to the Spice Islands

From the onset of the voyage, many people were against Magellan. The King of Portugal made several attempts to halt the expedition, now jealous of Magellan's success in finding a sponsor. Spanish captains within Magellan's own fleet were upset that a Portuguese man was given so much trust by their King. At Port St. Julian, Magellan quelled a rising mutiny within from officers in his fleet, the first of multiple attempted mutinies. In one instance, one of the ships peacefully peeled away from Magellan's fleet and returned to Spain before he even reached the Pacific Ocean.

The waters of the Pacific were calm for Magellan, and the winds were favorable; the wind current that Magellan followed across the Pacific would later be called the "trade winds". Despite this, many of the crewmen were diagnosed with scurvy, a common and deadly disease resulting from a severe lack of vitamin C.

As many as thirty sailors died of scurvy while traveling across the Pacific. Food storage ran low, and the men turned to rats for food. The fleet was pushed to the brink of starvation, but in 1521 they arrived in the Philippines. The locals were peaceful and generous to Magellan and his crew until the Portuguese explorer intervened in a political dispute between local lords.

Ferdinand Magellan Death

On April 27th, 1521, Ferdinand Magellan led sixty well-armed Spanish men into a battle against fifteen hundred warriors on the island of Mactan. (The people of Mactan were the enemy of another Filipino warlord who had converted to Christianity and sworn an oath to the King of Spain under Ferdinand Magellan.) Magellan was stabbed during the European retreat from the conflict and killed before he could escape. He never reached the Spice Islands.

Fig. 3- Art depicting Ferdinand Magellan's death.

Some of Magellan's men escaped the slaughter. In the explorer's stead, Spanish sailor Juan Sebastian Elcano was nominated as the new leader of the expedition. One of the two remaining ships had to be left behind in the Philippines for repairs. In 1522, just eighteen men and a single ship of Magellan's former fleet returned to the shores of Spain, successfully circumnavigating the globe after a three-year voyage.

Ferdinand Magellan Accomplishments

Ferdinand Magellan was not the first person to circumnavigate the globe. But his fleet was the first fleet to do so, even though only eighteen of over two hundred original crewmen returned to Spain.

Fig. 4- 19th-century art depicting three of Magellan's ships.

The Strait that Magellan crossed in South America was eventually renamed to commemorate the Portuguese explorer who discovered the Pacific Ocean for Europe. Although the path across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to east Asia was deemed too long by the European nations, the geographical insight that Magellan's expedition provided was worth its sacrifices. Beyond absolute verification that the world was indeed not flat, the Europeans learned that the world was a lot bigger than they thought it was.