magellan's voyage was recognized for having achieved the following except

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Ferdinand Magellan

By: History.com Editors

Updated: October 4, 2023 | Original: October 29, 2009

In search of fame and fortune, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480-1521) set out from Spain in 1519 with a fleet of five ships to discover a western sea route to the Spice Islands. En route he discovered what is now known as the Strait of Magellan and became the first European to cross the Pacific Ocean. The voyage was long and dangerous, and only one ship returned home three years later. Although it was laden with valuable spices from the East, only 18 of the fleet’s original crew of 270 returned with the ship. Magellan himself was killed in battle on the voyage, but his ambitious expedition proved that the globe could be circled by sea and that the world was much larger than had previously been imagined.

Ferdinand Magellan’s Early Years

Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480–1521) was born in Sabrosa, Portugal, to a family of minor Portuguese nobility. At age 12 Ferdinand Magellan ( Fernão de Magalhães in Portuguese and Fernando de Magallanes in Spanish) and his brother Diogo traveled to Lisbon to serve as pages at Queen Leonora’s court. While at the court Magellan was exposed to stories of the great Portuguese and Spanish rivalry for sea exploration and dominance over the spice trade in the East Indies, especially the Spice Islands, or Moluccas, in modern Indonesia. Intrigued by the promise of fame and riches, Magellan developed an interest in maritime discovery in those early years.

Did you know? Clove was the most valuable spice in Europe during Magellan's day. It was used to flavor food, but Europeans also believed that its essence could improve vision, its powder could relieve fevers and that it could enhance intercourse when mixed with milk.

In 1505, Magellan and his brother were assigned to a Portuguese fleet headed for India. Over the next seven years, Magellan participated in several expeditions in India, Southeast Asia, and Africa and was wounded in several battles. In 1513 he joined the enormous 500-ship, 15,000-soldier force sent by King Manuel to Morocco to challenge the Moroccan governor who refused to pay its yearly tribute to the Portuguese empire. The Portuguese easily overwhelmed the Moroccan forces, and Magellan stayed on in Morocco. While there he was seriously wounded in a skirmish, which left him with a limp for the rest of his life.

Magellan: From Portugal to Spain

In the 15th century, spices were at the epicenter of the world economy, much like oil is today. Highly valued for flavoring and preserving food as well as masking the taste of meat gone bad, spices like cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and especially black pepper were extremely valuable. Since spices could not be cultivated in cold and arid Europe, no effort was spared to discover the quickest sea route to the Spice Islands. Portugal and Spain led the competition for early control over this critical commodity. Europeans had reached the Spice Islands by sailing east, but none had yet to sail west from Europe to reach the other side of the globe. Magellan was determined to be the first to do so.

By now an experienced seaman, Magellan approached King Manuel of Portugal to seek his support for a westward voyage to the Spice Islands. The king refused his petition repeatedly. In 1517, a frustrated Magellan renounced his Portuguese nationality and relocated to Spain to seek royal support for his venture.

When Magellan arrived in Seville in October 1517, he had no connections and spoke little Spanish. He soon met another transplanted Portuguese named Diogo Barbosa, and within a year he had married Barbosa’s daughter Beatriz, who gave birth to their son Rodrigo a year later. The well-connected Barbosa family introduced Magellan to officers responsible for Spain’s maritime exploration, and soon Magellan secured an appointment to meet the king of Spain.

The grandson of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who had funded Christopher Columbus ’s expedition to the New World in 1492, received Magellan’s petition with the same favor shown by his grandparents. Just 18 years old at the time, King Charles I granted his support to Magellan, who in turn promised the young king that his westward sea voyage would bring immeasurable riches to Spain.

Strait of Magellan

On August 10, 1519 Magellan bade farewell to his wife and young son, neither of whom he would ever see again, and the Armada De Moluccas set sail. Magellan commanded the lead ship Trinidad and was accompanied by four other ships: the San Antonio , the Conception , the Victoria and the Santiago . The expedition would prove long and arduous, and only one ship, the Victoria , would return three years later across the Pacific, carrying a mere 18 of the fleet’s original crew of 270.

In September 1519 Magellan’s fleet sailed from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain, and crossed the Atlantic Ocean, which was then known simply as the Ocean Sea. The fleet reached South America a little more than one month later. There the ships sailed southward, hugging the coast in search of the fabled strait that would allow passage through South America. The fleet stopped at Port San Julian where the crew mutinied on Easter Day in 1520. Magellan quickly quelled the uprising, executing one of the captains and leaving another mutinous captain behind. Meanwhile Magellan had sent the Santiago to explore the route ahead, where it was shipwrecked during a terrible storm. The ship’s crew members were rescued and assigned out among the remaining ships. With those disastrous events behind them, the fleet left Port San Julian five months later when fierce seasonal storms abated.

On October 21, 1520 Magellan finally entered the strait that he had been seeking and that came to bear his name. The voyage through the Strait of Magellan was treacherous and cold, and many sailors continued to mistrust their leader and grumble about the dangers of the journey ahead. In the early days of the navigation of the strait, the crew of the San Antonio forced its captain to desert, and the ship turned and fled across the Atlantic Ocean back to Spain. At this point, only three of the original five ships remained in Magellan’s fleet.

The Magellan Expedition: Circumnavigation the Glob e

After more than a month spent traversing the strait, Magellan’s remaining armada emerged in November 1520 to behold a vast ocean before them. They were the first known Europeans to see the great ocean, which Magellan named Mar Pacifico, the Pacific Ocean, for its apparent peacefulness, a stark contrast to the dangerous waters of the strait from which he had just emerged. In fact, extremely rough waters are not uncommon in the Pacific Ocean, where tsunamis, typhoons and hurricanes have done serious damage to the Pacific Islands and Pacific Rim nations throughout history.

Little was known about the geography beyond South America at that time, and Magellan optimistically estimated that the trip across the Pacific would be rapid. In fact, it took three months for the fleet to make its way slowly across the vast Mar Pacifico. The days dragged on as Magellan’s crew anxiously waited to utter the magic words “Land, ho!” At last, the fleet reached the Pacific island of Guam in March 1521, where they finally replenished their food stores.

Magellan’s fleet then sailed on to the Philippine archipelago landing on the island of Cebu, where Magellan befriended the locals and, struck with a sudden religious zeal, sought to convert them to Christianity . Magellan was now closer than ever to reaching the Spice Islands, but when the Cebu asked for his help in fighting their neighbors on the island of Mactan, Magellan agreed. He assumed he would command a swift victory with his superior European weapons, and against the advice of his men, Magellan himself led the attack. The Mactanese fought fiercely, and Magellan fell when he was shot with a poison arrow. Ferdinand Magellan died on April 27, 1521.

Magellan would never make it to the Spice Islands, but after the loss of yet another of his fleet’s vessels, the two remaining ships finally reached the Moluccas on November 5, 1521. In the end, only the Victoria completed the voyage around the world and arrived back in Seville, Spain, in September 1522 with a heavy cargo of spices but with only 18 men from the original crew, including Italian scholar and explorer Antonio Pigafetta. The journal Pigafaetta kept on the voyage is a key record of what the crew encountered on their journey home.

Impact of Ferdinand Magellan

Seeking riches and personal glory, Magellan’s daring and ambitious voyage around the world provided the Europeans with far more than just spices. Although the trip westward from Europe to the east via the Strait of Magellan had been discovered and mapped, the journey was too long and dangerous to become a practical route to the Spice Islands. Nevertheless, European geographic knowledge was expanded immeasurably by Magellan’s expedition. He found not only a massive ocean, hitherto unknown to Europeans, but he also discovered that the earth was much larger than previously thought. Finally, although it was no longer believed that the earth was flat at this stage in history, Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe empirically discredited the medieval theory conclusively.

Though Magellan is often credited with the first circumnavigation of the globe, he did so on a technicality: He first made a trip from Europe to present-day Malaysia, eastward via the Indian Ocean, and may have continued further east to the Spice Islands. He then later made his famous westward voyage that brought him to the Philippines. So he did cover the entire terrain, but it was not a strict point A to point A, round-the-world trip, and it was made in two different directions. His enslaved servant Enrique was born in the region, possibly near Malacca or Cebu, and had come to Europe with Magellan by ship. Enrique reached Cebu (and possibly Mallaca) on the expedition’s westward voyage, meaning he may have been the first person to circumnavigate the world in one direction to return to the same starting point.

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The Ages of Exploration

Magellan’s voyage.

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Magellan’s Voyage Around the World

Map of Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage around the world.

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Voyages of Ferdinand Magellan Timeline

First voyage, king charles i finances the voyage, rio de janeiro, strait of magellan, philippines, death in battle, rounding the cape, voyage home.

Voyages of Ferdinand Magellan

The Magellan expedition, also known as the Magellan–Elcano expedition, was the first voyage around the world. It was a 16th century Spanish expedition initially led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan to the Moluccas, which departed from Spain in 1519, and completed in 1522 by Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano, after crossing the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, culminating in the first circumnavigation of the world.

The expedition accomplished its primary goal – to find a western route to the Moluccas (Spice Islands). The fleet left Spain on 20 September 1519, sailed across the Atlantic ocean and down the eastern coast of South America, eventually discovering the Strait of Magellan, allowing them to pass through to the Pacific Ocean (which Magellan named). The fleet completed the first Pacific crossing, stopping in the Philippines , and eventually reached the Moluccas after two years. A much-depleted crew led by Juan Sebastián Elcano finally returned to Spain on 6 September 1522, having sailed west across the great Indian Ocean, then around the Cape of Good Hope through waters controlled by the Portuguese and north along the Western African coast to eventually arrive in Spain.

The fleet initially consisted of five ships and about 270 men. The expedition faced numerous hardships including Portuguese sabotage attempts, mutinies, starvation, scurvy, storms, and hostile encounters with indigenous people. Only 30 men and one ship (the Victoria) completed the return trip to Spain. Magellan himself died in battle in the Philippines, and was succeeded as captain-general by a series of officers, with Elcano eventually leading the Victoria's return trip.

The expedition was funded mostly by King Charles I of Spain, with the hope that it would discover a profitable western route to the Moluccas, as the eastern route was controlled by Portugal under the Treaty of Tordesillas. Though the expedition did find a route, it was much longer and more arduous than expected, and was therefore not commercially useful. Nevertheless, the expedition is regarded as one of the greatest achievements in seamanship, and had a significant impact on the European understanding of the world.

In March 1505 at the age of 25, Magellan enlisted in the fleet of 22 ships sent to host Francisco de Almeida as the first viceroy of Portuguese India . Although his name does not appear in the chronicles, it is known that he remained there eight years, in Goa, Cochin and Quilon. He participated in several battles, including the battle of Cannanore in 1506, where he was wounded. In 1509 he fought in the battle of Diu.

After having his proposed expeditions to the Spice Islands repeatedly rejected by King Manuel of Portugal, Magellan turned to Charles I, the young King of Spain (and future Holy Roman Emperor). Under the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, Portugal controlled the eastern routes to Asia that went around Africa. Magellan instead proposed reaching the Spice Islands by a western route, a feat which had never been accomplished. Hoping that this would yield a commercially useful trade route for Spain , Charles approved the expedition, and provided most of the funding.

On 10 August 1519, the five ships under Magellan's command left Seville and descended the Guadalquivir River to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, at the mouth of the river. There they remained more than five weeks. The fleet left Spain on 20 September 1519, sailing west across the Atlantic toward South America. Magellan's fleet consisted of five ships, carrying supplies for two years of travel. The crew consisted of about 270 men. Most were Spanish, but around 40 were Portuguese.

On 13 December, the fleet reached Rio de Janeiro, Brazil . Though nominally Portuguese territory, they maintained no permanent settlement there at the time. Seeing no Portuguese ships in the harbour, Magellan knew it would be safe to stop.

The fleet spent 13 days in Rio, during which they repaired their ships, stocked up on water and food (such as yam, cassava, and pineapple), and interacted with the locals. The expedition had brought with them a great quantity of trinkets intended for trade, such as mirrors, combs, knives and bells. The locals readily exchanged food and local goods (such as parrot feathers) for such items. The crew also found they could purchase sexual favours from the local women. Historian Ian Cameron described the crew's time in Rio as "a saturnalia of feasting and lovemaking".

On 27 December, the fleet left Rio de Janeiro. Pigafetta wrote that the natives were disappointed to see them leave, and that some followed them in canoes trying to entice them to stay.

After three months of searching (including a false start in the estuary of Río de la Plata), weather conditions forced the fleet to stop their search to wait out the winter. They found a sheltered natural harbor at the port of Saint Julian, and remained there for five months. Shortly after landing at St. Julian, there was a mutiny attempt led by the Spanish captains Juan de Cartagena, Gaspar de Quesada and Luis de Mendoza. Magellan barely managed to quell the mutiny, despite at one point losing control of three of his five ships to the mutineers. Mendoza was killed during the conflict, and Magellan sentenced Quesada and Cartagena to being beheaded and marooned, respectively. Lower-level conspirators were made to do hard labor in chains over the winter, but later freed.

During the winter, one of the fleet's ships, the Santiago, was lost in a storm while surveying nearby waters, though no men were killed. Following the winter, the fleet resumed their search for a passage to the Pacific in October 1520. Three days later, they found a bay which eventually led them to a strait, now known as the Strait of Magellan, which allowed them passage through to the Pacific. While exploring the strait, one of the remaining four ships, the San Antonio, deserted the fleet, returning east to Spain. The fleet reached the Pacific by the end of November 1520. Based on the incomplete understanding of world geography at the time, Magellan expected a short journey to Asia, perhaps taking as little as three or four days. In fact, the Pacific crossing took three months and twenty days. The long journey exhausted their supply of food and water, and around 30 men died, mostly of scurvy. Magellan himself remained healthy, perhaps because of his personal supply of preserved quince.

On 6 March 1521, the exhausted fleet made landfall at the island of Guam and were met by native Chamorro people who came aboard the ships and took items such as rigging, knives, and a ship's boat. The Chamorro people may have thought they were participating in a trade exchange (as they had already given the fleet some supplies), but the crew interpreted their actions as theft. Magellan sent a raiding party ashore to retaliate, killing several Chamorro men, burning their houses, and recovering the 'stolen' goods

On 16 March, the fleet reached the Philippines , where they would remain for a month and a half. Magellan befriended local leaders on the island of Limasawa, and on 31 March, held the first Mass in the Philippines, planting a cross on the island's highest hill. Magellan set about converting the locals to Christianity . Most accepted the new religion readily, but the island of Mactan resisted.

On 27 April, Magellan and members of his crew attempted to subdue the Mactan natives by force, but in the ensuing battle, the Europeans were overpowered and Magellan was killed by Lapulapu, a native chieftain in Mactan.

Following his death, Magellan was initially succeeded by co-commanders Juan Serrano and Duarte Barbosa (with a series of other officers later leading). The fleet left the Philippines (following a bloody betrayal by former ally Rajah Humabon) and eventually made their way to the Moluccas in November 1521. Laden with spices, they attempted to set sail for Spain in December, but found that only one of their remaining two ships, the Victoria, was seaworthy.

The Victoria set sail via the Indian Ocean route home on 21 December 1521, commanded by Juan Sebastián Elcano. By 6 May 1522 the Victoria rounded the Cape of Good Hope, with only rice for rations.

Twenty crewmen died of starvation by 9 July 1522, when Elcano put into Portuguese Cape Verde for provisions. The crew was surprised to learn that the date was actually 10 July 1522, as they had recorded every day of the three-year journey without omission. They had no trouble making purchases at first, using the cover story that they were returning to Spain from the Americas. However, the Portuguese detained 13 crew members after discovering that Victoria was carrying spices from the East Indies. The Victoria managed to escape with its cargo of 26 tons of spices (cloves and cinnamon).

On 6 September 1522, Elcano and the remaining crew of Magellan's voyage arrived in Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain aboard Victoria, almost exactly three years after they departed. They then sailed upriver to Seville, and from there overland to Valladolid, where they appeared before the Emperor. When Victoria, the one surviving ship and the smallest carrack in the fleet, returned to the harbour of departure after completing the first circumnavigation of the Earth, only 18 men out of the original 270 men were on board. In addition to the returning Europeans, the Victoria had aboard three Moluccans who came aboard at Tidore.

Magellan has come to be renowned for his navigational skill and tenacity. The first circumnavigation has been called "the greatest sea voyage in the Age of Discovery", and even "the most important maritime voyage ever undertaken". Appreciation of Magellan's accomplishments may have been enhanced over time by the failure of subsequent expeditions which attempted to retrace his route, beginning with the Loaísa expedition in 1525 (which featured Juan Sebastián Elcano as second-in-command). The next expedition to successfully complete a circumnavigation, led by Francis Drake, would not occur until 1580, 58 years after the return of the Victoria.

Magellan named the Pacific Ocean (which was also often called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century), and lends his name to the Strait of Magellan.

Even though Magellan did not survive the trip, he has received more recognition for the expedition than Elcano has, since Magellan was the one who started it, Portugal wanted to recognize a Portuguese explorer, and Spain feared Basque nationalism.

How Did the Caravel Change the World?

Technology of the Age of Exploration

Holy Roman Emperor

Ferdinand Magellan

Portuguese Explorer

Juan Sebastián Elcano

Castilian Explorer

Juan de Cartagena

Spanish Explorer

Francisco de Almeida

Mactan Datu

• The First Voyage Round the World, by Magellan, full text, English translation by Lord Stanley of Alderley, London: Hakluyt, [1874] – six contemporary accounts of his voyage
• Guillemard, Francis Henry Hill (1890), The life of Ferdinand Magellan, and the first circumnavigation of the globe, 1480–1521, G. Philip, retrieved 8 April 2009
• Zweig, Stefan (2007), Conqueror of the Seas – The Story of Magellan, Read Books, ISBN 978-1-4067-6006-4

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One The Voyage of Magellan

• Published: June 2016
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This chapter details the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan, arguably the first man to circumnavigate the globe. In 1518, Magellan was appointed by Spain's King Charles to command a fleet of five ships for a journey to the Spice Islands. The voyage itself was fraught with problems including mutinies, desertions, and deaths of captains and crew alike, which eventually reduced the fleet to three ships. On November 28, 1520, after weeks of searching, Magellan finally reached the channel that would lead to the Pacific Ocean. On April 7, 1521, the fleet reached Cebu where Magellan developed a cordial relationship with local king, Humabon. The ruler, his family, and most of the people in Cebu later converted to Christianity. Pleased with his success as a missionary, Magellan decided to establish a trading station on Cebu and to make all the local chieftains accept Humabon as their sovereign. One who refused was the chief of Lapulapu on Mactan Island. On the morning of April 27, 1521, Magellan took sixty men to subdue what he thought would be a poorly defended village. Instead, he found his small force battling a huge body of men, armed with spears and poisoned arrows. Magellan was killed, as were half a dozen others.

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Dire straits: the story of Ferdinand Magellan's fatal voyage of discovery

The renegade Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan masterminded a Spanish expedition that completed the first circuit of Earth, although it cost him his life. Writing for BBC History Revealed , Pat Kinsella tells the story and timeline of a triumph beset by mutiny, malnutrition and disaster

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If all had gone to plan during Ferdinand Magellan’s life-defining expedition, almost no one would know his name now. As it happened, everything went disastrously wrong for the Portuguese sea captain, yet he has gone down in history as the first explorer to circumnavigate the planet, even though he died in the middle of the journey.

Magellan did, however, become the first European to lead a voyage into the Pacific Ocean – although future sailors would regularly raise alarmed eyebrows at the name he bequeathed to it. The expedition he led (or at least one of the five ships that set out from Spain in 1519) performed the first known complete loop of the globe.

Although Magellan could never have predicted the extraordinary events that would follow, perhaps the thought of reputational immortality would have provided the 41-year-old with a crumb of comfort on 27 April 1521, as he floundered in the shallows of a beach on the island of Mactan in the Philippines, mortally injured and weighed down by his armour. He had been identified as the leader of the invading alien force by the enraged warriors of island chief Lapu-Lapu, and was about to suffer a pointless and wholly avoidable death after his ill-advised show of military might spectacularly backfired.

• A voyage from hell: how Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world changed history

Magellan’s final moments were frenzied and violent. But if he hadn’t made the fateful decision to lead a small force against a defending army of 1,500 battle-ready men, then perhaps he wouldn’t have been remembered as one of the greatest explorers of his era.

Who was Ferdinand Magellan?

Born into an aristocratic Portuguese family in 1480, Ferdinand Magellan was orphaned as a young boy and at the age of 12 he entered the royal court in Lisbon as a page of Eleanor of Viseu, consort of King John II. Thirteen years later, he enlisted in the fleet of the Portuguese viceroy to the Indies and spent seven years learning the ropes of his future career during action-packed voyages in Asia and Africa.

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Magellan was part of the invading force that saw Portugal secure control of the region’s most important trading routes when it conquered Malacca on the Malay Peninsula in 1511, and he may have ventured as far east as the Moluccas (Spice Islands) of modern-day Indonesia. During these adventures he bought a Malay-speaking man, Enrique de Malacca, to be his slave, interpreter and companion – and he remained so on all Magellan’s later voyages.

By 1512, Magellan was back in Lisbon with a promising-looking career ahead of him. He soon joined the huge expeditionary force of 500 ships and 15,000 soldiers that John II’s successor, King Manuel I, sent to punish the governor of Morocco for failing to pay his tribute to the Portuguese crown in 1513. It was during a skirmish that he sustained an injury that left him with a lifelong limp. But he was then accused of illegal trading with the Moors, which saw him fall from favour.

A dedicated student of maps and charts, consumed with an urge to explore, Magellan had hatched a plan to pioneer a westward route to the Spice Islands, avoiding the perilous route around the Cape of Good Hope. However, the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas and the expeditions and achievements of explorers such as Vasco da Gama had already granted Portugal full control of the eastwards route around southern Africa, and Manuel was disinterested in Magellan’s ideas.

Great reputations

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This snub left the ambitious and capable captain dangerously disaffected – a blessing for the Spanish, who were desperately seeking an alternative way of accessing the riches of India and the Far East. In 1517, Magellan decamped to Seville in Spain, where he quickly married the daughter of another Portuguese exile, had two children and began bending the ear of Charles I about a western route to the Spice Islands.

The 18-year-old Spanish king – grandson of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who had commissioned the adventures of Columbus – was desperate to make his mark and smash the dominance his Iberian rivals had over the enormously lucrative spice trade. He seized the potential opportunity to bypass Africa, while avoiding breaking the terms of the treaty with the powerful Portuguese, and commissioned Magellan to undertake the expeditionary mission he had been itching to pursue.

Of course, Magellan wasn’t the first European explorer to sail west in search of a backdoor route to the treasures of the Orient. Columbus had ventured that way across the Atlantic looking for the East Indies in 1492, before bumping into the Bahamas instead, while John Cabot (aka Giovanni Caboto), a Venetian captain commissioned by Henry VII of England, had sailed from Bristol to Newfoundland in 1497.

• Ptolemy's maps: the father of modern Geography

Unlike Columbus – who made a further three journeys across the western ocean, but died in denial that he was actually exploring a totally new continent – the Spanish soon realised this was a different land mass (the Americas). While this revelation would ultimately return riches beyond their wildest dreams in terms of gold, Magellan’s focus was on how to get past this ‘New World’ in order to reach the Spice Islands beyond.

No European had sailed around Cape Horn – or indeed even laid eyes on it – but a Spanish adventurer named Vasco Núñez de Balboa had discovered the ocean beyond the New World in 1513, by traversing the Isthmus of Panama. Magellan, a visionary who was working with the most advanced cartographers and cosmographers of the era, was convinced there was a way of getting around the Americas.

Westward ho

In September 1519, Magellan led five vessels, manned by a multinational, 270-strong crew, into the Atlantic – his flagship the Trinidad, plus the Santiago , San Antonio , Concepción and Victoria . Word of his mission reached Manuel I, who jealously dispatched a Portuguese naval detachment to follow the expedition, but Magellan outran them.

But he couldn’t escape all his enemies so easily, especially as some were among his own men. Many of the Spanish sailors in the expeditionary party were suspicious of their Portuguese commander. Some of his crew were criminals released from prison in return for undertaking the dangerous voyage. Others joined just because they were avoiding creditors.

Many of the Spanish sailors were suspicious of their commander

The fleet was hit by a storm, which caused a delay and resulted in food rationing. Here, Juan de Cartagena – who had been appointed captain of the largest ship, the San Antonio , because of his good connections, despite being green in the business of exploration and an inexperienced seaman – began openly criticising Magellan’s competence and refusing to salute his captain-general. Magellan had Cartagena arrested, relieved of his command and imprisoned in the brig of the Victoria until they reached South America. The incident was a precursor to the much more dramatic and bloody events to come.

In December, the expedition reached South America and made landfall in Rio de Janeiro. For two weeks they interacted with indigenous people, trading trinkets for food and sexual favours, before the fleet sailed south, scouring the coastline in search of an opening. They spent fruitless weeks exploring the estuary of Río de la Plata for this elusive passage, before freezing conditions forced the party to seek shelter for the winter in Port St Julian in Patagonia.

Timeline: Ferdinand Magellan's voyage

Ten landmark moments in magellan’s voyage into the unknown, as plotted out on a 1544 copy of the agnese atlas, produced by the italian mapmaker battista agnese.

Morale was already plummeting when, in April 1520, Cartagena made his move. He escaped Victoria , reboarded the San Antonio , and begun fermenting trouble and securing support from the Spanish crew and officers, playing on bad blood about Magellan’s Portuguese nationality.

In the mutiny that followed, the San Antonio was declared independent of Magellan’s command. The captains of the Concepción and the Victoria (Gaspar de Quesada and Luiz Mendoza) joined them, as did the Victoria ’s pilot Juan Sebastián Elcano, and many of the officers and crew. A letter was sent to Magellan on the Trinidad, demanding he acknowledge that the fleet was no longer under his command.

Magellan sent his reply in the hands of an assassin

Magellan coolly sent his reply back in the hands of an assassin. After coming alongside the Victoria in a small boat, while pretending to hand over the letter to Mendoza, the man fatally stabbed the errant captain instead. Simultaneously, crew loyal to Magellan stormed aboard the ship and attacked the mutineers, who were overcome.

The rebels maintained control of the San Antonio and Concepción , with Cartagena having boarded the latter prior to the fighting breaking out. Magellan positioned the three ships he had at his disposal across the mouth of the bay, and prepared for combat.

During the night, heavy winds caused San Antonio to drag its anchor and drift towards the Trinidad. Magellan met the oncoming ship with a cannon broadside, causing the mutineers aboard the stricken carrack to surrender. Conceding defeat, Cartagena followed suit and gave up the Concepción without resistance the following morning.

Having quelled the revolt, Magellan immediately sentenced 30 men to death, but then (mindful of his threadbare resources) commuted their punishment to hard labour. The leaders of the mutiny weren’t so lucky. Quesada was beheaded for treason, and both his body and that of Mendoza’s were mutilated and put on sticks. Too fearful of Cartagena’s connections to order him executed, Magellan instead left him marooned with Padre Sánchez de la Reina, a priest who’d supported the mutineers. They were never heard of again.

The real deal

Back on course.

In July, Magellan dispatched the Santiago to scout ahead for the elusive passage. She discovered the Rio de Santa Cruz in what is now Argentina, but sank in a storm while trying to make the return journey. Remarkably, the crew survived, and two men trekked overland for 11 days to alert Magellan, who mounted a rescue mission.

In October, the entire fleet set off, and Magellan at last sighted the strait that now bears his name, a route between the tip of mainland South America and the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. However, conditions continued to be rough, and when the fleet split to explore either side of an island, the crew of the San Antonio forced their captain to desert and return to Spain (where they spread scurrilous rumours about Magellan’s brutality to avoid punishment).

While the main fleet waited in vain for the San Antonio , Gonzalo de Espinosa led an advance party along the strait, returning after six days with news that made Magellan weep with joy: they’d sighted open ocean. On 28 November, the expedition emerged into an ocean that seemed so relatively benign on the day, Magellan named it Mar Pacifico, or Peaceful Sea.

The true nature and enormity of the Pacific was soon revealed to the explorer, however. !e fleet left the coast of Chile to sail across the new-found ocean, a journey Magellan expected to last four days, but which took almost four months. The fleet was woefully underprepared and the sailors savaged by scurvy and thirst, many dying.

• Mutiny at sea: the forgotten story of murder and brutality aboard HMS Wager

Magellan crossed the equator in February 1521 and reached the Pacific island of Guam in March, where the fleet replenished its exhausted supplies. Not long afterwards they finally arrived at the Philippine archipelago. This, though, was just the beginning of Magellan’s real troubles; his erstwhile planning and leadership came dramatically undone when he needlessly embroiled himself in a dispute between two local chiefs.

In the Philippines, Magellan communicated with local rajahs through his Malay slave, Enrique. At the evangelical explorer’s behest, a number of island chiefs – including Cebu’s Rajah Humabon – converted to Christianity.

In return for his soul, however, Humabon sought Magellan’s support in a disagreement with a neighbour, Lapu- Lapu, a chief on Mactan Island, who had already irked the explorer by declining to convert or bow to the Spanish crown.

On 27 April 1521, 60 heavily armed Europeans accompanied a fleet of Filipino boats to Mactan, where Lapu- Lapu again refused to recognise the authority of Humabon or the Spanish. Facing 1,500 warriors, Magellan – confident in the shock-and-awe capability of his superior weaponry, which included guns, crossbows, swords and axes – instructed Humabon to hang back, while he waded ashore with an attack party of 49 men.

They torched several houses in an attempt to scare the islanders, but this only served to whip Lapu-Lapu’s warriors into a battle rage. In the resulting beachfront mêlée, where the Europeans were weighed down by their armour, Magellan was identified and injured by a bamboo spear thrust. Felled, he was then surrounded and killed, along with several others. With their captain dead, the survivors retreated to the boats.

After the battle, when the Europeans refused to release Enrique (despite Magellan’s orders to do so in the event of his death), Humabon turned against the Spanish. Several were poisoned during a feast, including Duarte Barbosa and João Serrão, who had assumed leadership of the expedition following the demise of Magellan.

Rounding the circle

João Carvalho took command of the fleet and ordered an immediate departure. By this time, however, too few men remained to crew the three ships. The Concepción was burnt, and the two remaining vessels made for Brunei, indulging in a spot of piracy en route, and attacking a junk bound for China. Espinosa then replaced Carvalho as leader, as well as being captain of the Trinidad , while Elcano was made the captain of the Victoria .

In November, the expedition finally reached the Spice Islands and managed to trade with the Sultan of Tidore. Loaded with cloves, they attempted to return home by sailing west across the Indian Ocean – which had never been Magellan’s intention – until the Trinidad started leaking. The wounded ship stopped for repairs, and eventually tried to return via the Pacific, but was captured by the Portuguese and subsequently sank.

Meanwhile, under the captaincy of Elcano, the Victoria continued across the Indian Ocean, eventually limping around the Cape of Good Hope in May. Tragically, 20 men starved on the last leg along the Atlantic coast of Africa, and another 13 were abandoned on Cape Verde – Elcano had put into port to resupply, but the Portuguese there caught on that they were part of a Spanish expedition; fearing for his cargo, Elcano fled.

On 6 September 1522, after three years’ absence, Victoria arrived in Spain, becoming the first ship to have sailed around the planet. Only 18 of Magellan’s original 270-man crew arrived with her. Though ultimately successful in finding a western passage that opened up the Pacific and the west coast of the Americas, the Strait of Magellan proved too far south to be a viable trade route to the Orient, which intensified the search for the elusive Northwest Passage from the mid-16th century.

Although Magellan didn’t make it home, he did complete a full circumnavigation of the globe (Philippines to Philippines, albeit in two chunks separated by several years), a feat probably matched by his Malaysian slave Enrique. But the first European to definitively do so in a single voyage was the man who captained Victoria on her final leg – the mutineer Elcano.

Drake's fortune

Pat Kinsella specialises in adventure journalism as a writer, photographer and editor

This article was first published in the September 2019 issue of BBC History Revealed

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• HISTORY MAGAZINE

240 men started Magellan's voyage around the world. Only 18 finished it.

The explorer died on a Philippines beach in April 1521, joining the scores who perished in Spain's quest to circumnavigate the globe.

As it moored under Seville’s imposing skyline on September 8, 1522, the Victoria   may not have stood out as anything exceptional among the bustle of Spanish ships arriving from the Americas. When 18 men stepped off board, “leaner than old, worn-out nags,” as one of them later recalled, they stepped into the history books as the first people to have sailed entirely around the world.

It had been a brutal voyage, led by the brilliant, if ruthless, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan. When they set out from Seville, three years before in summer 1519, they were a crew of 240 manning five ships. A series of blows—including starvation, illness, mutiny, executions, and the death of their leader—decimated their numbers and their fleet before returning to Spain.

These men had, however, completed their global journey, despite the violence and greed that marred it from the outset. The venture would be remembered for the skill and endurance of many of its members. As the first Europeans to enter the eastern Pacific, the expedition radically altered Europe’s understanding of the world, while posterity would lionize Magellan for an accomplishment that he never lived to see.

Despite the aura of heroism that has formed around Magellan, his voyage was not driven by geographic curiosity, but by trade and Spain’s struggle to surpass Portugal. Following Christopher Columbus’s voyages of the 1490s and the discovery of a landmass to the west, the two premier naval powers competed to control the new vistas opening before them. In 1493 Pope Alexander VI drew a line from north to south down the Atlantic, decreeing that Spain could exploit the new continent to the west. The papal bull did not specify, however, that Portugal could exploit the territory to the east of the line.  

Portugal cried foul, pointing out that the pope, a Borgia of Spanish descent, was not an impartial arbiter. To avoid a war, direct talks opened between Portugal and Spain and the line was moved farther west in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. This allowed Portugal more room to maneuver down the eastern coastline of Africa. Happily for the Portuguese, Pedro Álvares Cabral’s 1500 discovery of the eastern coastline of South America fell on Portugal’s side of the 1494 line.

Portugal had already bested Spain in the exploration race, when in 1497 Vasco de Gama was the first European to discover a sea route to India around Africa. While this period of global exploration is often associated with the Americas, both powers were also seeking riches in the Asia-Pacific. It was there that Magellan gained experience vital to his later expedition. ( Was Magellan the first to sail around the world? Think again. )

For Hungry Minds

A sea change.

Born Fernão de Magalhães in northern Portugal in 1480, Magellan grew up in a noble family. At age 10 he was sent to Lisbon to train as a page in the court of Queen Leonora. He came of age as Europe began shaking off its medieval sensibilities and looking outward. The few sources on his early life suggest he became fascinated with maps and charts, an interest that may have coincided with the news, at age 13, of the Spanish expedition under Columbus that had made landfall in the Americas.

Portuguese eastward expansion began to move rapidly after Vasco de Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1497. By 1505 the 25-year-old Magellan was with the Portuguese fleet heading around the Cape, and up the other side, to East Africa. The aim of King Manuel of Portugal was to wrest control of the entire Indian Ocean from the Arabs so as to control trade with India.

In 1507 Magellan participated in a naval battle that consolidated Portuguese power over the Indian Ocean. More Portuguese victories followed in Goa (western India), and in 1511 the Portuguese seized Malacca on the Malay Peninsula. The city overlooks the strait through which the spices from modern-day Indonesia were funneled westward. By controlling Malacca, Portugal could exert control over the spice trade.

An older relative (and possible cousin) of Magellan, Francisco Serrão, had also forged a dramatic career as a sailor and took part in the seizure of Malacca before going on an expedition to the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, in 1512. His venture would later inspire Magellan’s own goal to reach them by sailing west from Europe.

Magellan took part in the battle for Malacca and honed his navigational skills during Portugal’s eastern victories. After returning to Europe, in 1514 he entered into a bitter dispute with King Manuel over the king’s refusal to reward him. Having used up all his appeals, Magellan rejected his native land and traveled to the Spanish court at Valladolid in 1517 to offer his services to the Spanish king Charles I (who would become Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in June 1519). From that day, Fernão de Magalhães would be known by his Spanish name, Fernando de Magallanes.

By offering his services to Spain, Magellan was not engaging in any truly scandalous behavior. Seafaring expertise often crossed borders, and crews were drawn from different nations. Columbus too, a Genoan from northern Italy, had offered himself to the Spanish crown after initially working for the Portuguese. Magellan’s plan was strikingly similar to Columbus’s from nearly 30 years earlier: to sail west to bring back spices from the Moluccas, the Spice Islands of Indonesia.   ( Discover the secrets hidden in a 500-year-old map used by Columbus. )

Citing the theories of other navigators at the time, Magellan postulated that a strait cut through the Americas to a sea whose eastern shore was first glimpsed by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513. If he could find it, this passage would allow Spain a kind of “back-door” access to the Moluccas, bypassing Portugal’s Cape route. Magellan’s reputation as a sailor and his knowledge of the east convinced Charles, and the expedition received royal assent.

Not all were happy that this Portuguese interloper had gained such favor with the king. The nobility and the Casa de Contratación (the state body that controlled such expeditions) took every opportunity to obstruct Magellan’s preparations. Under two-thirds of the crew were Spaniards; of the foreigners, 24 were Portuguese and 27 were Italian.

Marvels and mutiny

Among the crew was a young Venetian nobleman named Antonio Pigafetta, a student of astronomy and geography. Pigafetta’s lively journal became history’s principal written source for detailed information on the entire voyage.

“On Monday, August 10, St. Lawrence’s day, the fleet, having been supplied with all the things necessary for the sea, made ready to leave the harbor of Seville,” Pigafetta recorded in his log. Five ships in total—the San Antonio,   the Concepción,   the Victoria,   the Santiago , and the flagship, the Trinidad —struck out west from Spain via the Canary Islands. Pigafetta’s observations were not solely nautical. He took a lively interest in geography and zoology and science, noting different kinds of birds and wildlife.

While Pigafetta wrote his log, Magellan was deeply concerned about his authority. He was officially the supreme commander, but prior to departure, pressure from the Spanish authorities had forced him to accept a nobleman, Juan de Cartagena, as the voyage’s second-in-command. This decision led to violent power struggles during the voyage. Early on, Magellan was forced to arrest and demote Cartagena for insubordination. As a royal appointee, he was otherwise untouchable, but his resentful presence would prove nearly catastrophic for Magellan later.

The coast of modern-day Brazil, which Europeans had only been aware of for 20 years, was a source of wonder. But it was its inhabitants that captured Pigafetta’s attention most. He recorded in his journal that some of the people of “Verdin” (as he called it)

live a hundred, or a hundred and twenty, or a hundred and forty years, and more; they go naked, both men and women. Their dwellings are houses that are rather long . . . [and] in each of these houses . . . there dwells a family of a hundred persons, who make a great noise. In this place they have boats, which are made of a tree, all in one piece, which they call “canoo.” These are not made with iron instruments, for they have not got any . . . Into these thirty or forty men enter.  

Pigafetta’s writings revealed a condescending attitude toward the indigenous peoples. His descriptions of the peoples he meets in Patagonia, the Pacific Islands, and lands in Asia are centered on the amount of clothing worn, physical traits including skin color, height, and build, and whether they could be converted to Christianity. He recorded certain words from their languages, many of which related to commodities that could be of use to colonial Spain. ( See a shipwreck from explorer Vasco da Gama's fleet. )

The small armada sailed south, scanning for any strait or opening in the great landmass to starboard. A great inlet in early 1520 aroused much excitement. Once it had been ascertained it was not the longed-for strait, but a river mouth (the Río de la Plata), the fleet continued south to San Julián, where, in April, surrounded on all sides by the frozen expanse of Patagonia, a full-scale mutiny was launched against Magellan by the captains of the four other ships.

Played out across five vessels, the scenes were chaotic and confusing, but Magellan prevailed. In the ensuing skirmishes, the rebellious captains of the Victoria and the Concepción were arrested and executed. One of the leaders of the revolt was the demoted and resentful Juan de Cartagena. Magellan opted to maroon him on an island, thus avoiding shedding the blood of a powerful nobleman, while also ridding himself of an incompetent troublemaker. Cartagena’s fate is unknown, but other mutineers were pardoned, including one of the officers, Juan Sebastián Elcano.

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Shortly after the failed mutiny, as resentments still simmered, Magellan lost the Santiago   in a storm. Unbowed, the reduced fleet continued south until glacial conditions forced a halt for two months to provision; then it set out once more. Finally, as Pigafetta records on “the day of the feast of the eleven thousand virgins,” St. Ursula’s Day which falls on October 21, they sighted a strait “surrounded by lofty mountains laden with snow... Had it not been for the captain-general, we would not have found that strait, for we all thought that it was closed on all sides.”

For over a month, buffeted by storms and currents, the fleet ventured down the strait that Charles V would later name for Magellan. The commander named an archipelago they saw on the south side Tierra del Fuego (“land of fire”) in reference to the many bonfires lit there by its indigenous hunter-gatherer peoples, who had occupied this tip of South America for millennia.

In the course of this passage, another ship disappeared: the San Antonio . Pigafetta records it had been believed lost; in fact, it had deserted and was returning to Spain. Equipped now with only three vessels, Magellan and his men “on Wednesday, November 28, 1520, . . . debouched from that strait, engulfing . . . in the Pacific Sea.” They were the first Europeans to enter that vast ocean from its eastern shore.

Hard crossing

After being borne northward along what is today the Chilean coast, Magellan’s fleet finally struck out northwest in search of land beyond. Magellan knew that the Malay archipelago he had visited years before must lie somewhere to the west. To find it, the limping expedition had to sail through rough seas for over three months.

Hunger and disease stalked the crossing. Pigafetta records how he and his crewmates ate sawdust, ox hides, and “biscuit, which was no longer biscuit, but powder of biscuits swarming with worms, and which stank strongly of the urine of rats.” General privation, the lack of food, and illness greatly reduced their numbers. Perhaps the most devastating was scurvy, the distinctive symptoms of which Pigafetta captured: “[I]t was that the upper and lower gums of most of our men grew so much that they could not eat, and in this way so many suffered, that nineteen died.” ( Scurvy killed more people than the American Civil War. )

Savaged by scurvy

While crossing the Pacific, Pigafetta recorded how many of Magellan’s crew seemed to waste away from a horrific illness: Their gums bled, their limbs ulcerated, and delirium addled their minds. Scurvy and its symptoms, which are caused by a lack of vitamin C, would ravage many European expeditions. The captain who completed the Magellan expedition, Juan Sebastián Elcano, succumbed to scurvy on a later voyage, and it killed an estimated two million sailors between the 15th and 18th centuries. The medical properties of vitamin C were not discovered until the 1920s, but it became common wisdom in the 1700s that citrus fruit could be a preventative, a remedy that was resisted by some in the British Navy. It was not until the 1790s that fruit was distributed routinely among crews. 

On March 6, 1521, after 100 days in Pacific waters, the exhausted armada finally was able to make landfall in the Mariana Islands where they restocked the ships and then continued west. Days later, they reached an archipelago (later christened the Philippines by another Spanish explorer) of many inhabited islands that Magellan would attempt to claim for Spain. The crew celebrated mass on the island of Limasawa in late March and then converted the rulers of Cebu Island to Christianity.

Magellan heard that rivals of the Becu who lived on the nearby island of Mactan refused to convert and submit to Spain. Magellan tried to claim their land for Spain and their souls for the church, but the occupants of Mactan Island, led by the chieftain known traditionally as Lapulapu, stood firm in the face of Spanish guns and swords. On April 27, 1521, Magellan led 60 men to the island with an ultimatum to surrender. The islanders refused, and a fierce battle ensued, which Pigafetta recounted:

When we reached land we found the islanders fifteen hundred in number . . . they came down upon us with terrible shouts . . . seeing that the shots of our guns did them little or no harm [they] would not retire, but shouted more loudly, and . . . at the same time drew nearer to us, throwing arrows, javelins, spears hardened in fire, stones, and even mud, so that we could hardly defend ourselves.  

Pigafetta reported that Magellan was killed by Lapulapu and his warriors on the shore. Despite Spanish firepower, the islanders quickly overcame the invaders with their numbers and bravery and drove them back. The Europeans retreated, leaving their commander to die on the beach; Magellan’s body was never recovered. Later, the king of Cebu would turn against the Europeans, too, and kill 26 of them. The remaining Europeans soon departed.

Their numbers dwindling, the surviving crew, under the command of Juan Sebastián Elcano, did finally reach the Moluccas in November 1521. They were able to stock up the ships with spices and goods to bring back to Spain. Having been forced to abandon two of their three remaining ships, the crew would return to Spain in a fleet of one—the Victoria . Ten months later, the ship and its bedraggled crew of 18, including Pigafetta, entered Seville’s harbor. ( Who really discovered Antarctica? )

Final frontier

The first continuous circumnavigation of the world was complete. It took almost exactly three years and, surprisingly, turned a profit. The 381 sacks of cloves brought back by the Victoria   were worth more than all five ships that had set out on the voyage. Despite the hopes and funds invested, it did not translate into immediate meaningful economic benefits for Spain. The treacherous course around the tip of South America was never a practical route for trade with the Moluccas.

Despite the death and destruction brought on by the voyage, many historians believe Magellan’s expedition was a worthy accomplishment. The careful records kept by Pigafetta and others dramatically expanded Europe’s knowledge of the world beyond the Atlantic, giving cartographers a firm sense of the world’s actual size and future navigators intelligence on the conditions and currents of the Pacific Ocean. Europeans had known of the eastern shore of the Pacific since 1513, but Magellan revealed its sheer size and power, knowledge that transformed Europeans’ understanding of the extent of the globe.

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Magellan and the First Voyage Around the World

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Ferdinand Magellan (1480?-1521) was the leader of a group of sailors that the circled the globe in the early 16th century, an amazing feat that perhaps will not be equaled until a human being lands on Mars. Magellan himself did not complete the trip. Of the 300 or so men and five ships that left Portugal with Magellan only one ship made it back to its embarkation place and only 18 men made it back there alive.

Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Spanish (Castilian) expedition of world circumnavigation starting in 1519. That year he sailed down the east coast of South America, found and sailed through the strait that bears his name. In November 1520, he entered the Pacific. Magellan then sailed north and caught the trade winds which carried him across the Pacific. In a vivid illustration of the emptiness of the Pacific, Magellan sailed across the entire ocean before touching land in the Mariana Islands of western Micronesia in 1521. After Magellan was killed in the what is now the Philippines, one surviving ship went west across the Indian Ocean and the other went north in the hope of finding the westerlies and reaching Mexico. The Pacific was often called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century.

"No other had so much natural wit, boldness, or knowledge," is how one man described Magellan. W said he was an "able and ruthless" Portugese soldier-adventurer-seaman with battle-lame leg. "Magellan's feat," wrote historian Daniel Boorstin, "by any measure — moral, intellectual, or physical — would excel even that of Gama or Columbus or Vespucci. he would face rougher seas, negotiate more treacherous passages and find his way across a broader ocean.”

Compared to what Magellan accomplished, Columbus’s journey was a ride to the park. Columbus followed sunny trade winds to the West Indies and followed the prevailing westerlies back to Europe. Magellan on the other hand traveled about ten times the distance Columbus did: through the crushing winds in the furious fifties latitudes of southern South America and icy seas of north of Antarctica, then traveled across the breadth of the Pacific (a distance about four times what Columbus traveled across the Atlantic), having absolutely no idea where land was or where he was going. Once he achieved that feat he was only halfway home. His objective was cloves and other cooking spices in the Moluccas, or Spice Islands.

Related Articles: SPICES, TRADE AND THE SPICE ISLANDS factsanddetails.com ; EUROPEANS DISCOVER THE PACIFIC AND OCEANIA ioa.factsanddetails.com ; DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA BY EUROPEANS ioa.factsanddetails.com CAPTAIN JAMES COOK: HIS LIFE, CAREER, DEATH AND CONTRIBUTIONS ioa.factsanddetails.com ; VOYAGES OF CAPTAIN JAMES COOK: SHIPS, CREW, MISSIONS, DISCOVERIES ioa.factsanddetails.com ; CAPTAIN JAMES COOK IN NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA ioa.factsanddetails.com CAPTAIN JAMES COOK IN THE PACIFIC: DESCRIPTIONS, EVENTS AND PLACES VISITED ioa.factsanddetails.com ; FIRST EUROPEAN IN NEW ZEALAND: EXPLORERS, SETTLERS AND THEIR IMPACT ON THE MAORI ioa.factsanddetails.com EUROPEANS IN THE PACIFIC IN THE 1800S: WHALERS, MISSIONARIES, COPRA AND FORCED LABOR ioa.factsanddetails.com ; SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR AND ITS IMPACT ON THE NORTHERN PACIFIC factsanddetails.com

Magellan's Early Life

Ferdinand Magellan was born to a noble family in a part of Portugal with a climate described as "nine months of winter and three months of hell." He was orphaned at an early age and grew up as a page in the Portuguese court at a time when Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope and de Gama (both Portugese) made it to India.

In 1505, at the age of 25, he sailed to India where he served under Alfonos Albuquerque, founder of the Portuguese empire in Asia, and explored as far east as the Spice Islands (Moluccas) in present-day Indonesia. When he returned to Portugal in 1512 he had attained the rank of captain. He was lamed for life while fighting the Moors in Northern Africa and later fell out of favor with Portugese court and moved to Spain.

To gain support for his plan to sail west to the West Indies by locating a westward passage at the southern tip of South America, Magellan married the daughter of Portuguese expatriate who made decisions regarding Spanish voyages to the west. The union helped seal a deal that gave Magellan and a partner one twentieth of all the profits of their voyage and their heirs would be given the governorship to all new lands discovered. [Source: Daniel Boorstin, "The Discoverers"]

Purpose of Magellan's Voyage

The main reason Magellan circled the globe was to determine where the dividing line between Spain and Portugal — set up by the Treaty of Tordesillas — was. The Treaty of Tordesillas divided the New World between Portugal and Spain. Signed in 1494, the agreement gave Spain all the land to the west of a meridian 370 degrees west of the Cape Verde Islands (off Africa), and the land to the east to Portugul. This agreement is why Brazil ended up being Portuguese and the rest of Latin America became a Spanish possesion.

The line dividing Spanish and Portuguese territory ran 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands on the Atlantic side (46°longitude) and 134° longitude on the Asian side, but nobody knew exactly where that was. With the Treaty of Saragossa in 1529, the Portuguese payed Emperor Charles V of Spain 350,000 ducats of gold (a huge sum of money at that time) to gain possession sole of the Spice Islands. When chronometers were invented they showed that the land was in fact on the Portuguese side anyway. [Source: Merle Severy, National Geographic, November 1992]

Like Columbus, Magellan was also seeking a western route to Spice Islands in Asia, but by this time he knew there was a continent in the way and he was determined to get around it. The expedition was financed by the Spanish king (the Portuguese king had refused to back him). Most of the officers were Spanish. Two-and-a-half years before he set off Magellan himself changed his nationality and became a Spaniard.

Magellan's Ship and Crew

Magellan sailed with 300 men and five heavily armed but "barely seaworthy" ships (varying in size between 75 and 125 tons). The largest ship was smaller than the Mayflower, which in turn was smaller than a modern tug-boat.

The ships were supplied with trading goods such as brass bracelets, 500 looking glasses, bolts of velvet, 2,000 pounds of quicksilver and 20,000 hawkbells to barter for spices. Unknown to Magellan was that his suppliers had short-changed him on supplies. He didn't realize that he had been given six months of supplies — instead of the year and a half he agreed to — until he was about to go through the Strait of Magellan

Magellan's 250 man crew consisted mainly of foreigners — Portuguese, Frenchmen, Italians, Greeks and Englishmen — because Spaniards were reluctant to embark on such a risky voyage with a foreign captain. The three Spanish captains who accompanied Magellan were suspicious of him from the start and they may have made plans to make sure he didn’t finish the voyage. [Source: Daniel Boorstin, "The Discoverers"]

Pigafetta’s Descriptions of Magellan’s Voyage

Most of the details we know about Magellan’s voyage come from Magellan's log and a journal by one of his crew members, Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian gentleman-adventurer who "came along for the ride." His account of the voyage is one of most of the insightful and vividly written reports in the Age of Discovery. Luckily he was one of the handful of men that finished the voyage. "I am determined," the Italian Knight of Rhodes wrote, "to experience and to go...that it might be told that I made the voyage and saw with my eyes the things hereafter written and that I might win a famous name."

Pigafetta's closest brush with death occurred when he fell off a ship but luckily caught a line after he cried for help. It seems he couldn't swim. About sharks Pigafetta wrote: "great fish called 'Tiburoni' approached the ships. They have terrible teeth and eat men...and even the small ones are not much good [as food]. He also described electrostatic effect known as St. Elmos' fire.

"Among the other virtues which he possesses, Pigafetta wrote about Magellan, "he was always the most constant in greatest adversity...he endured hunger better than all the rest and more accurately than any man in the world, he understood dead reckoning and celestial navigation. No other had so much talent, nor the ardor to learn how to go around the world which he almost did."

First Leg of Magellan's Voyage — Along the East Coast of South America

Magellan and his ships embarked from the Spanish port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda on September 20, 1519. Their first destination was the Canary islands. Four months from Spain and two months from the Canaries, Magellan crossed the Atlantic and reached the eastern tip of Brazil. he followed the coast southward and traded for supplies in a port called Verzin, latter renamed to Rio de Janeiro. In his log he wrote: "The men and women of this place are of good physical build."

At the Río de la Plata, a large bay or marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean near present-day Buenos Aires, Argentina, Magellan thought he found a passage to the Pacific Ocean. But realized that was not the case after tasting the water and finding it was not very salty. After investigating several bays and rivers that turned out to be dead ends, Magellan decided the spend the South American winter of 1520 in St. Julian Bay, located about 1,100 kilometers (700 miles) south Buenos Aires.

"One day," Pigafetta wrote, "we saw a giant who was on the shore...So tall was this man that we came up to the level of his waistbelt. he was well enough made and had a broad face, painted red. His hair cut short and shaved like friars, and colored white, and he was dressed in skins.

The "giants" had huge feet (or perhaps thick-grass wrappings around them) reported Magellan who named them “Patgonians “(Spanish for "people with big feet") and their land Patagonia. The Portuguese captain gave these people "a mirror, a comb, bells, and other things" and then kidnapped "the two youngest to bring them to Spain."

Mutiny of Magellan's Journey

Magellan crew didn’t like it in Patagonia. Most of them wanted to return to tropical ports in the north but Magellan worried that if they did that they might loose valuable time and the crew might lose their resolve to carry on and he decided to go on short rations and wait until the spring to resume his journey.

One of the deciding moments of Magellan's voyage came on April 1, 1520. Docked in a bay in Patagonia and not very close to their destination after six months and 10,000 kilometers (6,000 miles) of traveling at sea, Magellan's crew decided to mutiny. The operation began when Magellan invited the captains and officers on the four other ships to dine on his ship (the “Trinidad”) and not one of them showed up. Instead they sent a boat to his ship, announcing the independence of three of the ships. Magellan didn’t stand for this. He sent a messenger to the cabin of the fleet treasurer, Luis de Mendoza, and told him to immediately report to Magellan's ship. When Mendoza responded with a sneer and laugh, the messenger, following his captain’s orders, grabbed the Spaniard by the throats and slit his throat with a dagger.

At about the same time a boatload of Magellan's men leaped aboard one of the other ships, whose captain Gaspar de Quesada was placed in irons. Magellan himself led an assault on a third ship that was trying to escape and its captain Juan de Cartegena was captured, bringing the mutiny to an abrupt, decisive end.

Only two en were killed in mutiny and two men were left behind. To prevent any one from getting any more ideas "The treasurer," Magellan wrote in his log, "was...quartered...Caspar Quesada had his head cut off, and then he was quartered...And Juan de Cartagena...was banished.. and put in exile on that land called “Patagonia”. A month after this one of the ships was lost while surveying a coastal passage, but "all the men were saved by a miracle," wrote one his officers, for they were not even wetted."

Strait of Magellan

The Strait of Magellan, also called the Straits of Magellan, is a navigable sea route in southern Chile and Argentian separating mainland South America to the north and Tierra del Fuego to the south. The strait is considered the most important natural passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It was navigated by canoe-faring indigenous peoples including the Kawésqar for thousands of years. In 1520, Magellan, after whom the strait is named, became the first Europeans to discover it. Magellan's original name for the strait was Estrecho de Todos los Santos ("Strait of All Saints"). The King of Spain, Emperor Charles V, who sponsored the Magellan-Elcano expedition, changed the name to the Strait of Magellan in honor of Magellan.

The route is difficult to navigate due to frequent narrows and unpredictable winds and currents. Maritime piloting is now compulsory. The strait is shorter and more sheltered than the Drake Passage, the often stormy open sea route around Cape Horn, which is beset by frequent gale-force winds and icebergs. Along with the Beagle Channel, the strait was one of the few sea routes between the Atlantic and Pacific before the construction of the Panama Canal.

"To say that the strait through the American land barrier was 'well hidden' turned out to be the understatement of the centuries," wrote Boorstin. "The Strait of Magellan — the narrowest, most devious, most circuitous of all straits connecting two great bodies of water — was a wonderful ironic prop for a seafaring melodrama...We must view on a modern map the tortuous passage, the angular disorder of islands, the countless unexpected slots of water, to grasp the full measure of expertise, the persistence, courage — and luck — required to find the way."

"While the entrance at Cape Virgins on the Atlantic side goes through mild and pleasant country with low grassy banks, the exit on the Pacific is a gargantuan fjord between craggy ice-capped mountains...Some of the narrows were less than three kilometers (two miles) wide, The passage so meandered, with countless misleading bays and rivers, that not until the end was there any view of open sea. To sail the 585 kilometers (364 miles) between the oceans took Magellan 38 days. Drake’s 16 days would be the 16th century record, others would take more than three month, many would simply give up.

Great winds known as williwas blasted the western side of the straits. An English captain in 1900 wrote: "These were compressed gales of wind that Boreas handed down over the hills in chunks. A full-blown williwaw will throw a ship, even without sail set, over her on her beam end."

Magellan Journey Through the Strait of Magellan

It took Magellan 38 days to traverse the Strait of Magellan. Compared to experience that mariners have had since Magellan had a rather easy go of it. Uncharacteristically the winds were light and there was plenty of good water in the streams on the shores and sardines for eating in the sea.

"After going...to the fifty-second degree [of latitude]," Pigafetta wrote, "toward the said Antarctic Ole, on the festival of the eleven thousand virgins [October 21]. Which strait is in length one hundred and ten leagues [a league is roughly three miles]...And it falls into another sea called the Pacific Sea. And it is surrounded by very great...mountains covered with snow."

Magellan entered the Strait of Magellan with four ships and left with three. Traversing the waterway, two ships went ahead, picking out good routes though difficult passages and locating good anchorages. During one these scouting trip one of the ships didn't return. The pilot on this ship overpowered the captain, doubled back during the night, and headed home to Spain. This left three of the original five ships. The leader of the mutiny hated Magellan and when he returned to Spain he accused Magellan of all sorts of things and spent only a short time in jail for a crime which is punishable by death. When Magellan asked his astrologer what had happened, he consulted the stars and gave an accurate report of what really happened.

Short on supplies, Magellan's crew tried to catch fish, sea birds and guanacos for food. Fresh water was difficult to obtain, with the shores being difficult to approach, and the crew suffered terribly. When a scouting boat finally spotted the open sea Pigafetta wrote "the captain-general wept for joy, and called that cape, cape Dezeado [Desire], for we had been desiring it for a long time." So impressed by Magellan's skill was Pigaetta that he thought he may have seen a secret map of the route "in the treasury of the King of Portugal."

The voyage through the Strait of Magellan also answered the question once and for all about a passage to the Orient — the Cape of Good Hope route around Africa was much better.

Magellan's Journey Across the Pacific

By far the most harrowing part of Magellan’s journey was from the Strait of Magellan across the Pacific. Neither Magellan or his crew had any idea what lay ahead and Magellan thought at most the journey would take a couple of weeks. . No European had ever been in this part of the world before and no one knew how wide the Pacific was — for a, accurate system of longitude had not yet been devised.

"We issued forth from the said strait and entered the Pacific Sea," wrote Pigafatta, "where we remained for three months and twenty days without taking on board provisions or any other provisions or any other refreshment."

Magellan was blessed with unusually good weather across the Pacific, thus the name. "In truth," Magellan wrote, the sea "is very pacific, for during that time we did not suffer any storm." This lead the misleading name of the ocean — the Pacific.

The only land they encountered were "two small uninhabited islands where we found only birds and trees. Wherefore we called them the Isles of Misfortune...We found no anchorage, [but] near them, saw many sharks. And if our Lord and his blessed Mother had not aided us by giving good weather we would all have died of hunger in that exceeding vast sea.

To take full advantage of the wind Magellan could sail well directly from the straits he had to sail north along the South American coast to catch the prevailing northeasterly trade winds to the west. The course he took is still recommended by the United States Government Pilot Association for sailors heading from cape Horn to Hawaii.

Hardships in the Pacific

Magellan's crew was unable to catch many fish, except for albacore they dispatched with a "barbed hook in a piece of white rag secured to a chip of wood." Occasionally a flying fish inadvertently flew onto the deck and rain squalls were their only source of water. In the Doldrums (an area in sea with no wind) the crew had to hold their nose to drink the putrid water stored in the hold. The men were so weak from lack of food and water it took six or eight men to perform work that only took one.

"We ate biscuit, which was no longer biscuit, but powder of biscuits swarming with worms, for they had eaten the good. It stank strongly of the urine of rats. We drank yellow water that had been putrid for many days. We also ate some ox hides that covered the top of the mainyard...We left them in the sea for four of five days, an then placed them for a few moments on top of the embers, and so ate them; and often we ate sawdust from boards. Rats sold for one-half ducado a piece and even then we could not get them.

“But above all the other misfortunes the following was the worst. The gums of both the lower and upper teeth of some of our men swelled, as they could not eat under any circumstances and therefore died. Nineteen men died from the sickness, and the [Patagonian] giant together with an Indian from the country of Verzin." This disease of course was scurvy, and it claimed 29 members of the crew.

Magellan in Guam

On March 6, 1521, Magellan's three ships finally reached Guam, 14,500 (9000 miles) from Patagonia, and a considerable distance to the north as well as west. In Guam the seamen were able to load up on sugarcane, rice, fish, bananas and yams. Fruit with Vitamin C to relieve the scurvy was especially heaven-sent. Because the local Chamorro people swarmed all over the ship and grabbed everything they could their hands on, Magellan named Guam and the islands around it the Ladrones (Spanish fro "thieves").

The Chamorro people who came aboard the ships took items such as rigging, knives, and a ship's boat. They were particularly fond of nails and other metal item from their boat, because they yet to learn how to smelt metal themselves. They may have thought they were participating in a trade exchange (as they had already given the fleet some supplies, but the crew interpreted their actions as theft. Magellan sent a raiding party ashore to retaliate, killing several Chamorro men, burning their houses, and recovering the stolen goods.

Describing the inhabitants of Guam, Antonio Pigafette wrote: "the people of these islands boarded the ships and robbed us, in such a way that it was impossible to preserve oneself from them. Whilst we lowering the sails to go ashore, they stole away with much address and diligence the small boat called the skiff, which was made fast to the poop of the captain's ship, at which he was much irritated, and went in shore with forty armed men, burned forty or fifty houses, with several small boats, and killed seven men of the island; they recovered their skiff."

After three days in Guam, Magellan sailed west and reached the Philippine islands of Suluan and Samar in a week. Here sailors with scurvy were sent ashore to recuperate, and hawbells, red caps and mirrors were traded for coconuts and bananas (refered to as "figs a foot long" by Pigafetta). When a chief showed up with a bar of gold and a basket of ginger the captain thanked him very much but would not accept the present. After that, when it was late, we went with the ships near to the houses and abode of the king.”

Magellan in the Philippines

Magellan landed on Homonhon Islet (Limasawa Island), near Samar Island in the present-day Philippines, at dawn on March 16, 1521. He claimed the islands for Spain, named them the Islas del Poniente (Western Islands) and held the Philippines first Catholic mass on April 14, 1521 on Cebu, where he planted a cross on the spit where a local ruler was converted along with the 800 of his people. Local believed that the cross possessed magical powers and over the centuries that followed took pieces of it

Magellan spent about a month in the Philippines. He was welcomed to the islands of Samar, Leyte, and Limasawa. Within a week of arriving on Cebu he converted 400 islanders including Humabon and Juana, the island's king and queen. Professor Susan Russell wrote: “Magellan's arrival in Cebu represents the first attempt by Spain to convert Filipinos to Roman Catholicism. The story goes that Magellan met with Chief Humabon of the island of Cebu, who had an ill grandson. Magellan (or one of his men) was able to cure or help this young boy, and in gratitude Chief Humabon allowed 800 of his followers to be 'baptized' Christian in a mass baptism. [Source: Professor Susan Russell, Department of Anthropology, Center for Southeast Asian Studies Northern Illinois University, seasite.niu.edu]

Magellan was killed on Mactan Island off Cebu Island by a local leader named Lapu Lapu. A plaque on Mactan reads: "Here Lapu Lapu and his men repulsed the Spanish invaders, killing their leader, Ferdinand Magellan, Thus Lapu Lapu became the first Filipino to have repelled European aggression." Of the 300 or so men that left Portugal with Magellan on his ship only 14 made it back alive.

Lapu Lapu is an enduring cultural hero in the Philippines. His defeat of Magellan has been immortalized in movies, comic books and popular songs. Every year the triumphant defeat of the Spanish is reenacted on the island of Mactan. Russell wrote: Lapu Lapu’s “resistance to Western intrusion makes this story an important part of the nationalist history of the Philippines. Many historians have claimed that the Philippines peacefully 'accepted' Spanish rule; the reality is that many insurgencies and rebellions continued on small scales in different places through the Hispanic colonial period.”

Magellan's Battle in the Philippines

On present-day Mactan island off the island of Cebu a local king pretended to covert to Christianity to enlist Magellan's crew "to fight and burn the houses of Mactan to make the King of Mactan kiss the hands of the King of Cebu...because he did not send a bushel of rice and a goat as tribute."

Pigafetta wrote: the "lord of the aforesaid island...sent one his sons to present the captain-general two goats, saying he would keep all promises with 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 men to fight."

In the fight that ensued 60 armor-clad Europeans were pitted against 2,000 near-naked Mactanians. Pigafetta wrote: "The captain-general resolved to go there with three boats...[with]...sixty men armed with corselets and helmets...and we so managed that we arrived...The captain...[told]...the lord of the place and his people that, if they agree 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 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...the other eleven men remained to guard the boats... Immediately they perceived us, they came about is 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 hackbutmen 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...When those people saw this...they fired so many arrows and lances...we could hardly defend ourselves.

"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...And those people shot at no other place but our legs, for the latter were bare...Our large pieces of artillery, which were in the ships could not help us, because they were firing at too long a range...And the followed us, hurling poisoned arrows...very close to [Magellan's] head. “

Magellan's Death in the Philippines

Pigafetta wrote: "But as a good captain and a knight he still stood fast...fighting thus for more than an hour. And as he refused to retire further, an Indian threw a bamboo lance in his face, and immediately killed him with his lance, leaving it in his body...All those people threw themselves on him, and one of them with a large javelin...thrust it into his left leg, whereby he fell downward. On this all at once rushed upon him will lances of iron and of bamboo."

"They slew our mirror, our light, our comfort, and our true guide. When they wounded him, he turned back many times to see whether we were all in the boats. Then, seeing him dead, we wounded made the best of our way to the boats, which were already pulling away. But for him, not one of us in the boats would have been saved, for while he was fighting the rest retired."

Seeing that there was no chance in rescuing anything other than his dead body the men fled to their boats, and no European ever laid on eyes on Magellan again. The men tried to trade as "much merchandise as they desired" for the bodies, but the islanders refused. "They intended to keep him as a perpetual memorial."

Santo Niño, Magellan’s Gift and the Oldest Religious Image in the Philippines

The image of the Santo Niño is the oldest religious image in the Philippines. The wooden image, made by Flemish artisans, was brought to the Philippines by Magellan in 1521, just like the Magellan cross. Magellan gave the Santo Niño (the Child Jesus) image to Queen Juana of Cebu as a baptismal gift. [Source: Angels in Stone by Pedro Galende, philippines.hvu.nl]

Forty-four years later, in 1565, a large part of Cebu was destroyed by a fire. The fire was set on purpose by the Spaniards as a punishment for hostile activities of the Cebu king Cebuanos. In one of the burned houses, a Spanish soldier found the image of Santo Niño. Remarkably it was unscratched! Since then, the miraculous image has been treated by the Cebuanos as its patron saint. At present, the miraculous image is kept in the Parish convent. A replica, adorned with gold and precious stones and enshrined in glass, is housed inside the Basilica Minor del Santo in present-day Cebu City.

The church was built near the place where the Santo Niño was found in the burned house. On this place the Spaniards built three churches. The first two churches were built out of wood and nipa. These burned down. The present church dates was built 1735. In 1965 it was given the name "Basilica Minor del Santo Niño".

Magellan Crew in Indonesia

After Magellan was killed in the Philippines in 1521 his crew continued on to the Spice Island. At this point in the voyage Magellan's crew still had 17,770 kilometers (11,000 miles) to go to get home. By this time only 100 of the 250 men that left South America remained, and one the three remaining ships was so filled with worm holes that these men decided to squeeze onto to the remaining two ships.

Instead of sailing the short distance between Cebu and the Spice Islands the ships took a more circuitous route, stopping first in Borneo where they encountered an Arab outpost near present-day Brunei. This was their first contact with a race of people of which the new since they left Brazil.

A couple of months later they reached the Spice Islands where the two ships loaded up with cloves. At that time nutmeg and cloves were worth more than gold. "When the cloves sprout," wrote Pigafoote, "they are white; when ripe, red; and when dried, black...Nowhere in the world do good gloves grow except on five mountains of those five islands."

One of the overfilled ships sprang a leak and had to be unloaded again for repairs. The other ship, captained by Juan Sebastián del Cano, decided to leave on its own while the monsoon winds were favorable. The other ship later tried to sail back across the Pacific to Panama, but was forced back and eventually was wrecked.

Final Leg of Magellan's Journey

With new sails and now only 47 Europeans, 13 East Indian natives and two birds of paradise (a gift from a sultan to the king of Spain), the last ship from the original five started home under the command of Juan Sebastián del Cano. The only problem is the tradition route home — via Malaysia, India, and east and west African coasts — was supplied by Portugese outposts. Magellan's ships were Spanish and the had to go out of their way to avoid Portugese ports and ships.

To avoid trouble Captain del Cano's ship went straight across the Indian Ocean, south of Madagascar and then swung wide around the Cape of Good Hope. With a lot of hungry and sick men aboard finally they pulled in for provisions at the Cape Verde Islands off the West African coast. This was a Portuguese outpost and foolishly they tried to trade cloves for food, but ended up having to make a dash for it because Portugal was supposed to have a monopoly on the trade of cloves. Thirteen crew members were left behind.

Magellan’s Ship Returns Home

Finally two months after leaving the Cape Verde Islands, seven months after the Spice Islands, and three years after leaving Spain, del Cano's ship arrived back in Spain. Of the original 3000 men that set sail only 18 returned (although the thirteen in the Cape Verde islands also made it back). The returnees were "emaciated skeletons in rags" by the time they returned. The day after their arrival home, fulfilling a vow, they walked barefoot, wearing only their shirts and carrying a candle each, a mile from the port to the shrine of Santa María de l'Antigua at the Seville Cathedral.

Of the five ships that started out only one returned to Spain after a three year voyage that covered perhaps 56,325 kilometers (35,000 miles). Since Magellan was killed in the Philippines it inaccurate to say that he circumnavigated the globe, although he got his ships through the most difficult part.

People were amazed that a ship actually sailed around the world, and the businessmen who paid for the expedition even turned a small profit after all the cloves were sold. But the men who took part in the voyage were not rewarded. Del Cano didn't receive much money or notoriety. Magellan's widow and only son both died during the voyage and his remaining heir collected no reward "not even the salary due him." The Philippines eventually became a Spanish colony serviced by ship that ran between Acapulco Mexico and Manila, but Magellan was not glorified in either Spain or Portugal.

Image Sources:

Text Sources: Source: Most information in this article is from a National Geographic article by Alan Villiers, June 1976 and the book "The Discoverers" by Daniel Boorstin. Also, “Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Volume 2: Oceania,” edited by Terence E. Hays, 1991, Wikipedia, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.

Last updated July 2023

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500 Years on, How Magellan's Voyage Changed the World

• By Agence France-Presse

Ferdinand Magellan set off from Spain 500 years ago on an epoch-making voyage to sail all the way around the globe for the first time.

The Portuguese explorer was killed by islanders in the Philippines two years into the adventure, leaving Spaniard Juan Sebastian Elcano to complete the three-year trip. But it is Magellan's name that is forever associated with the voyage.

"Magellan is still an inspiration 500 years on," said Fabien Cousteau, a French filmmaker and underwater explorer like his grandfather Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

"He was a pioneer at a time when explorers who went off into the unknown had a strong habit of not coming back."

Here are five ways in which Magellan's voyage marked human history and continues to inspire scientists and explorers today.

Some of them spoke to AFP at a conference in Lisbon to mark the August 10 fifth centenary.

Magellan's voyage was a turning point in history, as unique as the first manned journey into outer space and the later moon landings, said NASA scientist Alan Stern, leader of its New Horizons interplanetary space probe.

"When the first one circled the plant, (that) sort of meant that we now had our arms around the planet for the first time," he said.

"That just transformed humanity in my view. I would call it the first planetary event, in the same way that Yuri Gagarin was the first off-planetary event" when the Soviet cosmonaut went into outer space.

Geographical

Magellan's voyage rewrote the maps and geography books. He was the first to discover the strait, which now bears his name, linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans at the tip of South America.

"Perhaps his greatest feat, and still considered today one of the greatest feats of the history of navigation, was negotiating this strait, of which there were no maps and whose existence was vaguely rumored," said US historian Laurence Bergreen, author of a biography of Magellan.

Philosophical

The voyage transformed humans' own conception of their place in the world.

"It wasn't just geography and anthropology, it showed something philosophical: that it's all one world," said Bergreen.

"Before Magellan people didn't really know that. They didn't know how the world was connected or how big it was."

Astronomical

The voyage contributed to Europeans' knowledge of the universe and has marked the worlds of space exploration and astronomy to this day.

While crossing the Magellan Strait, the explorer and his crew observed two galaxies visible to the naked eye from the southern hemisphere, now known as the Magellanic Clouds.

Some recently-designated areas of the surface of Mars have been given the same names that Magellan gave to parts of South America, with Bergreen's help. A giant telescope being developed in Chile will also bear the explorer's name.

Inspirational

Magellan's achievement was a landmark in the history of exploration still hailed by his modern-day successors.

"In the space program, to prepare for these long duration missions, we say 'the lessons for the future are written in the past'," said Dafydd Williams, a former NASA astronaut, now 65, who went on two space missions.

"So many in the space program have read about Magellan."

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August 5, 2019

500 years on, how Magellan's voyage changed the world

Ferdinand Magellan set off from Spain 500 years ago on an epoch-making voyage to sail all the way around the globe for the first time.

The Portuguese explorer was killed by islanders in the Philippines two years into the adventure, leaving Spaniard Juan Sebastian Elcano to complete the three-year trip. But it is Magellan's name that is forever associated with the voyage.

"Magellan is still an inspiration 500 years on," said Fabien Cousteau, a French filmmaker and underwater explorer like his grandfather Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

"He was a pioneer at a time when explorers who went off into the unknown had a strong habit of not coming back."

Here are five ways in which Magellan's voyage marked human history and continues to inspire scientists and explorers today.

Some of them spoke to AFP at a conference in Lisbon to mark the August 10 fifth centenary.

Magellan's voyage was a turning point in history, as unique as the first manned journey into outer space and the later moon landings, said NASA scientist Alan Stern, leader of its New Horizons interplanetary space probe.

"When the first one circled the planet, (that) sort of meant that we now had our arms around the planet for the first time," he said.

"That just transformed humanity in my view. I would call it the first planetary event, in the same way that Yuri Gagarin was the first off-planetary event" when the Soviet cosmonaut went into outer space.

Geographical

Magellan's voyage rewrote the maps and geography books. He was the first to discover the strait, which now bears his name, linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans at the tip of South America.

"Perhaps his greatest feat, and still considered today one of the greatest feats of the history of navigation, was negotiating this strait, of which there were no maps and whose existence was vaguely rumoured," said US historian Laurence Bergreen, author of a biography of Magellan.

Philosophical

The voyage transformed humans' own conception of their place in the world.

"It wasn't just geography and anthropology, it showed something philosophical: that it's all one world," said Bergreen.

"Before Magellan people didn't really know that. They didn't know how the world was connected or how big it was."

Astronomical

The voyage contributed to Europeans' knowledge of the universe and has marked the worlds of space exploration and astronomy to this day.

While crossing the Magellan Strait, the explorer and his crew observed two galaxies visible to the naked eye from the southern hemisphere, now known as the Magellanic Clouds.

Some recently-designated areas of the surface of Mars have been given the same names that Magellan gave to parts of South America, with Bergreen's help. A giant telescope being developed in Chile will also bear the explorer's name.

Inspirational

Magellan's achievement was a landmark in the history of exploration still hailed by his modern-day successors.

"In the space program, to prepare for these long duration missions, we say 'the lessons for the future are written in the past'," said Dafydd Williams, a former NASA astronaut, now 65, who went on two space missions.

"So many in the space program have read about Magellan."

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The Voyage of Magellan - 1519 CE

Comprehension.

In 1519 AD, a brave sea captain named Ferdinand Magellan was able to get backing from King Charles of Spain to attempt a voyage around the world. Magellan believed that he could find a path through South America and then head west until he reached the Spice islands.The Spice islands are now called the Moluccas and are in Indonesia. In the middle ages spices were very valuable because they were scarce and added flavor to bland foods.

Magellan's voyage was one of the greatest adventures in all of history. When he landed on the shores of South America several of his officers attempted to mutiny. Magellan put down the uprising and had some of the traitors drawn and quartered; a cruel method of execution in which the victim is pulled apart by force. Two of the mutineers were marooned on an island off the coast of South America; never to be seen again.

Magellan continued his voyage down the eastern shore of South America until he found a path through the continent. This path is now known as the Straights of Magellan. Naval historians believe that Magellan's trip through the Straights was one of the greatest navigational accomplishments in history.

The voyage continued across the Pacific ocean where many of the men on the ships died of hunger and a disease called scurvy. Magellan and his officers survived because they had been given kiwi fruit as a gift. The kiwi fruit had vitamins that prevented scurvy. Some men actually paid for rats to eat, because food was so scarce.

Magellan eventually found his way to some islands after crossing the Pacific ocean. Unfortunately, the captain got into a battle with natives of the Philippine islands and he and some of his men were killed with spears and machetes.

The remaining men of the voyage did find the Spice islands and filled their ship with valuable spices. They completed the voyage to Spain and became the first people to circumnavigate the globe.

• Corrections

Ferdinand Magellan & The First Voyage Around the World

During the Age of Exploration, one task was particularly noteworthy: the circumnavigation of Earth. Discover the life of Ferdinand Magellan and the first voyage around the world.

The Age of Exploration saw the achievement of incredible feats with the voyages of European expeditions. Perhaps the most famous of them all is the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the Americas, but many other expeditions are equally groundbreaking. Besides making contact with a “new continent,” the circumnavigation of the Earth was seen as an enormous feat. With Columbus’ travels and following expeditions by other explorers, the circumnavigation of the world was believed possible, but who would be first? Europe’s major powers put their efforts into completing the task, but one expedition, led by Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer serving the Spanish crown, would ultimately be successful: the Magellan expedition.

Magellan’s Early Life & First Travels

Magellan was born in the north of Portugal in 1480. His family was of noble origin and enjoyed a minor presence yet sufficient status among the higher classes of the Kingdom of Portugal. His father, Rui Magellan, was the mayor of a small town. Ferdinand served as a page to Queen Eleanor, consort of John II of the Portuguese crown. After the death of John, Magellan served under Manuel I. When Magellan was 25, he joined a Portuguese expedition to India, where they would establish Francisco de Almeida as the first viceroy of Portuguese India. Magellan stayed in India for almost a decade; then, he traveled to Malacca, where, in 1511, the Portuguese conquered the city under the governor Alfonso de Albuquerque.

Magellan received great riches and promotions from his participation in the conquest of Malacca. He received a slave, baptized under the name Enrique of Malacca, who would join Magellan through many of his travels and endeavors. Magellan’s behavior became increasingly rebellious and not in tune with the Portuguese authorities’ expectations. He took leave without permission, was accused of illegally trading in Morocco, and even quarreled with the Portuguese King Manuel I.

Magellan dedicated himself to studying the most recent nautical charts available to him. He investigated, alongside cosmographer Rui Faleiro, the possibility of reaching the Moluccas through a gateway from the Atlantic to the South Pacific in the Americas. While in Malacca, Magellan befriended the navigator Francisco Serrao, who reached and stayed in the Spice Islands (the Moluccas). His letters to Magellan would prove very useful for his consequent travels to the Islands.

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Please check your inbox to activate your subscription, magellan the spanish explorer: pledging loyalty to the opposing crown.

When Magellan fell out of favor with the Portuguese King, he turned to the Spanish crown. Magellan had been refused time and time again an expedition made possible by the Portuguese crown. King Manuel I disapproved of Magellan’s planned expedition. Thus, Magellan renounced his Portuguese nationality and proposed his travel expedition to King Charles I of Spain (Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor ).

At the time of Magellan’s proposed expedition, Spain was at the start of its expansion into other continents, mainly the Americas, which would be decisive for the Spanish to consolidate their empire.

Portugal had a similar situation. The Portuguese Empire had explored most of the coasts of Africa, reached the Indies through said passage, and established colonies all throughout Africa and Asia.

However, both Iberian empires had become rivals whose differences were often solved only through external intervention. The Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 established a division of lands outside of Europe between Spain and Portugal. The treaty was largely left unsettled, but in 1529, the Treaty of Zaragoza clarified and formalized the divisions. Before its formalization, however, Magellan and his fleet would achieve the first circumnavigation of the Earth, arguably abusing the agreement set in the Tordesillas treaty.

Magellan convinced the Spanish king that his expedition would not be opposed to the agreement between Spain and Portugal; thus, he was allowed to sail. King Manuel I was greatly insulted by Magellan’s expedition and work under the Spanish crown. The preparations of the Spanish fleet were disrupted by the Portuguese, and a fleet was sent after Magellan, though it failed to capture him.

Expedition through the Atlantic & Reaching the Americas

Magellan and his fleet left Spain from the port of Seville in 1519. The fleet traveled through the Guadalquivir River until they reached the Atlantic through the port of Sanlucar de Barrameda. The fleet remained in place for weeks, going back and forth from Seville to solve unforeseen difficulties. More than a month later, they departed. The fleet reached the Canary Islands, then passed next to Cape Verde and the coasts of Sierra Leone. Four months went by before the fleet reached the coasts of the Americas.

In December 1519, Magellan and his fleet touched land in what is now Rio de Janeiro. They traveled through the estuary of the Rio de la Plata River, then reached and named the region of Patagonia . In Patagonia, the Spaniards met local Indigenous people for the first time. After making contact and trading with them, the Spanish kidnapped some to bring them back for the king. Unfortunately, the kidnapped Indigenous people didn’t survive.

In March 1520, the fleet found itself in harsh conditions. They took refuge in the port of San Julian, but after considering the expedition had failed, some of the crew attempted to overthrow Magellan as their leader. The insurrection ultimately failed; the leaders of the unsatisfied crew were killed or banished, and Magellan forgave the rest as he needed them to continue. Later, the crew of one of the five ships, San Antonio , once again rose against Magellan and turned back for Spain.

The Strait of Magellan & the Voyage in the Pacific

After facing difficulties finding a passage to the Pacific Ocean (known to them as Mar del Sur ), the fleet reached the Strait of Magellan. Magellan originally named it the Strait of All Saints ( estrecho de Todos los Santos ), but the strait gained its name in honor of Magellan and his expedition, having been the first European explorer to find the strait.

Known to be a harsh place, the Strait of Magellan was challenging to pass through. The Spaniards saw bonfires lit by the natives and thus named the territory “ Tierra del Fuego ” (Land of Fire). Indigenous people lived or had reached as far down as Antarctica . The ocean known to them as Mar del Sur was then baptized the Pacific Ocean for its tranquil waters. For three months, after passing through the strait, the fleet was unable to reach land and disembark. The conditions aboard were challenging, to say the least.

The difficulties during the voyage in the Pacific decreased once the fleet reached the Mariana Islands . The state of the fleet was in tatters, having barely survived over three months without touching land. They then reached the Philippines, becoming the first Europeans to do so. Magellan and his fleet carried out the conversion of the local islanders to Catholicism. Magellan won over the locals by proving his strength and urging them to convert so that they could become like them. Thus, the fleet remained in the region before continuing to the Moluccas.

The Battle of Mactan, Magellan’s Death, & the First Circumnavigation of the World

In the Philippines, the locals were manipulated into converting to Catholicism, but when attempting to form an alliance with one chieftain, Magellan proposed to battle an opposing leader to win over his potential ally. Magellan and his fleet went to the Island of Mactan to fight, convert, and make the chieftain Lapulapu submit to the Spanish crown. The battle was a decisive defeat for the Spanish, who were unprepared and outnumbered. Magellan himself was killed during combat. After Magellan’s death, the expedition under his command had to choose a new leader.

The expedition chose Magellan’s brother-in-law and Juan Serrano as co-commanders, but their leadership would be short-lived. On the first of May, the Spanish disembarked to join the Cebuanos for a feast, yet once the meal was finished, they were surprised and murdered by the Cebuanos. The Spaniards had been betrayed by Magellan’s slave Enrique, who was supposed to be freed after his master’s death but was forced to continue working as an interpreter for them. Enrique made a deal with the island’s leader, Humabon, in order to regain his freedom.

With both co-commanders murdered, Juan Lopez de Carvalho was named captain. The fleet chose to continue with just two ships: Trinidad and Victoria . Carvalho was deemed unable to command, and Gonzalo Gomez de Espinosa was chosen as the new captain, leading the ship Trinidad . Meanwhile, Juan Sebastian Elcano was to captain the ship Victoria . When the fleet reached the Moluccas, it was decided that they should leave for Spain at once, yet the Trinidad was in no shape for that sort of travel, so only the Victoria would continue, and the Trinidad would follow later. Elcano and his ship circumnavigated the African continent for their return, and in September 1522, they reached Spain, completing the first circumnavigation of the world .

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By Francisco Perpuli BA History (in progress) Francisco is completing a History degree at the University of Guadalajara. He has a keen interest in the study of culture and the arts. In his spare time, he tries to explore and develop other interests while saving up to travel the world.

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Magellan's Voyage and the Perspective of "Otherness"

Explore other cultural realities through the diary of antonio pigafetta, journalist of this first voyage around the world..

By Museo de América

Museo de América

View of the port of Seville (ca. 1600) Museo de América

The first expedition to voyage around the world, captained by Ferdinand Magellan, set sail on August 20, 1519 from the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz, Spain). The larger ships could not sail the river Guadalquivir up to the city of Seville due to the sandbanks formed around its mouth.

The nationalities of the expedition's crew, which included the Italian Pigafetta, were extremely diverse. But it was only made up of men, as women were prohibited from joining the crew in order to prevent potential riots.

Cinnamon tree (1789/1794) by José Guio Museo de América

…to seek out and discover spices in the Maluku Islands. The aim of the journey was to reach the Spice Islands, today known as the Maluku Islands. Spices were used to season meat and fish, enhancing flavors or camouflaging those brought about by the conditions of storage. The search for spices continued into subsequent centuries. This image shows a drawing of the Ishpingo or cinnamon tree. This example is an Amazonian variety of cinnamon, of which the flowers—shown here—are used, unlike the Asian variety, of which the bark is used.

Pepper shaker (1600/1622) by MR Museo de América

Some of the most sought after condiments were clove, pepper, nutmeg, and cinnamon, which were used to flavor delicious food and drinks. This silver spice rack was found in the Nuestra Señora de Atocha shipwreck, which sunk off the coast of Florida in 1622. This type of rack is called a turret. It is made up of different elements stacked on top of each other, with this dome-shaped pepper pot placed at the very top of the set.

Scarlet macaw (ca. 1942) Museo de América

Exotic Nature

Knowledge of the natural world and the use of its resources are themes that run throughout the diary of Pigafetta, as the purpose of his voyage was to locate valuable natural produce (spices) for selling.

Tridacna gigas shell Museo de América

The flesh of these two mollusks, respectively, weighed 26 and 44 pounds [more than 11.7 and almost 20 kilos]. Some previously unknown species caused surprise due to their giant size, such as these Pacific shells, which were first used in Spain as basins for holy water at the entrance to churches.

The expeditionaries exchanged various objects for food, live animals, and other products. In Brazil, they were interested in large macaws ( Ara sp.) and a species of golden lion tamarin monkey ( Leontopithecus rosalia ). These kinds of exotic animals became prized pets in Europe, reflecting the status of their owners. There are numerous portraits, particularly of women and children, with these animals, such as Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia and Magdalena Ruiz, by Alonso Sánchez Coello, in the Prado Museum (Museo Nacional del Prado).

Basket (20th Century) by Kayapó Museo de América

Visions of the Indigenous World

The meeting of societies that had had no previous contact had an enormous impact on the expeditionaries as well as the other cultures.

Population of the Napo River shore (1789/1794) Museo de América

Visions of the Indigenous World in America ...These people paint their entire body and face beautifully with fire and in other ways... The corporal appearance of the Amazonian communities was admired by the Europeans. These societies totally or partially covered their bodies with paint. The designs were not intended to look pretty, but rather were an expression of belonging to a specific group, or a protection against spiritual influences.

Canoe (1862/1865) Museo de América

They have boats carved out of a single piece of wood with stone tools, known as canoes. The tribes that live along the banks of the Amazon basin maintain a close relationship with the river. It is the main route for communication, a fundamental part of their beliefs, and an essential source of economic resources. The most efficient way to move along the river is via canoe. Traditionally, a tree trunk would be hollowed out using fire or hot stones, and the lack of metal meant that stone tools had to be used to carve out the inside.

The women work and carry all the food in wicker backpacks, or in baskets placed upon or tied to their heads. The expeditionaries saw how the Amazonian tribes organized a division of work based on gender and age. Women invested a large part of their day on gathering duties. In order to leave their hands free, they put the food they gathered in vegetable fiber baskets that they could carry on their backs, but tied with a belt around their front.

Bow (1867) by Ona (selk´nam) Museo de América

Within the division of labor by gender, the men of the groups that lived in the region of Patagonia were mainly dedicated to hunting guanaco ( Lama guanicoe ). Apart from the meat, they also used their skin and tendons for tools and clothing. The guanaco was a species previously unknown in Europe, which is why Pigafetta uses comparisons with other animals to describe it: the body and long neck of a camel, the hooves of a deer, and the tail of a horse. According to the author, it also imitates a horse's neigh.

Man from the Guam island (1789/1794) by Juan Ravenet Museo de América

Visions of the Pacific Indigenous Community After 100 days of traveling across the Pacific, and with an urgent need for food, they had a brief encounter with the inhabitants of the island of Guam. They named it the Island of Thieves due to the theft of a skiff from one of their boats. The absence of the concept of private property in these indigenous communities led to an unexpected clash of mindset. The behavior of these skilled navigators was not understood by the expeditionaries, and was met with violence until they were able to recover the valuable part of their vessel.

Peineta (Helu) (1775/1880) by Tonga Museo de América

These combs are one of the few elements of personal adornment that women would wear on their heads in some Polynesian societies such as Tonga. They are delicate pieces made from very thin rods obtained from the central spines of the coconut palm leaf, joined together with braided vegetable fibers, forming geometric designs. Following contact with western societies, some elements of the material culture changed in meaning, going from common use to being considered a symbol of higher social status.

Woman of the aeta group or "negritos" from the Manila mountains (19th Century) by Juan Ravenet Museo de América

Visions of the Asian Indigenous Community Journeying around the myriad islands allowed the expeditionaries to learn about the enormous ethnic diversity of the Philippine archipelago, which was populated by cultural groups with a wide variety of languages, customs, and physical appearances. Some societies, such as the Aeta people, have dark skin and were therefore known as blacks. This female portrait is a delicate study of the particular characteristics of the population of the mountainous region of Manila.

Bracelet (19th Century) by Kalinga Museo de América

In many societies of Oceania and Indonesia, pigs were one of the most prized animals, used as an element of prestige in exchanges. The teeth of the wild boar were especially valued by the men, who would use them to make bracelets, as in this case, but also pendants or even a nose adornment. Among the tribes in the north of the island of Luzon, defending these animals was considered a symbol of affluence and power.

Swords (Kalasag) (19th Century) by Bagobo Museo de América

Different Types of Relationships

Although the preferred relationship was one of commercial exchange, contacts with other populations sometimes led to tension, conflict, and confrontation.

Mirror (18th Century) Museo de América

Commercial Relationships All of our mirrors had broken and the few good ones were wanted by the King [King of Tidore, of the Maluku Islands]. The economic system was based on trade. The expeditionaries offered iron objects, knives, scissors, cloth, combs, bells, glass, and particularly mirrors, which were all considered curios. Obviously exchanges were established based on precisely the difference in the valuation criteria of the items, so that each party thought they were getting a good deal.

Carrier of Manila (1789/1794) by Juan Ravenet Museo de América

Following the arrival of the Spanish, the port of Manila became one of the most important centers of commercial activity in the world. Silver from American mines was exchanged for sought-after Asian products, which would end up in the houses of noblemen and the bourgeoisie across America and Europe. The presence in Manila of numerous Chinese traders, or Sangleys (those that came to trade) was essential to boost economic development and facilitate the necessary flow of merchandise with the Asian powerhouse.

Headdress (Aheto) (ca. 1993) by Karajá Museo de América

The Process of "Othering" They wrap themselves in clothing made from macaw feathers, with large rolls on their backside made with the longest feathers; they look ridiculous. The Amazonian cultures used feathers from various birds to make headdresses, bracelets, and skirts. These elements were used in special ceremonies, though not always understood or valued by western cultures. The feather objects were not held in high regard by the expeditionaries. Societies were categorized based on the complexity of their material culture, which marked the relationship established with them, and was used as a criterion to legitimize their domination.

Sword (19th Century) by Moros de Mindanao Museo de América

Throughout this voyage around the world, the expeditionaries made contact with different populations, and each required different types of relationships and exchange of different goods. In the text, distancing is justified with regard to these groups, marking them as "other" based on their religion (moors, pagans, and gentiles), their clothing, their economy, their way of life, and even their size (giant Patagonians). This sword, made by the moors of the Southern Philippines, and called kalis tulid, is an emblem of power and prestige for the chief, used both in battle and on parades.

Figure (Bulul) (19th Century) by Ifugao Museo de América

The expeditionaries observed the beliefs of the cultures that they came across along their voyage, but most were dismissed as idolism, and their representations burned. These types of anthropomorphic sculptures by the Ifugao culture, made from wood, represent the ancestral spirits, guardians of the granaries and houses, and invoke the protection of harvests, health, and prosperity.

Conflicts and Confrontations Weapons were highly valued objects by the western expeditionaries when they made contact with other cultures. They were used to profile a scale of value between societies, and to estimate the potential relationships that were possible between the parties. Wooden swords similar to these ( kalasag ) could have been used by the indigenous people who clashed with Magellan on the island of Mactán, which ended with the death of the captain. They stuffed hair from their defeated enemies around the edge of the ancient kalasag in order to appropriate their power and courage.

Spear (19th Century) by Malayo-filipino Museo de América

Bows and arrows with poisoned tips were common weapons among the Filipino indigenous communities. It was precisely one of these that caused the death of Ferdinand Magellan. In the Muslim communities of the Southern Philippines, known as moors, lances as well as swords were essential elements for face-to-face confrontations. They would use lances made from a metal sheet shaped into a lance, that could be finished with extended blades, and a handle made from a thick piece of bamboo or wood.

Morion (helmet) (19th Century) by Moros de Mindanao Museo de América

Filipinos had their own collections of arms, but they also started adapting new weapons following the European influx. For example, this bronze helmet is similar to the Hispanic morion, a military helmet typical of the second half of the 16th century. It may be an imitation, but is a version made by the moors of the Philippines. The differences that the expeditionaries found between other populations were an excuse for the violent interaction which took place: attacks, battles, and even kidnapping men and women considered different and "other."

Hammock (1862/1865) Museo de América

Cultural Influences

Contact with different groups led to the adoption, on both sides, of new customs, and the use of previously unknown objects.

Some Amazonian communities with a nomadic or semi-nomadic way of life required light tools that could be easily transported. A hammock is a lightweight netting made from vegetable fiber. It is hung at each end from two strong posts, to allow a person to rest while preventing contact with the floor. The position of the body in the hammock avoids any pressure points, and aids venous return. The relaxation of the soft swinging, and the sensation of weightlessness, led to these items being distributed to other cultures in warm environments, or regions of high humidity.

Cockfight (1789/1794) by Tomás de Suría Museo de América

They have large, domestic roosters, but they do not eat them; rather they worship them, although they also make them fight… Hens are not native to America, and so it is surprising that these domestic birds have been described there from very early dates. The breeding of European chickens spread from the Antilles to many indigenous groups in Brazil. However, another route that these birds took to America was via the Pacific, from Asia and Polynesia, where white-feathered hens were bred for rituals, and in some cases for cock fights; a tradition that made its way to Mexico.

Curation and texts: Beatriz Robledo Sanz, Andrés Gutiérrez Usillos Coordination: Susana Alcalde Amieva Photographs: Joaquin Otero, Gonzalo Cases Museo de América This exhibition is part of the First Voyage Around the World project.

The Asian Influence on American Arts