Was Ferdinand Magellan really the first person to circumnavigate the world? No, because he died about two-thirds into the journey.
Ferdinand Magellan’s name was actually Magellan. He was born Fernão de Magalhães in Portugal, I n1480. He was born into nobility and he was a page of Queen Eleanor, the consort of King John II, and then his successor, his cousin, Manuel I. His various links to the nobility would give him access to the king in the future, when he most needed it. He could probably have lived a comfortable life at court, but he wanted adventure and he enlisted in one of King Manuel’s fleets and spent 8 years sailing around the coast of India, defending Portugal’s territories and fighting in battles. He was wounded in one in 1509. At the time, Portugal and Spain were the world’s foremost seafaring nations and they were gradually increasing their empires. They were always at loggerheads with each other.
In 1513, Magellan (Magalhães) returned to Portugal. One of his friends moved to the islands in the eastern part of the Philippines, known as the Spice Islands at the time. He wrote numerous letters to Magellan about the lands and the spices, and Magellan’s idea to reach them from the east was born. To get from Portugal to the Spice Islands required someone to sail all around the horn of Africa, which was very dangerous and would take months. Several people believed that an easier route would be to go the other way around the world and approach it from the back. Columbus had the same idea when he landed in the Americas. Magellan took his idea to King Manuel I, who said no. Magellan kept asking and Manuel kept saying no. Magellan had been involved in illegal trading during his time fighting for Manuel, and Manuel bore a grudge. In 1517, Magellan got the message, renounced his Portuguese citizenship, and went to petition Charles V, king of Spain. Charles agreed and Magellan took up the Spanish version of his name: Fernando de Magallanes.
The voyage was a huge risk, but Magellan didn’t believe it would take as long as it would end up taking. He believed that there was a passage through South America. Charles V also gave him a ten-year monopoly on any route he might discover, which would have made him incredibly rich. He assembled five ships and a crew of Spanish sailors and left Spain on 20th September 1519. It took them two months to cross the Atlantic and reach South America. They started to sail south, looking for the rumored passage through South America. Of course, as we know now, there isn’t one. They searched for three months before they had to give up as the weather worsened, and they wintered in Rio de Janeiro for five months. Conditions were extremely bad and the Spanish crew resented their Portuguese captain, so they mutinied. Magellan just about hung onto control, he had to execute some of the leaders of the mutiny in order to do it, and they sailed on.
They had no choice but to keep sailing down the coast and they finally found a passage, not far from the tip of South America. It was named the Strait of Magellan and is 570 km long. The climate is usually cold and foggy and it is very easy to get lost. It took Magellan’s expedition 38 days to cross it. From the other side, they sailed on into the Pacific, but had to stop (probably at Guan) to restock. Then they sailed on to the Philippines, landing there in April of 1521. When they reached the Philippines, Magellan discovered that a slave he had bought in Spain could actually speak the local language, and had probably been enslaved from there. He became the expedition’s translator.
Magellan claimed the Philippines for Spain and then, rather than sailing on to find the Spice Islands, he decided to start converting the locals to Christianity and started a war. During the war, Magellan was killed by a poison arrow. This was a completely unnecessary war and Magellan died at the age of 41, two-thirds of the way into his circumnavigation of the world. If he had only sailed on, who knows what might have happened?
His crew sailed on without him and arrived back in Spain on September 6th, 1522. It had taken them almost three years. So, was Ferdinand Magellan really the first person to circumnavigate the world? No, because he died in the Philippines. Out of his original crew of 260, all but 18 had died. So, the first people to circumnavigate the world were those 18 people. The leader of the expedition after Magellan died was Juan Sebastian Elcano, so the honor could go to him. Or, possibly, to Enrique, the slave that translated for Magellan in the Philippines. He had been captured there, then taken to Spain, and then sailed with Magellan back to the Philippines, possibly making him the first person to circumnavigate the world. And this is what I learned today.
Sources
https://www.history.com/news/was-magellan-the-first-person-to-circumnavigate-the-globe
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/magellan-first-sail-around-world-think-again
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Magellan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Magellan
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ferdinand-Magellan/Allegiance-to-Spain