The Great Ones - Ferdinand Magellan

Charting a sea passage around the globe

A man whose seamanship and endurance were unparalleled in the early 16th century, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521) was the first European navigator to discover a westward sea route to the Orient. He traveled across the Atlantic, through the southern tip of South America via a series of channels and mountain-surrounded bays, and then on across the Pacific. The expedition continued westward and eventually returned to Spain, achieving the first circumnavigation of the world.

Early adventures: Magellan was born into a noble Portuguese family, and at a young age, was made a page in the royal court. When he was 25, he joined the Portuguese navy and spent the next six years helping his country win important battles in the Indian Ocean. In 1513, while fighting to defeat the Moors in Azamor, Morocco, Magellan suffered a serious lance wound to his left knee that left him with a lifelong limp. To make matters worse, when he returned to Portugal in 1514, he learned that he had been accused of illegally trading livestock with the Moors. Portugal's King Manuel dismissed Magellan from the navy, and Magellan angrily declared an end to his allegiance with Portugal. In 1517 he offered his services to Portugal's chief competitor, Spanish King Charles I, and began a new phase of his career as a Spanish explorer.

For the history books: On Sept. 20, 1519, 39-year-old Magellan and about 270 men set sail from Sanlucar de Barrameda, Spain, with five ships, Trinidad, San Antonio, Concepcion, Victoria, and Santiago. Their goal: to reach the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, via a westerly route--one that avoided the Portuguese-controlled Cape of Good Hope. The ships set a southwestern course, crossing the Atlantic and reaching South America's Bay of Rio de Janeiro three months later. They continued south along the coast, exploring the many inlets in what is now Uruguay and Argentina as they tried in vain to find a passage to the Pacific. On March 31, trouble came over the expedition when the tired and disgruntled men aboard three of the ships mutinied against their commander. Magellan quickly regained control of his crew, leaving one of the mutinying captains dead in the melee, executing another, and stranding another alone on the shore. Finally, in October 1520, success: Just south of an outcropping called the Cape of the Virgins, Magellan found a winding passage through an area of high fjords--now known as the Strait of Magellan--that indeed led to the Pacific.

The second half of the journey proved as difficult as the first. Only three ships remained after one wrecked and another had deserted; supplies were low and men were dying of scurvy. Undaunted, Magellan pressed on, reaching the island of Guam in 1521, where they resupplied by pillaging a village in retaliation for theft by the natives. Later that year, not long after arriving in the islands now known as the Philippines, Magellan was killed in a skirmish with natives on Mactan Island. Two of his ships continued the journey, reaching the Spice Islands in November 1521. On Sept. 8, 1522, only one ship, the Victoria, captained by Spaniard Juan Sebastián de Elcano, made it back to Spain, arriving with 17 remaining crewmen.

Words to live by: Observed a chronicler of the round-the-world expedition, "[Magellan] was always the most constant in the greatest adversity....No other had so much talent, nor the ardor to learn how to go around the world..."