Circling the Planet

Like Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer who found a sea

route to Asia. Like Christopher Columbus, Magellan was a non-Spanish commander of

a Spanish flotilla that tried to reach Asia by sailing west from Europe.

Magellan’s expedition was successful in spite of the fact that it lost its captain, four of

its five ships, all its officers, and most of its crew on the eventful voyage that went

across the Atlantic, through the straits at the southern tip of South America (ever after

called the Straits of Magellan), across the Pacific Ocean (Magellan named it), through

the coveted ports of the Spice Islands (in today’s Indonesia), around Africa from the

east, and home.

Although he died on the trip, Magellan (whose name in Portuguese was Fernao

de Magalhaes) gets credit as the first to circle the globe. He made it as far as the

Philippines, and as Magellan may have earlier sailed that far east with Portuguese

expeditions, you could say he personally sailed around the world. Technically, his

ship’s master (like a chief petty officer on a modern ship) Juan Sebastian del Cano

(or de Elcano) was the first commander to successfully circumnavigate the globe,

arriving home in Spain in 1522. He took command of the expedition after

Philippine natives killed Magellan.

The expedition’s success gave Europeans proof that the Americas were more than just

an unexplored part of Asia. The vast ocean to the west of the New World confirmed

that it really was a new world — to Europeans, anyway. Further, Magellan proved it

was possible to get at Asia from either direction. In 1522, when his one remaining ship

and its few sick, emaciated sailors returned to Spain, Asia was still the prize that

European traders and their monarchs coveted.

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