Magellan-Elcano Expedition (1519-1522): First Circumnavigation

The Magellan-Elcano expedition (1519-1522) was the first voyage to sail all the way around the Earth. Sent by the Spanish crown to reach the Spice Islands by a western route, the fleet of five ships found a passage through South America, crossed the vast Pacific Ocean and reached the Philippines, where its commander Ferdinand Magellan was killed. Under Juan Sebastián Elcano, a single ship, the Victoria, returned to Spain in September 1522 with just 18 survivors, proving that the world’s oceans were connected and far larger than Europeans had believed.

Background: the race for the Spice Islands

In the early 16th century the most valuable goods in European trade were spices such as cloves, nutmeg and pepper. Cloves grew only on a few small islands in the Moluccas (Maluku, in today’s Indonesia). After Vasco da Gama’s voyage to India, Portugal controlled the eastern sea route to Asia around Africa, and in 1511 it captured Malacca, the key port on the way to the Moluccas.

Spain and Portugal had divided the newly explored world between them in the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, along a line in the Atlantic. Nobody could yet measure longitude accurately, so it was unclear on which side of the matching line on the other side of the globe the Spice Islands lay. If Spain could reach them by sailing west, it could claim them.

Ferdinand Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães in Portuguese) was a Portuguese nobleman and experienced soldier who had served in India and at the conquest of Malacca. After falling out with King Manuel I of Portugal, he moved to Seville and offered his plan to the young King Charles I of Spain, soon to be Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. In March 1518 the crown signed a contract with Magellan and his partner, the cosmographer Rui Faleiro, to find a western route to the Moluccas.

The fleet and its crew

Magellan’s fleet was the Armada de Molucca. It consisted of five ships: the Trinidad (Magellan’s flagship), the San Antonio, the Concepción, the Victoria and the small Santiago. Estimates of the crew vary between about 240 and 270 men, most often given as around 270. They came from Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Greece and other lands, which made relations between the Portuguese commander and his Castilian captains tense from the start.

On board was the young Venetian scholar Antonio Pigafetta, who kept a detailed journal. His account, written up after the return, is the main eyewitness source for the voyage. Also aboard was Enrique, a Malay man whom Magellan had acquired as a slave in Malacca and who served as an interpreter in Southeast Asia.

From Spain to the Pacific

Crossing the Atlantic and the mutiny

The fleet left Seville in August 1519 and put out to sea from Sanlúcar de Barrameda on 20 September 1519. It crossed to Brazil, stopped in the bay of what is now Rio de Janeiro in December, and then worked south along the coast of South America, searching every large inlet for a strait.

As the southern winter approached, Magellan anchored at Puerto San Julián in Patagonia at the end of March 1520. On 1-2 April three captains, led by Gaspar de Quesada, Luis de Mendoza and Juan de Cartagena, rose in mutiny. Magellan regained control by a surprise attack: Mendoza was killed, Quesada was executed, and Cartagena was later marooned on the coast with a priest. Dozens of mutineers, including the Basque officer Juan Sebastián Elcano, were pardoned because the fleet needed their labour. During the winter the Santiago was wrecked while scouting, though its crew survived.

Through the strait

On 21 October 1520 the fleet rounded a cape that Magellan named the Cape of the Eleven Thousand Virgins and entered the passage now called the Strait of Magellan. The channel, about 570 kilometres (350 miles) long, is a maze of narrows, cold winds and side channels. Fires seen on the southern shore gave the land its name, Tierra del Fuego (“land of fire”).

While the ships explored the passage, the crew of the San Antonio, the fleet’s largest supply ship, deserted under the pilot Estêvão Gomes and sailed back to Spain, arriving in May 1521. With the three remaining ships, Magellan emerged into the open ocean on 28 November 1520. Because the waters seemed calm, he called it the Mar Pacífico, the “peaceful sea”.

Across the Pacific to the Philippines

The great ocean

Nobody in Europe knew how wide the Pacific was. The crossing took more than three months, during which the crews saw almost no inhabited land. Food ran out and the water turned foul. Pigafetta described men eating biscuit crumbs full of worms, sawdust and the leather that protected the rigging, and scurvy killed many of them.

On 6 March 1521 the ships reached Guam in the Mariana Islands, where they took on fresh food after a violent clash with the local Chamorro people. On 16 March they sighted the islands of the Philippines. At Limasawa, on 31 March 1521, the expedition held what is remembered as the first Christian Mass in the Philippines. Enrique could make himself understood in Malay to local traders, which showed that the fleet had reached the edge of a world already linked to the Asian trading network.

Death of Magellan

At Cebu, Magellan formed an alliance with the local ruler, Rajah Humabon, who was baptised along with hundreds of his people. Magellan then tried to force neighbouring chiefs to accept Humabon’s authority and the Spanish king. When Lapulapu, a chief on the small island of Mactan, refused, Magellan led a small force against him.

At the Battle of Mactan on 27 April 1521, about 50 Europeans waded ashore against a much larger force of Mactan warriors. The ships could not come close because of the reefs. Magellan was wounded and killed in the shallows together with several of his men. Days later, on 1 May, Humabon turned on the Europeans at a banquet and killed more than 20 of them, including the newly chosen commanders Duarte Barbosa and João Serrão.

Elcano and the return of the Victoria

Too few men remained to sail three ships, so the Concepción was burned near Bohol. The Trinidad and Victoria wandered through the islands, under a series of commanders, before reaching Tidore in the Moluccas on 8 November 1521, where they loaded cloves. The Trinidad was leaking badly and stayed behind for repairs; she later tried to return across the Pacific, failed, and her crew was captured by the Portuguese.

Juan Sebastián Elcano took the Victoria west on 21 December 1521 with around 60 men, including some Moluccan islanders. To avoid Portuguese ships he sailed far south across the Indian Ocean and rounded the Cape of Good Hope in May 1522. Starvation and scurvy again killed many. At the Portuguese Cape Verde Islands in July, 13 men sent ashore to buy food were arrested. On the same stop the crew discovered that their careful log was one day behind the date on land: by sailing westward around the world, they had “lost” a day.

On 6 September 1522 the battered Victoria reached Sanlúcar de Barrameda with 18 European survivors, and on 8 September she arrived in Seville. The cargo of cloves was worth enough to cover the cost of the whole expedition.

Key people

• Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480-1521): Portuguese navigator in Spanish service who planned and led the expedition, found the strait and crossed the Pacific, but died at Mactan.
• Juan Sebastián Elcano (c. 1486/87-1526): Basque navigator from Getaria who joined the mutiny of 1520, was pardoned and later commanded the Victoria on the return to Spain. He died in the Pacific in 1526 during a second expedition.
• Antonio Pigafetta (c. 1491-c. 1531): Venetian chronicler whose journal is the fullest record of the voyage.
• Charles V (1500-1558): King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, who sponsored the expedition and rewarded Elcano with a coat of arms showing a globe and the motto “Primus circumdedisti me” (“You were the first to sail around me”).
• Lapulapu: Chief of Mactan, honoured today in the Philippines as the first local leader to resist European conquest.

Consequences and legacy

The voyage proved that a ship could sail around the world and that the Americas were a separate landmass from Asia. It revealed the enormous size of the Pacific and gave Europeans a far more accurate sense of the planet’s dimensions.

In practical terms, the western route was too long and dangerous to compete with Portugal’s route around Africa. Spain and Portugal argued over the Moluccas for years until the Treaty of Zaragoza of 1529, in which Charles V gave up his claim in return for 350,000 ducats. Spain kept an interest in the Philippines, however, which it colonised from 1565 onwards.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Magellan sailed around the world. He completed only part of the journey, since he died in the Philippines. Earlier, though, he had sailed east to Malacca, so his personal travels covered most of the globe.
• Myth: The voyage proved the Earth was round. Educated Europeans had known the Earth was a sphere since ancient times. The voyage showed instead how large it was and how the oceans connected.
• Debate: Was Enrique the first person to circle the globe? Some writers argue that Magellan’s interpreter, if he came from the Philippines region, completed a circle when the fleet arrived there. His origins are uncertain, and historians treat the claim as possible but unproven.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1518, 22 March: Charles I of Spain signs the contract for Magellan’s expedition.
• 1519, 20 September: The fleet of five ships sails from Sanlúcar de Barrameda.
• 1520, 1-2 April: Mutiny at Puerto San Julián is put down.
• 1520, 21 October: The fleet enters the Strait of Magellan.
• 1520, 28 November: The remaining three ships reach the Pacific Ocean.
• 1521, 6 March: The ships reach Guam after crossing the Pacific.
• 1521, 27 April: Magellan is killed at the Battle of Mactan.
• 1521, 8 November: The Trinidad and Victoria reach Tidore in the Moluccas.
• 1521, 21 December: Elcano sails west from the Moluccas in the Victoria.
• 1522, 6 September: The Victoria returns to Sanlúcar de Barrameda with 18 survivors.

Why it matters

The Magellan-Elcano expedition turned the idea of a single, connected world ocean into proven fact. At a terrible human cost, it linked Europe, the Americas and Asia in one continuous route, opened the Pacific to European navigation and began the long Spanish presence in the Philippines.