Ferdinand Magellan

Ferdinand Magellan (or ; , ; , ; 1480 – 27 April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer best known for having planned and led the 1519 Spanish expedition to the East Indies across the Pacific Ocean to open a maritime trade route, during which he discovered the interoceanic passage thereafter bearing his name and achieved the first European navigation to Asia via the Pacific.
During this voyage, Magellan was killed in the Battle of Mactan, Mactan Island, now Province of Cebu, Cebu group of islands in 1521 in the present-day Philippines, after running into resistance from the indigenous population led by Lapulapu, who consequently became a Philippine national symbol of resistance to colonialism. After Magellan's death, Juan Sebastián Elcano took the lead of the expedition, and with its few other surviving members in one of the two remaining ships, completed the first circumnavigation of Earth when they returned to Spain in 1522.
Born 1480 into a family of minor Portuguese nobility, Magellan became a skilled sailor and naval officer in service of the Portuguese Crown in Asia. King Manuel refused to support Magellan's plan to reach the Maluku Islands (the "Spice Islands") by sailing westwards around the American continent. Magellan left Portugal and proposed the same expedition to King Charles I of Spain, who accepted it. In Seville he married, fathered two children, and organised the expedition. For his allegiance to the Hispanic Monarchy, in 1518, Magellan was appointed an admiral of the Spanish fleet and given command of the expedition – the five-ship Armada of Molucca. He was also made Commander of the Order of Santiago, one of the highest military ranks of the Spanish Empire.
Granted special powers and privileges by the King, he led the Armada from Sanlucar de Barrameda southwest across the Atlantic Ocean, to the eastern coast of South America, and down to Patagonia. Despite a series of storms and mutinies, the expedition successfully passed through the Strait of Magellan (as it is now named) into the Mar del Sur, which Magellan renamed the Mar Pacifico (the modern Pacific Ocean). The expedition reached Guam and, shortly after, the Philippine islands. There Magellan was killed in the Battle of Mactan in April 1521. Under the command of captain Juan Sebastian Elcano, the expedition later reached the Spice Islands. To navigate back to Spain and avoid seizure by the Portuguese, the expedition's two remaining ships split, one attempting, unsuccessfully, to reach New Spain by sailing eastwards across the Pacific, while the other, commanded by Elcano, sailed westwards via the Indian Ocean and up the Atlantic coast of Africa, finally arriving at the expedition's port of departure and thereby accomplishing the first complete circuit of the globe.
While in the Kingdom of Portugal's service, Magellan had already reached the Malay Archipelago in Southeast Asia on previous voyages traveling east (from 1505 to 1511–1512). By visiting this area again but now traveling west, Magellan achieved a nearly complete personal circumnavigation of the globe for the first time in history.
Early life and travels
Magellan was born in northern Portugal 1480. His father, Pedro de Magalhães, was a minor member of Portuguese nobility and mayor of the town. His mother was Alda de Mezquita. Magellan's siblings included Diego de Sosa and Isabel Magellan. He was brought up as a page of Queen Eleanor, consort of King John II. In 1495 he entered the service of Manuel I, John's successor.
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, and the Battle of Diu in 1509.
He later sailed under Diogo Lopes de Sequeira in the first Portuguese embassy to Malacca, with Francisco Serrão, his friend and possibly cousin. In September, after arriving at Malacca, the expedition fell victim to a conspiracy and ended in retreat. Magellan had a crucial role, warning Sequeira and risking his life to rescue Francisco Serrão and others who had landed.
In 1511, under the new governor Afonso de Albuquerque, Magellan and Serrão participated in the conquest of Malacca. After the conquest their ways parted: Magellan was promoted, with a rich plunder. In the company of a Malay he had indentured and baptized, Enrique of Malacca, he returned to Portugal in 1512 or 1513. Serrão departed in the first expedition sent to find the "Spice Islands" in the Moluccas, where he remained. He married a woman from Amboina and became a military advisor to the Sultan of Ternate, Bayan Sirrullah. His letters to Magellan later proved decisive, giving information about the spice-producing territories.
After taking a leave without permission, Magellan fell out of favour. Serving in Morocco, he was wounded, resulting in a permanent limp. He was accused of trading illegally with the Moors. The accusations were proven false, but he received no further offers of employment after 15 May 1514. Later in 1515, he was offered employment as a crew member on a Portuguese ship, but rejected this. In 1517, after a quarrel with Manuel I of Portugal, who denied his persistent requests to lead an expedition to reach the Spice Islands from the east (i.e., while sailing westwards, thus avoiding the need to sail around the tip of Africa), he left for Spain. In Seville he befriended his countryman Diogo Barbosa and soon married the daughter of Diogo's second wife, Maria Caldera Beatriz Barbosa. They had two children: Rodrigo de Magallanes and Carlos de Magallanes, both of whom died at a young age. His wife died in Seville around 1521.
Meanwhile, Magellan devoted himself to studying the most recent charts, investigating, in partnership with cosmographer Rui Faleiro, a gateway from the Atlantic to the South Pacific and the possibility that the Moluccas were Spanish under the demarcations of the Treaty of Tordesillas.
Voyage of circumnavigation
Background and preparations
After having his proposed expeditions to the Spice Islandsthe Moluccas beside New Guinearepeatedly rejected by King Manuel I of Portugal, Magellan proposed his project to Charles I, the young king of Spain (later emperor CharlesV of the Holy Roman Empire) and became one of his subjects and navigators. Under the terms of the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, Portugal was to control the eastern routes to Asia that went around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. Magellan instead proposed to seek a southwestern passage around South America to reach the Spice Islands by a western route, a feat never before accomplished. Bergreen further states that Magellan claimed to Charles that his Malaccan or Sumatran slave Enrique had been a native of the Spice Islands and used Enrique and letters from Serrão to "prove" that the islands were so far east that they would fall within the Spanish sphere of influence if the world were truly to be divided in half. (The details of the eastern division implicit in the Tordesillas treaty would later be formalized in the 1529 Treaty of Zaragoza.)
King Manuel saw all of this as an insult and did everything in his power to disrupt Magellan's arrangements for the voyage. The Portuguese king allegedly ordered that Magellan's properties be vandalized as it was the coat of arms of the Magellan displayed at the family house's façade in Sabrosa, his home town, and may have even requested the assassination of the navigator. When Magellan eventually sailed to the open seas in August 1519, a Portuguese fleet was sent after him, though it failed to capture him.
Magellan's fleet consisted of five ships carrying supplies for two years of travel. The crew consisted of about 270 men of different origins, though the numbers may vary downwards among scholars based on contradicting data from the many documents available. About 60 percent of the crew were Spaniards from virtually all regions of Castile. Portuguese and Italian followed with 28 and 27 seamen respectively, while mariners from France (15), Greece (8), Flanders (5), Germany (3), Ireland (2), England and Malaysia (one each) and other people of unidentified origin completed the crew.
Voyage
The fleet left Spain on 20 September 1519, sailing west across the Atlantic toward South America. In December, they made landfall at Rio de Janeiro. From there, they sailed south along the coast, searching for a way through or around the continent. 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 were 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 sighted the island of Samar ("Zamal") in the eastern Philippine Islands. They weighed anchor in the small (then uninhabited) island of Homonhon ("Humunu"), where they would remain for a week while their sick crew members recuperated. Magellan befriended the tattooed locals of the neighboring island of Suluan ("Zuluan") and traded goods and supplies and learned of the names of neighboring islands and local customs.
After resting and resupplying, Magellan sailed on deeper into the Visayan Islands. On 28 March, they anchored off the island of Limasawa ("Mazaua") where they encountered a small outrigger boat ("boloto"). After talking with the crew of the boat via Enrique of Malacca (Magellan's slave-interpreter who was originally from Sumatra), they were met by the two large balangay warships ("balanghai") of Rajah Kulambo ("Colambu") of Butuan, and one of his sons. They went ashore to Limasawa where they met Kulambo's brother, another leader, Rajah Siawi ("Siaui") of Surigao ("Calagan"). The rulers were on a hunting expedition on Limasawa. They received Magellan as their guest and told him of their customs and of the regions they controlled in northeastern Mindanao. The tattooed rulers and the locals also wore and used a great amount of golden jewelry and golden artifacts, which piqued Magellan's interest. On 31 March, Magellan's crew held the first Mass in the Philippines, planting a cross on the island's highest hill. Before leaving, Magellan asked the rulers for the next nearest trading ports. They recommended he visit the Rajahnate of Cebu ("Zubu"), because it was the largest. They set off for Cebu, accompanied by the balangays of Rajah Kulambo and reached its port on 7 April.
Magellan met with the King of Cebu, Rajah Humabon, who asked them for tribute as a trade, thinking they were traders bartering with them. Magellan and his men insisted that they did not need to pay tribute as they were sent by the king of Spain, "the most powerful king in the world", and that they were willing to give peace to them if they wanted peace and war if they wanted war. Humabon then decided not to ask for any more tribute and welcomed them instead to the Kingdom of Cebu (Sugbo). To mark the arrival of Christianity in the Far East, Magellan then planted a Cross on the shorelines of the kingdom. Magellan set about converting the locals, including the king and his wife, Queen Humamay, to Christianity. Rajah Humabon was renamed "Carlos" and Queen Humamay was renamed "Juana" after the king and queen of Spain. After her baptism, the queen asked the Spaniards for the image of the Child Jesus (Santo Niño), which she was drawn to, and begged them for the image in contrition, amidst her tears. Magellan then gave the image of the Child Jesus, along with an image of the Virgin Mary, and a small cross to the queen as a gesture of goodwill for accepting the new faith. The king then had a Blood Compact with Magellan in order to cement the allegiance of the Spaniards and the Cebuanos. The king then told the Spaniards to go to the island of Mactan to kill his enemy Lapulapu.
The Spaniards went to the island of Mactan just as Rajah Humabon told them to. However, they did not initially come by force and wanted to Christianize them. Unlike the people of Cebu who accepted the new religion readily, the King of Mactan, Datu Lapulapu, and the rest of 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 and his men.
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, who had poisoned many Spanish soldiers on a banquet ruse on the night after the battle for being easily defeated by Lapulapu and the people of Mactan and failing to kill Lapulapu) 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, captained by Juan Sebastián Elcano, finally returned to Spain by 6 September 1522, completing the circumnavigation. Of the 270 men who left with the expedition, only 18 or 19 survivors returned.
Death
After several weeks in the Philippines, Magellan had converted as many as 2,200 locals to Christianity, including Rajah Humabon of Cebu and most leaders of the islands around Cebu. However, Lapulapu, the leader of Mactan, resisted conversion. In order to gain the trust of Rajah Humabon, Magellan sailed to Mactan with a small force on the morning of 27 April 1521. During the resulting battle against Lapulapu's troops, Magellan was struck by a "bamboo" spear (bangkaw, which are actually metal-tipped fire-hardened rattan), and later surrounded and finished off with other weapons.
Antonio Pigafetta and Ginés de Mafra provided written documents of the events culminating in Magellan's death:
Reputation following circumnavigation
In the immediate aftermath of the circumnavigation, few celebrated Magellan for his accomplishments, and he was widely discredited and reviled in Spain and his native Portugal. In Portugal, some regarded Magellan as a traitor for having sailed for Spain. In Spain, Magellan's reputation suffered due to the largely unflattering accounts of his actions given by the survivors of the expedition.
The first news of the expedition came from the crew of the San Antonio, led by Estêvão Gomes, which deserted the fleet in the Strait of Magellan and returned to Seville 6 May 1521. The deserters were put on trial, but eventually exonerated after producing a distorted version of the mutiny at Saint Julian, and depicting Magellan as disloyal to the king. The expedition was assumed to have perished. The Casa de Contratación withheld Magellan's salary from his wife, Beatriz, "considering the outcome of the voyage", and she was placed under house arrest with their young son on the orders of Archbishop Fonseca.
The 18 survivors who eventually returned aboard the Victoria in September 1522 were also largely unfavourable to Magellan. Many, including the captain, Juan Sebastián Elcano, had participated in the mutiny at Saint Julian. On the ship's return, Charles summoned Elcano to Valladolid, inviting him to bring two guests. He brought sailors Francisco Albo and Hernándo de Bustamante, pointedly not including Antonio Pigafetta, the expedition's chronicler. Under questioning by Valladolid's mayor, the men claimed that Magellan refused to follow the king's orders (and gave this as the cause for the mutiny at Saint Julian), and that he unfairly favoured his relatives among the crew, and disfavoured the Spanish captains.
One of the few survivors loyal to Magellan was Antonio Pigafetta. Though not invited to testify with Elcano, Pigafetta made his own way to Valladolid and presented Charles with a hand-written copy of his notes from the journey. He would later travel through Europe giving copies to other royals including John III of Portugal, Francis I of France, and Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam. After returning to his home of Venice, Pigafetta published his diary (as Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo) around 1524. Scholars have come to view Pigafetta's diary as the most thorough and reliable account of the circumnavigation, and its publication helped to eventually counter the misinformation spread by Elcano and the other surviving mutineers. In an often-cited passage following his description of Magellan's death in the Battle of Mactan, Pigafetta eulogizes the captain-general:
Magellan's main virtues were courage and perseverance, in even the most difficult situations; for example he bore hunger and fatigue better than all the rest of us. He was a magnificent practical seaman, who understood navigation better than all his pilots. The best proof of his genius is that he circumnavigated the world, none having preceded him.
Legacy
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 sometimes referred to as the Sea of Magellan, in his honor, until the eighteenth century), and lends his name to the Strait of Magellan. His name has also since been applied to a variety of other entities, including the Magellanic Clouds (two dwarf galaxies visible in the night sky of the southern hemisphere), Project Magellan (a Cold War-era US Navy project to circumnavigate the world by submarine), and NASA's Magellan spacecraft.
Quincentenary
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 began it, Portugal wanted to recognize a Portuguese explorer, and Spain feared Basque nationalism. In 2019, the 500th anniversary of the voyage, Spain and Magellan's native Portugal submitted a new joint application to UNESCO to honour the circumnavigation route.
Commemorations of the circumnavigation include:
An exhibition titled "The Longest Journey: the first circumnavigation" was opened at the General Archive of the Indies in Seville by the King and Queen of Spain. It was scheduled to be transferred to the San Telmo Museum in San Sebastian in 2020.
An exhibition entitled Pigafetta: cronista de la primera vuelta al mundo Magallanes Elcano opened at the library of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation in Madrid. It gave prominence to Pigafetta, the chronicler of the expedition.
See also
List of things named after Ferdinand Magellan
Age of Discovery
Chronology of European exploration of Asia
History of the Philippines
Military history of the Philippines
Portuguese Empire
Spanish Empire
Notes
References
Sources
Online sources
Further reading
Primary sources
(orig. Primer viaje en torno del globo Retrieved on 2009-04-08)
Magellan (Francis Guillemard, Antonio Pigafetta, Francisco Albo, Gaspar Correa) [2008] Viartis
Maximilianus Transylvanus, De Moluccis insulis, 1523, 1542
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
Secondary sources
External links
Ferdinand Magellan on history.com
PBS Secrets of the Dead: Magellan's Crossing
Magellan's untimely demise on Cebu in the Philippines from History House
Expedición Magallanes – Juan Sebastian Elcano
Encyclopædia Britannica Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan (Bibliotheca Augustana)
1480 births
1521 deaths
15th-century Portuguese people
16th-century Portuguese people
15th-century Roman Catholics
16th-century Roman Catholics
16th-century explorers
16th century in the Spanish East Indies
Circumnavigators of the globe
Explorers of Chile
Magellan expedition
Maritime history of Portugal
People from Sabrosa
People from the Spanish colonial Philippines
Portuguese explorers of the Pacific
Portuguese military personnel killed in action
Portuguese Roman Catholics