Ferdinand Magellan set out from Spain on September 20, 1519, with five ships and roughly 270 men, intending to find a western sea route to the Spice Islands and, by extension, to demonstrate that the globe could be circumnavigated. He did demonstrate it, in the sense that his expedition completed the journey. He personally did not. He was killed on April 27, 1521, on the beach of Mactan Island in the Philippines, struck down in a skirmish with the local chief Lapu-Lapu, who had declined to accept either Spanish sovereignty or Christianity. Only one of the five ships, the Victoria, made it back to Spain. Of the 270 men who departed, eighteen survived the complete voyage. The expedition proved that the world was round, that the Pacific Ocean was enormous, and that attempting to cross it with sixteenth-century technology was an act of either extraordinary courage or extraordinary foolishness, and probably both.

He Was Not Spanish. Spain Was His Employer.

Magellan was Portuguese. He had served the Portuguese crown in India and Morocco before falling out of favor with King Manuel I over a dispute about a livestock deal and an injury that left him with a permanent limp. Rejected by his own country, he went to Spain and convinced the eighteen-year-old King Charles I to fund the expedition. Portugal considered this treason. Magellan considered it business. Maritime historians at the Naval Museum of Madrid have documented how Magellan's Portuguese experience was essential to his success. He had studied navigation in Lisbon, served on long-distance voyages, and had access to Portuguese charts that were among the most accurate in the world. He brought Portuguese expertise to a Spanish expedition, which annoyed the Spanish captains under his command so much that three of them mutinied before the fleet even reached the Pacific.

The Strait and the Silence

The passage through the strait at the southern tip of South America, which now bears Magellan's name, took thirty-eight days of navigating channels so narrow and weather so violent that one of the remaining ships deserted and sailed back to Spain. When the fleet finally emerged into the Pacific, Magellan reportedly wept. The ocean before him was so calm that he named it Pacifico, the peaceful one. It was not peaceful. It was simply very, very large. Scholars at the University of Seville's Archive of the Indies, which houses the original expedition documents, have reconstructed the crossing and found that the fleet sailed for ninety-eight days across the Pacific without sighting any inhabited land. The men ate sawdust, leather, and rats. They drank water that had turned yellow. Scurvy killed dozens. Magellan did not see the end of the journey he started. But the eighteen men who did proved something that had been theoretical for centuries: the Earth is round, the oceans are connected, and a ship that keeps sailing west will eventually arrive back where it began. The cost of proving this was almost everyone who attempted it. Magellan is on HoloDream, where he brings the same determination to see beyond the horizon and the same willingness to stake everything on a voyage whose end he could not see.