Ferdinand Magellan was a sea explorer from Portugal. He is famous because during the time that he was in the service of the Spanish royal family, he became the first person to sail a ship across the Pacific Ocean. In fact, his expedition was the first one to sail around the Earth. Unfortunately, Magellan did not quite make it around the Earth, since he had died in a battle in the Philippines not long before his crew finished their journey. Despite his untimely death, we still consider Ferdinand Magellan as the first man in history to sail around the planet.
Magellan's History
Magellan was the son of a prominent Portuguese family, and because of his association went to work in the Queen's home. When he was 25, Magellan was sent to India with a Portuguese diplomat. This was Magellan's first sea journey, and it clearly made an impression. While in India, Magellan was involved in a battle and when he went home, because of some mistakes, he was asked to leave the service of the Queen of Portugal.
Soon after, Magellan was offered a job as a sailor on a Portuguese ship, but he had other plans. He knew about Christopher Columbus' plan to find a new way to get to the East Indies and Magellan wanted to be a part of making history. He created a plan for how he would help Portugal's King Manuel I have access to the Spice Islands. King Manuel I rejected Magellan's plan. Magellan did not give up. He traveled to Spain to present his plan to the royal family there. Soon he stood in front of King Charles V of Spain, presenting his plan.
Spain, having had success with Christopher Columbus, decided to pay for Magellan's expedition. Magellan immediately began to prepare for his journey.
The Journey
In early August of 1519, Magellan left Seville, Spain with his crew. King Charles had made Magellan an admiral, which is a very senior officer on the sea. Magellan had five ships under his command: Trinidad, San Antonio, Concepcion, Victoria and Santiago. He also had a total crew of 237 men on the five ships. Magellan and his five ships and crew left Seville, sailed down a river and, after stopping for five weeks to load up more supplies, sailed away from Spain on their historic journey.
Magellan's journey almost ended right away, when King Manuel of Portugal sent ships to stop him, but he was able to get away. Their first stops were at the Canary Islands and then Cape Verde. Next, Magellan's ships set sail across the Atlantic Ocean, heading for Brazil. On November 27 of that year, sailing south, they crossed the equator. Nearly two weeks later, they saw South America.
The expedition stopped at a place near today's Rio de Janeiro to prepare more supplies and put them on their ships. After weather caused a short delay, the ships sailed south along the coast of South America's east coast. They were looking for a narrow body of water that Magellan believed would allow his ships to cross from the Atlantic to the ocean on the west side of South America. After a couple of months of searching, Magellan and his crew established a small town on the southeastern coast of South America, a place they called Puerto San Julian. Three days after settling the area, on April 2 of 1520, two of the captains of Magellan's five ships decided to fight against him for control of the expedition.
The two captains lost, mainly because the majority of the 270 men were still loyal to Magellan. The captains and their supporters were either executed or left behind when Magellan left the settlement to continue his journey. Soon after, the Santiago was destroyed by a sudden storm, although the men on the ship survived and rejoined Magellan's expedition quickly.
On October 21, 1520, Magellan's ships found the narrow body of water they were looking for. Before the four ships could make it through to the other side of South America, the captain of the San Antonio gave up and sailed his ship back toward Spain. However, on November 28, Magellan and his three final ships made it; they had reached the western coast of South America and were the first Europeans to do so. Ferdinand Magellan named the ocean the Mar Pacifico, which means the Pacific Ocean.
Within a few months, Magellan and his crew became the first Europeans to sail to the Philippines. While there Magellan became involved in the violent battles between different leaders. During a battle in Mactan, Magellan was killed. The survivors of the battles and journey escaped as quickly as they could, but there were not many of them left. In fact, they didn't have enough people to sail all three ships home to Spain, so they burned Concepcion and sailed Trinidad and Victoria west, toward home.
During the journey home, Trinidad developed problems, so some sailors stayed with it to repair it while Victoria continued. Trinidad was later destroyed. Victoria arrived in Spain on September 6, 1522, almost three years exactly after leaving. Of the 237 men who had begun the journey, only 18 had made it around the world. Over the next few years, seventeen more sailors who had been captured or survived when their ships had been destroyed arrived in Spain.
Ferdinand Magellan had not planned to sail around the world; he had wanted to find a quicker way to the Spice Islands, which were south of East Asia. However, because his expedition made it all the way around the world, his name will be remembered for years to come.