The Magellan–Elcano expedition and the first voyage around the world

Five ships left Spain in September 1519. Almost three years later, one came back, with 18 men on board. Ferdinand Magellan was not among them; he had been killed in the Philippines in 1521. The ship that finished the first known voyage around the world, the Victoria, was commanded at the end by the Basque navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano. That is why historians increasingly call it the Magellan–Elcano expedition.

Why go west?

In the early 1500s, spices such as cloves and nutmeg sold for very high prices in Europe. Cloves grew in only a few places, chiefly the Moluccas, islands in what is now Indonesia, known in Europe as the Spice Islands.

Portugal already reached Asia by sailing east around Africa. In the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), Spain and Portugal had agreed to split newly found lands along a north–south line in the Atlantic, but nobody knew where that line would fall on the far side of the world. Magellan, a Portuguese sailor who had served in Asia, argued that the Spice Islands could be reached by sailing west, and that they might lie in Spain's half. The Portuguese king turned him down; the young King Charles I of Spain agreed to back him.

Five ships, five fates

The fleet left Sanlúcar de Barrameda, in southern Spain, on 20 September 1519, with a crew usually estimated at roughly 240 to 270 men from many countries. Historians do not agree on an exact figure.

The voyage, stage by stage

Atlantic and Patagonia, 1519–1520. The fleet crossed to Brazil, then worked south along the coast of South America looking for a way through the continent. They spent the southern winter at a bay in Patagonia called San Julián, where several captains mutinied. Magellan put the mutiny down harshly: one leader was killed during it, another was executed, and a third was later left behind on the coast.

The strait, October–November 1520. Near the southern tip of the continent they found a narrow, winding channel between the mainland and Tierra del Fuego, now called the Strait of Magellan. Getting through took more than a month. During it, the San Antonio slipped away and turned for home, carrying a large share of the fleet's supplies. The Indigenous peoples of the region had, of course, lived there for thousands of years.

The Pacific, November 1520 – March 1521. The three remaining ships came out into an ocean so calm that Magellan called it the Mar Pacífico, the peaceful sea. Nobody aboard knew how wide it was, and Magellan had badly underestimated it. The crossing took more than three months with almost no landfall. Food rotted, water went foul, and many men suffered from scurvy, a disease caused by lack of vitamin C. Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian who kept a detailed journal, recorded men eating sawdust and leather from the rigging. They reached Guam in March 1521 and then the Philippines.

Mactan, April 1521. In the Philippines, Magellan allied himself with one local ruler and tried to force others to accept that ruler's authority, and Spain's. On 27 April 1521 he led an attack on the island of Mactan and was killed in the fighting by warriors under the chief Lapulapu, who is honoured today as a national hero in the Philippines.

Spice Islands and home, 1521–1522. With too few men for three ships, the crew burned the Concepción. The Trinidad and Victoria reached the Moluccas in November 1521 and loaded cloves. The leaking Trinidad stayed for repairs, then tried to sail east across the Pacific and was captured by the Portuguese. Elcano took the Victoria west across the Indian Ocean and round the Cape of Good Hope, keeping clear of Portuguese ports where he could. On 6 September 1522 she reached Sanlúcar de Barrameda. A few crew members who had been captured on the way home returned to Spain later.

The missing day

When the Victoria called at the Cape Verde Islands on the way home, the crew discovered that their carefully kept log was one day behind the date ashore. Nobody had miscounted. By sailing westwards all the way round the world, following the Sun, they had seen one fewer sunrise than people who stayed in one place. It was the first recorded meeting with the problem that the International Date Line now deals with.

Worked example: how many days were they away?

The Victoria left on 20 September 1519 and returned on 6 September 1522.

1. 20 September 1519 to 20 September 1522 is exactly three years.
2. Those three years include February 1520, a leap year, so they contain 366 + 365 + 365 = 1,096 days.
3. The ship arrived 14 days before 20 September, so 1,096 − 14 = 1,082 days.

Reading the story carefully

This voyage is often told as a simple adventure. A closer look raises harder questions.

• Who went round first? Elcano and the Victoria's survivors completed the first known circumnavigation. Some historians suggest that Magellan's servant Enrique, who came from Southeast Asia and had been taken to Europe years earlier, may have been the first person to travel all the way round. The evidence is uncertain.
• "Proving the Earth was round." Educated Europeans already knew the Earth was a sphere. The real unknowns were its size and the width of the Pacific.
• The cost. The great majority of those who set out never came home.
• The people they met. The islands the fleet reached had their own rulers, trade and history, and the voyage involved violence against their inhabitants. Their side is part of the story too.
• Navigation. Latitude could be measured from the Sun and stars; longitude was largely guesswork, for reasons explained in how latitude and longitude work. The ships steered with magnetic compasses marked with 32 points.

Pigafetta was one of the 18 survivors, and his journal is the main source historians use. Elcano was honoured by the king, joined a second Spanish expedition to the Spice Islands, and died in the Pacific in 1526. The next expedition generally credited with sailing round the world was led by the English captain Francis Drake, between 1577 and 1580.

Activity: a ship's log

Imagine you keep the log on the Victoria. Write five short, dated entries for:

1. leaving Sanlúcar de Barrameda
2. entering the strait
3. the first week on the Pacific
4. news of Magellan's death
5. the discovery of the "missing day"

Give each entry a date, a rough position (for example "off the coast of Patagonia") and one fact from this article. Then underline every sentence that is your opinion rather than a fact.

Four centuries later, explorers were still racing to be first, this time across the ice: see the race to the South Pole.

Sources and further reading

• Ferdinand Magellan – Britannica – a full biography, covering the voyage, the strait and his death at Mactan.
• Ferdinand Magellan – Royal Museums Greenwich – a short account of Magellan and the expedition from the National Maritime Museum.

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