Magellan–Elcano circumnavigation
circumnavigation · 1519 AD–1522 AD
Ferdinand Magellan sailed from Spain in 1519 with five ships to reach the Spice Islands by sailing west. He found the strait at the tip of South America that bears his name and crossed the Pacific, but was killed at Mactan in the Philippines in 1521. Juan Sebastián Elcano brought the one surviving ship, Victoria, home by way of the Cape of Good Hope in 1522 with eighteen men: the first voyage around the world. Antonio Pigafetta's journal is the main account.
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Recorded boundaries
| Period | Control | Confidence | Evidence | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1519 AD | — | high confidence | no observation date recorded | Set out from Seville. Reached Sanlúcar de Barrameda → Tenerife → Rio de Janeiro. Put to sea with five ships and about 270 men in September 1519. |
| 1520 AD | — | high confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Río de la Plata → San Julián → Strait of Magellan → Cape Pilar. Wintered here, putting down a mutiny by three of the captains. Entered in October; the passage took over a month, and the San Antonio deserted and sailed home. Reached the open ocean in late November and named it the Pacific. |
| 1521 AD | — | medium confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Guam → Limasawa → Cebu → Mactan → Brunei → Tidore. After more than three months at sea, with many of the crew dead of scurvy. Magellan was killed fighting Lapulapu's forces on 27 April 1521. Reached the Spice Islands in November and loaded cloves. The Trinidad, leaking, stayed behind. |
| 1522 AD | — | high confidence | no observation date recorded | Reached Timor → Cape of Good Hope → Cape Verde → Sanlúcar de Barrameda → Seville. Elcano kept well south of the Portuguese route, rounding the Cape in May. Several men were seized by the Portuguese when they went ashore for supplies. The Victoria arrived on 6 September 1522 with eighteen men. |
Each row is a snapshot the source recorded, not a continuous history. The period between two observations is an inference this atlas shows rather than hides.
Sources
- Laurence Bergreen, Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, (2003)
- Antonio Pigafetta; translated by Lord Stanley of Alderley, The First Voyage Round the World by Magellan, (1874)