Fernão de Magalhães later known as Fernando de Magallanes, better known as Ferdinand Magellan, is a rather famous guy. In fact he’s really only famous for one thing in particular. I mean, there is a strait named after him, the Strait of Magellan which passes through the southern tip of South America, but the real reason he’s famous is for being the first person to circumnavigate the globe, to sail all the way around the Earth, a full circle. That really is Magellan’s claim to fame. Except for one thing. He never even did that. Did you know that, despite claiming all the credit posthumously, Magellan only made it about three quarters of the way around the world? One of his five ships did return to Spain after a mostly disastrous voyage but Magellan was no longer on board. So who should really claim the credit? Who was the first person to circumnavigate the Earth? Let’s fix that. 

 

Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. June is ship month I guess, getting real nautical this month, just sort of happened that way. This topic though, Magellan and his famed circumnavigation of the globe, this is like the perfect topic for History Fix. How many of you guys realized he never actually completed the voyage? Never actually made it all the way around? I don’t know how I missed that in all of the history classes I took in high school and college. I mean they really push that misconception on you. Magellan was the first one to circumnavigate the Earth. Um, no he most definitely wasn’t. So let’s set the record straight today. 

 

Also, I’ve completely lost my mind, and I’m testing out a video version of History Fix that is available on YouTube @historyfixpodcast for free for everyone and also at patreon.com/historyfixpodcast for subscribers early and ad free. So, if you’re not watching it right now, it’s basically just my big dumb head talking and I’ll pop up some images from time to time that go along with the story which is pretty cool. So if you think you’d enjoy having the visuals, head on over to YouTube or Patreon to listen and watch. I don’t know how long this will last, we’ll see if I can keep it going. 

 

So who was Magellan? Well he was born into a noble family in Portugal in 1480. So, for some context, Christopher Columbus’ first voyage to the Americas was in 1492, when Magellan was 12 years old. So they are living at the same time but Columbus was just about 30 years older than Magellan. So Magellan was born into a noble family but both of his parents died when he was young. And so he went to serve as a court page in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. During this time, pages were young boys who acted as servants or attendants to nobility or even to knights. They delivered messages, served food, cleaned armor, etc. And Magellan wasn’t a page to just any old Portuguese noble, he was the page to Queen Leonor who was the wife of the King of Portugal, John II. She was also the sister of the king who came after John, King Manuel I. So, these are pretty great connections he’s making even as a young child. 

 

In 1505, when Magellan was 25 years old, so you know he’s sort of moved on from being a page, he’s sort of outgrown that, that’s a little boy thing to do, he enlisted in a Portuguese fleet that was heading to the Indian Ocean, bouncing around the coasts of Africa and India. And the purpose of this mission was to establish a Portuguese presence in the Indian Ocean so that they could use it to travel to the spice islands in the East Indies. These islands were also called the Moluccas and are essentially the eastern part of Indonesia. This is where the good spices are and Europe is like crazy for spices right now. It’s really Spain and Portugal duking it out for the spices at this point. The rest of the European countries are a little behind them when it comes to this whole world domination in search of spices thing. Gotta have those cloves, or whatever, nutmeg, like literally, that’s what all this is about. I’m like, I have had a shaker of nutmeg in my spice cabinet for, I don’t even want to admit how long. I use it once a year, Thanksgiving, when I make pumpkin pie, that’s it. What are y’all doing with all this nutmeg? But, after Christopher Columbus does his thing in the 1490s, please refer to episodes 80 and 81 for more on that, after he sort of stumbles upon the Americas, Spain and Portugal come to a little agreement. Because they both want it, right. They want it all. Doesn’t matter that there’s already whole thriving civilizations there, they want it. And so they argue with each other over who gets it. And they come to an agreement and sign the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. This drew a line, the line of demarcation, north to south through what’s now Brazil, and it said that, as far as future exploration and conquest is concerned, Spain gets everything west of the line and Portugal gets everything east. Like, how brazen was this? Like, yeah you guys get that half of the Earth and we’ll take this half. Um what? What about all of the other people on Earth already in those places? Like, what were they thinking? Also, that doesn’t really work because the Earth is a circle, it’s a sphere so you can’t just be like “you go that what, I’ll go this way” because you're eventually going to meet back up. You’d need another line on the other side of the Earth for this to work. But they’re not thinking clearly, obviously. 

 

So, anyway, this is why Portugal is now terrorizing the Indian Ocean, because Portugal gets to go east and Spain gets to go west. They both want those spices. India, Africa, the Indian Ocean, these all lie between Portugal and their eastward route to the Spice Islands. Now Spain can’t go that way. They got most of the Americas in the deal but they can’t go east. They have to go west if they want to get to the Spice Islands and they honestly have no idea how difficult that is. They’re like “sure, we’ll just pop across South America, easy peezy,” they have no idea that a whole nother ocean, the largest ocean on Earth by a lot, stands in their way. 

 

So right now Magellan is team Portugal, he’s trying to help establish Portugal’s route to the spices. In 1511, he was part of a fleet that conquered Malacca which is in present day Malaysia. Controlling Malacca was a big deal because it meant controlling most of the trade routes in that region. Also while in Malacca, this will matter later, Magellan essentially kidnaps an indigenous Malay man that ends up being called Enrique although something tells me that wasn’t his actual name. He takes Enrique with him back to Portugal and keeps him with him going forward to use as a translator during future voyages to that region. 

 

In 1514 Magellan is injured during a skirmish in Morocco and this injury causes him to walk with a limp for the rest of his life. Sort of laid up back in Portugal, he asks the then king, King Manuel, the brother of the lady he used to page for, he asks him to increase his pension as a reward for having been injured in service to the crown but the king refuses. According to Encyclopedia Britannica quote “unfounded reports of irregular conduct on his part had reached the king: after the siege of Azamor, Magellan was accused of having sold a portion of the war spoils back to the enemy. Refusing Magellan’s request for a reward, Manuel ordered him back to Morocco. Early in 1516 Magellan renewed his petition; the king, refusing once more, told him he might offer his services elsewhere,” end quote. So unfounded accusations, other sources said the king just plain didn’t like Magellan, either way he gave him permission to take his service elsewhere. And so he did. He did offer his services elsewhere. 

 

Magellan went to Spain, much like Christopher Columbus had done when other countries refused to fund his hairbrained scheme. It worked for Columbus and, guess what, it worked for Magellan too. He goes to Spain and he says, you know, “you guys got west in the Treaty of Tordesillas, you have to go west if you want to get to the spice islands. We don’t even know what’s over there, like, at all, but I’m willing to give it a go. Give me some ships and a crew and I will find a westward passage to the spices for you. Patrick J. Kiger writes for History.com quote “In accomplishing that, the expedition would circumnavigate the planet for the first time in human history. It was an audacious plan, one that involved sailing through thousands of miles of uncharted waters and finding a previously undiscovered passage through the Americas from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. But Magellan, who believed that it was God’s will for him to succeed, was confident of success,” end quote. He ends up leaving Spain in September of 1519 with 5 ships and 260 sailors. They sail west towards the Americas in the hopes of finding a passage through that will take them to the East Indies. 

 

But, turns out, Magellan really had no idea where he was going, much like Columbus before him. His understanding of the geography that lay between Spain and the spice islands in the East Indies was very very mistaken. He thought the spice islands were much farther east than they actually were. He had no idea how large the Pacific Ocean was or even that there was a whole ocean between the Americas and the spice islands. For all he knew, the islands he sought were just off the coast of Chile. Kiger writes quote “Magellan told Spanish officials that his plan was to sail along the eastern coast of South America until the land ended, and even showed them a globe to illustrate the route. Though he didn’t know the actual distance, he estimated that the round trip from the Spice Islands would take no more than two years. But Magellan was vague about how he would get past the Americas. According to historian Jerry Brotton’s A History of the World in 12 Maps, a priest and author named Bartolome de las Casas, who witnessed the presentation, asked Magellan, “What will you do if you find no strait to pass into the other sea?” Magellan dodged the question,” end quote. So he’s very much winging this. 

 

Las Casas concerns turn out to be valid. Magellan and his crew, his 5 ships and 260 men do 

have a hard time finding that passage through South America and in the process, they lose one of the ships, the Santiago, which wrecked during a storm and had to be abandoned. So they’ve had a very rough passage across the Atlantic and then they lose a ship, tensions are high. On top of that, this was a pretty rough and tumble crew to begin with. They came from a lot of different countries, spoke all different languages, and many of them disliked Magellan. We know this because of a first hand account written by a guy named Antonio Pigafetta. Pigafetta served during the expedition as Magellan’s assistant and also as a chronicler, documenting the whole thing. Thank you for that dude. He kept a detailed diary which he later published into a book called “Magellan’s Voyage Around the World.” In this he wrote quote “The captains who accompanied him hated him exceedingly… I know not why, unless because he was a Portuguese, and they Spaniards,” end quote. 

 

It takes them about a year after reaching the coast of South America to actually find a passage through. And there is a lot of unrest and outright mutiny going on during this time. First, in December of 1519, soon after reaching South America, an officer on one of the ships called the Victoria, a guy named Antonio Salamon is tried and executed by strangulation for sexually assaulting an apprentice. Then one of the captains on one of the ships named Juan de Cartagena, accuses Magellan of being a Portuguese double agent who is actually trying to sabotage the Spanish mission. This escalates and by April of 1520, Cartagena and others have come up with a plot to kill Magellan. According to Kiger quote “according to an account by Portuguese historian Gaspar Correa, Magellan anticipated their treachery. When they tried to strike, an officer loyal to him pulled a dagger and cut the throat of mutineer Luis de Mendoza, whose corpse was then hung by his feet, “so they might see him from the other ships.”

Magellan captured  the other conspirators, and their punishment was brutal. After one captain was beheaded, his body was drawn and quartered as an example of the price for disloyalty. Cartagena, who had tried to hatch a second plot, was left to starve on a small island off the coast,” end quote. 

 

By November of 1520, Magellan managed to find a way through the bottom tip of South America, a passage that is now called the Strait of Magellan. But there was still a lot of dissent and unrest among the crew. One whole ship, the San Antonio, actually slipped away rather than attempting the crossing through the strait, they were like “peace out” and they turned and headed back to Spain. So one ship wrecked, one abandoned the mission, we’re down to just three ships now, the Victoria, the Trinidad, and the Concepcion. Magellan was on the Trinidad, in case you were curious. They get through the Strait of Magellan and they enter another ocean, an ocean that Magellan names the Pacific Ocean because it seemed so peaceful. Yes, Magellan came up with that name. Now, it might have been peaceful but it was also very very large. Much larger than he had imagined in his wildest dreams. They just kept sailing and sailing and sailing and every single day they are expecting to spot land but they don’t and they don’t and they don’t and it’s just going on forever. They are running out of food, eating very little, they have to ration their water and at one point Magellan gets so frustrated by how inaccurate the maps he’s been using are that he actually throws them overboard. I'm pretty sure he was hangry. The men freak out. He threw the maps overboard! But according to historian Laurence Bergreen, it ended up being for the better. Without the maps, Magellan was forced to navigate by reading the signs of the ocean, the currents, the winds. He actually navigates much better without the maps. I found this so interesting. We talked a bit about the skills of Polynesian voyagers in episode 110 about Easter Island, and in a few different episodes actually, how they were able to travel all over the Pacific ocean in small canoes without any of the technology Magellan had, maps, compasses, sextants. And how, really until recently, westerners have been mostly in denial that they had these abilities. I find it ironic that Magellan is having to resort to their methods and it’s working better. He reaches the Philippines in March of 1521, 4 months after leaving South America and barely before his crew starves to death. 

 

So he gets to the Philippines in March of 1521. He could have just, you know, traded for some spices, and kept on going back to Spain. They know the way back to Spain, people have done that leg of the voyage before. But no, Magellan has other ideas. He decides, you know, we came all this way, let’s pop in a little side mission. And he decides he’s going to convert the indigenous people there to Christianity, Catholicism. Why not? Once he does this, he’ll be able to place them under the authority of the Spanish king. Dude’s gonna be stoked, right? Spices and human beings, what more could he want? Just like we saw play out in the Americas, some of the indigenous people go along with it. They convert, they do the dance, because see Spain as a powerful ally. Right, this is why Manteo was so down to side with the English during the Roanoke voyages, he saw them as a potential ally. They have guns and cannons and metal and all kinds of crazy stuff that we need. We need them. Now, not all of the people Magellan encountered felt that way though. There were some Wancheses too. Specifically, Lapu Lapu who was the chief of the island of Mactan refused to convert and submit to the authority of Spain. Which like, yes dude, same. Now Magellan, if you recall, had been involved in a lot of military pursuits for Portugal in his youth, he had been all over India and Africa, Morocco, conquering people left and right to secure Portugal’s trade route to the spices. So, with all of that under his belt, he thinks he knows exactly how to deal with Lapu Lapu. He’s going to attack. 

 

On April 27th, 1521, Magellan gathers 60 men from his crew and up to 30 native allies to go attack this guy Lapu Lapu. Right, he’s not going to do what they say, he’s going down. WWJD right? It’s so crazy you guys, this is about Christianity. Magellan wanted this guy to convert to Christianity and when he refuses, he decides to go kill him? Like, does no one actually read the bible? Does anyone actually know what Jesus preached? The entire foundation of the religion? I assure you it wasn’t that. But he goes, and he thinks he has the advantage. They have armor and guns and crossbows and these dudes just have wooden spears. They don’t stand a chance. That’s what Magellan thinks. Pigafetta wrote about this in his account. He says that Magellan goes with these 90ish men to the island of Mactan to attack but the boats can’t get very close because of the rocks. So they have to jump out of the boats and wade to shore where 1,500 indigenous warriors await them. Magellan and his puny crew, these outsiders, start to fire on this massive crowd defending their land and their way of life but they are completely outnumbered and they’re in the water, they can’t hit their marks, the advantage of their superior weapons is outweighed by the disadvantage of their position and their numbers. Pigafetta wrote quote “So many were the spears and stones that they hurled at us, that we could offer no resistance,” end quote. 

 

Magellan is struck in the leg with a poison arrow and has his helmet knocked off his head. He continues to fight but a warrior slashes him in the leg causing him to fall. Once on the ground, the warriors swarm him, stabbing him to death. And I hate to say this, I really do, because this is really tragic, but kind of serves him right? These people on this island were not the antagonizers. They were just minding their own business and happened to be like “no thanks” when he tried to force them to follow his religion and serve his king. That’s very reasonable. Magellan is the one who attacked with his inflated overconfident ego and vastly underestimated his victims. I was going to say opponents but they weren’t opponents, they were victims here. They were forced to defend themselves and that’s what they did, successfully. How bad can you feel for the man, really? I’m noticing a bit of a pattern here: the king of Portugal didn’t like Magellan, the captains on the various ships didn’t like Magellan, the indigenous people of the island of Mactan didn’t like Magellan. It’s getting to the point where it’s like okay is it all of these various people or is it Magellan? I’m kind of starting to think there’s a chance he just wasn’t a very likable guy. And after reading reports of his behavior in the Philippines, um, I kind of get it.

 

Magellan died on the island of Mactan in the Philippines in April of 1521 after only having completed around ¾ of the total voyage. He never circumnavigated the Earth. But some of his crew did. So what happened next? Well, after this ill fated battle, Magellan’s remaining crew had suffered so many casualties that they had to abandon one of the ships, the Concepcion, because they just didn’t have enough men left to sail it. They actually burnt it, set it on fire and left it there. So there are two ships left, the Victoria, and the Trinidad. These ships high tailed it out of there and made it to the spice islands, the Moluccas,  in November of 1521. Upon arrival, the Trinidad was in bad shape. It needed a lot of repairs so it stayed behind to have this work done and was eventually captured by the Portuguese and later sank in a storm. The Victoria, the only remaining ship of the expedition, headed back to Spain, sailing around the southern tip and up the west coast of Africa. Almost a whole nother year later, in September of 1522, the Victoria appeared in the same Spanish harbor from which it had departed 3 years earlier. It was battered and sun bleached with tattered sails and only 18 men remained on board. That was all that completed the expedition, 18 out of 260. Kiger writes quote “they were so weak from malnutrition and exposure that they had trouble walking or speaking. The survivors did manage to bring back a load of spices, it was obvious that Magellan’s notion of establishing a westward route to Asia was too slow, costly and downright dangerous to be practical,” end quote. 

 

So some of them, 18 of them did in fact circumnavigate the Earth, but not Magellan, Magellan wasn’t with them. These remaining men were led instead by a guy named Juan Sebastian Elcano. Elcano was Spanish. He was born in 1486, so he was 6 years younger than Magellan, in a small fishing village in Spain, the son of a local merchant. He was always around the water and so by the time he was an adult, he was already an experienced sailor and even had his own boat. Starting in 1509, Elcano started sailing around the Mediterranean participating in Spanish naval campaigns, much like Magellan was doing for Portugal. By 1518 he was in debt and had to sell his boat. That’s when he heard about Magellan’s proposal to the King of Spain, this idea to sail west to reach the spice islands and he was interested. He joined the expedition. Now if you remember, they had a rough journey across the Atlantic. They ran into a lot of storms and then when they got to South America and tried to sail down the east coast to find a passage through, it took way way longer than they thought it would and this is when all those mutinies took place. Some of the other ship captains and crew started to turn on Magellan and form these plots to kill him. Now, Magellan was able to foil their plans and actually had several of them executed or marooned. Elcano was actually part of this mutinous group. He was involved in the plotting to overthrow Magellan to some degree but he was not executed. And it’s believed this was because he was such a skilled seaman that Magellan could not spare him. He was that much of an asset, right that he was needed on this mission and so his life was spared. 

 

They make it through South America and into the Pacific Ocean and finally finally to the Philippines. Magellan gets himself killed and the crew is in disarray, what do they do now? Their leader is dead. They decided to appoint two Spanish guys, Duarte Barbosa and Juan Serrano, to jointly lead the expedition from now on but they both died soon after during yet another probably unnecessary skirmish with indigenous people, this time in Cebu which is in the Philippines. Right around this time is also when they go down to one remaining seaworthy ship, the Victoria, which whoever is left piles on and they put Juan Sebastian Elcano in charge. Elcano is the one who gets them back to Spain. And this is a rough final leg after having already spent several very rough years at sea. They are very malnourished. They suffer from scurvy and starvation and still more storms. At one point they narrowly escape the Portuguese who are in competition with Spain over these Spice Islands and suspicious about where this Spanish ship came from. And so finally, three years after setting out on this voyage, the Victoria limps back into Spain under Elcano’s command. 

 

Elcano was recognized at the time as the first person to circumnavigate the Earth. Obviously 17 other guys did too but Elcano was their leader so he got the credit, at the time. King Charles I of Spain granted him an annual pension and a coat of arms with the motto Primus circumdedisti me" which means “You first encircled me.” Apparently this is the Earth talking to Elcano on the coat of arms. Sincerely, Earth. PS maybe don’t try that again you dumb idiot. So if it was Elcano, and the king of Spain even recognized him and all that, then why do we remember Magellan as the first guy to do this? Well, according to History Skills quote “historical narratives often emphasize the beginnings of great endeavors rather than their completion,” end quote. This expedition was Magellan’s brain child. He came up with this idea, he went to the king of Spain, secured the funding, made it happen. That’s what we remember most. It was his thing. Like “oh yeah that circumnavigation thing, that’s Magellan’s thing.” Doesn’t really matter that he never successfully completed it, it was still his thing. It also helps that he has a geographical landmark named after him, the Strait of Magellan. And in a weird way, his death also helped to solidify his claim to fame. It added a tragic hero element to the story, almost like a martyr, right. People love that stuff, people cling to that stuff in epic adventure stories and so that further tied the credit to Magellan when it was really Elcano. 

 

Sort of, I mean it was Elcano if you’re considering the first person to circumnavigate the Earth all in one go, all in one voyage okay. But there may have actually been another guy who did it first just broken up into separate voyages. Remember Enrique? He was an indigenous Malay man from Malacca who Magellan had abducted and enslaved during a visit there in 1511. Magellan sort of strung Enrique along from then on to use as a translator during later voyages. And so of course he brought Enrique on this expedition when they set off west from Spain in 1519. So, just think about that for a minute, 1511, Magellan takes Enrique from Malacca which is in Malaysia back to Europe with him. They bop around there for a while and then in 1519 he takes Enrique west from Europe to South America, around South America, across the Pacific Ocean and back towards his homeland. Evan Andrews explains for History.com quote “Enrique abandoned the expedition and disappeared shortly after Magellan’s death in the Philippines. By then, he was only a few hundred miles short of his point of origin in Malacca. If he ever returned to his homeland, then Enrique may deserve the true credit for being the first person to circumnavigate the globe,” end quote. So there’s a bit of a question mark there. Did Enrique, or whatever his real name was, make it those few hundred miles back home once he abandoned the expedition? What would you do if you had been kidnapped from your home, taken away from your family and your culture and everything you ever knew. Would you go home again if you were that close? We can’t prove it, but something tells me he did and something tells me he made it there before Elcano limped back into Spain over a year later. And that would make Enrique the real first man to circumnavigate the Earth. Yes it took separate voyages over the span of a decade but if we’re talking about a human body traveling around the circumference of the planet first, that was probably Enrique. Now he would never have gotten the credit for that, of course, but, looking back, he may really be the most deserving of the title. 

 

This expedition, this crazy idea to go west and end up back in Spain, it really didn’t go well. Pretty much everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. They dealt with storm after storm, multiple mutinies, desertion, starvation and thirst, disease, scurvy, violent encounters with indigenous people, the death of multiple leaders, threats from other European forces. It’s really remarkable that anyone at all completed the voyage, those 18 men aboard the Victoria including Elcano and including Pigafetta, the chronicler who brought us most of this story. It almost seems like an epic failure. But really, this expedition was quite groundbreaking when it comes to our understanding of the world. It proved once and for all that the Earth was round. I’ll say that again in case anyone missed it. It proved, in 1522, we proved once and for all that the Earth was round. It also proved that North and South America were separate continents and not just some easterly part of Asia. And it proved that our planet was mostly covered in water. It proved it to the western world. This was the first time that Europeans realized that the Pacific Ocean existed and just how large it was. Now of course, as I have said before, the Pacific islanders were already well aware of that fact. They knew all about the Pacific Ocean which they already had their own names for. Magellan named it that, Pacific. But it already had other names. The Hawaiians called it Moananuiākea which means vast great ocean. The Maori called it Te Moana Nui a Kiwa, very similar. It means the great ocean of Kiwa. Kiwa is a Polynesian ocean guardian. 

 

So, in this story, this epic adventure tale of Ferdinand Magellan, we see the same glaring issues that we see in a lot of these stories of early European explorers. We see a guy, this European nobleman getting credit for something that he didn’t actually do successfully anyway. That credit should have really gone to a different European man but also possibly to an indigenous Malaysian man. We also see Europeans staking claims on things they have no right to take. Magellan names the Pacific Ocean and we still call it that even though it already had a name. He rolls up into the Philippines and just thinks he can take whatever he wants. He takes human beings, Enrique, abducts him, enslaves him. He forces the people there to succumb to the authority of the Spanish king by converting to Christianity and when they won’t, he thinks he can just make them do it with violence. But, like we’ve also seen in a lot of these stories, he underestimates them big time and he ends up dead. Honestly, this is the real victory of the Magellan story. Not that some random Portuguese turned Spanish guy made it ¾ of the way around the Earth. That’s not the victory here. The victory is that this group of people, 1,500 warriors on the island of Mactan defeated the great Ferdinand Magellan. They defended their island and forced the Spanish back, reducing their numbers such that only 18 of them remained, licking their wounds as they limped back home. The people of Mactan said “not today” and this time, in this story, it worked. That’s the real victory here. 

 

Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. That’ll make it much easier to get your next fix. 

Information used in this episode was sourced from History.com, History Skills, BBC, and Encyclopedia Britannica. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.