Ferdinand Magellan

House where Magellan lived, in Sabrosa, Portugal

Magellan was born in the Portuguese town of Sabrosa on 4 February 1480.[14] His father, Pedro de Magalhães, was a minor member of Portuguese nobility[14] and mayor of the town. His mother was Alda de Mezquita.[15] Magellan's siblings included Diego de Sosa and Isabel Magellan.[16] He was brought up as a page of Queen Eleanor, consort of King John II. In 1495 he entered the service of Manuel I, John's successor.[17]

In March 1505, at the age of 25, Magellan enlisted in the fleet of 22 ships sent to host Francisco de Almeida as the first viceroy of Portuguese India. Although his name does not appear in the chronicles, it is known that he remained there eight years, in Goa, Cochin and Quilon. He participated in several battles, including the battle of Cannanore in 1506, where he was wounded. In 1509 he also fought in what is considered one of the 6 battles that changed the world,[18] the battle of Diu.[19]

Effigy of Ferdinand Magellan in the Monument of the Discoveries, in Lisbon, Portugal.

He later sailed under Diogo Lopes de Sequeira in the first Portuguese embassy to Malacca, with Francisco Serrão, his friend and possibly cousin.[20] In September, after arriving at Malacca, the expedition fell victim to a conspiracy ending in retreat. Magellan had a crucial role, warning Sequeira and risking his life to rescue Francisco Serrão and others who had landed.[21][22]

In 1511, under the new governor Afonso de Albuquerque, Magellan and Serrão participated in the conquest of Malacca. After the conquest their ways parted: Magellan was promoted, with a rich plunder and, in the company of a Malay he had indentured and baptized, Enrique of Malacca, he returned to Portugal in 1512 or 1513.[23] Serrão departed in the first expedition sent to find the "Spice Islands" in the Moluccas, where he remained. He married a woman from Amboina and became a military advisor to the Sultan of Ternate, Bayan Sirrullah. His letters to Magellan would prove decisive, giving information about the spice-producing territories.[24][25]

After taking a leave without permission, Magellan fell out of favour. Serving in Morocco, he was wounded, resulting in a permanent limp. He was accused of trading illegally with the Moors. The accusations were proven false, but he received no further offers of employment after 15 May 1514. Later on in 1515, he got an employment offer as a crew member on a Portuguese ship, but rejected this. In 1517 after a quarrel with King Manuel I, who denied his persistent demands to lead an expedition to reach the spice islands from the east (i.e., while sailing westwards, seeking to avoid the need to sail around the tip of Africa[26]), he left for Spain. In Seville he befriended his countryman Diogo Barbosa and soon married the daughter of Diogo's second wife, Maria Caldera Beatriz Barbosa.[27] They had two children: Rodrigo de Magallanes[28] and Carlos de Magallanes, both of whom died at a young age. His wife died in Seville around 1521.

Meanwhile, Magellan devoted himself to studying the most recent charts, investigating, in partnership with cosmographer Rui Faleiro, a gateway from the Atlantic to the South Pacific and the possibility of the Moluccas being Spanish according to the demarcation of the Treaty of Tordesillas.

After several weeks in the Philippines, Magellan had converted as many as 2,200 locals to Christianity, including Rajah Humabon of Cebu and most leaders of the islands around Cebu.[40] However, Lapulapu, the leader of Mactan,[41] resisted conversion.[42][43] In order to gain the trust of Rajah Humabon,[44][45] Magellan sailed to Mactan with a small force on the morning of 27 April 1521. During the resulting battle against Lapulapu's troops, Magellan was struck by a "bamboo" spear (bangkaw, which are actually metal-tipped fire-hardened rattan), and later surrounded and finished off with other weapons.[46][47]

Antonio Pigafetta and Ginés de Mafra provided written documents of the events culminating in Magellan's death:

When morning came forty-nine of us leaped into the water up to our thighs, and walked through water for more than two crossbow flights before we could reach the shore. The boats could not approach nearer because of certain rocks in the water. The other eleven men remained behind to guard the boats. When we reached land, those men had formed in three divisions to the number of more than one thousand five hundred persons. When they saw us, they charged down upon us with exceeding loud cries.... The musketeers and crossbowmen shot from a distance for about a half-hour, but uselessly; for the shots only passed through the shields.... Recognizing the captain, so many turned upon him that they knocked his helmet off his head twice.... An Indian hurled a bamboo spear into the captain's face, but the latter immediately killed him with his lance, which he left in the Indian's body. Then, trying to lay hand on sword, he could draw it out but halfway, because he had been wounded in the arm with a bamboo spear. When the natives saw that, they all hurled themselves upon him. One of them wounded him on the left leg with a large cutlass, which resembles a scimitar, only being larger. That caused the captain to fall face downward, when immediately they rushed upon him with iron and bamboo spears and with their cutlasses, until they killed our mirror, our light, our comfort, and our true guide.

— Antonio Pigafetta[46]^{: 173–177}

Nothing of Magellan's body survived, that afternoon the grieving rajah-king, hoping to recover his remains, offered Mactan's victorious chief a handsome ransom of copper and iron for them but Datu Lapulapu refused. He intended to keep the body as a war trophy. Since his wife and child died in Seville before any member of the expedition could return to Spain, it seemed that every evidence of Ferdinand Magellan's existence had vanished from the earth.

— Ginés de Mafra[48]

In the immediate aftermath of the circumnavigation, few celebrated Magellan for his accomplishments, and he was widely discredited and reviled in Spain and his native Portugal.[49][50] The Portuguese regarded Magellan as a traitor for having sailed for Spain. In Spain, Magellan's reputation suffered due to the largely unflattering accounts of his actions given by the survivors of the expedition.

The first news of the expedition came from the crew of the San Antonio, led by Estêvão Gomes, which deserted the fleet in the Strait of Magellan and returned to Seville 6 May 1521. The deserters were put on trial, but eventually exonerated after producing a distorted version of the mutiny at Saint Julian, and depicting Magellan as disloyal to the king. The expedition was assumed to have perished.[51] The Casa de Contratación withheld Magellan's salary from his wife, Beatriz "considering the outcome of the voyage", and she was placed under house arrest with their young son on the orders of Archbishop Fonseca.[52]

The 18 survivors who eventually returned aboard the Victoria in September 1522 were also largely unfavourable to Magellan. Many, including the captain, Juan Sebastián Elcano, had participated in the mutiny at Saint Julian. On the ship's return, Charles summoned Elcano to Valladolid, inviting him to bring two guests. He brought sailors Francisco Albo and Hernándo de Bustamante, pointedly not including Antonio Pigafetta, the expedition's chronicler. Under questioning by Valladolid's mayor, the men claimed that Magellan refused to follow the king's orders (and gave this as the cause for the mutiny at Saint Julian), and that he unfairly favoured his relatives among the crew, and disfavoured the Spanish captains.[53]

One of the few survivors loyal to Magellan was Antonio Pigafetta. Though not invited to testify with Elcano, Pigafetta made his own way to Valladolid and presented Charles with a hand-written copy of his notes from the journey. He would later travel through Europe giving copies to other royals including John III of Portugal, Francis I of France, and Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam. After returning to his home of Venice, Pigafetta published his diary (as Relazione del primo viaggio intorno al mondo) around 1524. Scholars have come to view Pigafetta's diary as the most thorough and reliable account of the circumnavigation, and its publication helped to eventually counter the misinformation spread by Elcano and the other surviving mutineers.[54] In an often-cited passage following his description of Magellan's death in the Battle of Mactan, Pigafetta eulogizes the captain-general:

Magellan's main virtues were courage and perseverance, in even the most difficult situations; for example he bore hunger and fatigue better than all the rest of us. He was a magnificent practical seaman, who understood navigation better than all his pilots. The best proof of his genius is that he circumnavigated the world, none having preceded him.[55]

A 1561 map of America showing Magellan's name for the Pacific, Mare pacificum, and the Strait of Magellan, labelled Frenum Magaliani

Magellan has come to be renowned for his navigational skill and tenacity. The first circumnavigation has been called "the greatest sea voyage in the Age of Discovery",[56] and even "the most important maritime voyage ever undertaken".[57] Appreciation of Magellan's accomplishments may have been enhanced over time by the failure of subsequent expeditions which attempted to retrace his route, beginning with the Loaísa expedition in 1525 (which featured Juan Sebastián Elcano as second-in-command).[58] The next expedition to successfully complete a circumnavigation, led by Francis Drake, would not occur until 1580, 58 years after the return of the Victoria.[59]

Magellan named the Pacific Ocean (which was also often called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century[60]), and lends his name to the Strait of Magellan. His name has also since been applied to a variety of other entities, including the Magellanic Clouds (two dwarf galaxies visible in the night sky of the southern hemisphere), Project Magellan (a Cold-War era US Navy project to circumnavigate the world by submarine), and NASA's Magellan spacecraft.

Primary sources

Secondary sources

• Beazley, Charles Raymond (1911). "Magellan, Ferdinand" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 17 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 302–304.
• Bergreen, Laurence (2003), Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe, William Morrow, ISBN 978-0-06-093638-9
• Cameron, Ian (1974). Magellan and the first circumnavigation of the world. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 029776568X. OCLC 842695.
• Guillemard, Francis Henry Hill (1890), The life of Ferdinand Magellan, and the first circumnavigation of the globe, 1480–1521, G. Philip, retrieved 8 April 2009
• Hildebrand, Arthur Sturges (1924), Magellan, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co, ISBN 978-1-4179-1413-5
• Joyner, Tim (1992), Magellan, Camden, Me.: International Marine Publishing, ISBN 978-0-07-033128-0
• Nunn, George E. (1932), The Columbus and Magellan Concepts of South American Geography
• Parr, Charles M. (1953), So Noble a Captain: The Life and Times of Ferdinand Magellan, New York: Crowell, ISBN 978-0-8371-8521-7
• Parry, J.H. (1979), The Discovery of South America, New York: Taplinger
• Parry, J.H. (1981), The Discovery of the Sea, Berkeley: University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-520-04236-0
• Parry, J.H. (1970), The Spanish Seaborne Empire, New York: Knopf, ISBN 978-0-520-07140-7
• Pérez-Mallaína, Pablo E. (1998), Spain's Men of the Sea: Daily Life on the Indies Fleets in the Sixteenth Century, translated by Carla Rahn Phillips, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 978-0-8018-5746-1
• Roditi, Edouard (1972), Magellan of the Pacific, London: Faber & Faber, ISBN 978-0-571-08945-1
• Schurz, William L. (May 1922), "The Spanish Lake", Hispanic American Historical Review, 5 (2): 181–194, doi:10.2307/2506024, JSTOR 2506024.
• Salonia, Matteo (2022), "Encompassing the Earth: Magellan's Voyage from Its Political Context to Its Expansion of Knowledge", International Journal of Maritime History, 0 (0), doi:10.1177/08438714221123468
• Thatcher, Oliver J., ed. (1907), "Magellan's Voyage Round the World", The Library of Original Sources, vol. V, University Research Extension, pp. 41–57, hdl:2027/nyp.33433067371306
• Wilford, John Noble (2000), The Mapmakers, New York: Knopf, ISBN 978-0-375-70850-3, archived from the original on 9 December 2012
• Zweig, Stefan (2007), Conqueror of the Seas – The Story of Magellan, Read Books, ISBN 978-1-4067-6006-4

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ferdinand Magellan.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Ferdinand Magellan.

• Ferdinand Magellan on history.com
• PBS Secrets of the Dead: Magellan's Crossing
• Magellan's untimely demise on Cebu in the Philippines from History House
• Expedición Magallanes – Juan Sebastian Elcano
• Encyclopædia Britannica Ferdinand Magellan