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Explorers of the Pacific: European and American Discoveries in Polynesia

Ferdinand Magellan

Ferdinand Magellan

1519 to 1522

The direct sea path to the East by a western course was blocked by the two Americas. South America was occupied on the west by the Spanish and on the east by the Portuguese, who had established ports along the coast of Brazil. The popular theory was that the land mass of South America extended to the south polar region. But one navigator held, as did Columbus, a different theory and wished to put it to the test. He was a Portuguese named Ferdinand Magellan who had enlisted in an expedition to the East in 1505 and had spent five years in the East Indies. When his theory of a western passage to the East through some opening in the American barrier received no support from his own country, he turned to Spain. Spain was enthusiastic, and on September 20, 1519, Magellan sailed on his quest with five ships under Spain's banner. He picked up the Brazilian coast and, on December 13, anchored in Santa Lucia Bay off what is now Rio de Janeiro. He worked south, exploring every bay, and finally entered the stretch of water which was to bear his name, a fitting memorial to independent thought and courage. He spent thirty-seven days in the Strait, where he lost two ships. At last, on November 27, 1520, he sailed with his three remaining ships past Cape Desire and entered the "Great South Sea." The voyage from Europe to the Pacific had taken just over fourteen months, a period filled with suffering from cold, thirst, and starvation, and fraught with the threat of mutiny and ship-wreck.

Magellan turned north along the Patagonian coast, then west, inclining northward in his westerly course. Thus he passed north of the Tuamotu Archipelago and south of the Marquesas. Meanwhile, his men suffered so greatly from scurvy and hunger that a half ducat was paid for a fresh rat. Two small uninhabited islands were sighted, but they provided no relief. After three months and a week of incredible suffering, his ships arrived on March 6, 1521, at a group of islands which he first named the Islands of the Lateen Sails, after the sails used by the natives. Later he changed the name to the Islands of Thieves (Ladrones) because of the stealing propensity of the native inhabitants. The island at which he landed was probably Guam in the Marianas.

Magellan sailed on to Samar in the Philippines, then to Cebu, where he foolishly undertook the cause of a local rajah against the rebellious small island of Moctan off the east coast of Cebu. He and eight of his men were killed. The small Vitoria, a ship of 85 tons under the command of Juan Sebastian del Cano, page 4was the only vessel of the original fleet to return to Europe, where she anchored in Seville on September 8, 1522. Only 18 members of the crew survived, 21 men having died on the voyage from the East Indies.

Magellan not only discovered a western passage to the Pacific through the Strait of Magellan but, by crossing the Pacific, proved that Columbus was right in his theory that the world was round. His death deprived him of the honor of being the first to circumnavigate the world, but the way in which del Cano conducted the return voyage of the Vitoria made him worthy of that honor.