Ferdinand Magellan - Realist or Idealist?

Ferdinand Magellan

Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480–1521) was born in Portugal.
In 1505, Magellan participated in several expeditions in India and Africa and was wounded in several battles which left him with a limp for the rest of his life.

THE AMBITION

King Charles I

Magellan was exposed to stories of the great Portuguese and Spanish rivalry for sea exploration and dominance over the spice trade in the East Indies, especially the Spice Islands, in modern Indonesia. Europeans had reached the Spice Islands by sailing east, but none had yet to sail west from Europe to reach the other side of the globe. Magellan was determined to be the first to do so.
He approached King Manuel of Portugal to seek his support for a westward voyage to the Spice Islands. The king refused his petition repeatedly.
In 1517 a frustrated Magellan renounced his Portuguese nationality and relocated to Spain to seek royal support for his venture.
The grandson of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella - King Charles I, who had funded Columbus’ expedition to the New World in 1492, received Magellan’s petition. He granted his support to Magellan.

THE VOYAGE

The Voyage

On August 10, 1519 Magellan commanded the lead ship Trinidad and was accompanied by four other ships: the San Antonio, the Conception, the Victoria, and the Santiago.
The expedition would prove three years long and carry back a mere 18 of the fleet’s original crew of 270.
In September 1519 Magellan’s fleet sailed from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain, and crossed the Atlantic Ocean, which was then known simply as the Ocean Sea.

THE TRIALS

The fleet stopped at Port San Julian where the crew mutinied and Magellan quickly quelled the uprising, executing one of the captains and leaving another mutinous captain behind.
Magellan had sent the Santiago to explore the route ahead, where it was shipwrecked during a terrible storm. The ship’s crew members were rescued and assigned out among the remaining ships.
With those disastrous events behind them, the fleet left Port San Julian five months later when fierce seasonal storms abated.

THE MAGELLAN STRAIT

On October 21, 1520 Magellan finally entered the strait that he had been seeking.
The voyage through the strait was treacherous and cold.
In the early days of the navigation of the strait, the crew of the San Antonio forced its captain to desert, and the ship turned and fled across the Atlantic Ocean back to Spain.
So at this point, only three of the original five ships remained in Magellan’s fleet.

THE PACIFIC

After more than a month spent traversing the strait, Magellan’s remaining armada emerged in November 1520 to behold a vast ocean before them.
Magellan named it Mar Pacifico, the Pacific Ocean, for its apparent peacefulness, a stark contrast to the dangerous waters of the strait from which he had just emerged.
Little was known about the geography beyond South America at that time, and Magellan optimistically estimated that the trip across the Pacific would be rapid.
In fact it took three months for the fleet to make its way slowly across the vast Mar Pacifico.
The days dragged on as Magellan’s crew anxiously waited to utter the magic words “Land!”.
At last in March 1521 the fleet reached the Pacific island of Guam, where they finally replenished their food stores.

HIS DEMISE

There are several theories surrounding his death.
The first theory was that Magellan’s fleet landed on the island of Cebu, where Magellan befriended the locals. The Cebu asked for his help in fighting their neighbors on the island of Mactan, and against the advice of his men, Magellan agreed and himself led the attack. But surprisingly the Mactanese fought fiercely, and Magellan fell when he was shot with a poison arrow. He died on April 27, 1521.

THE FINAL JOURNEY

Enrique

Now there remained two ships which finally reached the Moluccas on November 5, 1521.
In the end, only the Victoria completed the voyage around the world and arrived back in Seville, Spain, in September 1522 with a heavy cargo of spices but with only 18 men from the original crew.
Though Magellan is often credited with the first circumnavigation on the globe, he did so on a technicality: He first made a trip from Europe to the Spice Islands, eastward via the Indian Ocean, and then later made his famous westward voyage that brought him to the Philippines.
So he did cover the entire terrain, but it was not a strict point A to point A, round-the-world trip, and it was made in two different directions.
His slave, Enrique, continued the journey and so was the first person to circumnavigate the world in one direction, from point A to point A

MAGELLAN - THE IDEALIST

He wasn't aiming to sail around the world, he actually wanted to find a route west from Europe to the Spice Island
Although the trip westward from Europe to the east via the Strait of Magellan had been discovered and mapped, the journey was too long and dangerous to become a practical route to the Spice Islands.
He was stupid enough to believe that he could get to the Spice Islands faster by sailing west than by sailing east even though it was more than 2x as long
During his voyage people on his ships were starving, and were forced to eat rats and saw dust
He sent the Santiago down the coast of South America, and because of this it wrecked
Killed the Chamorros Indians of Guam when landed there
Stole the natives' food from their village by scaring them away
Died in silly battle that should not have been fought thus putting remaining 48 crew members in hopeless situation
The odds were 49 Europeans vs. thousands of natives

MAGELLAN - THE REALIST

Magellan’s daring and ambitious voyage around the world provided the Europeans with far more than just spices.
European geographic knowledge was expanded
He found a massive ocean unknown to Europeans and he also discovered that the earth was much larger than previously thought.
Although it was no longer believed that the earth was flat at this stage in history, Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe empirically discredited the medieval theory conclusively.
Travelled much farther than anyone else had ever done before, 42,000 miles, 22,000 white men had never seen before
He was very religious. But he strongly disapproved of killing natives in the name of Christ
Two galaxies are named after him, one The Large Magellanic Cloud, and the other the Small Magellanic Cloud
HE DIED PROUDLY FOR HIS BELIEFS

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