FERDINAND MAGELLAN: Was he the
first man to circumnavigate the globe?
by Antonio C. Antonio
April 4, 2014
Ferdinand Magellan discovered the Philippines…
can’t argue with this fact. Historical
accounts and literature also establishes that Ferdinand Magellan was the first
man to circumnavigate the globe… can’t argue with this either. But wait… the discovery of new information
tends to debunk the claim that he (Magellan) was the first man to have
circumnavigated the globe and the info even suggested that a Cebuano named
Enrique was quite possibly the first man to circumnavigate the globe on a
“technicality”. If this bit of
information turns out to be accurate, “Mabuhay ang Pinoy!”… sikat na naman
tayo!
RESEARCHED MATERIAL:
Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480–1521) was born in Sabrosa, Portugal, to a
family of minor Portuguese nobility. At
age 12 Ferdinand Magellan and his brother Diogo traveled to Lisbon to serve as
pages at Queen Leonora’s court. While at
the court 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, or Moluccas, in modern Indonesia. Intrigued by the promise of fame and riches,
Magellan developed an interest in maritime discovery in those early years.
In 1505, Magellan and his brother were assigned to a Portuguese fleet
headed for India. Over the next seven
years, Magellan participated in several expeditions in India and Africa and was
wounded in several battles. In 1513 he
joined the enormous 500-ship, 15,000-soldier force sent by King Manuel to
Morocco to challenge the Moroccan governor who refused to pay its yearly
tribute to the Portuguese empire. The
Portuguese easily overwhelmed the Moroccan forces, and Magellan stayed on in
Morocco. While there he was seriously
wounded in a skirmish, which left him with a limp for the rest of his life.
In the 15th century, spices were at the epicenter of the world economy,
much like oil is today. Highly valued
for flavoring and preserving food as well as masking the taste of meat gone
bad, spices like cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and especially black pepper, were
extremely valuable. Since spices could
not be cultivated in cold and arid Europe, no effort was spared to discover the
quickest sea route to the Spice Islands. Portugal and Spain led the competition
for early control over this critical commodity . 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.
By now an experienced seaman, Magellan 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.
When Magellan arrived in Seville in October 1517, he had no connections
and spoke little Spanish. He soon met
another transplanted Portuguese named Diogo Barbosa, and within a year he had
married Barbosa’s daughter Beatriz, who gave birth to their son Rodrigo a year
later. The well-connected Barbosa family
introduced Magellan to officers responsible for Spain’s maritime exploration,
and soon Magellan secured an appointment to meet the king of Spain.
The grandson of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who had funded
Columbus’ expedition to the New World in 1492, received Magellan’s petition
with the same favor shown by his grandparents.
Just 18 years old at the time, King Charles I granted his support to
Magellan, who in turn promised the young king that his westward sea voyage
would bring immeasurable riches to Spain.
On August 10, 1519 Magellan bade farewell to his wife and young son,
neither of whom he would ever see again, and the Armada De Moluccas set sail.
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 long and arduous,
and only one ship, the Victoria, would return home three years
later, carrying a mere 18 of the fleet’s original crew of 270.
In September 1519 Magellan’s fleet sailed from SanlĂșcar de Barrameda,
Spain, and crossed the Atlantic Ocean, which was then known simply as the Ocean
Sea. The fleet reached South America a
little more than one month later. There
the ships sailed southward, hugging the coast in search of the fabled strait
that would allow passage through South America.
The fleet stopped at Port San Julian where the crew mutinied on
Easter Day in 1520. Magellan
quickly quelled the uprising, executing one of the captains and leaving another
mutinous captain behind. Meanwhile
Magellan had sent the Santiago to explore the route ahead,
where it was shipwrecked during a terrible storm. The ship’s crewmembers 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.
On October 21, 1520 Magellan finally entered the strait that he had been
seeking and that came to bear his name.
The voyage through the strait was treacherous and cold, and many sailors
continued to mistrust their leader and grumble about the dangers of the journey
ahead. 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. At this point, only three
of the original five ships remained in Magellan’s fleet.
After more than a month spent traversing the strait, Magellan’s
remaining armada emerged in November 1520 to behold a vast ocean before
them. They were the first known
Europeans to see the great ocean, which Magellan named 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. In fact, extremely rough waters are not
uncommon in the Pacific Ocean, where tsunamis, typhoons and hurricanes have
done serious damage to the Pacific Islands and Pacific Rim nations throughout
history.
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, ho!” At last in March 1521 the fleet reached the
Pacific island of Guam, where they finally replenished their food stores.
Magellan’s fleet then sailed on to the Philippine archipelago landing on
the island of Cebu, where Magellan befriended the locals and, struck with a
sudden religious zeal, he sought to convert them to Christianity. Magellan was now closer than ever to reaching
the Spice Islands, but when the Cebu asked for his help in fighting their
neighbors on the island of Mactan, Magellan agreed. He assumed he would command a swift victory
with his superior European weapons, and against the advice of his men, Magellan
himself led the attack. The Mactanese
fought fiercely, and Magellan fell when he was shot with a poison arrow. He died on April 27, 1521.
Magellan would never make it to the Spice Islands, but after the loss of
yet another of his fleet’s vessels, the two remaining ships 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.
Seeking riches and personal glory, Magellan’s daring and ambitious
voyage around the world provided the Europeans with far more than just
spices. 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. Nevertheless, European geographic knowledge was expanded immeasurably
by Magellan’s expedition. He found not
only a massive ocean, hitherto unknown to Europeans, but he also discovered
that the earth was much larger than previously thought. Finally, 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.
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, however, was born in either Cebu or Mallaca and came to Europe with
Magellan by ship. Ten years later, he
then returned to both Cebu (with Magellan) and Mallaca (after Magellan died) by
ship on the armada’s westward route. So
Enrique was the first person to circumnavigate the world in one direction, from
point A to point A.
Comments posted on Facebook:
ReplyDeleteWillie C. Santos (April 4, 2014): “hi mate anton. nice research. took me back during Bosco days on world history. but am a bit confused. our teachers then, plus our history books make mention of a guy named SEBASTIAN DEL CANO, also an explorer credited with discoveries of new territories. nanu ne kasi gewa na nita?”
Romeo Yumul (April 4, 2014): “Sorry to butt in but to be more accurate, Magellan was the first European in recorded history to land in the Philippines. However, it was also noted by his chronologer Figafetta that they already encountered Chinese merchants when they arrived in the islands.”
Anton Antonio (April 4, 2014): “Hi, Mate Willie C. Santos... Juan Sebastian del Cano is a soldier under Magellan's command who mutinied against him (Magellan). When Magellan died in Mactan, Cebu, del Cano took over command of the command ship The Victoria and returned to Spain.”
Anton Antonio (April 4, 2014): “Yes, Mate Romeo Yumul... European civilization was more progressive and advance than Asia. Europe had a better recording and chronicle system then kaya yung mga exploits lang nila ang recorded. The Chinese could have beaten them in discovering new islands in the ASEAN region pero there are no historical records whatsoever of these finds.”