After sailing through the dangerous straits below South America that now bear his name, Portuguese navigator Fernão de Magalhães (Ferdinand Magellan, c. 1480 – 1521) and three of the five ships that began the voyage entered the Pacific Ocean on this date in 1520. Consequently, he and his crews become the first Europeans to reach the Pacific via the Atlantic. On September 20th, 1519, de Magalhães departed from Spain in an effort to find a western sea route to the rich Moluccas (Spice Islands) of Indonesia. In command of five ships (his flagship the Trinidad, the San Antonio, the Concepción, the Santiago, and the Victoria) and 270 men, he sailed to West Africa and then to Brazil, where he combed the South American coast for a strait that would take him to the Pacific. He searched the Rio de la Plata, a large estuary south of Brazil, for a passage; failing, he continued south along the coast of Patagonia. At the end of March of 1520, the expedition prepared winter quarters at Puerto San Julian. On Easter day at midnight, the Spanish captains mutinied against their Portuguese captain, but he crushed the revolt and executed one of them while marooning another when his ship left San Julian in August. The Santiago was wrecked during a storm just as they were leaving and the crew of the San Antonio deserted a month later to return to Spain. On October 21st, he finally discovered the strait he had been seeking, which he named Estrecho de Todos los Santos (All Saints’ Channel). The Strait of Magellan, as it became known, is located near the tip of South America and separates Tierra del Fuego from the continent. It took 38 days for the three remaining ships to navigate the treacherous passage, and when ocean was sighted at the other end de Magalhães wept with joy. His fleet completed the westward passage of the ocean in 99 days, through waters so strangely calm that the ocean was named Mar Pacifico, from the Latin words mare, meaning “sea”, and pacificus, meaning tranquil. By the end of the crossing, the men had no food and were chewing the leather parts of their gear to keep themselves alive. On March 6th, 1521, the expedition anchored in the archipelago (now called the Marianas) he named Ilhas de velas Latinas (Island of the Lateen Sails) and then – because the natives allegedly stole a small boat they thought had been traded to them – Ilhas dos Ladrões (Islands of the Thieves). Ten days later, when they dropped anchor at the Philippine island of Cebu, they were only about 400 miles from the Moluccas. De Magalhães met with Humabon, then the rajah of Cebu, who after converting to Christianity persuaded the Europeans to assist him in conquering a rival tribe on the neighboring island of Mactan. De Magalhães, along with several of his men, was killed during the Battle of Mactan on April 27th and his corpse was abandoned because the natives, led by Lapu Lapu (their datu), refused to surrender it to his crew. The survivors – who numbered only enough to man two ships – burnt the Concepción (which had become unseaworthy) and sailed from the Moluccas with the hulls of the Trinidad and the Victoria brimmed with spices. From there, the Victoria continued westwards under the command of the Basque navigator Juan Sebastián de Elcano while the Trinidad remained for significant repairs. Once these were completed, her crew attempted to return via the Pacific, but was destroyed at anchor by a storm after capture by the Portuguese. The Victoria sailed across the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and the eighteen survivors arrived at the Spanish port of Sanlucar de Barrameda on September 6th, 1522. They and the ship were inadvertently the first to circumnavigate the globe, a feat for which de Magalhães is credited although he both did not survive to see it and never meant to do so. The Magellanic Penguin, which was first observed by the expedition, and the Nubeculae Magellani (the two dwarf galaxies visible only from the southern hemisphere that now are generally known as the Magellanic Clouds) also honor of the explorer. The dates of the birth and death of Humabon are unknown. Lapu Lapu lived from 1491 – 1542.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 19:33:26 +0000
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