Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe

by Laurence Bergreen

One of Seville’s limitations as a port was the shallowness of the Guadalquivir River; ships had to be sufficiently small and light to negotiate the narrow waterway to the Atlantic. Thus Magellan’s flagship, Trinidad, weighed 100 tons; San Antonio, which carried many of the provisions, weighed 120 tons; Concepción 90 tons, Victoria 85 tons; and Santiago, to be used for reconnaissance, weighed just 75 tons.

Eventually, Magellan gave the Indians a name—Pathagoni, a neologism suggesting the Spanish word patacones, or dogs with great paws, by which he meant to call attention to their big feet, made even larger by the rough-hewn boots they wore. So these were the Bigfeet Indians, according to Magellan, who later gave the name to the whole region, known ever since as Patagonia.

Magellan called this region Tierra del Fuego, Land of Fire. Today, we know that Tierra del Fuego is actually an enormous triangular island buffeted by winds from both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and constantly beset by storms and rapidly changing weather. The Land of Fire is actually the land of storms. Tierra del Fuego covers more than 28,000 square miles of glaciers, lakes, and moraines.

Magellan’s skill in negotiating the entire length of the strait is acknowledged as the single greatest feat in the history of maritime exploration.

It was, perhaps, an even greater accomplishment than Columbus’s discovery of the New World, because the Genoan, thinking he had arrived in China, remained befuddled to the end of his days about where he was, and what he had accomplished, and as a result he misled others.

Not until 1795 did the British Royal Navy finally insist that sailors receive a daily ration of the juice of lemons or limes to combat scurvy, a practice leading to the term “limeys” to refer to British sailors. (At the time, a “lime” meant both lemons and limes.)

For Magellan, the landfall on Guam came as a mixed blessing. Although the island provided shelter from the misery he and his men had endured during their ninety-eight-day Pacific cruise, nothing about it suggested they were anywhere near their goal, the Spice Islands. Nevertheless, it was land. Since leaving the western mouth of the strait, Magellan had traveled more than seven thousand miles without interruption: the longest ocean voyage recorded until that time.

Magellan decided to name the archipelago after Lazarus, but twenty-two years later, another European explorer, Ruy Lopez de Villalobos, reached these islands and later named them Las Islas Filipinas—the Philippines—after King Philip of Spain.

His thirst for glory, under cover of religious zeal, led him fatally astray. In the course of the voyage, Magellan had managed to outwit death many times. He overcame natural hazards ranging from storms to scurvy, and human hazards in the form of mutinies. In the end, the only peril he could not survive was the greatest of all: himself.

The arrival of a ship from distant lands was hardly an unusual event in Seville, but she was not just any vessel, this was San Antonio, part of the Armada de Molucca. It was May 6, 1521, and the event marked the first news of the fleet since it left Sanlúcar de Barrameda on September 20, 1519.

At last, Pigafetta allowed himself a moment of pride concerning the chief accomplishment of the Armada de Molucca. “From the time we left that bay until the present day, we sailed fourteen thousand four hundred and sixty leagues”—nearly sixty thousand miles—“and furthermore completed the circumnavigation of the world from east to west.” The distance the armada traveled was fifteen times longer than that covered by Columbus’s first voyage to the New World, and correspondingly more dangerous.

Banished were phenomena such as mermaids, boiling water at the equator, and a magnetic island capable of pulling the nails from passing ships. All these discoveries came at the cost of over two hundred lives and extreme hardship. No other voyage had been as prolonged and complicated as this one; no other voyage during the Age of Discovery would ever equal it for ambition and daring.

Not until 1580, fifty-eight years after Victoria returned to Seville, did another explorer, Sir Francis Drake, complete a circumnavigation. His voyage took him through the Strait of Magellan. To accomplish the feat, Drake relied on the knowledge so painfully and heroically acquired by the Captain General and his crew.

Although no continent or country was named after him, Magellan’s expedition stands as the greatest sea voyage in the Age of Discovery.