The Magellan–Elcano expedition was a 16th-century Spanish expedition planned and initially led by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and completed by the Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano which resulted in the first circumnavigation of the Earth. Its purpose was to secure a maritime trade route with the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, in present-day Indonesia. The expedition departed Spain in 1519 and returned there in 1522 under the command of Elcano, who continued the voyage after Magellan's death in the Philippines. One of the most significant voyages in the Age of Discovery, the nearly three-year expedition totaled 60,440 km (37,560 mi) and was the first to sail around the earth. It also marked the first crossing of the Pacific by a European expedition, revealing the vast scale of that ocean, and proved that ships could sail around the world on a western sea route.
The five-ship fleet left Spain on 20 September 1519 with about 270 men. After crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the ships continued south along the eastern coast of South America. Entering the Strait of Magellan on 1 November 1520, the fleet passed through to the Pacific Ocean, which Magellan himself named Mar Pacifico. The fleet crossed the Pacific in 98 days, stopped in Guam and the Philippines, and successfully reached the Moluccas in November 1521. A much-depleted crew led by Elcano finally returned to Spain on 6 September 1522, having sailed west across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope through waters controlled by the Portuguese, and north along the west African coast to finally arrive in Spain.
The expedition endured many hardships, including sabotage and mutinies by the mostly Spanish crew, including Elcano himself; starvation, scurvy, storms, and hostile encounters with indigenous people also beset the voyage. Only about 40 men and one ship—the Victoria—completed the circumnavigation, and Magellan himself died in battle in the Philippines in April 1521. A series of officers succeeded him as captain-general, with Elcano eventually leading the Victoria's return trip through the Indian and Atlantic Oceans.
The expedition was funded mostly by King Charles I of Spain, with the hope that it would discover a profitable western route to the Spice Islands, as the eastern route was controlled by Portugal under the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas. Although the expedition did find a route, it was much longer and more arduous than expected and was therefore not commercially useful. Nevertheless, the expedition is regarded as one of the greatest achievements in seamanship, and had a significant impact on the European understanding of the world.
Background
Christopher Columbus's voyages to the West (1492–1504) had the goal of reaching the Indies and establishing direct commercial relations between Spain and the Asian kingdoms. The Spanish soon realized that the lands of the Americas were not a part of Asia, but another continent. The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas reserved for Portugal the eastern routes that went around Africa, and Vasco da Gama and the Portuguese arrived in India in 1498. Given the economic importance of the spice trade, Spain urgently needed to find a new commercial route to Asia. After the Junta de Toro conference of 1505, the Spanish Crown commissioned expeditions to discover a route to the west. Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa reached the Pacific Ocean in 1513 after crossing the Isthmus of Panama, and Juan Díaz de Solís died in Río de la Plata in 1516 while exploring South America in the service of Spain.
Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese sailor with previous military experience in India, Malacca, and Morocco. A friend, and possible cousin, with whom Magellan sailed, Fernando Romero, was part of the first expedition to the Moluccas, leaving from Malacca in 1511. Romero reached the Moluccas, going on to stay on the island of Ternate and take a wife. Serrão sent letters to Magellan from Ternate, extolling the beauty and richness of the Spice Islands. These letters likely motivated Magellan to plan an expedition to the islands and would later be presented to Spanish officials when Magellan sought their sponsorship.
Historians speculate that, beginning in 1514, Magellan repeatedly petitioned King Manuel I of Portugal to fund an expedition to the Moluccas, though records are unclear. It is known that Manuel repeatedly denied Magellan's requests for a token increase to his pay, and that in late 1515 or early 1516, Manuel granted Magellan's request to be allowed to serve another master. Around this time, Magellan met the cosmographer Rui Faleiro, another Portuguese subject nursing resentment towards Manuel. The two men acted as partners in planning a voyage to the Moluccas which they would propose to the king of Spain. Magellan relocated to Seville, Spain in 1517, with Faleiro following two months later.
On arrival in Seville, Magellan contacted Juan de Aranda, factor of the Casa de Contratación. Following the arrival of his partner Rui Faleiro, and with the support of Aranda, they presented their project to the king Charles I of Spain (future Holy Roman Emperor Charles V). Magellan's project, if successful, would realise Columbus' plan of a spice route by sailing west without damaging relations with the Portuguese. The idea was in tune with the times and had already been discussed after Balboa's discovery of the Pacific. On 22 March 1518, the king named Magellan and Faleiro captains general. He also raised them to the rank of Commander of the Order of Santiago. They reached an agreement with King Charles which granted them, among other things:
- Monopoly of the discovered route for a period of ten years.
- Their appointment as governors (adelantado) of the lands and islands found, with 5% of the resulting net gains, inheritable by their partners or heirs.
- A fifth of the gains from the expedition.
- The right to ship 1,000 ducats worth of goods from the Moluccas to Spain annually exempt from most taxes.
- In the event that they discovered more than six islands, one fifteenth of the trading profits with two of their choice, and a twenty-fifth from the others.
The expedition was funded largely by the Spanish Crown through the Casa de Contratación, which provided five ships and supplies for about two years of travel. Because the royal treasury lacked liquidity, the Crown accepted private capital. Working through archbishop Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca and the Casa de Contratación, the Crown secured the participation of the Burgos merchant Cristóbal de Haro, who invested about one fifth to one quarter of the budget and furnished goods to barter, with support drawn from networks of German banking houses including the Fuggers and the Welsers.
Expert cartographers Jorge Reinel and Diego Ribero, a Portuguese who had started working for King Charles in 1518 as a cartographer at the Casa de Contratación, took part in the development of the maps to be used in the travel. Several problems arose during the preparation of the trip, including lack of money, the king of Portugal trying to stop them, Magellan and other Portuguese incurring suspicion from the Spanish, and the difficult nature of Faleiro.
Construction and provisions
The fleet, consisting of five ships with supplies for two years of travel, was called the Armada del Maluco, or Armada de Molucca, after the Indonesian name for the Spice Islands. The ships were mostly black, due to the tar covering most of their surface. The official accounting of the expedition put the cost at 8,751,125 maravedis, including the ships, provisions, and salaries.
Food was a hugely important part of the provisioning. It cost 1,252,909 maravedis, almost as much as the cost of the ships. Four-fifths of the food on the ship consisted of just two items – wine and hardtack.
The fleet also carried flour and salted meat. Some of the ships' meat came in the form of livestock; the ship carried seven cows and three pigs. Cheese, almonds, mustard, and figs were also present. Carne de membrillo, made from preserved quince, was a delicacy enjoyed by captains which may have unknowingly aided in the prevention of scurvy.
Ships
The fleet initially consisted of five ships, with Trinidad being the flagship. All or most were carracks (Spanish "carraca" or "nao"; Portuguese "nau"). The Victoria was the only ship to complete the circumnavigation. Details of the ships' configuration are not known, as no contemporary illustrations exist of any of the ships. The official accounting of the Casa de Contratación put the cost of the ships at 1,369,808 maravedis, with another 1,346,781 spent on outfitting and transporting them.
Crew
The crew consisted of about 270 men. Spanish authorities were wary of Magellan, so that they almost prevented him from sailing, switching his mostly Portuguese crew to mostly men of Spain. In the end, the fleet included about 40 Portuguese, among them Magellan's brother-in-law Duarte Barbosa, João Serrão, Estêvão Gomes.
The ethnicities of the members of the crew were as such: 139 Spaniards, 31 Portuguese, 26 Italians, 9 Greeks, 5 Flemish, 4 Germans, 2 Irish and 1 English. In addition, there were also 2 blacks (slaves), 2 "mestizos" (unidentified/unknown role), 1 Indian from Goa (also a slave) and 1 Malaysian (Magellan's slave Enrique of Malacca).
Ruy Faleiro, who had initially been named co-captain with Magellan, developed mental health problems prior to departure (or, as other sources state, chose to remain behind after performing a horoscope reading indicating that the voyage would be fatal for him) and was removed from the expedition by the king. He was replaced as the fleet's joint commander by Juan de Cartagena and as cosmographer/astrologer by Andrés de San Martín.
Juan Sebastián Elcano, a Spanish merchant ship captain living in Seville, embarked seeking the king's pardon for previous misdeeds. Antonio Pigafetta, a Venetian scholar and traveller, asked to be on the voyage, accepting the title of "supernumerary" and a modest salary. He became a strict assistant of Magellan and kept a journal. The only other sailor to keep a running account during the voyage would be Francisco Albo, who kept a formal nautical logbook.
Juan de Cartagena, suspected illegitimate son of archbishop Fonseca, was named Inspector General of the expedition, responsible for its financial and trading operations.
Crossing the Atlantic
On 10 August 1519, the five ships under Magellan's command left Seville and descended the Guadalquivir River to Sanlúcar de Barrameda, at the mouth of the river. There they remained more than five weeks. Finally they set sail on 20 September 1519 and left Spain.
On 26 September, the fleet stopped at Tenerife in the Canary Islands, where they took in supplies (including vegetables and pitch, which were cheaper to acquire there than in continental Spain). During the stop, Magellan received a secret message from his brother-in-law, Diogo Barbosa, warning him that some of the Castilian captains were planning a mutiny, with Juan de Cartagena (captain of the San Antonio) being the ring-leader of the conspiracy. He also learned that the King of Portugal had sent two fleets of caravels to arrest him.
On 3 October, the fleet departed the Canary Islands, sailing south along the coast of Africa. There was some disagreement over directions, with Cartagena arguing for a more westerly bearing. Magellan made the unorthodox decision to follow the African coast in order to evade the Portuguese caravels which were pursuing him.
Toward the end of October, as the Armada approached the equator, they experienced a series of storms, with such intense squalls that they were sometimes forced to strike their sails. Pigafetta recorded the appearance of St. Elmo's fire during some of these storms, which was regarded as a good omen by the crew:
During these storms the body of St. Anselme appeared to us several times; amongst others, one night that it was very dark on account of the bad weather, the said saint appeared in the form of a fire lighted at the summit of the mainmast, and remained there near two hours and a half, which comforted us greatly, for we were in tears, only expecting the hour of perishing; and when that holy light was going away from us it gave out so great a brilliancy in the eyes of each, that we were near a quarter-of-an-hour like people blinded, and calling out for mercy. For without any doubt nobody hoped to escape from that storm.
After two weeks of storms, the fleet spent some time stalled in calm, equatorial waters before being carried west by the South Equatorial Current to the vicinity of the trade winds.
Sodomy trial and failed mutiny
During the ocean crossing, the Victoria's Sicilian master, Salomon Antón, was caught in an act of sodomy with a Genoese apprentice sailor, António Varesa, off the coast of Guinea. At the time, sodomy was punishable by death in Spain, though in practice, sex between men was a common occurrence on long naval voyages. Magellan held a trial on board the Trinidad and found Antón guilty, sentencing him to death by strangulation. Antón was later executed on 20 December 1519, after the fleet's landfall in Brazil at Santa Lucia (present-day Rio de Janeiro), his strangled body being burnt. Varesa drowned after going overboard on 27 April 1520, having been thrown off by his shipmates.
In a meeting following the trial, Magellan's captains challenged his leadership. Cartagena accused Magellan of risking the King's ships by his choice of route, sailing south along the African coast. When Cartagena declared that he would no longer follow Magellan's command, Magellan gave the signal for a number of armed loyalists to enter the room and take hold of him. Magellan called him a "rebel" and branded his behaviour as mutinous. Cartagena called on the other two Castilian captains (Quesada and Mendoza) to stab Magellan, but they held back.
Immediately following the episode, Cartagena was placed in stocks. Magellan could have tried him for mutiny and sentenced him to death, but at the urging of Quesada and Mendoza, he agreed to merely relieve him of command of the San Antonio and allow him to move freely within the confines of the Victoria. Antonio de Coca replaced Cartagena as captain of the San Antonio.