Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480–1521) was a Portuguese navigator who led the Spanish expedition of 1519–1522 that became the first to sail around the world. As a young man he served Portugal on voyages to India and Southeast Asia, gaining deep experience of ocean navigation. When the Portuguese king declined his proposals, he turned to Spain, where King Charles I backed his plan to reach the Spice Islands by sailing west. Leaving Spain in 1519 with five ships, he crossed the Atlantic and in 1520 found the passage at the southern tip of South America now called the Strait of Magellan, naming the calm ocean beyond it the Pacific. Magellan died in 1521 in a clash on the island of Mactan in the Philippines, and Juan Sebastián Elcano brought the ship Victoria home in 1522. The voyage revealed the true size of the Earth's oceans.
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Voyages of the Age of Discovery
Marco Polo's account of his years in China later inspired European navigators, among them Christopher Columbus, who crossed the Atlantic in 1492. Amerigo Vespucci, whose name the Americas came to bear, described the lands as a New World. Vasco da Gama opened the sea route to India, Ferdinand Magellan led the first expedition to sail around the globe, and Sir Francis Drake completed the second circumnavigation.
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