Navigator Whose Fleet Completed the First Circumnavigation
Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480–1521) was a Portuguese navigator who, funded by the Spanish crown, led a fleet west across the Atlantic and around the strait at the southern tip of South America (later named the "Strait of Magellan") into the Pacific, seeking to open a new route to the Spice Islands. He himself died in a local tribal conflict in the Philippine islands, never living to see the voyage’s completion, but his surviving crew sailed on westward and at last returned to Spain in 1522, completing the first recorded circumnavigation in human history and proving by actual voyage that the earth is a sphere — a knowledge that until then had rested largely at the level of theory.
As the fleet worked south along the coast of South America seeking a waterway to the Pacific, it searched for months through great hardship before at last finding a narrow, winding strait of treacherous currents, crossed it successfully into a relatively calm ocean that Magellan named the "Pacific," and the strait itself was later named the "Strait of Magellan" for him.
In 1521 Magellan became entangled in a conflict on Mactan Island in the Philippines between the local chief Lapulapu and another tribe, and, leading a small party rashly onto the island to fight, was outnumbered and killed on the spot. The fleet was thereafter commanded on by the crew, and at last, with only one ship and eighteen men left, returned to Spain in 1522, completing this nearly three-year circumnavigation.
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