The first Monday in March is Magellan
Day. Here are some things you might not know about explorer Ferdinand Magellan:
- Ferdinand Magellan was born Fernão de Magalhães in about 1480. He was the son of Rodrigo de Magalhães, Alcaide-Mor of Aveiro and Alda de Mesquita. They were a wealthy family. Young Ferdinand learned to sail and for a while was a page at the royal court.
- Magellan's mission was to find a route to the Maluku Islands (the "Spice Islands") by travelling west rather than east, and avoid having to navigate around Africa. Five ships set out, only one completed the trip around the world.
- Although he was Portuguese, it was the king of Spain who sponsored his epic voyage. The king of Portugal refused to do so, and even tried to stop the voyage from happening at all. King Manuel I of Portugal arranged for disruptions to the preparations, including, it's thought, an attempt to assassinate Magellan. Even after they sailed, Magellan's fleet were chased by Portuguese vessels hoping to capture him. Even though sponsored by the king, Spanish sailors were reluctant to serve under a Portuguese captain. Hence the crew included not only Spaniards and Portuguese, but sailors from Greece, Sicily, England, France, Germany and even North Africa. Not only that, but a number of them were ex-prisoners.
- There were two attempted mutinies on the trip, which Magellan and his supporters managed to quash. Two sailors were later marooned on an island because they were planning a third one.
- Magellan had a limp as a result of an injury sustained while serving in Morocco.
- Magellan discovered many things on his journey besides a new route to the Spice Islands. He discovered Guam, which he initially called The Island of Sails because there were a lot of sailing boats there. He changed the name to Island of Thieves after the natives stole some of his own small boats. There were reports that he'd discovered giants living in Patagonia - men who were 8 feet tall. They even managed to entice one on board their ship to take him home as proof, but the giant died at sea, so we only have their word for it. They myth that there were giants in Patagonia persisted for years. They probably weren't giants, but members of the Tehuelche, a naturally tall tribe of natives whose size was exaggerated by Magellan's men in their reports.
- It was Magellan who gave the Pacific Ocean its name. Having lost one of his ships in a storm off South America on 1 November 1520, the remainder of the fleet sailed into what they named the Strait of All Saints, because it was All Saints Day. We know it today as The Strait of Magellan. They emerged from there into a calm sea which Magellan dubbed “Mar Pacifico,” which means “peaceful sea” in Portuguese. Even so, their journey was far from over. It was another 98 days before they reached land again.
- Magellan was a very religious man, and saw it as part of his Christian duty to convert as many of the natives he encountered as he possibly could. It was partially successful. The "giant" was baptised and re-named Paul before he died, and in the Philippines, he baptised King Humabon of Cebu along with thousands of his subjects. However, not all the kings and chieftains wanted to become Christians. Magellan's big mistake was getting heavy-handed with those who didn't. When one king, Lapu-Lapu, refused, Magellan burned his village down and repeated his demands that Lapu-Lapu should convert. Lapu-Lapu still wasn't having any of it, and this resulted in a battle between islanders and Magellan's men, during which Magellan was stabbed to death.
- Magellan is remembered for leading the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe, but thanks to his fatal efforts to convert the tribes in the Philippines, he didn't actually make it the whole way around the world himself. The captain of the one ship to make it home after this, Victoria, Juan Sebastian Elcano, a Basque mariner you've probably never heard of, was the one to make it. You could argue that even he wasn't the first. Magellan had a personal slave called Enrique, who had been with Magellan since a previous voyage to Malacca in 1511. When the expedition reached his homeland, Enrique would have circumnavigated the globe, long before any of the European sailors did.
- Magellan has a number of things named after him as well as the Magellan Straits. The Magellanic penguin is named after him, as he was the first European to document it. Even further afield, the Magellanic Clouds, now known to be two nearby dwarf galaxies; the twin lunar craters of Magelhaens and Magelhaens A; and the Martian crater of Magelhaens also bear his name.
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