The Man Who Named the Pacific and Never Saw It End
He set out to find a shortcut to the Spice Islands and instead found the width of the whole Earth — a discovery that killed him before he could see it proven.
Around 1480, in northern Portugal, a boy named Fernão de Magalhães was born into minor nobility. He grew up a page in the royal court, and by March 1505, at twenty-five, he had sailed for Portuguese India in a fleet of 22 ships. Over the following years he fought at Cannanore in 1506, where he was wounded, and later at the Battle of Diu in 1509.
In September 1509 he sailed under Diogo Lopes de Sequeira on the first Portuguese embassy to Malacca, alongside his friend Francisco Serrão. When the expedition fell victim to a native conspiracy, Magellan risked his life to warn Sequeira and help rescue Serrão and others stranded ashore. Two years later, in 1511, under the new governor Afonso de Albuquerque, Magellan and Serrão took part in the actual conquest of Malacca. Afterward he returned to Portugal with plunder and a baptized Malay servant named Enrique, who would travel with him for the rest of his life.
Magellan's fortunes soured. Sent to fight at the Moroccan stronghold of Azemmour, he was wounded again in August 1513, left with a permanent limp, and accused (falsely) of illegal trade with the Moors. Denied further royal favor by King Manuel I, he found his repeated proposals to sail west to the Spice Islands flatly rejected. In 1517 he left Portugal for Spain. In Seville he married Beatriz Barbosa, had two children who died young, and pitched his westward route to King Charles I — who, unlike Manuel, said yes.
Charles named him admiral of a five-ship fleet, the Armada of Molucca, and made him a Commander of the Order of Santiago. On 10 August 1519 the ships left Seville, delayed more than five weeks at Sanlúcar de Barrameda while suspicious Spanish officials replaced much of the Portuguese-heavy crew. On 20 September, Magellan finally sailed with roughly 270 men, evading a Portuguese naval force sent by King Manuel to stop him.
The fleet crossed the Atlantic via the Canary and Cape Verde islands, sighted Brazil in December 1519, and searched the coastline for a passage south. At Puerto San Julián in March 1520, mutiny broke out among two ship captains; Magellan crushed it, executing Quesada and abandoning Cartagena and a priest on the desolate shore. The Santiago was later lost in a storm scouting the coast, though its crew survived.
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