F E R D I N A N D M A G E L L A N
Ferdinand Magellan (1480 – 27
April 1521) was a Portuguese explorer who organized the Spanish expedition to
the East Indies from 1519 to 1522, resulting in the first circumnavigation of
the Earth, completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano.
Born into a Portuguese noble
family in around 1480, Magellan became a skilled sailor and naval officer and
was eventually selected by King Charles I of Spain to search for a westward
route to the Maluku Islands (the "Spice Islands"). Commanding a fleet
of five vessels, he headed south through the Atlantic Ocean to Patagonia,
passing through the Strait of Magellan into a body of water he named the
"peaceful sea" (the modern Pacific Ocean). Despite a series of storms
and mutinies, the expedition reached the Spice Islands in 1521 and returned
home via the Indian Ocean to complete the first circuit of the globe. Magellan
did not complete the entire voyage, as he was killed during the Battle of
Mactan in the Philippines in 1521.
Magellan had already reached the
Malay Archipelago in Southeast Asia on previous voyages traveling east (from
1505 to 1511-1512). By visiting this area again but now traveling west,
Magellan achieved a nearly complete personal circumnavigation of the globe for
the first time in history.
Death in the Philippines
Heading northwest, the crew
reached the equator on 13 February 1521. On 6 March they reached the Marianas
and Guam. Pigafetta described the "lateen sail" used by the
inhabitants of Guam, hence the name "Island of Sails", but he also
writes the inhabitants "entered the ships and stole whatever they could
lay their hands on", including "the small boat that was fastened to
the poop of the flagship." "Those people are poor, but ingenious and
very thievish, on account of which we called those three islands the islands of
Ladroni."
On 16 March Magellan reached the
island of Homonhon in the Philippines, with 150 crew left. Members of his
expedition became the first Europeans to reach the Philippine archipelago.
Magellan relied on Enrique, his
Malay servant, and interpreter, to communicate with the native tribes. He had
been indentured by Magellan in 1511 after the colonization of Malacca and had
accompanied him through later adventures. They traded gifts with Rajah Siaiu of
Mazaua who guided them to Cebu on 7 April.
Rajah Humabon of Cebu was
friendly towards Magellan and the Spaniards; both he and his queen Hara Amihan
were baptized as Christians and were given the image of the Holy Child (later
known as Santo Niño de Cebu) which along with a cross (Magellan's Cross)
symbolizes the Christianization of the Philippines. Afterward, Rajah Humabon
and his ally Datu Zula convinced Magellan to kill their enemy, Datu Lapu-Lapu,
on Mactan. Magellan wanted to convert Lapu-Lapu to Christianity, as he had
Humabon, but Lapu-Lapu rejected that. On the morning of 27 April 1521, Magellan
sailed to Mactan with a small attack force. During the resulting battle against
Lapu-Lapu's troops, Magellan was struck by a bamboo spear, and later surrounded
and finished off with other weapons.
Pigafetta and Ginés de Mafra
provided written documents of the events culminating in Magellan's death:
When morning came, forty-nine of
us leaped into the water up to our thighs and walked through water for more
than two cross-bow flights before we could reach the shore. The boats could not
approach nearer because of certain rocks in the water. The other eleven men
remained behind to guard the boats. When we reached land, the natives had
formed three divisions to the number of more than one thousand five hundred
people. When they saw us, they charged down upon us with exceeding loud
cries... The musketeers and crossbowmen shot from a distance for about a
half-hour, but uselessly... Recognizing the captain, so many turned upon him
that they knocked his helmet off his head twice... A native hurled a bamboo
spear into the captain's face, but the latter immediately killed him with his
lance, which he left in the native's body. Then, trying to lay hand on the sword,
he could draw it out but halfway, because he had been wounded in the arm with a
bamboo spear. When the natives saw that, they all hurled themselves upon him.
One of them wounded him on the left leg with a large cutlass, which resembles a
scimitar, only being larger. That caused the captain to fall face downward when immediately they rushed upon him with iron and bamboo spears and with
their cutlasses until they killed our mirror, our light, our comfort, and our
true guide. When they wounded him, he turned back many times to see whether we
were all in the boats. Thereupon, beholding him dead, we, wounded, retreated,
as best we could, to the boats, which were already pulling off.
Magellan provided in his will
that Enrique, his interpreter, was to be freed upon his death. But after the
battle, the remaining ships' masters refused to free the Malay. Enrique escaped
his indenture on 1 May with the aid of Rajah Humabon, amid the deaths of almost
30 crewmen.
Pigafetta had been jotting down
words in both Butuanon and Cebuano languages – which he started at Mazaua on 29
March and his list grew to a total of 145 words. He continued communications
with indigenous peoples during the rest of the voyage.
"Nothing of Magellan's body
survived, that afternoon the grieving rajah-king, hoping to recover his
remains, offered Mactan's victorious chief a handsome ransom of copper and iron
for them but Datu Lapulapu refused. He intended to keep the body as a war
trophy. Since his wife and child died in Seville before any member of the
expedition could return to Spain, it seemed that every evidence of Ferdinand
Magellan's existence had vanished from the earth."
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