Magellan was killed at Mactan in 1521, mid-voyage

Ferdinand Magellan was killed on April 27, 1521, in a battle on Mactan Island in the Philippines, roughly 19 months into the Spanish expedition now remembered as the first circumnavigation. He had allied himself with Raja Humabon of Cebu and attacked Lapulapu, the ruler of Mactan, who refused to pay tribute to Humabon or to the King of Spain.

Accounts of the odds differ. Ohio State University’s Origins puts it at Magellan and 49 men fighting in the shallows against more than 1,000 warriors; the Mariners’ Museum gives about 60 men against 1,500. Either way, the attackers were badly outnumbered. Magellan and seven of his men died, and the ruler of Mactan would not surrender his body, which was never recovered. Nearly all we know comes from the diary of Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian passenger, because Magellan’s own log has not survived.

What happened to Magellan’s five ships?

Ship	Fate
Santiago	Ran aground while scouting, winter 1520
San Antonio	Turned back in the strait and sailed home to Spain
Concepción	Scuttled on May 2, 1521; crew split between the last two ships
Trinidad	Leaking badly at Tidore; abandoned with its crew
Victoria	Reached Spain on September 6, 1522

The fleet unravelled fast after Mactan. Within days Humabon poisoned a group of the expedition’s senior men at a feast, leaving fewer than half of the original crew. The Victoria, under the Basque officer Juan Sebastián Elcano, finally brought home just 18 of the roughly 270 men who had set out in 1519.

So the man whose name became shorthand for sailing around the world got only part of the way on this voyage, six weeks after his fleet reached the Philippines. Elcano received the hero’s welcome and a coat of arms reading Primus circumdedisti me, “first to circumnavigate me”, while survivors disparaged their dead commander.