One battered ship closed the first lap around the world
On this day · 6 September 1522
After three years and the loss of its leader, a single ship limped into Spain to prove the Earth could be sailed all the way around.
On September 6, 1522, a leaking, worm-eaten carrack named Victoria slipped into the Spanish harbor of Sanlúcar de Barrameda. She had been gone nearly three years, and she alone of the original fleet had circled the globe — the first ship in history to do so.
The expedition had set out under Ferdinand Magellan, but he never saw the finish. Killed in the Philippines in 1521, he left the homeward voyage to his Basque officer Juan Sebastián Elcano, who steered Victoria across the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope through Portuguese-controlled waters.
Of an original crew of 270, only 18 starved and exhausted men sailed home aboard her.
The survivors arrived with proof of something scholars had argued for centuries: you could keep sailing west and eventually come back east. They also returned a day “behind” their own calendar, an early lesson in what crossing the date line does to bookkeeping.
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