Magellan's Fleet Set Off to Circumnavigate the Globe

On 10 August 1519, the expedition led by Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan left Seville and dropped down the Guadalquivir River toward the open sea. The fleet of five ships — Trinidad, San Antonio, Concepción, Victoria and Santiago — carried roughly 270 men under the flag of the Spanish crown, hunting a westward route to the spice-rich Moluccas.

The ships paused for weeks at Sanlúcar de Barrameda before finally clearing Spain on 20 September 1519. What followed redrew the map: the crew crossed the Atlantic, threaded the strait at South America’s tip now bearing Magellan’s name, and became the first Europeans to cross the Pacific.

Magellan never finished the journey, but the voyage he began did.

Magellan was killed in the Philippines in 1521. Command passed to Juan Sebastián Elcano, who brought the Victoria home in September 1522 with just 18 survivors — the first people to circle the Earth, settling ancient questions about the planet’s true size and shape.