Magellan sailed off to circle the Earth
On this day · 20 September 1519
On September 20, 1519, five ships left Spain on a voyage that would become the first to circumnavigate the globe.
On September 20, 1519, five ships and about 270 men under Ferdinand Magellan slipped out of Sanlúcar de Barrameda in southern Spain and turned west. The goal was not glory but commerce: a westward route to the Spice Islands of present-day Indonesia.
The expedition became a catalogue of disasters. Crews mutinied off South America, ships were lost, and starvation and scurvy thinned the ranks. Magellan himself never finished the journey; he was killed in 1521 in a battle in the Philippines.
Only one ship and 18 men completed the circuit.
Command passed to Juan Sebastián Elcano, who brought the battered Victoria home to Spain on September 6, 1522, nearly three years after departure. The survivors had not set out to ring the planet, but in doing so they proved, beyond argument, that the oceans were connected and the Earth could be sailed around.
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