In the sixteenth century, an age of great marine and terrestrial exploration, Ferdinand Magellan led the
first expedition to sail around the world. As a yound Portuguese noble, he served the king of Portugal, but
he became involved in the quagmire of political intrigue at court and lost the king’s fovor. After he was
dismissed from service to the king of Portugal, he offered to serve the future Emperor Charles V of Spain.
A papal decree of 1493 had assigned all land in the New World west of 50 degrees W longitude to Sain and
all the land east of that line to Portugal. Magellan offered to prove that the East Indies fell under Spanish
authority. On September 20, 1519, Magellan set sail from Spain with five ships. More than a year later,
one of these ships was exploring the topography of South America in search of a water route across the
continent. This ship sank, but the remaining four ships searched along the southern peninsula of South
America. Finally they found the passage they sought near a latitude of 50 degrees S. Magellan named this
passage the Strait of All Saints, but today we know it as the Strait of Magellan.
One ship deserted while in tis passage and returned to Spain, so fewer sailors were privileged to gaze at
that first panorama of the Pacific Ocean. Those who remained crossed the meridian we now call the International
Date Line in the early spring of 1521 after ninety-eight days on the Pacific Ocean. During those
long days at sea, many of Magellan’s men died of starvation and disease.
Later Magellan became involved in an insular conflict in the Philippines and was killed in a tribal
battle. Only one ship and seventeen sailors under the command of the Basque navigator Elcano survived
to complete the westward journey to Spain and thus prove once and for all that the world is round, with
no precipice at the edge.