Ferdinand Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães)

person · earth · Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, Southeast Asia

The Portuguese captain who, sailing for Castile, commanded the expedition that first crossed the Pacific — and who did not complete the circumnavigation he is remembered for. Five ships left Sanlúcar de Barrameda on 20 September 1519 with roughly 270 men, wintered in Patagonia through a mutiny, found the strait that now bears his name in late 1520, and emerged into an ocean whose width nobody had guessed. The Pacific crossing took over three months without fresh provisions and the crew died of scurvy in numbers. Magellan was killed on 27 April 1521 at Mactan in the Philippines, in a fight he had picked in support of a local ally. His commercial premise was also wrong: the expedition was sold to Castile on the argument that the Spice Islands lay on the Castilian side of an antimeridian nobody could measure, and the argument could not be settled by the voyage because longitude could not be determined at sea.