Week 20 Essay

          This week was all about Spanish explorers, but the one I found most interesting was Ferdinand Magellan. He was a great explorer and is credited to have the first crew to sail completely around the world. Unfortunately, he himself was not able to complete the route, but he is remembered for finding a trade route from Spain to India.

           Ferdinand Magellan was born in 1480 in Portugal. He became an orphan at 10, but he lived as a page to the queen. At 25 he joined the Royal Navy. During a battle he was injured and got a permanent limp from it. Being injured he went back to Portugal, but was not well received because he left without permission.

           He worked alongside his friend Serrao in India, and when Serrao sent him letters of his travels when he was exploring, Magellan wanted to be an explorer too. He asked the king of Portugal to sponsor his journey. One of the reasons was probably because Magellan was technically not supposed to be back yet. Ferdinand instead went to Spain to ask the Spanish crown.

          Spain and Portugal made an agreement that anything discovered on the West would belong to Spain, and anything discovered on the East would belong to Portugal. Well, new trading routes to India were discovered and therefore belonged to Portugal. India produced many spices and riches and Spain wanted to become rich too. However, they could not get to India because Portugal owned the trading routes. Magellan was aware of Spain’s problem and offered to find a new trading route to India by going around the other side of the world. Spain agreed to sponsor his journey and Magellan left in 1519 with five ships and around 270 men.

          Magellan sailed across the ocean down to South America where he found a deep river at the tip of South America and he sailed through it. After traveling through the river, he came out into an ocean on the other side. He named it Mar Pacifico or the Pacific Ocean after seeing how peaceful the water was. Magellan is also known to be the first European to sail on the Pacific Ocean.

           He and his crew sailed across the Pacific Ocean and stopped in the Philippines. There Magellan helped the king fight against one of the king’s enemies, but was killed in battle. After the battle there were only three ships left but not enough sailors to have all of those ships so one of them was abandoned and burnt.

           The remaining two ships each went different ways, one going back to South America, while the other continuing the journey to Spain. The ship that left to go back to South America was captured by Portugal, and was destroyed in a storm. Almost three years after setting sail the last ship returned to Spain without Magellan, and only eighteen crew members!

           Even though Magellan did not live to sail completely around the world, his crew did and they made a trade route from Spain to India. Today Magellan is known as a famous explorer who sailed around the world, gave Spain a trading route to India, who discovered and named the Pacific Ocean, and who was the first to sail on it. I cannot wait to learn about more explorers for different countries next week.