Why Was Magellan’s Pass So Dangerous?
In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan undertook a daring voyage around the world. Find out what made the expedition dangerous and why its leader did not survive.
On September 20, 1519, a fleet of five ships and 260 sailors set sail from the Spanish port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda under Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese sailor who had switched allegiance to Spain.
Magellan was trying to find a way west by water to the Spice Islands, a small archipelago in Indonesia that was the source of coveted nutmeg, cloves, and other spices by Europeans. The mission would have circumnavigated the globe for the first time in human history by achieving this goal.
It was a daring plan that involved sailing thousands of miles of uncharted waters and finding a previously unknown passage across the Americas, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But Magellan believed success was God’s will, and he had every confidence in it.
Lawrence Berggren, author of At the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Voyage Around the World (2003), says the sailor was “an unparalleled example of seafaring wisdom, personal courage, and indifference to adversity.”
Ultimately, Magellan’s mission claimed his life and resulted in the death or escape of all but one ship and most of the crew.
Here are some of the dangers that made Magellan’s voyage difficult and how the explorer and his crew overcame some (but not all) of those obstacles.
Magellan didn’t know how to get to his destination.
According to Peregrine, Magellan initially tried to convince King Manuel of Portugal to authorize a voyage to discover a sea route to the Spice Islands. Still, the king didn’t like the idea and dismissed it. Frustrated, he obtained Manuel’s permission to present his plan elsewhere. In 1517, he moved to Spain to lobby officials to support his idea.
As propaganda, Magellan proclaimed his belief that the Spice Islands were located within the Kingdom of Spain as defined by the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, in which Spain and Portugal agreed to divide the non-Christian world. Magellan may have believed this, as he had a friend, Portuguese sailor Francisco de Selao, who settled in the Spice Islands and wrote to Magellan in which he placed the islands further east than they were. Not only was Magellan mistaken about his destination, but he was also unsure of the route
Magellan told Spanish officials that he planned to sail along the east coast of South America to the ends of the earth and even showed them a globe to guide them. Although the distance was unknown, he estimated it would take no more than two years to go from the Spice Islands and back.
However, Magellan did not explain how he would cross the Americas. According to historian Jerry Broughton’s book A History of the World in 12 Maps, a priest and author named Bartolomé de las Casas witnessed the march. They asked Magellan, “What would you do if you could not find any straits to cross to another sea?” Magellan dodged the question.
When Magellan finally crossed the Atlantic to South America, he found the passage much more difficult than expected. One of his ships, the Santiago, was wrecked in a storm during the search and had to be abandoned.
Magellan had to fight off mutinies by some of his crew.
“As a master of navigation, the greatest dangers he faced were not physical threats, storms, or natural disasters while crossing the vast ocean,” Berggren explained. “He led an often unruly group of men, who came from many different countries, spoke different languages, and were often at odds with him and with each other.”
“The commanders who accompanied him hated him very much,” wrote the diplomat Antonio Pigafetta, who kept detailed diaries of the expedition that he later published in a book called Magellan’s Voyage Around the World. “I do not know why, except that he was Portuguese and they were Spanish.”
During the arduous voyage across the Atlantic to Brazil, the fleet was hit by a storm, and tensions were further heightened when Antonio Salamon, an officer on the Victoria, was tried and strangled in December 1519 for sexually assaulting a midshipman. The noise grew louder. One of the commanders, Juan de Cartagena, accused Magellan of being a double agent for Portugal and sabotaging the mission.
Cartagena and others hatched a plot to revolt and assassinate Magellan in April 1520. But Magellan anticipated their betrayal, according to Portuguese historian Gaspar Correa. When they attempted the attack, a loyal officer drew a dagger and slit the throat of the rebel Luis de Mendoza, hanging his body at his feet “so they could see him from the other ships.”
Magellan captured the other conspirators, and their punishments were brutal. After one captain was beheaded, his body was pulled out and cut into quarters as an example of the price he paid for his disloyalty. Cartagena attempted a second plot, only to be left to starve to death on an island off the coast.
Magellan’s intensity may seem shocking today, but Berggren says it was not uncommon in his day. “Captains had the power of life and death over sailors, and they sometimes used that power,” the historian explains.
But it didn’t quell all the opposition. In November 1520, the officers and crew of the San Antonio managed to escape and return to Spain.
The Pacific, it turns out, was much bigger than Magellan had imagined.
In November 1520, Magellan finally discovered the Strait of Magellan, a natural passage connecting the southern tip of the continent to Tierra del Fuego, and he and his three remaining ships were finally able to sail into an ocean he called the Pacific because it appeared so calm.
“He thought he had to go around the globe to get to the Spice Islands, and then he would return triumphantly. Of course, that didn’t happen,” Bergeron said.
After the coast of South America disappeared, Magellan found himself in the middle of an ocean far larger than he had imagined.
“He was crossing the Pacific hoping to find land one day, not realizing he was crossing the largest body of water on Earth,” Bergeron explained.
As the voyage continued, the crew had to survive on severely scarce diets and rationed water. The impasse had a profound effect on Magellan. “At some point, he became irritable, probably from the lack of food, and began to become less rational,” Bergeron explained. The explorer realized that the map he was using was completely inaccurate. Magellan suddenly threw her into the sea.
Magellan’s men were terrified. “They thought they were doomed without a map,” Berggren said. But on the contrary, they were liberated. Without a map, Magellan was forced to navigate by reading signs in the marine environment. He discovered the trade winds that blew across the Pacific, and his skills as a sailor, combined with the agility and maneuverability of his ship’s design, enabled him to speed across the Pacific before he and his men died of hunger and thirst.
Magellan’s overconfidence proved fatal.
When Magellan arrived in the Philippines in March 1521, he saw an opportunity to convert the indigenous people to Catholicism and bring them under the authority of the Spanish king, according to researchers Kate Fullagar and Christie Patricia Flannery of the Australian Catholic University.
Some local rulers saw the benefits of an alliance with the Spanish and sided with Magellan. But Lapu-Lapu, the leader of Mactan Island, refused. Magellan, who had experience as a soldier, decided to attack. On April 27, 1521, he and a small Spanish force of 60 armed men and 20 to 30 native allies attempted an amphibious invasion at dawn.
As Peregrine notes, Magellan thought his superior technology—guns and shields—would overwhelm the natives armed with wooden spears. This proved to be a fatal error of judgment.
According to Pigafetta, the invading force’s ships could not get very close to shore because of rocks, forcing Magellan’s men to jump into the water and try to wade to land. More than 1,500 warriors were waiting for them. Magellan’s knights and crossbowmen opened fire on the defenders but could not hit them in the confusion.
“The spears and stones they hurled at us were so numerous that we could not resist,” Pigafetta wrote. Magellan himself was wounded in the leg by a poisoned arrow and had his helmet knocked off by the attackers. He fought hard to survive until the war broke out.
He struggled desperately for his life until a warrior hacked his leg with a machete, and he fell, and the others pounced on Magellan, stabbing him to death.
Only one of Magellan’s ships and 18 sailors made it back.
The Spanish suffered heavy casualties and had to abandon another ship, the Concepción because they did not have enough men to sail her. The remaining two ships finally reached the Spice Islands in November 1521.
One of the two remaining ships, the Trinidad, was in poor condition and needed major repairs. The Portuguese later captured her and eventually sank in a storm. This left only the Victoria to sail around Cape Horn and then back to Europe along the west coast of Africa.
On September 6, 1522, Victoria arrived at the same Spanish port she had left three years earlier, as Bergeron described in his book. Victoria’s shattered sails and damaged, sun-bleached hull proved she had survived the ordeal. Only 18 of the 260 sailors survived, so weak from malnutrition and exposure that they had difficulty walking or talking.
The survivors managed to bring back a cargo of spices, but it became clear that Magellan’s idea of a westward route to Asia was too slow, expensive, and dangerous to be practical.
How did Magellan’s voyage impact history?
Although it was seen as a failure then, Magellan’s mission changed the world in key ways.
By circumnavigating the globe, the mission removed doubts about whether the Earth was round and showed that North and South America were separate continents from Asia and that much of our planet’s surface was covered in water.
It would take another half century for English navigator, pirate, and slave trader Sir Francis Drake to equal Magellan’s feat of exploration by completing a circumnavigation between 1577 and 1580.
