Ferdinand Magellan

Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese-born navigator who entered Spanish service and proposed reaching the Spice Islands by sailing west. His expedition left Spain in 1519, discovered the navigable passage through the southern tip of South America now known as the Strait of Magellan and became the first European expedition to cross the Pacific Ocean.

Magellan was killed at Mactan in the Philippines in April 1521 and did not complete the circumnavigation himself. The surviving ship Victoria eventually returned to Spain under Juan Sebastián Elcano. Magellan’s expedition demonstrated a westward route to the Pacific and Moluccas and initiated the first successful circumnavigation of the globe. Ferdinand Magellan was born in Kingdom of Portugal and died in Mactan.

In Roger Crowley’s Spice, after Portuguese forces reached the Moluccas in 1511, Lisbon’s attempt to secure the spice routes drew Spain into a competing search for a western passage. Ferdinand Magellan’s Spanish-backed expedition crossed the strait that bears his name and the Pacific before his death at Mactan, leaving Juan Sebastián Elcano to bring the Victoria home and complete the first circumnavigation.