MAGELLAN, FERDINAND. - In Portuguese Fernão de Magalhães, Portuguese navigator, b. in 1480 at Villa de Sabrosa in the province of Trazos-Montes of a noble family, d. on the island of Mactan on 27 April 1521.
As an adolescent he was at the court of King Manuel as a page and was probably instructed in mathematics, geography, and nautical science; at the age of 25, in his desire to make a name for himself, he enlisted as a volunteer in the great expedition to the Indies, led by Francisco de Almeida (1505), in which, though without a position of prominence, he distinguished himself in many feats of arms, among them the battle of Diu where he was wounded. In 1509 he was with the small squadron of Diego Lopez de Sequeira exploring the Malay peninsula, took part in the capture of that city, then remained at Malacca under the governorship of Albuquerque, and, having by then become familiar with the high commanders (Antonio de Abreu, Francisco Serrão, etc.), acquired extensive knowledge of the countries of Southeast Asia, of Indonesia, and of the Spice Islands. Certainly few were better informed than he, when, in 1513, he returned to Lisbon, but not to rest, for the following year he was in Morocco at the capture of Azamor where he was again wounded. Having become the object of accusations, which later proved unfounded, he nonetheless alienated the court, by which he believed, perhaps with reason, that he had been treated with little consideration, and he withdrew to private life, devoting himself to the study of cosmography under the guidance of the astronomer Ruy Faleiro. But the information received from Serrão about the prodigious riches of the Spice Islands - the Moluccas - rekindled his spirit, all the more so since, the position of these islands being still uncertain, it was not known with exactness whether they fell within the hemisphere belonging to Portugal or within that belonging to Spain (according to the demarcation of the Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494); indeed Faleiro's calculations inclined rather toward their belonging to Spain. M. and Faleiro then left Portugal (1517) and presented to the Spanish government the project of reaching the Moluccas by way of the Atlantic, a project which had, moreover, already been formulated by others. This project was at first rejected by the Casa de Contratación of Seville, which had supreme direction of all maritime enterprises, but was viewed favorably by the young King Charles I; the relevant capitulations were stipulated on 22 March 1518; the greater part of the expenses were assumed by M., Faleiro and the merchant Christobal de Haro; but Faleiro did not take part in the expedition. Five ships were fitted out, all of small tonnage, with 265 men, for the most part
Spaniards; there were, however, at least 25 Italians among them, including Antonio Pigafetta of Vicenza (v.), the principal narrator of the great enterprise.
The expedition set out from Sanlúcar on Sept. 20, 1519, crossed the Atlantic, followed southward the coasts of present-day South America in search of a passage to the South Sea (the report that M. already knew its location is unfounded), and reached San Julián in Patagonia on March 31, where 5 months of the austral winter were spent; during this period one ship was lost, and another later deserted, returning to Spain. The three surviving ships, which had resumed the voyage at the end of Aug. 1520, arrived only on Oct. 21 at the mouth of the long-hoped-for strait and emerged from it on Nov. 28: to the strait, named de Todos los Santos, there later remained, quite rightly, the name of its discoverer, M.
M., who well knew that he had gone too far south, first sailed back along the South American coasts as far as about 37° south latitude, then from there, on Dec. 15, turned northwest and had to cross the entire Pacific Ocean, whose enormous extent no one could have suspected, following a very long diagonal and without encountering any land, except two small islands devoid of resources. The privations and sufferings of the unforeseen crossing were atrocious; the exhausted crew reached the Island of Guam in the Marianas only on March 6, 1521, and thence passed to the archipelago of San Lázaro (Philippines), taking possession of it in the name of the king of Spain; but here, unexpectedly, M. fell in a conflict with the natives on the Island of Mactan, after fighting strenuously. The two remaining ships (one had been burned for lack of crew) reached, after many vicissitudes, the Island of Tidor in the Moluccas and loaded spices there, but one of them, damaged by breakdowns, was captured by the Portuguese; in the end only the flagship, the "Victoria," under the command of the Spaniard Sebastián del Cano, was able, by crossing the Indian Ocean and then rounding south of the Cape of Good Hope, to return to Spain at Sanlúcar on Sept. 6, 1522 with only 18 survivors.
This first circumnavigation of the globe was important above all from the scientific point of view; the map of the world was quite simply revolutionized by it. The principal direct sources are the account of Antonio Pigafetta, the Roteiro of the pilot Albo, and another diary attributed to Leone Parcaldo of Savona. M. was wrongly judged a traitor for having entered the service of Spain; such transfers were at that time an ordinary occurrence. He was a man of high nautical competence, of great courage, energetic to the point of cruelty, accustomed to demanding of others what he demanded of himself; of his debated and debatable errors he was cleansed by a truly heroic death.