Download Ferdinand Magellan Synopsis

Ferdinand Magellan
Synopsis
Ferdinand Magellan was born in Portugal circa 1480. As a
boy, he studied mapmaking and navigation. By his mid20s, he was sailing in large fleets and was committed in
combat. In 1519, with the support of King Charles V of
Spain, Magellan set out to circumnavigate the globe. He
assembled a fleet of ships and, despite huge setbacks, his
own death included, proved that the world was round.
Early Life
Ferdinand Magellan was born in Portugal, either in the city
of Porto or in Sabrosa, circa 1480. His parents were
members of the Portuguese nobility, so after their deaths,
when he was just 10 years old, Magellan became a page for
the queen. Magellan studied at Queen Leonora's School of
Pages in Lisbon and spent his days poring over texts on
cartography, astronomy, and celestial navigation—subjects
that would serve him well in his later pursuits.
Navigator and Explorer
In his mid-20s, Magellan joined a Portuguese fleet that was
sailing to East Africa. He soon found himself at the Battle
of Diu, in which the Portuguese destroyed Egyptian ships
in the Arabian Sea. He also explored Malacca, located in
present-day Malaysia, and participated in the conquest of
Malacca's port. It is possible that he sailed as far as the
Moluccas, islands in Indonesia, then called the Spice
Islands. The Moluccas were the original source of some of
the world's most valuable spices, including cloves and
nutmeg. The conquest of spice-rich countries was, as a
result, a source of much European competition.
While serving in Morocco, Magellan was wounded, and
walked the remainder of his life with a limp. After his
injury, he was falsely accused of trading illegally with the
Moors, and despite all of his service to Portugal, and his
many pleas to the king, any further offers of employment
were withheld him.
In 1517, Magellan moved to Seville, Spain, to offer his
skills to the Spanish court. In the three years following his
departure from Portugal, he had religiously studied all of
the most recent navigation charts. He had also benefited
from the mistakes and discoveries of several other
explorers—Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of North
America and Vasco Núñez de Balboa's march across the
Panamanian isthmus to the Pacific Ocean were just two of
the many events that inspired Magellan's bold quest for an
all-water passage to farther-flung, spice-rich lands.
Final Years
Magellan devised a plan for circumnavigating the globe,
and King Charles V of Spain gave it his blessing. On
September 20, 1519, he set out with a fleet of five ships,
beautifully named but hardly adequate to sail the distances
he proposed. The fleet sailed first to Brazil and then down
the coast of South America to Patagonia. There, an
attempted mutiny took place, and one of the ships was
wrecked. Despite the setback, the crew continued on with
the four remaining vessels.
By October 1520, Magellan and his men had entered what
is now called the Strait of Magellan. It took them over a
month to pass through the strait, during which time the
master of one of the ships deserted and sailed back home.
In March 1521, the fleet anchored in Guam.
It is a lesser-known fact that Magellan became involved in
a local war in the Philippines, where he was killed in battle
on April 27, 1521. It's also largely unknown that it was the
remaining members of his crew, namely Juan Sebastián del
Cano, who actually completed the circumnavigation of the
globe. The following year, on September 8, 1522, despite
having almost lost their lives in their efforts, the remainder
of Magellan's fleet returned to Spain, thus proving that the
globe was in fact round.
Ferdinand Magellan
http://geography.about.com/od/historyofgeography/a/magellan.htm
Ferdinand Magellan was born in 1480 in Sabrosa, Portugal to Rui de
Magalhaes and Alda de Mesquita. Because his family had ties to the
royal family, Magellan became a page to the Portuguese queen after
his parents' untimely deaths in 1490. This allowed him the opportunity
to become educated and learn about the various Portuguese
exploration expeditions- possibly even those conducted by Christopher
Columbus.
Magellan took part in his first sea voyage in 1505 when Portugal sent
him to India to help install Francisco de Almeida as the Portuguese
viceroy. He also experienced his first battle there in 1509 when one of
the local kings rejected the practice of paying tribute to the new
viceroy.
From here however, Magellan lost the viceroy Almeida's support after
he took leave without permission and was accused of illegally trading
with the Moors. After some of the accusations were proven to be true,
Magellan lost all offers of employment from the Portuguese after 1514.
The Spanish and the Spice Islands
Around this same time, the Spanish were engaged in trying to find a
new route to the Spice Islands (the East Indies, in present-day
Indonesia) after the Treaty of Tordesillas divided the world in half in
1494. The dividing line for this treaty went through the Atlantic Ocean
and Spain got the lands west of the line, including the Americas. Brazil
however, went to Portugal as did everything east of the line, including
India and the eastern half of Africa.
Similar to his predecessor Columbus, Magellan believed that the Spice
Islands could be reached by sailing west through the New World. He
proposed this idea to Manuel I, the Portuguese king, but was rejected.
Looking for support Magellan moved on to share his plan with the
Spanish king.
On March 22, 1518, Charles I was persuaded by Magellan and granted
him a large sum of money to find a route to the Spice Islands by
sailing west, thereby giving Spain control of the area, since it would in
effect be "west" of the dividing line through the Atlantic. Using these
generous funds, Magellan set sail going west toward the Spice Islands
in September 1519 with five ships (the Conception, the San Antonio,
the Santiago, the Trinidad, and the Victoria) and 270 men.
The Early Portion of the Voyage
Since Magellan was a Portuguese explorer in charge of a Spanish fleet,
the early part of the voyage to the west was riddled with problems.
Several of the Spanish captains on the ships in the expedition plotted
to kill him but their plans were never realized and many of them were
held prisoner and/or executed. In addition, Magellan had to avoid
Portuguese territory since he was sailing for Spain.
After months of sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, the fleet anchored at
what is today Rio de Janeiro to restock its supplies on December 13,
1519. From there, they moved down the coast of South America
looking for a way into the Pacific. As they sailed farther south
however, the weather got worse so the crew anchored in Patagonia
(southern South America) to wait out the winter.
As the weather began to ease in the spring, Magellan sent the
Santiago on a mission to look for a way through to the Pacific Ocean.
In May, the ship was wrecked and the fleet did not move again until
August 1520. Then, after months of exploring the area, the remaining
four ships found a strait in October and sailed through it. This portion
of the journey took 38 days, cost them the San Antonio (because its
crew decided to abandon the expedition) and a large amount of
supplies. Nevertheless, in the end of November, the remaining three
ships exited what Magellan named the Strait of All Saints and sailed
into the Pacific Ocean.
Later Voyage and Magellan's Death
From here, Magellan mistakenly thought it would only take a few days
to reach the Spice Islands, when it instead took four months, during
which time his crew suffered immensely. They began to starve as their
food supplies were depleted, their water turned putrid, and many of
the men developed scurvy. The crew was able to stop at a nearby
island in January 1521 to eat fish and seabirds but their supplies were
not adequately restocked until March when they stopped in Guam.
On March 28, they landed in the Philippines and befriended a tribal
king, Rajah Humabon of Cebu Island. After spending time with the
king, Magellan and his crew were persuaded into helping the tribe kill
their enemy Lapu-Lapu on Mactan Island. On April 21, 1521, Magellan
took part in the Battle of Mactan and was killed by Lapu-Lapu's army.
After Magellan's death, Sebastian del Cano had the Conception burned
(so it could not be used against them by the locals) and took over the
two remaining ships and 117 crewmembers. To ensure that one ship
would make it back to Spain, one ship, the Trinidad, headed east, and
the Victoria continued west. The Trinidad was seized by the Portuguese
on its journey, but on September 6, 1522 the Victoria and only 18
surviving crew members returned to Spain, completing the first
circumnavigation of the earth.
Magellan's Legacy
Though Magellan died before the voyage was completed, he is often
credited with the first circumnavigation of the earth as he initially led
the voyage. He also discovered what is now called the Strait of
Magellan, named the Pacific Ocean, and South America's Tierra del
Fuego. Magellanic Clouds in space were also named for him, as his
crew was the first to view them while sailing in the Southern
Hemisphere. Most important to geography though, was Magellan’s
realization of the full extent of the earth- something that significantly
aided in the development of later geographic exploration and the
resulting knowledge of the world today.