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Ocean from the Western Hemisphere. He claimed the ocean and its entire coastline for Spain.
Magellan and the Circumnavigation of the Globe
The Portuguese sea captain Ferdinand Magellan, sailing under the Spanish
flag, gave the Pacific Ocean its European name. Magellan’s expedition became the
first to circumnavigate the globe.
Magellan was Portuguese and originally sailed for his native land. He followed the Portuguese trade routes around Africa to the Indies. However, he eventually fell out of favor with the Portuguese king and began to sail for Spain. He
convinced the Spanish king that he could reach the Indies by sailing west and
then through or around South America.
Teaching Idea
Use Magellan’s voyage as a way to
revisit and reinforce what students
learned about the International Date
Line and time zones during their study
of geography.
Name
In September 1519, five ships under his command sailed southwest from
Spain. They reached the South American coast in December and sailed south,
looking for a passage through South America to the Pacific Ocean. They spent the
winter in a settlement along the coast. Magellan had to put down a mutiny by
some of his ship captains. He executed one leader and left another to survive on
an island. One of his ships was lost in a wreck at sea. When the winter ended in
August (remember that the seasons are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere), he
sailed on, still searching for a passage.
Date
Routes of European Explorers
Study the map. Use it to answer the questions below.
N
W
E
S
NORTH
AMERICA
ASIA
EUROPE
PORTUGAL
CHINA
SPAIN
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
Caribbean
PA C I F I C
OCEAN
PA C I F I C
OCEAN
INDIA Calcutta
Bombay
Madras
AFRICA
Calicut
SOUTH
AMERICA
Spice Islands
INDIAN
OCEAN
BRAZIL
AUSTRALIA
Cape of
Good Hope
0
0
2,000
2,000
4,000 miles
Strait of Magellan
Henry’s Ships
Dias
Vasco da Gama
Cabral
4,000 kilometers
Columbus’s first voyage
With three ships out of his original five, Magellan sailed into the Pacific
Ocean. He thought it would not take long to reach Asia, but he had no idea of the
vastness of the ocean before him. It took six months to reach the Philippines. He
and his men barely survived. The ship ran out of water and food. Sailors suffered
from scurvy and were reduced to eating rats and pieces of leather. Some men
starved to death.
Magellan
1. Which explorers sailed to or around the Cape of Good Hope?
Dias, Magellan, Cabral, Vasco da Gama
2. Which explorers reached South America?
Cabral, Magellan
Copyright ©Core Knowledge Foundation
In October 1520, they at last found a passage—the passage that is now
known as the Strait of Magellan. The roughly 350 miles through the passage were
extremely difficult, and one of his ships abandoned him and sailed back to Spain.
But Magellan pressed on. It is said that he cried for joy when he finally reached
the ocean. On entering the Pacific Ocean, Magellan gave it that name because he
found it very calm compared to the icy waters he had just crossed.
Purpose: To read and interpret a map featuring the routes of six European explorers
Master 20
Grade 5: History & Geography
Use Instructional Master 20.
Once Magellan’s party reached the Philippines, they began to convert some of
the local leaders to Christianity. On the island of Mactan, Magellan was killed in
a battle by Chief Lapulapu, the leader of a tribe that resisted the European explorers. Antonio Pigafetta, one of the men on board described the encounter:
When morning came forty-nine of us leaped into the water up to our
thighs, and walked through water for more than two crossbow flights
before we could reach the shore. . . . When we reached land, those men
[the natives] had formed in three divisions to the number of more than
one thousand five hundred persons. When they saw us, they charged
down upon us with exceeding loud cries. . . . Recognizing the captain, so
many turned upon him that they knocked his helmet off his head twice.
. . . An Indian hurled a bamboo spear into the captain’s face, but the
latter immediately killed him with his lance, which he left in the Indian’s
body. Then, trying to lay hand on sword, he could draw it out but
halfway, because he had been wounded in the arm with a bamboo spear.
When the natives saw that, they all hurled themselves upon him. One of
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III. European Exploration, Trade,
and the Clash of Cultures
them wounded him on the left leg with a large cutlass, which resembles
a scimitar, only being larger. That caused the captain to fall face downward, when immediately they rushed upon him with iron and bamboo
spears and with their cutlasses, until they killed our mirror, our light,
our comfort, and our true guide. When they wounded him, he turned
back many times to see whether we were all in the boats. Thereupon,
beholding him dead, we, wounded, retreated, as best we could, to the
boats, which were already pulling off.
After this encounter, there were no longer enough men to sail three ships, so
one ship was abandoned. The two remaining ships arrived in the Spice Islands in
1521. After loading up with spices, they sailed for home. One ship was captured
by the rival Portuguese, so only one ship returned to Spain. This ship had sailed
west to Africa, south along the coast, west around the Cape of Good Hope, and
northward along the western coast of Africa, reaching Spain in 1522. Despite the
loss of four ships and all but 18 men, the spices that the one remaining ship had
taken on in the Spice Islands made the voyage a profit for its backers.
Arriving home, the survivors of the journey noticed something interesting.
They had kept a careful record of the days they had journeyed, but when they
checked the date with locals, they found that their reckoning of what day it was
differed by one day from the reckoning of those who had stayed at home. The
travelers thought it was Wednesday, but the Europeans who stayed at home said
it was Thursday. What had happened was the ship had sailed one rotation around
Earth, so that their assessment of time was off by 24 hours. This discovery eventually led to the creation of the International Date Line.
England and France
Search for the Northwest Passage
Although Spain and Portugal led the way in exploration, England and France
were not far behind. The English and the French were hopeful that they could
find a “Northwest Passage,” a water route that would lead them through North
America to the Pacific Ocean. Then they could sail to the Spice Islands and grow
wealthy.
An early English explorer was John Cabot. Although he was from Venice,
Cabot was in the service of the English monarch when he sailed west in 1497.
Cabot reached the coast of North America at Newfoundland and possibly sailed
as far south as the Chesapeake Bay. Cabot’s expedition was the first European
expedition to see the North American continent since the Vikings. But Cabot
himself did not know this. Like Columbus, he believed he had reached Asia.
When Cabot returned to England, he did not have any spices and silks to
show for his journey, but was able to describe scooping codfish out of the water
in baskets. Cabot’s second expedition in 1498 disappeared, and while he had not
located the Northwest Passage, England based its later claim to North American
territory on his explorations. When Cabot had first sighted Newfoundland, he
had gone ashore and claimed the land for England.
Frenchman Samuel de Champlain searched for a Northwest Passage several
times. He explored the St. Lawrence River, northern New York (where he discovered the lake that bears his name), and the Great Lakes Huron and Ontario. From
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