Fedinand Magellen (The most dangerous sea voyour of all time)


In search of fame, distinction and fortune, a young Portuguese pioneer Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480-1521) set out from Spain in 1519 with an armada of five boats to find a western ocean route to the Spice Islands. In transit, he discovered what came to be known as  the Strait of Magellan - and in the process, making him the first European to cross the Pacific Ocean. In spite of the fact that it was loaded down with profitable flavors and goodies from the East, the journey was so lengthy and dangerous that just 18 of the armada's talented crew of 270 came back with the ship three years later... Magellan himself non-inclusive!!..... 

Let us take a trip into the life of this great explorer.


The Beginning

Ferdinand Magellan was born in Sabrosa, Portugal in 1840 to a family of distantPortuguese nobility. At  12 Ferdinand Magellan and his brother Diogo traveled to Lisbon to serve as pages at Queen Leonora’s court. Here, he was opportuned to study at Queen Leonora's School of Pages in Lisbon and spent his days poring over texts on cartography, astronomy, and celestial navigation. While at the court Magellan was also exposed to stories of the great Portuguese and Spanish rivalry for sea exploration and dominance over the spice trade in the East Indies, especially the Spice Islands - or what is now called Moluccas, in modern Indonesia. Intrigued by the promise of fame and riches, Magellan developed an unquenchable interest in maritime and sea voyaging. This thirst is what would turn out to shape his life.

In 1505, Magellan and his brother were allocated to a Portuguese vessel setting out for India. Throughout the following seven years, Magellan took part in a few endeavors in India and Africa and was injured in a several battles.

 In 1513 he joined the tremendous 15,000-marine army sent by King Manuel to Morocco to challenge the Moroccan king who declined to pay his yearly tribute to the Portugal. The Portuguese effortlessly overpowered the Moroccans and Magellan remained  in Morocco. While there, he was subsequently injured in a clash, which left him with a trademark limp for the rest of his life.

Journey to Spain

In the fifteenth century, flavors such as cinnamon, clove, nutmeg and particularly dark pepper, were very significant in the shaping of the economy of major countries.  Since flavors couldn't be developed in chilly and bone-dry Europe, almost all top European countries struggled to find the fastest ocean course to the Spice Islands. Portugal and Spain drove the opposition for early control of this search. Europeans had long discovered a route to the Spice Islands by cruising east, yet none of them could find a way of sailing west from Europe to the opposite side of the globe. Magellan was resolved to be the first to do as such.

At this point - an accomplished sailor, Magellan appealed King Manuel of Portugal to obtain his support for a westbound voyage to the Spice Islands. The lord rejected his request of over and again.
In 1517 a disappointed Magellan revoked his Portuguese nationality and migrated to Spain to look for imperial support for his the Spanish king.

At the point when Magellan landed in Seville in October 1517, he had no associations and spoke minimal Spanish. He soon met another transplanted Portuguese named Diogo Barbosa, and inside a year he got married to Barbosa's daughter Beatriz, who brought forth their child Rodrigo a year later. The very much connected Barbosa family  got Magellan acquainted with officers in charge of Spain's oceanic investigation, and soon Magellan secured an arrangement to meet the ruler of Spain.

The grandson of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who had supported Columbus' undertaking to the New World in 1492, gave Magellan's request the similar support his grandparents did. Only 18 years of age at the time, King Charles I conceded his support to Magellan, who generously guaranteed the youthful ruler that his westbound ocean voyage would convey limitless wealth to Spain.

Discovery of the Strait of Magellan

On August 10, 1519 Magellan bade farewell to his wife and young son, neither of whom he would ever see again, and the Armada De Moluccas set sail. Magellan commanded the lead ship Trinidad and was accompanied by four other ships: the San Antonio, the Conception, the Victoria, and the Santiago. The expedition would prove long and arduous, and only one ship, the Victoria, would return home three years later, carrying a mere 18 of the fleet’s original crew of 270.

In September 1519 Magellan's crew cruised from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain, and crossed the Atlantic Ocean, which was then referred to just as the Ocean Sea. The armada reached South America one month later. There, the ships sailed southward, exploring the coast in search of the fabled strait that would allow passage through South America. The fleet stopped at Port San Julian where the crew mutinied on Easter Day in 1520. Magellan quickly quenched the uprising, executing one of the captains in the process and leaving another mutinous captain behind.
Meanwhile Magellan had sent the Santiago to explore the route ahead, where it was shipwrecked during a terrible storm. The ship’s crew members were rescued and assigned out among the remaining ships. With those disastrous events behind them, the fleet left Port San Julian five months later when the fierce seasonal storms had reduced.

On October 21, 1520 Magellan found the strait that he had been looking for and that came to hold his name. The voyage through the strait was slippery and frosty, and numerous mariners kept on doubting the safety the adventure ahead. In the beginning of the route of the strait, the crew of the San Antonio forced its captain to desert, and the ship turned and fled across the Atlantic Ocean back to Spain. At this point, only three of the original five ships were left in Magellan’s fleet.


After over a month spent navigating the strait, Magellan's residual crew crossed the coast in November 1520 to meet a tremendous sea before them. They were the first known Europeans to see the immense sea, which Magellan named Mar Pacifico - the Pacific Ocean because of its clear tranquility, a glaring difference from the perilous waters of the    strait from which he had quite recently emerged. Truth be told, extremely rough waters are not uncommon in the Pacific Ocean, where tsunamis, typhoons and hurricanes have done serious damage to the Pacific Islands and Pacific Rim nations throughout history.

Little was thought about the geology past South America around then, and Magellan hopefully assumed that the journey over the Pacific would be fast. Actually it took three months for the crew to advance gradually over the tremendous Mar Pacifico. The days delayed as Magellan's group tensely waited in grim enchantment for the words "Land, ho!" At toward the end of March 1521 the armada arrived at the Pacific island of Guam, where they at last replenished their supplies.

Magellan's ship then cruised on to the Philippine archipelago arriving on the island of Cebu, where Magellan became a close acquaintence with local people and, was hit with a sudden religious energy. He zealously wanted to convert them to Christianity. Magellan was presently nearer than at any other time to reaching the Spice Islands, yet when the Cebu requested his assistance in battling their neighbors on the island of Mactan, Magellan accepted. He assumed that he would encounter a quick triumph with his superior European weapons. Against the exhortation of his men, Magellan personally drove the assault. The Mactanese battled savagely, and Magellan fell when he was shot with a poisonous arrow. He passed on April 27, 1521.

Magellan could never make it to the Spice Islands, yet after the loss of yet another of his crew's vessels, the two remaining ships at long last arrived at Moluccas on November 5, 1521.
At last, just the Victoria finished the voyage the world over and landed back in Seville, Spain, in September 1522 with a substantial load of flavors but however with just 18 men from the original crew.

Looking for wealth and individual eminence, Magellan's challenging and eager voyage the world over furnished the Europeans with more than just flavors. In spite of the fact that the excursion westbound from Europe toward the east by means of the Strait of Magellan had been found and mapped, the voyage was too long and unsafe to end up distinctly a down to earth course to the Spice Islands. By the by, European geographic information was extended listlessly by Magellan's undertaking. He found not just a gigantic sea, until now obscure to Europeans, but he also discovered that the earth was significantly bigger than already suspected.
At long last, despite the fact that it was no longer believed that the earth was flat at this stage in history, Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe empirically discredited the medieval theory conclusively.

The Circumnavigator

Though Magellan is usually credited with the first circumnavigation on the globe, he only did so on a technicality: He first made a trip from Europe to the Spice Islands, eastward via the Indian Ocean, and then later made his famous westward voyage that brought him to the Philippines. So he did cover the entire terrain, but it was not a strict terms, a round-the-world trip, and it was made in two different directions. His slave, Enrique, however, was born in either Cebu and came to Europe with Magellan by ship. Ten years later, he then returned to both Cebu (with Magellan) and Mallaca (after Magellan died) by ship on the westward route. So Enrique was actually the first person to circumnavigate the world in one direction.

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