44 Fun Facts About Ferdinand Magellan

Magellan sailed under the Spanish flag, but in which country was he born?

Portugal was his homeland, and he served it for years; only after King Manuel I kept refusing his petitions did he offer his services to Spain.

Which teenage Spanish king, later a Holy Roman Emperor, approved Magellan's plan to sail west to the Spice Islands?

Charles I, later Emperor Charles V, promised Magellan the government of any lands he found and a twentieth of the profits before a single ship had sailed.

Magellan's fleet sailed for the Spice Islands, now part of which country?

Indonesia now holds the Moluccas, the Spice Islands of Magellan's day; he died in the Philippines before his ships ever reached them.

The Victoria is the ship everyone remembers, but which vessel was Magellan's own flagship?

Trinidad carried Magellan himself but never came home: it proved unseaworthy in the Spice Islands, and its crew were taken prisoner.

In 1505, a young Magellan sailed from Lisbon with a great war fleet bound for which land?

India was the goal of Almeida's 1505 fleet; Magellan spent about eight years fighting in the East, and a friend who wrote to him from the Spice Islands later shaped his plan to sail west.

Magellan limped for life after a wound he took as a soldier in which country?

Morocco is where a wound at Azemmour in 1513 left Magellan limping; accused of misconduct there, he lost King Manuel's favour and soon took his plans to Spain.

Magellan's plan to reach Asia's spices by sailing west revived the dream of which earlier explorer?

Christopher Columbus had sailed west for Asia in 1492 and found the Americas in the way; Magellan's answer was to look for a passage through them.

What was the name of the Malay slave and interpreter Magellan brought back from Malacca?

Enrique may have been the first person to circle the world: if he was born in the islands the fleet reached in 1521, he got home before any European did.

Which 1494 treaty divided the world between the Iberian crowns and underpinned Magellan's claim to the Moluccas?

The Treaty of Tordesillas reserved the eastern route round Africa for Spain's rival, so the only lawful Spanish way to the spices was the one Magellan offered: west.

Which Spanish explorer had sighted the 'South Sea' from Panama in 1513, years before Magellan crossed it?

Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and saw an ocean beyond America; no European knew how wide it was until Magellan's crews sailed it.

Magellan's fleet set out from, and the Victoria came home to, which Spanish river port?

Seville watched five ships head down the Guadalquivir in August 1519; three years and one trip round the world later, a single leaking ship crept back up the river.

Magellan's crew told of giants in which South American region?

Patagonia is even said to take its name from 'Patagones', the word Magellan reportedly used for the tall locals his men described as giants; the legend long outlived him.

How did King Manuel react to Magellan sailing for Spain?

He sent a fleet after him, two in fact, hoping to bring him home in chains; Magellan slipped past by hugging the African coast instead of striking straight across the Atlantic.

Homeward bound across the Indian Ocean in 1522, the starving Victoria battled for weeks to round which cape?

Cape of Good Hope gales held the ship off for nine weeks by its chronicler's count; some of the sick wished to land at Portuguese Mozambique, but the greater number chose to press on for Spain.

Magellan's fleet sat out the bitter southern winter of 1520 in a bay on the coast of which modern country?

Argentina's Port St. Julian sheltered the fleet for five months; there Magellan crushed a mutiny, lost a scouting ship to a storm and put his crew on short rations.

How did Magellan's officer get aboard the mutinous Victoria to retake her?

Delivering a letter was the pretext: once let aboard, Magellan's officer stabbed the rebel captain in the throat, armed men swarmed over the side after him, and the mutiny soon collapsed.

What punishment did Magellan give the mutineer Juan de Cartagena?

Marooned on the coast with a plotting priest, Cartagena was left behind when the fleet sailed on; his fellow rebel captain Quesada got no such chance and was beheaded.

Setebos, a 'great devil' Magellan's crew heard South American captives cry out to, turns up in which Shakespeare play?

The Tempest names Setebos as the god of Caliban's mother; Shakespeare is thought to have found him in an English account of Magellan's voyage.

Why did Magellan name the ocean he entered in November 1520 the 'Mar Pacifico'?

Its calm waters earned the name: the voyage's chronicler wrote that they met not a single storm on the whole crossing, though hunger very nearly finished them.

Preserved quince at the officers' table probably spared Magellan which disease that ravaged his crew in the Pacific?

Scurvy comes from a lack of vitamin C, which nobody then understood; quince happens to be rich in it, so the officers stayed well while sailors' gums swelled until they could not eat.

After crossing almost the whole Pacific without touching an inhabited island, where did Magellan's starving fleet finally land?

Guam gave them their first fresh food since the strait, but the welcome soured fast: islanders made off with a ship's boat, and Magellan burned dozens of houses in reply.

What did Magellan's crew see at night that gave Tierra del Fuego its name?

Shoreline fires glowed through the night; the wary sailors guessed they were being watched from the land, and the southern coast went onto the maps as the Land of Fire.

Magellan died in battle in 1521 not on Cebu itself but on which island just off its coast?

Mactan's rocky shallows kept the boats far offshore, so Magellan and his men had to wade in beyond the help of their ships' guns; he was cut down in the surf covering the retreat.

Magellan died fighting the warriors of which island chief, now honoured as a hero in the Philippines?

Lapulapu refused to bow to Spain's king; Magellan waded ashore with 49 men to force him and met a force his chronicler put at 1,500, a victory re-enacted on the island every April.

On the starving Pacific crossing, which animals did Magellan's sailors buy from one another as food?

Rats fetched a stiff price in coin, the voyage's chronicler recorded, and even so there were never enough; the men also ate sawdust and leather stripped from the yards.

A wooden statue Magellan's expedition gave Cebu's queen is still venerated there; whom does it depict?

The Christ Child statue, the Santo Niño, turned up again 44 years later, when Spaniards came back to Cebu and found it unharmed in the burnt town; its basilica is said to stand on the spot.

What did the newly baptised ruler of Cebu do to the Spaniards after Magellan's defeat?

Massacred their officers at a feast: some two dozen guests, the new commanders among them, were cut down as the meal ended, and the rest fled, soon burning a ship they could no longer crew.

Who commanded the Victoria on its return to Spain, completing the circumnavigation?

Juan Sebastián Elcano had joined the mutiny against Magellan on the way out and was spared, yet he ended as the first captain to sail right round the world.

How many of the roughly 270 men who left Spain came home aboard the Victoria?

18 Europeans came ashore, gaunt and barefoot, from the only ship to finish; about a dozen more, seized at Cape Verde on the last leg, made their own way back over the following year.

A Spice Islands ruler sent Spain's king two dead, plumed gifts aboard Magellan's last ship; what were they?

Birds-of-paradise skins came home in Magellan's last ship as a gift for Spain's king; the islanders called them 'birds of God' and said they came from paradise, and Europe kept the name.

Which spice filled the Victoria's hold on her way home?

Cloves were the prize, and over 20 tons of spice came home in the one ship left; the dried flower buds then grew only in the Spice Islands, which is why kings sent fleets after them.

What shock met the Victoria's careful diarist at Cape Verde in July 1522?

They were a day behind: ashore it was Thursday, aboard only Wednesday, because sailing west with the sun right round the world costs one sunrise, the puzzle the International Date Line now settles.

Which survivor of Magellan's voyage gave the king a handwritten diary of the whole journey?

Antonio Pigafetta had written up every single day and, in his own words, gave the king 'neither gold nor silver' but his book; it became the account of the voyage the world knows.

Who led the next voyage round the world after Magellan's?

Francis Drake came home in 1580, nearly 60 years on, laden with Spanish treasure and, unlike Magellan, alive; his queen came aboard the Golden Hind to have him knighted.

Named in the explorer's honour, what are the Magellanic Clouds?

Two dwarf galaxies, companions of the Milky Way, plain to the naked eye from the southern hemisphere; Magellan's crew described the glowing patches on the voyage, and his name stuck to them.

What was the 'black goose' that the expedition's chronicler said had to be skinned rather than plucked?

A penguin: the crew found two islands crowded with the flightless, fish-eating birds, too fat to pluck, and by the chronicler's account loaded all five ships with them in an hour.

During Atlantic storms, Magellan's crew took heart when which eerie glow, a good omen to sailors, settled on the mainmast?

St. Elmo's fire burned at the masthead for over two hours one black night, the chronicler wrote; the men, in tears until then, believed no ship it touched could ever be lost.

NASA's Magellan probe, launched in 1989, used radar to map the cloud-hidden surface of which planet?

Venus hides under permanent cloud, so the probe mapped it by radar, the first craft to chart the planet's whole surface, before being sent to burn up in its atmosphere in 1994.

Spain's king honoured the Victoria's captain with a coat of arms showing which object?

A globe was the king's reward to the first captain to sail round the world; its Latin motto, 'Primus circumdedisti me', 'You first encircled me', is the planet speaking.

Sailing home from the Spice Islands, the Victoria's crew lived on water and which food alone?

Rice was all they had, because the meat, loaded without salt to cure it, had rotted; some twenty men starved, yet the crew voted against landing on a Portuguese-held coast.

Which Mexican actor played Magellan in the 2025 film about his voyage?

Gael García Bernal plays him as no hero in Lav Diaz's 'Magellan', which opened at Cannes and became the Philippines' Oscar entry; Rodrigo Santoro had the part in the 2022 series Boundless.

In 2019, which two countries jointly applied to UNESCO to honour the circumnavigation route?

Spain and Portugal first quarrelled over whose feat it was, one claiming the captain, the other the crown that paid and the Basque who finished the job; a joint bid ended the spat.

Magellan's crews spent a merry fortnight in December 1519 trading trinkets for food in the bay of which future Brazilian city?

Rio de Janeiro's bay gave them two easy weeks: the chronicler swapped a single playing card, a king, for five chickens, and the seller went away sure he had cheated the sailor.

What did Magellan name the passage his ships were sailing through on 1 November 1520?

All Saints, because the ships were in the passage on 1 November, All Saints' Day; the pious name did not last, and later maps called the strait after the man himself.