Ferdinand Magellan Trivia
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44 free Ferdinand Magellan trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Ferdinand Magellan trivia quiz covers the Portuguese captain who planned the first voyage around the world and did not live to finish it. The easy questions cover the basics: the country he came from, the king he sailed for, the ocean he named, the strait that carries his name, the islands where he died and the ship that got home. From there it moves through his years in Portuguese India, the wound at Azemmour that left him with a limp, the falling-out with King Manuel, the slave Enrique who may have been the first man to circle the globe, and the letters from his friend Serrão in the Spice Islands. The harder end covers the crew of 270 and where they came from, the mutiny at St Julian and how Magellan broke it, the wreck of the Santiago and the desertion of the San Antonio, the 98-day Pacific crossing and the quince that may have kept him free of scurvy, the theft at Guam, the first Mass at Limasawa, the blood compact at Cebu, the battle on Mactan as Pigafetta saw it, the poisoned banquet, the 26 tons of cloves, the day the crew lost, and how his reputation was trashed by the survivors before Pigafetta's diary rescued it. Every answer was checked against Magellan's encyclopaedia entry and the article on the expedition before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Christopher Columbus and James Cook quizzes are natural companions.
30 of 44 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Magellan sailed under the Spanish flag, but in which country was he born?
Portugal
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.
Q 02Which teenage Spanish king, later a Holy Roman Emperor, approved Magellan's plan to sail west to the Spice Islands?
Charles I
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.
Q 03Magellan's fleet sailed for the Spice Islands, now part of which country?
Indonesia
Indonesia now holds the Moluccas, the Spice Islands of Magellan's day; he died in the Philippines before his ships ever reached them.
Q 04The Victoria is the ship everyone remembers, but which vessel was Magellan's own flagship?
Trinidad
Trinidad carried Magellan himself but never came home: it proved unseaworthy in the Spice Islands, and its crew were taken prisoner.
Q 05In 1505, a young Magellan sailed from Lisbon with a great war fleet bound for which land?
India
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.
Q 06Magellan limped for life after a wound he took as a soldier in which country?
Morocco
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.
Q 07Magellan's plan to reach Asia's spices by sailing west revived the dream of which earlier explorer?
Christopher Columbus
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.
Q 08What was the name of the Malay slave and interpreter Magellan brought back from Malacca?
Enrique
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.
Q 09Which 1494 treaty divided the world between the Iberian crowns and underpinned Magellan's claim to the Moluccas?
The Treaty of Tordesillas
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.
Q 10Which Spanish explorer had sighted the 'South Sea' from Panama in 1513, years before Magellan crossed it?
Vasco Núñez de Balboa
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.
Q 11Magellan's fleet set out from, and the Victoria came home to, which Spanish river port?
Seville
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.
Q 12Magellan's crew told of giants in which South American region?
Patagonia
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.
Q 13How did King Manuel react to Magellan sailing for Spain?
He sent a fleet after him
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.
Q 21After crossing almost the whole Pacific without touching an inhabited island, where did Magellan's starving fleet finally land?
Guam
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.
Q 22What did Magellan's crew see at night that gave Tierra del Fuego its name?
Shoreline fires
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.
Q 23Magellan died in battle in 1521 not on Cebu itself but on which island just off its coast?
Mactan
Q 14Homeward bound across the Indian Ocean in 1522, the starving Victoria battled for weeks to round which cape?
Cape of Good Hope
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.
Q 15Magellan's fleet sat out the bitter southern winter of 1520 in a bay on the coast of which modern country?
Argentina
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.
Q 16How did Magellan's officer get aboard the mutinous Victoria to retake her?
Delivering a letter
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.
Q 17What punishment did Magellan give the mutineer Juan de Cartagena?
Marooned on the coast
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.
Q 18Setebos, a 'great devil' Magellan's crew heard South American captives cry out to, turns up in which Shakespeare play?
The Tempest
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.
Q 19Why did Magellan name the ocean he entered in November 1520 the 'Mar Pacifico'?
Its calm waters
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.
Q 20Preserved quince at the officers' table probably spared Magellan which disease that ravaged his crew in the Pacific?
Scurvy
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.
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.
Q 24Magellan died fighting the warriors of which island chief, now honoured as a hero in the Philippines?
Lapulapu
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.
Q 25On the starving Pacific crossing, which animals did Magellan's sailors buy from one another as food?
Rats
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.
Q 26A wooden statue Magellan's expedition gave Cebu's queen is still venerated there; whom does it depict?
The Christ Child
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.
Q 27What did the newly baptised ruler of Cebu do to the Spaniards after Magellan's defeat?
Massacred their officers at a feast
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.
Q 28Who commanded the Victoria on its return to Spain, completing the circumnavigation?
Juan Sebastián Elcano
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.
Q 29How many of the roughly 270 men who left Spain came home aboard the Victoria?
18
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.
Q 30A Spice Islands ruler sent Spain's king two dead, plumed gifts aboard Magellan's last ship; what were they?
Birds-of-paradise
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.