Although advancements in aviation and land travel have made it possible to circumnavigate the globe via air, train and even car (with a bit of help, admittedly), there is something intrepid and historic about sailing all the way around the world. While how we navigate the Seven Seas has also changed drastically since the early days of circumnavigation, large parts of the route remain the same.
This is the story of the first person to circumnavigate the globe (and it’s not who you might think).
We begin in Spain, in September 1519, with the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. Magellan is widely credited with this feat, but as you’ll see, it’s a bit more complicated than that.
He was sponsored by Spain to set off in search of the East Indies (modern-day Indonesia). Setting off from modern day Seville, he sailed across the Atlantic. His fleet successfully made it to the Americas, and then sailed south, along the coast of South America, passing through a strait towards the very bottom of the continent. The route in Chile is still commonly referred to as the Strait of Magellan, and it was found by chance, with the boats forced towards land by inclement weather, only to see an opening that, as luck would have it, led them right across the continent.
From here, the expedition traveled across the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first European ship to make it all the way across the world’s largest ocean. For almost 100 days, they did not touch land, eventually finding Guam in March 1521.
Just a month later, on the island of Mactan, part of the Philippines, Magellan and his crew were involved in a skirmish with locals. Magellan was killed in the fighting, yet his expedition carried on without him. Juan Sebastian Elcano, a sailor from the Basque Country, took charge of the mission from then on, and eventually led one of the ships, Victoria, back to Spain in September 1522.
Over the three years, the original crew had dwindled from 260 to just 18. They covered over 60,000 miles and charted previously unknown routes for Europeans.
So while Magellan may have masterminded the trip, he didn’t complete it, and while Elcano became the first person to circumnavigate in one long voyage, he was also not the first person to circumnavigate the world during their lifetime.
That title likely goes to another person, known only as Enrique. Enrique was an enslaved man believed to have first been taken from Malacca, Malaysia, in 1511, during an earlier voyage by Magellan. He went on the mission in 1519 as an interpreter, and so when the group reached the East Indies again, he had effectively sailed around the world.
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Enrique fled the expedition soon after Magellan’s death, and little is known about what happened to him afterwards. If he got back to his homeland, he would have gone door-to-door around the world, and be the first man to achieve this remarkable feat.
