First Circumnavigation Completed

In September 1522, the Victoria, a battered Spanish ship under Juan Sebastián Elcano, anchored at Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain. It had left the same coast three years earlier as one of five vessels. Its return completed the first known voyage around the world. The achievement did not "prove" the Earth was round, since educated Europeans had accepted that for centuries, but it offered a vivid demonstration of the planet's scale and of how its oceans connect.

The expedition grew out of the rivalry between Spain and Portugal over the spice trade. Portugal controlled the eastern route around Africa, and the Treaty of Tordesillas had divided the Atlantic world between the two crowns. Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese navigator who had fallen out with his own king, persuaded Charles I of Spain that a westward route to the Maluku (Spice) Islands was possible and lay within Spain's half of the globe. Like Columbus before him, he underestimated the distance involved.

The fleet sailed in September 1519 with roughly 240 men. After wintering on the Patagonian coast, where Magellan put down a serious mutiny, the ships found the strait at the tip of South America that now bears his name. One vessel turned back and another was wrecked. The remaining ships then entered an ocean far wider than anyone had expected, which Magellan named the Pacific for its calm waters. The crossing took months, and hunger and scurvy killed many men. In March 1521 the fleet reached the Philippines, where Magellan was killed in April in a clash on the island of Mactan, after becoming entangled in local conflicts.

Command passed through several hands, and the expedition abandoned another ship. The two remaining vessels reached the Spice Islands and loaded cloves. The Trinidad, in poor condition, tried to return across the Pacific and failed, while the Victoria, under Elcano, sailed west across the Indian Ocean. It avoided Portuguese-held ports as much as possible and rounded southern Africa. Only a small group of survivors, about eighteen on the Victoria itself, reached Spain, along with a few others who later returned separately. Sources differ slightly on exact figures.

Despite the losses, the cargo of cloves reportedly more than covered the voyage's costs. Charles I rewarded Elcano with a pension and a coat of arms bearing a globe. The expedition also revealed the immensity of the Pacific and led the crew to notice that they had "lost" a day, a consequence of travelling westward that was later explained by the international date line. It reshaped European maps and strengthened Spain's global ambitions, while also opening a long era of intercontinental trade and colonial competition.