... was involved in two major voyages. The first was led by Diogo Lopez de Sequeira, who was sent by King Manoel I of Portugal to analyse the trade potential in Madagascar and Malacca (now part of Malaysia). The expedition sailed round the Cape of Good Hope and arrived at Malacca on 11 September 1509. It left the following year, when Sequeira discovered that Mahmud Shah, the Sultan of Malacca, was planning his assassination.
Magellan subsequently fell out of favour with Manoel, after taking a leave without permission. The king repeatedly rejected his plans for a further voyage, so he turned to Charles I, the young king of Spain (later emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire). Portugal held the rights to the eastward approaches to Malacca (via the Cape of Good Hope and the Indian Ocean), so any Spanish voyage would need to pioneer a new route, westward and round the southern tip of South America.
Magellan's fleet left Seville on 20 September 1519. They made landfall in Rio de Janeiro, then passed through what would become known as the Strait of Magellan and crossed what Magellan himself named as the Mar Pacifico (the Pacific Ocean). They reached the Philippines in March 1521, and Magellan set about converting the local population to Christianity and securing their featly to Spain. The king and queen accepted readily, and the king (Rajah Humabon) ordered his chiefs not only to follow suit but to provide supplies to Magellan's ships. Most of them complied; but one, Datu Lupalupa, refused to accept Humabon's authority. When Humabon and another chief, Datu Zula, suggested that Magellan should visit Mactan, Lupalupa's island, to persuade the rebel chief by force, Magellan agreed – believing that this would strengthen his influence with the king.
Sailing to Mactan on 27 April 1521, Magellan and his landing party were met with fierce resistance – a barrage of arrows, throwing spears, fire–hardened sticks, and stones. Magellan was struck in the leg by a poisoned arrow, whereupon he was attacked by local warriors and quickly overpowered. He was brutally killed, along with several of his men and a number of native converts to Catholicism who had come to their aid.
The eighteen survivors from Magellan's expedition returned to Spain by continuing westwards and round the Cape of Good Hope. They landed in Seville in September 1522, and the Victoria (Magellan's flagship) thus became the first ship to circumnavigate the Earth. Magellan's reputation had taken a huge blow, but as he'd returned from Malacca in 1510 and sailed westward nine years later, he is considered by many to have become the first circumnavigator when he landed in the Philippines in 1521. He hadn't returned to where he started, but his 1521 landing place is actually slightly further west than the point he left in 1510.
© Haydn Thompson 2023