Abstract
On September 20, 1519, Ferdinand Magellan set sail from southern Spain with five ships on a transoceanic trek that would require three years to circumnavigate the globe. But Magellan made it only halfway, killed in a skirmish in the Philippines. Still, the voyage retains his name, although some modern sources prefer to call it the Magellan-Elcano expedition to include Juan Sebastián Elcano, commander of the Victoria, the only ship of the original five to make it back to Spain. Historian Samuel Eliot Morison noted that Elcano “finished the navigation, but he was only carrying out Magellan’s plan.” Among the great navigators of the Age of Discovery, Morison opined, “Magellan stands supreme,” and because of his contributions to navigation and geography, “the scientific value of this voyage is beyond doubt.” Although it certainly wasn’t necessary to sail around the Earth to prove that it was round, circumnavigating the globe for the first time surely qualifies as a significant human achievement, even if ranking slightly behind going to the moon. Some images and video content sourced from Wikicommons (commons.wikimedia.org).
