Da Gama, Columbus and Magellan

Magellan’s five ships left Spain in September 1519 with about 270 men. Three years later one ship, the Victoria, came home with 18.

Round Africa: Dias and da Gama

In 1488 the Portuguese captain Bartolomeu Dias was blown south past the tip of Africa, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and came back with proof that the coast turned northeast toward India. Nine years later King Manuel I sent Vasco da Gama with four ships to finish the route. Da Gama left Lisbon on 8 July 1497. Instead of hugging the coast, he swung far out into the South Atlantic to catch the westerly winds, and the fleet sailed for more than three months and more than 10,000 kilometres without sighting land, the longest voyage out of sight of land that anyone had made up to that time. At Malindi, on the coast of today’s Kenya, he took on a pilot who knew the monsoon route, and on 20 May 1498 the fleet arrived off Calicut.

Calicut was a rich trading city, and the goods da Gama had brought, such as cloth, hats and honey, impressed nobody. The Muslim merchants who already controlled the pepper trade did not welcome rivals, and relations with the ruler of Calicut grew so tense that da Gama sailed away at the end of August 1498, taking several local men with him by force. Many of his crew died of scurvy on the return. Even so, the small cargo of spices he brought back showed how much money the new route could make. In 1502 da Gama returned with a much larger and well-armed fleet and used violence, including the bombardment of Calicut, to force trade on Portuguese terms.

West to reach the east: Columbus

Christopher Columbus, a sailor from Genoa, argued that Asia could be reached by sailing west across the Atlantic. Educated Europeans already knew the earth was round; the argument was about its size. Columbus believed the ocean between Europe and Asia was far narrower than it is, and the experts who doubted him were closer to the truth. After years of refusals, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain agreed to pay for the voyage. His three ships, the Niña, the Pinta and the larger Santa María, crossed in about five weeks, and at dawn on 12 October 1492 they reached an island in the Bahamas that its Taíno inhabitants called Guanahani. Columbus named it San Salvador. Historians still argue over which island it was. Columbus made four voyages and went on insisting that he had reached the edge of Asia.

All the way round: Magellan and Elcano

Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese captain who offered his services to Spain. He proposed reaching the Spice Islands by sailing west, around or through the Americas. Funded mostly by King Charles I, five ships, the Trinidad, San Antonio, Concepción, Victoria and Santiago, left Spain on 20 September 1519 with about 270 men. They wintered on the coast of Patagonia, survived a mutiny, lost the Santiago in a wreck and saw the San Antonio desert and sail home. In late 1520 the remaining three ships threaded the strait at the southern tip of South America that now carries Magellan’s name, and entered an ocean so calm that he called it the Pacific. Nobody aboard knew how wide it was. The crossing took more than three months; the men ate biscuit full of worms and leather from the rigging, and many died of scurvy.

In the Philippines Magellan tried to bring local rulers under Spanish authority. On 27 April 1521 he was killed on the island of Mactan in a battle against the forces of its chief, Lapulapu, who is honoured in the Philippines today. The survivors burned one ship for lack of crew, reached the clove islands of Maluku and loaded spices. The Victoria, commanded by Juan Sebastián Elcano, sailed home across the Indian Ocean and around Africa, and on 6 September 1522 reached Sanlúcar de Barrameda with 18 men. They were the first people known to have sailed all the way around the world.