Magellan, Lapulapu and Elcano: The First Voyage Around the World and the Man Who Didn't Finish It

No, Ferdinand Magellan did not complete the trip around the world himself. The Portuguese explorer (c. 1480–1521) planned and led the Spanish expedition of 1519–1522 that made the first circumnavigation of the Earth, but he was killed in the Philippines at the Battle of Mactan in April 1521, and it was the Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano who brought the surviving ship back to Spain in 1522. There is a twist, though: years earlier, in Portuguese service, Magellan had already sailed east as far as the Malay Archipelago, so by reaching that region again from the west he came close to circling the globe in his own lifetime. The story has three main characters, Magellan, Elcano and Lapulapu, the leader on Mactan who defeated him, and each country involved remembers it differently.

A Portuguese sailor in Asia

Magellan was born in northern Portugal, probably around 1480, into a family of minor nobility, and grew up as a page at the royal court. In 1505, at about twenty-five, he joined a large fleet sent to Portuguese India, where he stayed for eight years and fought in several battles. In 1511 he took part in the Portuguese conquest of Malacca, in today's Malaysia. His friend Francisco Serrão went on to the Moluccas, the famous Spice Islands, and Serrão's letters about those islands later shaped Magellan's plans.

Back home, things went badly. He was wounded in the leg in Morocco and walked with a permanent limp, faced accusations of illegal trading that turned out to be false, and found that the king no longer offered him work. Most importantly, King Manuel I of Portugal kept rejecting his idea of reaching the Spice Islands by sailing west, around America, instead of east around Africa.

Changing sides: the Spanish plan

In 1517 Magellan left for Spain. There he married, had two children and offered his plan to the young King Charles I of Spain, who accepted it. The politics were important. Under the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, Spain and Portugal had divided the world between them, and Portugal controlled the eastern route to Asia around Africa. Magellan argued that a western route might reach the Spice Islands and that the islands might even lie in Spain's half of the world. The Portuguese king saw this as an insult and tried to disrupt the voyage, and a Portuguese fleet was even sent after Magellan, though it did not catch him.

The fleet that left Spain on 20 September 1519 had five ships and about 270 men from many countries, around sixty per cent of them Spanish, with Portuguese, Italians, French, Greeks and others among the rest.

Storms, mutiny and a strait

The ships crossed the Atlantic to Brazil and then sailed south along the coast of South America, searching for a passage through the continent. As winter came, they waited for five months at a harbour in Patagonia, where some Spanish captains started a mutiny; Magellan only just regained control, and one leader was killed while others were punished. One ship was lost in a storm.

In October 1520 they finally found the narrow, winding channel now called the Strait of Magellan. While they were exploring it, another ship, the San Antonio, deserted and sailed back to Spain. By the end of November the three remaining ships entered the great ocean beyond, which Magellan renamed the Mar Pacifico, the Pacific Ocean. In Spanish, pacífico simply means peaceful, a hopeful word after the storms and mutiny behind them.

The longest crossing

Because world geography was only partly understood at the time, Magellan expected a short journey to Asia, perhaps as little as three or four days. The crossing actually took three months and twenty days. Food and water ran out, and about thirty men died, most of them of scurvy. In March 1521 the exhausted fleet reached Guam, where a misunderstanding over goods, which the local Chamorro people may have seen as trade and the crew saw as theft, ended with Magellan's men killing several islanders and burning houses.

Arrival in the Philippines

A few days later the fleet reached the islands now called the Philippines. On Limasawa they met local rulers who wore a great deal of gold jewellery, and on 31 March the crew held the first Mass in the Philippines. In Cebu, Magellan met its ruler, Rajah Humabon, who first expected the visitors to pay a trade tribute, as other merchants did. Magellan refused, saying they served the most powerful king in the world. Humabon and his wife were baptised, Magellan gave the queen an image of the Child Jesus, the Santo Niño, and the two leaders sealed an alliance with a blood compact.

Humabon then pointed to an enemy: Lapulapu, a chief on the small neighbouring island of Mactan. While other local leaders accepted the new religion and alliance, Lapulapu refused to submit or pay tribute.

The Battle of Mactan

Before dawn on 27 April 1521, Magellan sailed to Mactan with a small force of Spaniards and warriors from Cebu. Coral reefs stopped the ships from reaching the beach, so Magellan and about forty-nine armoured men waded ashore, while the Cebuano warriors were told to stay in their boats, perhaps so they could watch European weapons at work. According to the chronicler Antonio Pigafetta, they faced around 1,500 warriors with swords, shields, bows and spears. The Spaniards burned some houses to frighten the islanders, but this only made them angrier. Magellan was wounded in the leg, recognised as the captain and made the main target, and outnumbered and slowed by heavy armour, he and several of his men were killed.

Lapulapu's side of the story

From a Philippine point of view, this was not an accident on a European journey; it was a local leader defending his island against a foreign force that demanded obedience. The historian William Henry Scott suggests that Magellan misunderstood Visayan society. He assumed that because Humabon was the king of Cebu, he must also rule Mactan, but the islands were more like a loose network of independent chiefdoms, and Lapulapu may well have been at least as powerful as Humabon. When asked to submit, Lapulapu reportedly said he was unwilling to pay respect to someone he had been commanding for a long time.

It is also honest to admit how little we know about him. The only undisputed early source that names him is Pigafetta's account, and no European who wrote about the voyage clearly says he saw Lapulapu or heard him speak. Even so, he is remembered in the Philippines as the first Filipino hero and a symbol of resistance to Spanish colonisation. A shrine stands on Mactan, the town of Opon became Lapu-Lapu City, his image appears on police seals, and since 2017 the anniversary of the battle has been marked as Lapu-Lapu Day. His victory also delayed Spanish expansion into the islands until the Legazpi expedition decades later.

Elcano brings the Victoria home

After the battle, relations with Cebu collapsed, and Humabon turned on his former allies, killing many of them at a banquet. With too few men left, the crew abandoned one ship and reached the Spice Islands in November 1521, where they loaded cloves. Only one ship, the Victoria, was fit for the long journey, with Juan Sebastián Elcano as captain.

Elcano had orders to go back the way they had come, staying in Spain's half of the world. Instead he decided to keep sailing west, across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope and up the coast of Africa, and it was this decision that made the voyage a full circle. The Victoria reached Spain in September 1522. Of the roughly 270 men who had set out, only 18 or 19 came back on it. King Charles rewarded Elcano with a coat of arms showing a globe and the Latin motto Primus circumdedisti me, you were the first to go around me.

Who gets the credit?

Today the voyage is often called one of the greatest sea journeys in history, and Magellan's name lives on in the Strait of Magellan and in the Magellanic Clouds, two small galaxies visible from the southern hemisphere. Yet Magellan usually receives more fame than Elcano, partly because he began the expedition. Portugal has tended to celebrate its explorer, while Spain stresses Elcano's role and the Spanish crown's funding; for the 500th anniversary in 2019, the two countries even applied together to UNESCO to honour the route. For Filipinos, the same events mark the first victory of a local leader over European power. Looking at all three viewpoints is a good habit whenever we read about the Age of Discovery.

Learn with Magellan: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to go full circle	to end where you started	The Victoria went full circle and returned to Spain.
to stand your ground	to refuse to give in	Lapulapu stood his ground on Mactan.
uncharted waters	a new and unknown situation	Moving abroad felt like uncharted waters.
to take the credit	to receive praise for something	Magellan often takes the credit, but Elcano finished the trip.
plain sailing	easy, without problems	The voyage was anything but plain sailing.

Try this: Write three English sentences about a long journey you have taken, using "uncharted waters" and "anything but plain sailing".