The Mar de Hoces is the turbulent body of water separating South America's Cape Horn from the Antarctic. It is famed for having some of the most dangerous and tempestuous marine conditions on the planet, featuring massive swells and relentless winds. The passage is named in honor of the Spanish navigator Francisco de Hoces. In January 1526, while attempting to navigate the Strait of Magellan as part of the Loaísa Expedition (left Spain in 1525), his vessel (the carabela San Lesmes) was driven south by a severe gale to 56º S latitude. This harrowing event allowed his crew to supposedly become the first Europeans to sight the open-water connection between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, thus becoming the first ship to round Cape Horn and discover the passage between Antarctica and America.
I learned many things while chatting with AI on Magellan's voyage around the world. Unfortunately, the history books I read were misleading. We had thought that Magellan had the intention to circumvent the whole world. However, that was not the case.
Magellan absolutely knew it was physically possible to cross the Indian Ocean and round Africa—in fact, he had personally done it earlier in his life! Before shifting his allegiance to Spain, Magellan was a Portuguese soldier and sailor. He had spent years sailing east under the Portuguese flag, rounding Africa’s Cape of Good Hope to reach India and Malacca. Because he already knew how lucrative that eastern highway was, his entire pitch to the King of Spain was: "Let me find a loophole. I will find a western water gap through the Americas so Spain can reach those same rich Asian spices without ever touching Portuguese waters."
That's how he discovered the Strait of Magellan and crossed the Pacific Ocean where he named it. Magellan lost his life due to his arrogance by not accepting the military support of his newly Christianized ally, Rajah Humabon, during a localized battle against the defiant chieftain Lapulapu on the island of Mactan. However, "In My Opinion" his unfortunate death allowed some of his crew to circumvent the earth and become the first Europeans to do that.
After Magellan’s death in April 1521, the expedition was in complete chaos. Out of the original five ships that had left Spain, only three remained (Trinidad, Concepción, and Victoria). However, so many crew members had died from disease and battle that they did not have enough living men to sail three ships. They made the painful decision to burn the Concepción and condense the remaining survivors onto the final two vessels.
The survivors sailed south out of the Philippines and finally reached their original destination: The Moluccas (the Spice Islands in modern-day Indonesia). They loaded the hulls of both ships to the brim with incredibly valuable cloves and nutmeg. When it was time to go home to Spain, the two ships realized they had a massive problem: the Trinidad (the flagship) was severely leaking water through its hull. They decided to split up:
The strongest historical proof that Magellan never intended a global loop is what his flagship, the Trinidad, did after he died. When the fleet finally loaded up with spices in Indonesia, the captain of the Trinidad followed Magellan's original battle plan: he turned the ship back east into the Pacific Ocean, attempting to make the grueling U-turn back to Spanish Mexico. Unfortunately, severe storms, starvation, and a leaking hull forced them back to Asia, where they were promptly captured by the Portuguese—exactly what Magellan had feared. Only four of its men ever made it back to Europe years later.
Command of the Victoria fell to a Basque navigator named Juan Sebastián Elcano. He made a highly illegal, incredibly dangerous executive decision. According to the global treaties of the time, the entire eastern route around Africa belonged strictly to Spain's fierce rivals, the Portuguese. If a Spanish ship was caught there, the crew would be executed or imprisoned. Elcano decided to run the blockade anyway. Instead of turning back across the Pacific, he sailed due west into the Indian Ocean, intending to loop entirely around the world to get home.
To avoid being spotted by Portuguese warships, Elcano sailed the Victoria thousands of miles out of the way, deep into the icy, violent southern latitudes of the Indian Ocean without stopping for supplies. The crew spent months eating nothing but rotten rice mixed with seawater. Men were dying of starvation and scurvy almost daily. They battled brutal storms to round the southern tip of Africa (the Cape of Good Hope), with their sails torn and the ship barely staying afloat.
On September 6, 1522, almost exactly three years after they first left, a lone, battered ghost ship hobbled into the harbor of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Spain. Of the roughly 240 to 270 men who had originally set sail on the expedition, only 18 skeletal survivors stepped off the Victoria. They were completely barefoot and holding candles, walking straight to a church to give thanks for surviving.
Though Magellan designed and led the first half of the voyage, it was Juan Sebastián Elcano and those 18 men who legally became the first humans in history to successfully sail entirely around the globe. Ironically, the single cargo of spices they brought back in the Victoria's hull was so wildly valuable that it paid for the cost of all five original ships and turned a profit for the Spanish Crown.
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