He gets credit for the first voyage around the world — but Magellan died in a beach fight in the Philippines, halfway through. Only 18 of his original 270 men made it back.
In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan — a Portuguese navigator sailing for Spain — set out with five ships and 270 men on a mission to find a western route to the Spice Islands of Asia. The Portuguese had a monopoly on the eastern route around Africa; Spain needed another way. Magellan convinced the young King Charles I that sailing west would work, even though no one had ever done it.
The expedition nearly ended before it began. While still off the coast of South America, three of Magellan's five captains mutinied, claiming the route was impossible and the expedition suicidal. Magellan suppressed the revolt with ruthless efficiency: one captain was killed, one was marooned on the coast of Patagonia, and one was put in irons. The fleet pressed on.
Crossing the Pacific nearly destroyed them. Magellan had vastly underestimated the ocean's size — he expected the crossing to take a few weeks. It took three months and twenty days. The crew ran out of food and resorted to eating rats, sawdust, and leather sail-rigging soaked in seawater. Men died of scurvy. When they finally reached the Philippines in March 1521, the survivors were skeletal.
Magellan was killed in April 1521 during an unnecessary battle on the island of Mactan. He had converted a local chief named Humabon to Christianity and, feeling obligated to help his new ally, led an attack on a rival chief named Lapu-Lapu with just 60 men against hundreds of warriors. He was struck by a poisoned arrow and spear, and died on the beach. The first attempt to circumnavigate the world lost its leader on the far side of the planet.
The expedition continued under a new commander, Juan Sebastián Elcano. By this point, so many men had died that they couldn't sail all three remaining ships — one was burned for lack of crew. The survivors loaded the two ships with cloves and spices and pushed on westward across the Indian Ocean, rounding Africa's Cape of Good Hope.
The Victoria, the only ship to complete the full circumnavigation, limped back into the Spanish port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda on September 6, 1522 — three years after departing. Of the original 270 men, just 18 had made it. Elcano, not Magellan, completed the first circumnavigation — though Magellan's name became the more famous one.
The voyage confirmed that the Earth was round, that the oceans were connected, and that Asia could be reached by sailing west. It also revealed an unexpected problem: the crew's journal showed they had gained an extra day during the voyage by sailing west, a phenomenon that baffled European scholars and eventually led to the concept of the International Date Line.