Expeditions to the Americas: Magellan

The 1490's were the most remarkable decade in the whole history of European navigation. Following Columbus's demonstration of how to sail across the Atlantic to the Caribbean (and how to get back), other explorers quickly made contact with Newfoundland, the central American isthmus, and (in 1500), Brazil, while the Portuguese fleets established a direct sea-route to India. Over the next twenty years, further voyages of exploration revealed to the Europeans more and more of the coasts of Asia, Africa and America until it became virtually certain that all the continents were surrounded by a single sea.

This fact was demonstrated by the flotilla of five ships and 250 men, commanded by Ferdinand Magellan, which left Spain in 1519, intending to sail around the southern tip of America into the Pacific, there to establish a new trade route to the spices of east Asia (just as Columbus had originally hoped to do). In 1519, Spanish settlements in the Caribbean seemed unrewarding, and the American mainland still appeared more of an obstacle than an opportunity. Magellan's task was therefore to establish a viable route to the Moluccas-the spice islands. The simple fact is that he failed, for the journey proved too long, arduous, and far too costly in lives and ships. There was a serious, savagely repressed mutiny before he penetrated into the Pacific by way of the Straight of Magellan, he lost his own life in battle on an island in the Philippines, and those of his men who reached the Moluccas, and bought cargoes of spices there, then found that only one of their ships was still seaworthy. Rather than return the way they had come, the survivors decided to keep sailing west, and the Victoria finally rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and crawled back into Spain in 1522. Magellan had been lost, four of his five ships, and of the 250 men who set out, only 18 returned.

In contrast, by this time Cortes had conquered Mexico for Spain and, as bullion from mainland America began to reach Spain, the Spanish crown began to lose interest in the Moluccas, which in any case, were eventually recognized as being in the Portuguese sphere of influence.