Stranded on the harsh Patagonian coast through the southern winter, Magellan's fleet faced a mutiny that he crushed by executing and marooning ringleaders. The ordeal nearly ended the expedition before it found the strait connecting the Atlantic and Pacific, opening the first passage for a fleet to circle the globe.
By late May 1520, Magellan's five ships had been anchored for weeks at the desolate bay of Puerto San Julián on the coast of what is now Argentina, waiting out the brutal southern winter. Supplies dwindled, the men grew mutinous over rationed food, and three ship captains conspired to seize control and turn the fleet back to Spain.
Magellan moved decisively, tricking the mutineers into exposing themselves and then having their leader, Luis de Mendoza, killed and another captain, Gaspar de Quesada, executed by beheading. He marooned two other conspirators on the barren shore, leaving them to a fate later legend embellished into cannibalism and madness.
The fleet's ordeal at Puerto San Julián, though it predates the exact date of May 29 as a single event, exemplifies the crushing hardship of the voyage that within another year would discover the strait linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Only one of Magellan's five original ships, the Victoria, would eventually complete the circumnavigation in 1522, and Magellan himself would not survive to see it, killed in the Philippines the following year.
Key people: Ferdinand Magellan, Luis de Mendoza