Commanding 270 men and five creaking ships, Magellan set out from Spain seeking a western route to the Spice Islands. He would be killed in the Philippines before the voyage's end, but one battered ship, the Victoria, limped home three years later having proven the earth could be sailed around.
The fleet that left Sanlúcar de Barrameda on this morning was poorly provisioned, crewed by men who distrusted their Portuguese captain, and bound for a passage nobody had ever mapped. Magellan carried sealed orders from King Charles I of Spain that he was forbidden to open until well out to sea, a precaution against mutiny and espionage.
The voyage would take nearly three years and cost Magellan his life on a beach in Mactan, in the Philippines, in April 1521. Of the original 270 men and five ships, only the Victoria returned to Spain in September 1522, carrying just 18 survivors and a hold full of cloves worth more than the entire cost of the expedition.
What began as a commercial venture to reach the Spice Islands by sailing west instead delivered something far larger: proof, in the form of a single ship's log, that the earth was round and that its oceans were connected. The survivors reportedly lost a day in their own calendar, a disorienting confirmation of just how far they had traveled.