El brutal viaje de Magallanes y Elcano en el que solo sobrevivieron 18 de los 250 tripulantes

It was almost 70,000 kilometers and 3 years of travel. An odyssey full of hardships to achieve a milestone: going around the world for the first time. It is truly one of the most colossal feats that man has accomplished. But how was it achieved? And what dangers and hardships did those sailors encounter along the way? We tell you some of the misadventures that marked an expedition that began with 250 men but that only 18 managed to complete. What you see is the journey those men took for three years. A journey that began here, in Seville, on August 10, 1519. The Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan had convinced King Charles I of Spain for his ambitious project: to reach the Spice Islands by sailing west.

This is what the Moluccas Islands were called, belonging to what we know today as Indonesia. They were looking for cloves, the most precious spice. And why did Magellan propose going west? Because to the east, crossing the Indian Ocean, Portugal was already traveling. And with the Treaty of Tordesillas, in 1494, Spain and Portugal had divided the world into two halves. But while they had well defined the division in the Atlantic, on the other side of the planet it had not been as precise, because they did not know the total size of the Earth. This is how Magellan obtained five boats and about 250 men, mostly Spanish, for his expedition.

Although Charles I did not want to grant all power to a Portuguese and appointed the Spanish Juan de Cartagena as general supervisor of the fleet. In its first stage, the expedition crossed the Atlantic and reached the coast of South America. The great challenge was to cross the Pacific Ocean, or as they called it then, the South Sea. They thought that this passage would be through the Río de la Plata, although they soon realized their mistake and continued south. However, desperation increased as they could not find a way and to complicate it even more, winter arrived.

Magellan then decided that they would remain in Puerto San Julián, in Argentine Patagonia, until the winter was over. But because of this decision, several Spanish officers revolted against the Portuguese navigator. They considered that the expedition was no longer viable and that it was preferable to return to Spain and try it another time. Among the rebels was the Spanish sailor Juan Sebastián Elcano, does this sound familiar to you? He will later have a leading role. The fact is that the mutiny was about to change history, but in the end, it was not successful and Juan de Cartagena, the supervisor appointed by the Spanish king, was left on the ground.

This makes Magellan's strength greater and his authority strengthened from this moment on. After the uprising and the 6 months of harsh winter were overcome, the expedition finally achieved its objective: crossing the so-called South Sea through what would later be known as the Strait…of Magellan. But it was not easy: one of the ships, the ship Santiago, was destroyed while exploring in search of the passage. Another, the ship San Antonio, decided to return to Spain without prior notice before crossing the strait. Magellan now only had three ships left. And what did they find on the other side? Waters so calm and calm that they inspired the name “Pacific”.

But their joy did not last long. Magellan had made a major miscalculation. Magellan left a written memorial to the king, according to which we can infer what width of the Pacific Ocean he expected to find. It turns out to be about 5,500 kilometers shorter than reality. The reality is approximately 17,000 kilometers. That ruling meant that those sailors spent three months without hardly touching land. And during that time, diseases such as scurvy and inhuman hunger devastated the crew. They cannot be replenished for very long periods, for example in the Pacific, in many periods of defeat and they come to eat, for example, the leather that protected the masts from the bustle of the sails.

They eat this leather by softening it in seawater and, sometimes, roasting it a little over the fire. They were only able to make a brief stop at what they called Thieves' Island, today known as Guam, before arriving in the Philippines on March 16, 1521. By then, only about 150 men remained on the expedition. The rest had died along the way or had returned to Spain on the San Antonio ship. So, imagine what it was like to arrive back on dry land. The Philippine Islands were quite close to the Moluccas, but Magellan had another objective first. King Charles I had promised him that he could keep two of the islands he discovered.

And since gold and other minerals were abundant in the Philippines, Magellan sought to establish his power in the area. It seems that he was obsessed with imposing his authority there. An authority that was not only that of the king of Spain, but was his own authority. His authority as ruler of those islands. But the ruler of the island of Mactan, one of the Philippine islands, rejected Magellan's authority, which the Portuguese did not take too well. So he decided to attack this island with just fifty soldiers and faced about a thousand indigenous people. And this was the end for Magellan, since in that battle he lost his life.

And after the Filipino misadventures, there were only a little more than 100 men left, so they were divided between two ships and got rid of the ship Concepción. Gonzalo Gómez de Espinosa remained as captain of the ship Trinidad and Juan Sebastián Elcano remained in command of the ship Victoria. Do you remember him? These two ships finally managed to reach the Moluccan Islands where they were loaded with the long-awaited clove. Although they still had to turn around. The Trinidad ship chose to return the way they had come. But they did not succeed, because scurvy broke out again, killing half of the crew and the barely 20 who survived were captured by the Portuguese.

Only 4 of them ended up returning to Europe. But Juan Sebastián Elcano decided that the ship Victoria would return from the west and would do so without touching land, since those waters were controlled by the Portuguese. They crossed the Indian Ocean, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and headed north. Once again, long months of hunger and hardship passed and the ship Victoria was forced to stop on the Portuguese island of Cape Verde. In order not to reveal that they came from the Moluccan Islands, they agreed to say that they came from America. But they were discovered and Elcano had to escape in a hurry, even abandoning 13 of his men on the ground – although these crew members were later rescued by Spain.

Finally, on September 8, 1522, the ship Victoria arrived in Seville. In it arrived 18 survivors and a shipment of cloves, the precious spice, enough to finance the entire expedition. Among the survivors was the Italian Antonio Pigafetta, whose chronicle of the trip became the best-known source for everything that happened during those three years. King Charles I received Elcano and granted him an annual income and a coat of arms on which there was a sphere of the world with the following legend: "You were the first to turn me around." A trip that confirmed that the Earth was spherical and that all the seas were connected.

Something that would be vital for world trade. Although as Elcano said upon his return, the most important thing is that they had managed to "round all the roundness of the world."