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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,

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Speaker 1: a show that proves history waits for no one. I'm

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Speaker 1: Gabe Bluesier, and today we're exploring the first successful trip

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Speaker 1: around the world, including who may deserve credit for it

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Speaker 1: and who definitely doesn't. The day was September fifteen, nineteen.

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Speaker 1: Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan set sail with a crew of

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Speaker 1: two hundred and seventy sailors on what would ultimately become

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Speaker 1: the first successful voyage around the world. However, there are

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Speaker 1: some important caveats to this story to keep in mind.

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Speaker 1: For one thing, the main concern of Magellan and his

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Speaker 1: crew wasn't to make history by circumnavigating the globe. The

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Speaker 1: real goal of their expedition was to find a westward

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Speaker 1: route to the Moluccu Islands of modern Indonesia, where they

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Speaker 1: planned to pillage a fortune's worth of exotic spices. The

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Speaker 1: other thing worth clarifying is that only some of the

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Speaker 1: crew managed to sail around the entire globe. The vast majority,

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Speaker 1: including Magellan himself, did not survive the return trip. But

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Speaker 1: before we get to the end of the journey, let's

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Speaker 1: talk a little about how it began. Magellan was born

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Speaker 1: to a noble Portuguese family in fourteen eighty. In his youth,

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Speaker 1: he served in the Royal court as a page to

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Speaker 1: Queen Consort Eleanor and King Manuel the First. At the time,

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Speaker 1: European aristocrats were enamored with the taste of foreign spices

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Speaker 1: like nutmeg, cloves, and mace. These new lucrative imports sparked

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Speaker 1: a needed competition between Portugal and Spain to see who

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Speaker 1: could discover and claim the best trade routes to the

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Speaker 1: so called Spice Islands. In fifteen o five, when he

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Speaker 1: was twenty five years old, Magellan joined a Portuguese military

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Speaker 1: fleet that was bound for India. Over the next decade,

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Speaker 1: Magellan would travel to Malaysia, Indonesia, and Morocco as well,

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Speaker 1: and along the way he learned the basics of navigation

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Speaker 1: and fought in several naval battles with Spain for control

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Speaker 1: of routes along the Indian Ocean. In fifteen thirteen, while

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Speaker 1: fighting Moorish forces in Morocco, Magellan sustained a leg wound

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Speaker 1: that would leave him with a limp for the rest

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Speaker 1: of his life. Although he had made a name for

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Speaker 1: himself in battle. Magellan was soon accused of illegal trading

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Speaker 1: with the very people he was fighting against. The accusations

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Speaker 1: were largely unfounded, but they were enough to ruin his

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Speaker 1: reputation in Portugal and sour his relationship with King may

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Speaker 1: Well the First. Finally, in fifteen seventeen, after being dismissed

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Speaker 1: from service to his home country, Magellan joined the competition

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Speaker 1: and pledged his allegiance to Spain. By that time, Portugal

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Speaker 1: had gotten the upper hand in the Spice War. It

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Speaker 1: controlled access to the primary trade routes that led east

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Speaker 1: from Europe to Indonesia by going around Africa's Cape of

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Speaker 1: Good Hope. Spain was quickly being boxed out of the

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Speaker 1: spice trade, but Magellan thought he had a solution. He

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Speaker 1: went to the King of Spain, Charles the Fifth, and

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Speaker 1: suggested sailing in the opposite direction, west rather than east.

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Speaker 1: Magellan believed that going west would lead them to a

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Speaker 1: strait that was rumored to run through South America. King

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Speaker 1: Charles was thrilled at the prospect of sticking it to

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Speaker 1: the Portuguese and agreed to finance a five ship voyage

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Speaker 1: in search of a westward route to the Spice Islands.

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Speaker 1: Most people thought the voyage was doomed from the start,

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Speaker 1: largely on account of all those sea monsters that were

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Speaker 1: sure to be lurking in the uncharted waters. But one

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Speaker 1: member of Magellan's crew bolstered confidence in the mission. Eight

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Speaker 1: years earlier, while helping to invade the Malaysian port city

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Speaker 1: of Malacca, Magellan took possession of an enslaved man named Enrique.

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Speaker 1: He was fluent in the Malay language, which made him

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Speaker 1: an ideal interpreter, and King Charles felt much better about

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Speaker 1: funding the voyage knowing that Enrique would be going along

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Speaker 1: to translate. As for the rest of the crew, they

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Speaker 1: inspired less confidence. Most Spanish sailors had refused to join

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Speaker 1: an expedition led by a Portuguese man, so instead Magellan

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Speaker 1: was forced to settle for less experienced crewmen. Many of

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Speaker 1: them were criminals loaned from prisons, and others joined mainly

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Speaker 1: as a way to avoid their debt collectors. As you

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Speaker 1: might expect, the unsavory crew caused some problems for Magellan.

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Speaker 1: In March of fifteen, twenty six months after the voyage began,

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Speaker 1: three of his captains incited a mutiny and tried to

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Speaker 1: kill him. Instead, Magellan killed them, and to send a

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Speaker 1: message to the rest of the crew, he had the

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Speaker 1: bodies drawn, quartered and impaled on spikes on the shore

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Speaker 1: of Argentina. After that cheery interlude, the five ships continued

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Speaker 1: their voyage across the Pacific Ocean, dealing with scurvy and

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Speaker 1: starvation along the way, and stopping off briefly in Guam

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Speaker 1: to massacre indigenous people. One month later, the crew reached

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Speaker 1: the Philippines, where they were shocked to learn that Enrique

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Speaker 1: could understand and speak the local language. Historians suggest that

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Speaker 1: Enrique may have been raised there in the central Philippines

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Speaker 1: before being sold into slavery in Sumatra and eventually taken

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Speaker 1: to Malacca, where he was bought by Magellan. This raises

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Speaker 1: a very interesting possibility, but we'll get back to that

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Speaker 1: in just a minute. With Enrique acting as interpreter, Magellan

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Speaker 1: decided to claim the Philippines on behalf of Spain. He

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Speaker 1: demanded the native people to convert to Christianity and wound

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Speaker 1: up starting an unnecessary war between those who were willing

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Speaker 1: to do so and those who weren't. On April fifty one,

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Speaker 1: this rash act of colonization backfired when Magellan was killed

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Speaker 1: by a poison arrow while attacking a chieftain who opposed

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Speaker 1: his rule. He never made it to the Spice Islands,

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Speaker 1: and it was his own fault. After Magellan's death, his

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Speaker 1: crew continued on and eventually made it to the Maluku

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Speaker 1: Islands in November. Off in September of the next year,

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Speaker 1: the expedition finally returned to Spain with three hundred and

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Speaker 1: eighty one sacks of clothes to show for their trouble.

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Speaker 1: In total, they had traveled more than sixty thousand miles

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Speaker 1: round trip, losing four out of five ships and of

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Speaker 1: the crew in the process. Still, the survivors had proven

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Speaker 1: that it was possible to circumnavigate the globe, and the

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Speaker 1: new routes they had charted would soon pave the way

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Speaker 1: for European colonization of the New World, for better or worse. Okay, so,

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Speaker 1: who was the first person to sail around the entire world?

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Speaker 1: There are actually a few options. The most obvious would

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Speaker 1: be the surviving crew members who actually completed the voyage

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Speaker 1: and made it back to Spain. In fact, the captain

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Speaker 1: of the one remaining ship, a man named Juan Sebastian

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Speaker 1: Delcano was given credit for the first circumnavigation by the

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Speaker 1: Spanish crown. The other possibility involves the expeditions interpreter Enrique.

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Speaker 1: If historians are correct and he was raised in the

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Speaker 1: Central Philippines before his enslavement, that would make him the

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Speaker 1: first person to circumnavigate the globe, beating the rest of

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Speaker 1: the crew by well over a year. Either way, the

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Speaker 1: one thing we know for sure is it definitely wasn't Magellan.

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Speaker 1: I'm Gabe Louzier and hopefully you now know a little

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Speaker 1: more about history today than you did yesterday. Also, we've

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Speaker 1: made a slight adjustment to our social media handles in

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Speaker 1: order to get them up and running again, So from

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Speaker 1: now on you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and

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Speaker 1: Instagram at t d I HC Show, and if you

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Speaker 1: have any Enrique fan fiction you'd like to share, you

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Speaker 1: can send it my way at this Day at I

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Speaker 1: heeart media dot com. Thanks to Chandler May's for producing

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Speaker 1: the show, and thank you for listening. I'll see you

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Speaker 1: back here again tomorrow for another Day in History Class.

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