Ferdinand Magellan

Ferdinand was in his early twenties when he

went on his first exploration to East Africa. He
was in the battle of Diu this is when the
Portuguese destroyed egyptian ships in the
arabian sea. Two years later he went to go
explore Malacca in the Malaysian peninsula.
While there he was part of the conquest of the
Malacca port. It is possible that Magellan sailed
all the way to Moluccas Indonesia. In his final
years he sailed all the way to Brazil with bad sails, then all the way down to Patagonia in South
America. Because of attempted mutiny one of the ships was wrecked. While being down there
they had to go through a strait and was in this straight for a good month. This straight is now
called the Strait of Magellan.

Hernando Cortes
Hernando was from Spain and conquered the Aztec empire. Cortes was to
command his own expedition into Mexico, but Velzquez cancelled it so
Cortes decided to still go on with the show. In 1519 Cortes landed into
Mexico, some of his allies were the natives he encountered. Some of the
other natives he encountered he had to use deadly force to conquer
Mexico. He fought Tlaxacan and Cholula warriors then wanted to take
over the Aztec empire. Cortes went to the Aztec capital and kidnapped
Montezuma the ruler of the Aztecs, leaving his soldiers there to raid the
capital. Since he did this the Spanish soldiers came to go arrest Cortes for
disobeying orders.

Sir. Francis Drake

Sir Francis successfully passed around south america
through the strait of Magellan and was knighted by
Queen Elizabeth the first. At first he was a slave trader.
Him and his cousin John Hawkins sailed to Africa and
were illegal slave traders, they then sailed to New Spain
and tried to sell their slaves but that was against the
Spanish law. They escaped but all of their men died
making Sir Francis hate the Spanish crown. In 1572 he
had his first independent voyage to Panama. They
returned to Plymouth with a lot of silver and gold they
stole from the spanish in several spanish settlements. Since the Panama trip was successful
Queen Elizabeth sent him to go explore the Northwestern coast of North America seeking a
northwest passage.

Samuel De Champlain
Samuel was a French explorer. He explored north america
establishing the city Quebec in 1603. He first started to go on
these voyages with his uncle he traveled all the way to Spain
and the West Indies. In 1603 he traveled to Canada, him and
his crew traveled up the St. Lawrence and the Saguenay
rivers. He ultimately arrived in Montreal. Champlain had no
official role in the expedition he proved himself by making
good predictions about the lakes and rivers of the region. In
later years returning back to France he had a lot of lawsuits
against him, so this led to him not being able to go back to
Quebec. In the end things did not go smoothly for Samuel De
Champlain.

Vasco De Gama
Vasco was born in Sines Portugal in 1460. In 1502 De Gama
traveled back to India that included 20 ships. He controlled ten of
these ships while his uncle and nephew controlled the other ships.
To keep Portugal's dominance in this region De Gama embarked on
one of the most gruesome massacres of the exploration ages. Him
and his crew terrorized muslims and wrecked their ports along the
east coast of Africa. At one point he set a muslim ship on fire that
was returning from Mecca. He then set sail to Calicut and wrecked
muslim ports and killing 38 hostages. From there they moved south
of Calicut to Cochin and made an alliance with the ruler there.
They traveled to the east in 1502 and finally came back to Portugal
in 1503. In later years De Gama laid low and had a family but still stayed in touch with King
Manuel.