Synthesis Paper

The world’s body is made up of 70% of water, it consist plenty of waters same with it’s history,
it has plenty of stories and astonishing events happened in any places. One of the remarkable
story is “The First Voyage Around the World by Magellan”. It is the famous historical event
and happened many years ago. Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian scholar survivor and explorer, the
author of 1525 travelogue ‘The First Voyage Around the World” he wrote narrative and
cartographic record of the journey including 23 hand-drawn water color charts from Patagonia
to Indonesia from the Philippines to the Cape of Good Hope.

On September 20, 1519, Ferdinand Magellan departed from Spain for the reason of finding
efficient westerly sea route to get through Spice Islands of Indonesia. He is the overall
command in five ships consisting of 270 men, in the older days sailing at high seas is a very
difficult task, it has limited resources, less accurate navigational equipment different from the
modern types amazingly, they still managed to sail to West Africa and then to Brazil. From
there, Magellan search in South American coast for believing that there’s a straight that would
take him to Pacific but unfortunately, he failed. He continued searching along south coast of
Patagonia after 38 challenging days and achieved the title of “The First European Explorer to
reach the Pacific Ocean from Atlantic Ocean”. 10 days later they reached the Philippines and
dropped anchor not knowing it will be his final place to go. Ferdinand Magellan killed by a
poisoned arrow during a tribal skirmish on Mactan Island in the Philippines the death of their
leader made them retreat the Island. Stated on his book that after Magellan’s death, the
survivors, in two ships, sailed across the Pacific under the command of Basque navigator
Juan Sebastian de Elcano and arrived at Seville on September 9, 1522 becoming the first
ship to circumnavigate the globe but permanently stopped sailing.

Stated by Penelope V. Flores, gathering the facts from the possible sequence of the events “if
Ferdinand Magellan lived after that decisive Battle of Mactan on that auspicious day of April
15, 1521?”. He was on contract by the King of Spain and soon to be appointed as Vice Roy
for life of the lands the he would discover. He also added that the reason on sailing westerly is
by tracing from “Treaty of Tordestillas” it is an agreement made by Spanish and Portuguese to
clear up confusion on newly claimed land in the New world. It would bring them to great
advances in European exploration in order to make good trades and more efficient route to
the India and China

In Philippine history, when we heard about Ferdinand Magellan we always see him as a villain
without considering his goal to discover new places and to make a world map.

References: http://www.thenagain.info, Pigafetta, A.(1522). First Voyage Around the World.

University of Toronto Press., Dr. Penelope V. Flores
(http://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/what-if-magelan-had-survived-mactan)