Magellan Was the First Person to Sail Around the World

Magellan did not make it. He led the expedition that set out from Spain in 1519, but he was killed in 1521 in the Philippines, at the Battle of Mactan, fighting local warriors led by Lapulapu, less than halfway through the voyage. The journey was completed by a battered remnant of the crew under Juan Sebastian Elcano, who limped one surviving ship, the Victoria, back to Spain in 1522. So the first person to complete a circumnavigation under his own command was Elcano, a name almost nobody knows. Magellan gets the credit because he planned and led the start, and because history likes a single hero over a committee of survivors. He pointed the way around the world. He just never got around it.