Posted on 08/23/2024 7:15:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Five hundred years ago, no one suspected the 16th-century vessel the Nao Victoria would become the stuff of legend. In 1519, a Portuguese consul called the Spanish carrack “very old and patched up” and unfit to even “sail … to the Canaries.” Nevertheless, the Nao Victoria was chosen for a five-ship expedition, crewed by 270 men, that would come to be known as one of the most significant journeys in the history of human exploration.
The captain of this unprecedented adventure was Portuguese explorer Fernão de Magalhães, anglicized Ferdinand Magellan. On September 20, 1519, he set sail aboard the flagship Trinidad from Sanlúcar de Barrameda in southern Spain, with an intended destination of the present-day Maluku Islands. Three years and tens of thousands of miles later, the “very old and patched up” Nao Victoria was the journey’s sole surviving ship — and Magellan wasn’t on board.
Magellan had died in a skirmish in the Philippines in 1521. It was Juan Sebastián Elcano, another mariner on the expedition, who brought the Nao Victoria back to its home port, but Elcano wasn’t the first person to circumnavigate the globe either. Historians believe that honor belongs to an enslaved person named Enrique, whom Magellan seized during the Portuguese conquest of Malacca (in present-day Malaysia) in 1511.
Enrique served as an interpreter during the historic journey for eight years after his capture, but he abandoned the mission after Magellan’s death.
As luck would have it, Enrique was only a little over 1,500 miles from his native land of Malacca. If Enrique found his way home before September 6, 1522 (when the 18 men aboard the Nao Victoria made it home to Spain), he’d officially be the first person to ever circumnavigate the globe — but we’ll likely never know for sure.
I saw the headline and I figured it was a black guy who outdid Magellan. I would have bet money on it.
Same here. I heard some schools are teaching it was a couple guys named Tyrone and Willie.
It was Magellan. All the rest is unsupported conjecture. Magellan Uber alles.
Magellan didn’t make it. He died enroute...
Yes, of course. Our neo-marxist masters and historical revisionists stick to some very basic and obvious propaganda themes
Next up - Enrique was likely TRANS.
And has been voting rat sine 1783
The Phoenicians! And they were late comers.
In other words he didn't and the article is a DEI lie. But it is a very interesting historical tidbit.
Proving once again, if you bend the facts and manipulate them enough you can rewrite history to your own liking and agenda.
ra! as in Ra expedition.
Correct. It was Tim Walz.
I figured it was some Chinese guy.
Perhaps not, but he did hav3 some pretty rad gel insoles
“I dunno, I kinda like DeSoto...”
“What the hell did he do?!”
“Discovered the Mississippi”
“They woulda found it anyway!”
The Chinese sailor Zhang Hua may have done it before Magellan. That does not diminish Magellan’s accomplishment. He went the hard way around Cape Horn
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.