Five hundred years ago, sailing even in familiar waters was an adventure. There were no radios, weather reports, or good maps. Sailors were on their own. Many died in shipwrecks. So little was known about the Earth and its seas that no one was sure that the world was round.

Then Ferdinand Magellan led a crew of 265 on a voyage. They were the first men to sail around the world. They were also the first Europeans to cross the Pacific Ocean. They set sail in September 1519. Magellan commanded the ‘Trinidad’. The other ships in his fleet were the ‘San Antonio’, ‘Concepcion’, ‘Victoria’, and ‘Santiago’.

In November they reached Brazil’s shore. They rested there. On Christmas Day, they started going down the South American coast. The fleet set out again in August 1520. In October, they found a bay. Magellan sent two ships to explore it. A violent two-day storm began. The ships took shelter in a small inlet. They found that it was a long waterway. Although it had land on both sides, the water was salty. They had discovered the Strait of Magellan at the tip of South America! They came back and got the rest of the fleet. For the first time, people sailed from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. It took one month.

The weather was awful, and the captain of the San Antonio turned his ship around and fled. It took the remaining ships from November 1520 until March 1521 to cross the Pacific Ocean and reach the Philippines. Magellan was killed when he tried to force the natives there to become Christians. But enough of his crew survived that the other two ships returned to Spain in September 1522. Only 18 men had survived the trip. One had kept a log about this adventure that proved once and for all that the world was round.