Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Juan Sebastián Elcano

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

When I was growing up I was taught like so many people that Ferdinand Magellan was the first person to circumnavigate the Earth. The problem with this is that is it isn’t true. In fact, Magellan never circumnavigated the Earth at all. Who should get credit then? Learn more about Juan Sebastián Elcano, and how he is still remembered today, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When I was growing up, I was taught like so many people that Ferdin and Magellan was the first person to circumnavigate the earth. The problem with this is that it isn't true. In fact, Magellan never circumnavigated the earth at all. So who should get credit then? Learn more about Juan Sebastian Elcano and how we still remember today on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now.

Time travel with us every week on the Thuline podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by the tourist office of Spain. Spain is a naval tradition which spans centuries. There are several destinations in the country where you can explore and learn about its rich history. There's the Cartagena Naval Museum, which has exhibitions related to shipbuilding. The National Maritime Museum of Barcelona has an extensive collection of ships and boats. The Museo Naval de San Fernando in Cadiz has the history of the Spanish Armada. Finally, and perhaps greatest of all, is the Naval Museum in Madrid. It shows the history of the Spanish Navy since the 15th century up to the present. You can start researching your dream trip to Spain today by visiting

Spain.Info, where you can get everything you need to know to plan your Spanish adventure. Once again, that's Spain.info. As I mentioned in the introduction, Ferdinand Magellan is often credited with being the first person to circumnavigate the Earth. However, this isn't true. I don't mean this in the same way that Columbus wasn't the first European and the Americas because the Vikings made it to Newfoundland first. I mean, Magellan never circumnavigated the Earth at all, period. The Magellan voyage did not set out to travel around the world. The purpose of the mission was to find a western route to the Spice Islands, or what we now call Indonesia.

They set out in 1519, only 27 years after Columbus first landed in the Bahamas in 1492. The Magellan voyage really just set out to achieve what the Columbus expedition tried to, to reach Asia by sailing west. The difference was that this time they knew there was a gigantic landmass in between Europe and Asia, and this time they were going to go around it. Magellan was Portuguese, so many people assumed that his expedition was sponsored by Portugal, but that wasn't the case. It was actually a Spanish expedition sponsored by King Charles I. The Spanish wanted the Western route because Portugal had a monopoly on the eastern route around Africa and through the Indian Ocean. The expedition consisted of five ships, with supplies to last two full years. The total crew consisted of 270 men at the start, mostly Spanish, but with crew from many different countries.

The expedition took a major toll. The first ship was lost in 1520 in a storm in Argentina. The second ship was abandoned in what is now called the Straits of Magellan several months later. The third ship was scuttled in the Philippines in May 1521 because of a lack of crew, and the fourth was lost in Indonesia in December. On April 27, 1521, Magellan himself was killed in the Philippines by the natives of the island where they landed. He was surrounded and killed with spears. This left the expedition in a quandary.

Its leader was dead, over half the crew were dead, and they were on the other side of the world. They sailed around without any purpose for about six months, and eventually the crew selected one Juan Sebastian Elcano, a Spaniard, to be the captain of the last remaining and smallest ship of the fleet, the Victoria. They decided to return home via the Western route, and on September 6, 1522, the ship arrived back in Spain at the same port they left almost three years earlier. The 500th anniversary of the completion of the first circumnavigation will be taking place next year. Of the 270 original men which left Spain, only 18 survived the journey. The journey was so costly in terms of lives, it would be another 60 years until Sir Francis Drake conducted the second circumnavigation of the earth. So, using the convention that a captain of a ship is the one who gets the credit, then Magellan wasn't the first person to travel around the earth. It was actually Juan Sebastian Alcano.

The King of Spain, now known as Charles V, of the Hapsburg Empire, gave Alcano an annual pension, and an addition to his personal coat of arms with the Latin motto, premise, curcumdisti me, which means you encircled me first. The tale of the Magellan expedition has a lot more to it than the simplified version I just provided. However, that is just the start of my story, the rest of which takes place in the present. Even though many of us grew up not knowing the name of Juan Sebastian Elcano, they certainly knew the name in Spain. The Spanish Navy built a four-mast sailing ship back in 1928. It's one of the largest tall ships still in the world, and since its construction, it has sailed over two million

nautical miles all over the world. It is the most traveled of the world's tall ships. The ship has a special place in the Spanish Navy. For decades, it has been used as a training vessel for Spanish officers. Naval officers would spend anywhere from six months to a year on the ship, learning life at sea, and about navigation. The name of that ship is the Juan Sebastian Elcano. The coat of arms is a globe with the motto, Primus, Corcomdisti, me, the same one given to Elcano by the Emperor Charles V.

On August 24, 2020, the Juan Sebastian Elcano, with the crew of 197 men and women, set out on an around-the-world journey to replicate the voyage, which was started by Ferdinand Magellan, and completed by their countrymen, who is the ship's namesake.

As of the time I am recording this, the ship is currently in the Philippines, after having visited Guam, both stops on the original voyage. There is one other thing about this voyage, which is interesting, and with something that it doesn't have in common with the original voyage. Wine. In particular, they have two casts of sherry from the Gonzales-Bias winery located near Cadiz, close to the home port of the ship. Thousands of years ago, wine used to be aged on ships. The early Roman Pliny the Elder wrote that, quote, Wines shipped overseas, it is observed that the effect of the motion on vintages that can stand it is merely to double their previous maturity, unquote.

It turned out that the motion of the wine on board a ship could make the wine better. It's believed that the movement of the ship made the wine undergo a micro-oxygenation process. It's the same thing that happens on land, only slower. The ship will be returning to Cadiz on July 14, 2021. If you happen to be into the area, you'll be able to welcome the ship home as it arrives in port. The 500 liters of wine will then be bottled in a special run to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Spaniard, who is actually the first person to circumnavigate the globe. Juan Sebastian Alcano. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson.

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