Karen Flick, Age 9, Of Phoenix, Ariz., for her question:
Where did Magellan go on his trip?
Nowadays, a jet can swoop around the globe in a day. An ocean liner can sail around the world in a few weeks. The pilots know the routes and keep in contact by radio and radar. Magellan's small ships nailed across unknown seas on the loneliest voyage in history.
The Portuguese of 500 year's ago were daring sailors. They found many new ocean routes and used them to trade with faraway lands. Young Ferdinand Magellan voyaged with these ships to the spice islands of the East Indies. This trip took him south from Portugal, around South Africa and then eastward until he was farther east than the Philippine Islands.
Columbus had found America, and Balboa had crossed the new world and seen the great ocean in the west. Magellan knew that the world was round, and he dreamed of being the first to prove this by sailing clear around the globe. He wanted to reach the spice islands by sailing westward, and on this voyage he knew he must cross the Atlantic and the unknown western ocean. He hoped to find a waterway in South America connecting the two oceans.
Magellan made his daring trip for the king of Spain. With five small sailing ships and 240 men, he left the Port of Seville on Aug. 10, 1519. He crossed the Atlantic as many ships had already done. Then he sailed far down the coast of South America into unknown seas.
At long last, almost in despair, the bold mariner found the waterway through South America. This channel is only 360 miles long, but its waters are so dangerous that it took him more than a month to pass through it. We call it the Strait of Magellan in honor of the great navigator who guessed it was there, who found it and was the first to sail through it.
On nov. 28, 1520, Magellan sailed out into the unknown western ocean. After the stormy strait, its waters seemed so calm that he named it the pacific ocean. For 100 days he sailed westward across the strange and lonely ocean. Food was low and the drinking water was foul when, at last, Magellan reached the Philippine Islands. His westward trip nor overlapped the early voyage he made to the East Indies by sailing eastward. Magellan lost his life in the philippines, but his two voyages had taken him clear around the world. He was the first sailor to circumnavigate the globe.
It was Sept. 9, 1552, almost three years after Magellan set out on his daring trip. Capt. Juan Sebastian Dal Cano, with 17 men, sailed the ship Vittoria back to Seville they were all that returned from the first voyage around the globe. Magellan, who planned the brave and lonely voyage, lived only 41 years. Someday, perhaps, we shall compare him with an astronaut the first astronaut who will take a spaceship across the lonely, unknown oceans of space to visit another world.