Ferdinand Magellan Ships

Wooden ships and iron men? You bet! They had to be. Part II

Last week we left off in 1771 as Captain James Cook and his crew barely escaped death on the Great Barrier Reef stretching along the northern coast of Australia. But death by drowning when a sailing ship was driven aground on a reef or a rocky shore by “contrary” winds was just one of the many things men and women faced in the day of the square-rigged European ship.

There are worse things than drowning, Johnny.

Read on.

What does it take to convince us two-legged troublemakers that we’re having a good day? Well, let’s see. Being warm and dry. Eating a good meal. Resting when we’re tired. Feeling well. Having a place we can call our own. Really doesn’t take much, does it?

Could you get that on the old sailing ships? Wel-l-l ...

Before British ships ventured upon the wide Pacific there was a Portuguese captain named Vacso de Gama who sailed around the southern tip of Africa and became the first European to reach India. That much I’ll bet you know. But did you know this? He left Portugal in July 1497 with four ships and an estimated 390 men, and returned in August 1499 with two ships and 55 men.

They don’t bother to mention that in the history books.

Having arrived in India, de Gama casually says, “... many of our men fell ill here, their feet and hands swelling, and their gums growing over their teeth, so they could not eat.”

Scurvy, of course. The old wooden ships couldn’t carry fresh food so the crew subsisted on hardtack and salt meat. Over 125 of de Gama’s crew of 170 died of scurvy. But why they died after they got to India where fresh food was plentiful he doesn’t say.

Ferdinand Magellan sailed from Seville, Spain, in August of 1519. He rounded the southern tip of South America in November 1520, his crew still healthy because he had stopped at several places to take on fresh food. But then he “... left the strait and entered the [Pacific Ocean], in which we sailed the space of three months and twenty days without tasting any fresh provisions.”

And the result of that was? Ready for this?

“The biscuit we were eating no longer deserved the name of bread; it was nothing but dust, and worms which had eaten the bread. And what is more it smelled intolerably; being impregnated with the urine of mice. The water we were obliged to drink was equally putrid and offensive.”

So, as usual during long sea voyages on the old sailing ships, they ate the pieces of “leather with which the mainyard was covered to prevent it from wearing the rope.” But don’t worry, Johnny, they soaked it in sea water for five days and broiled it up nicely. Yum! And you ain’t heard nothin’ yet.

interesting facts about Ferdinand Magellan for kids

Ferdinand Magellan, a European explorer in the 15th-16th centuries, died while trying to find a western sea route to the “Spice Islands” in Asia . But one of his ships was the first to sail around the world. Of the 260 men who set out on this journey, only 18 survived this perilous trip. It opened up a profitable new trade route between Asia and Europe .

After failing to persuade his own king, Manuel I of Portugal, to finance an expedition, Magellan went to the king of Spain, who gave him five ships and 241 men to look for the western passage.

Like Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan was convinced there was a westerly route to the Far East, but unlike Columbus, Magellan found it.

He set sail on Sept. 20, 1519, but after a mutiny on the coast of what is now Argentina, one ship returned to Spain.

The remaining four sailed south through what is now the Strait of Magellan and across the Pacific Ocean.

But the Pacific was far wider than Magellan had imagined. Food and water gave out and the crew ate rats, ox hides and sawdust before reaching Guam, where they obtained enough food and water to make it to the Philippines, where Magellan was killed when he joined in a fight between Filipino groups.

With only enough men left for two ships, the expedition abandoned the Concepcion and sailed south to the Spice Islands, where they loaded the Trinidad and Vittoria with spices. The Trinidad then tried to return home by sailing east, back across the Pacific, but disease and leakage forced the ship to return to the Spice Islands where the crew was imprisoned by the Portuguese.

But the Vittoria continued sailing west, rounding the tip of Africa and finally making it home to Spain with just 19 men, almost three years after leaving Spain.

Ferdinand Magellan, A Primary Source Biography

Reading Comprehension, Grades 3-4

Ferdinand Magellan

Ferdinand Magellan, circumnavigating the world

Ferdinand Magellan, circumnavigator