This is a list of circumnavigations of Earth. Sections are ordered by ascending date of completion.
This is a list of circumnavigations of Earth. Sections are ordered by ascending date of completion.
The Concepción (Spanish for "Conception") was an early 16th-century Spanish carrack during the Age of Discovery, chiefly remembered as part of the five-ship Molucca Fleet (Armada de Molucca) that undertook the historic 1519–22 Magellan expedition.
Departing Spain on September 20, 1519, the expedition attempted to find a route around South America to the Malukus, or Spice Islands, in present-day Indonesia. The expedition accomplished this goal, and also completed the first circumnavigation of Earth in history. However, the Concepción itself did not finish the voyage, and was scuttled in the Philippines on May 2, 1521, shortly after Ferdinand Magellan himself died in the Battle of Mactan.
Circumnavigation is the complete navigation around an entire island, continent, or astronomical body (e.g. a planet or moon). This article focuses on the circumnavigation of Earth.
The first circumnavigation of the Earth was the Magellan Expedition, which sailed from Sanlucar de Barrameda, Spain in 1519 and returned in 1522, after crossing the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. Since the rise of commercial aviation in the mid 20th century, circumnavigating Earth is straightforward, usually taking days instead of years. Today, the challenge of circumnavigating Earth has shifted towards human and technological endurance, speed, and less conventional methods.
The Magellan expedition (10 August or 20 September 1519 – 6 September 1522) was the first voyage around the world in human history. It was a Spanish expedition that sailed from Seville in 1519 under the initial command of Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese sailor, and completed in 1522 by Spanish Basque navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano.
The initial goal of the voyage was to secure time to explore the possibility of a southwestern passage around South America to China and the Spice Islands (now part of Indonesia). After crossing the Atlantic, wintering in Patagonia, and suppressing a mutiny, the expedition found and transited the Straits of Magellan in 1520. After crossing the Pacific Ocean to the Philippines, Magellan was killed during a raid on the Mactan chief Lapulapu in 1521. The ship Victoria under Juan Sebastian Elcano—who began the expedition as a boatswain— took command of the expedition and sailed into the open Indian Ocean, avoided landing in South Africa despite the resulting starvation, and bluffed his way into resupply at the Cape Verde Islands before completing the first circumnavigation on 6 September 1522. Of the initial 270 crew members, only 18 sailors completed the entire journey.