Magellan Discovers the Strait: Pacific Passage Found

Salt water rushed through a narrow, rock-walled channel as Ferdinand Magellan's fleet threaded a passage no European had ever navigated. For 38 days, the five ships of the Armada de Molucca picked their way through a labyrinth of fjords, glaciers, and dead-end inlets at the southern tip of South America, searching for the opening that would connect the Atlantic to the vast ocean beyond. When they finally emerged on the western side, Magellan reportedly wept at the sight of calm waters stretching to the horizon, naming them the Mar Pacifico. The discovery came at tremendous cost. Magellan had departed Seville in September 1519 with 270 men and five ships on a mission to reach the Spice Islands by sailing west. By the time the fleet reached the strait, one ship had been wrecked in a storm and another had deserted, its captain turning back to Spain. The crew had endured a brutal winter encampment in Patagonia, where Magellan suppressed a mutiny by executing and marooning its leaders. The strait itself was treacherous. Tidal currents ran at dangerous speeds through channels as narrow as a mile across, flanked by mountains rising thousands of feet on either side. The Tierra del Fuego shoreline glowed with the fires of indigenous Yaghan people, giving the land its name. Magellan sent scouting parties ahead in smaller boats to map each branching waterway, a methodical approach that prevented the fleet from running aground or entering a dead end. The 350-mile passage eliminated the only known alternative: the horrifying route around Cape Horn, with its storms and massive swells. For two and a half centuries, the Strait of Magellan remained the primary shipping route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The discovery proved that the Americas were a separate landmass from Asia and that a westward route to the East Indies was physically possible, even if brutally difficult.