April 27th, 2021 marks the 500th anniversary of the death of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. He was the first person to personally travel around the Earth, doing so in three voyages.
First, he travelled to the East Indies twice, leaving from Portugal and sailing south-east around the coast of Africa. In his third voyage he travelled west, towards the New World, crossing through the area between South America and Antarctic that now bears his name. Magellan was the first European to sail on the Pacific Ocean and crossed its great blue expanse to the islands of the Philippines. Having already been there, he completed his circumnavigation. He died there in a battle against its indigenous inhabitants and so another man took command of his ships and completed the rest of the voyage.
A Significant Voyage
Magellan’s circumnavigation is important as it helped fill in a major gap about our understanding of the world we live in. The world is round. Magellan’s arrival at the same destination from both directions proved that. In the process, he explored Old World and New World coastlines providing valuable lessons of geography and what the world looks like. In the Age of Discovery, Europeans explorers were obsessed with finding a western route to Asia. Magellan found one way, but his voyages also hint at what is the best way.
In past eras, when asked what was in unknown parts of the globe, people would shrug and say “there be dragons”. But Ferdinand Magellan was one person who actually acted and helped fill those holes, an important lesson for many walks of life. To commemorate that learning, I wanted to show just what mapmakers used to do when they encountered gaps in their knowledge. The results, compared to what we know about the world’s geography today, are often surprising and amusing.
A New Way to an Old World?
As the old rhyme goes “in fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”. Christopher Columbus thought he was taking a new route to Asia. He misidentified the native inhabitants of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola as “Indians”. For almost a generation after Columbus’ voyages, other European explorers still thought they were landing somewhere in Asia. Little did they know they had stumbled on an entirely New World.
This map, produced only 14 years after Columbus arrived in the Caribbean, shows exactly that mistake. West of Europe and Africa (1) lie the newly discovered islands of Caribbean (2). Yet, further west lies Japan (3); and Siberia extends far east from mainland Asia (4) to where we know Greenland should be. A huge gap in the map is simply cut away, leaving a smaller world for people to inhabit.
Interestingly, this map also features some big hints of the major discoveries to come. South of the Caribbean islands, it shows the early explorations of a large coastline (5). In a series of voyages, a handful of Portuguese navigators were able to gain knowledge of the existence of a new landmass. One of them, Amerigo Vespucci correctly guessed in 1502 that this was a new continent and not part of Asia. Upon hearing this, scholars back in Europe theorized this continent was the mythical “Antipodes”, the southern hemisphere’s counterweight to Eurasia. But that landmass was really South America!
Steppingstones to China
Much of the history of North American exploration stems from the belief that Asia lay on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. However, over the course of the Age of Discovery, European explorers were constantly shown that the world was not as small as they thought it was. First, Columbus found himself in what he thought was India. Others like Amerigo Vespucci realized these were new islands with a new continent to the south-west. So, the Europeans re-evaluated. As shown in the map above, if they stayed to the north of the mysterious continent, perhaps they could follow those islands all the way to Japan and the rest of Asia.
But continuing west brought another surprise. Another long coastline – that of Mexico – blocked their way. It was not clear how far in either direction this land extended, so the explorers looked to its north. The hope was to find an open seaway that would finally provide a lucrative gateway to the riches of the Far East.
The Island of California
In the early 1530s, after he built New Spain overtop the ruins of the Aztec Empire, Hernan Cortez sent expeditions north along the western coast of Mexico. The Spanish sailors were tasked with finding the “Strait of Anian”, supposedly the western exit of the maritime passage through the New World.
The Spanish did not find it. Instead, they discovered the long peninsula of Baja California. However, the explorers were influenced by the 1510 Spanish novel The Adventures of Esplandián by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. This romance, very popular among conquistadors, told the stories of a knightly figure. In the book, he travelled to an island called “California” inhabited by dark-skinned warrior women. Thinking they had found this same island, the peninsula was named California. In the late 1530s, the Spaniards realized it was not in fact an island. However, that idea did not fully die. Many mapmakers continued to draw California as an island for another 250 years!
The North-West Passage
Even after the establishment of many colonies, a large part of the North America remained unknown to the Europeans. The map above shows the limits of European knowledge in the year 1650. In that empty space, European hopes for an undiscovered North-West Passage still lived. Perhaps there was sea there that stretched down to the California.
The Sea of the West
In fact, maps made between 1740-1790 often filled in that gap in Canadian west with a large inland sea. Even though there were indications that a passage did not exist, navigation techniques were not always particularly accurate. This led to many errors about where land ended and sea began. This map’s ‘Sea of the West’ is likely due to a miscalculation of the area between Vancouver Island and Canada’s mainland. Juan de Fuca, who explored this region in 1592, said his crew spent a full 20 days sailing it. Perhaps he got lost, as the real sea there is not nearly as big!
Jousting at Windmills
Instead of reading The Adventures of Esplandián perhaps European explorers would have been better served reading Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. They may have identified with the title character. Don Quixote’s love for knightly heroes led him on a hairbrained quest. In one famous scene, he jousts against several windmills, mistakenly identifying them as giants. The explorers searching for the North-West Passage never found it. They were also falling for their own misinterpretations and looking for something that did not exist.
As explorers filled in the gaps on the maps of North America, the mysteries of Asia must have seemed further and further away. In fact, they were looking in the wrong place for a passage. Instead, they should have followed Magellan’s example. He discovered a South-West Passage to the Philippines, but he knew the eastern way around Africa too. Ironically, after all the exploration, going east is still less distance than going west around the New World, by almost 650 km!