Magellan: The Circumnavigation and the Victory Given the Wrong Name

On 6 September 1522, the ship Victoria reached Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain. Only 18 men remained aboard. They had left Spain almost three years earlier with five ships and more than 200 sailors, sailing west toward the spice islands of Maluku. The expedition’s commander, Ferdinand Magellan, had died in the Philippines in April 1521. Juan Sebastián Elcano, a sailor who had once joined a revolt against Magellan, brought Victoria home.

The Memoria Chilena collection records the 1519–1522 voyage and makes the division clear: Magellan began the expedition, but Elcano completed it. Why, then, does the world still call it Magellan’s voyage? The answer lies in the way an empire chooses its hero, keeps commercial advantage, and rewrites the work of the survivors.