The Man Who Unlocked the World
WHEN men first went to the moon, they planned with mathematical precision where they were going and how they were going to get there. And they could communicate with home. But when Ferdinand Magellan’s five little wooden ships most of them about 70 feet [21 m] long, comparable in length to a modern semitrailer left Spain in 1519, they sailed into the unknown. And they were utterly alone.
Among the boldest, most courageous navigational feats of all time, Magellan’s voyages are a monument to the Great Age of Exploration an age of courage and fear, elation and tragedy, God and Mammon. Let’s go back, then, to about 1480, when Ferdinand Magellan was born in northern Portugal, and take a look at the remarkable man who unlocked the world and at his epic journeys.
From Court Page to Fearless Mariner
The Magellan family are members of the nobility, so,
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