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Commissioned by King Charles I of Spain to find a shortcut through the Americas to the islands of Southeast Asia, Ferdinand Magellan, in command of five ships, left the Spanish port of Seville in August 1519. Thus began one of history's greatest voyages of exploration.

A Moment in Time is a brief, exciting and compelling journey into the past. Created to excite and enlighten the public about the past, its relevance to the present and its impact on the future, A Moment In Time is a captivating historical narrative that is currently broadcast worldwide.

Transcript

Lead: Commissioned by King Charles I of Spain to find a shortcut through the Americas to the islands of Southeast Asia, Ferdinand Magellan, in command of five ships, left the Spanish port of Seville in August 1519. Thus began one of history's greatest voyages of exploration.

Intro: A Moment In Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Prior to the voyages of Columbus beginning in 1492 and the systematic exploration of Africa by the Portuguese in the 1480s and 90s, Europeans had little accurate information about the earth's size. Their knowledge was based on the theories of the second century Greek writer Ptolemy who underestimated it. Because of this, geographers were convinced that Japan and China lay only a few thousand miles west of Europe. Columbus's trips proved those estimates to be wrong. With the first accounts of Vasco de Balboa of finding a new Pacific Ocean on the other side of the new world in 1513, it appeared that the earth was quite large indeed.

Ferdinand Magellan had a dream. He convinced the Spanish king to finance a voyage to find a passage through the American continent that would make possible a shorter route to the riches of the East by sailing west. He took a multinational crew of 265 men including an Italian passenger, Antonio Pigafetta (pee-ga-fate-ta), whose colorful written description of the voyage survived the three-year journey.

Almost from the beginning Magellan had trouble with one of his captains, Juan de Cartegena (car-te-ha-nea), a man with little seagoing experience, probably sent along by King Charles to keep an eye on Magellan. After encountering bad weather and an extended calm during the transatlantic leg of the trip, Cartegena tried to take over. Magellan had him arrested.

After touching the coast of South America on the bulge of Brazil, Magellan gradually worked his way down the continental coastline with major stops at Rio de Janeiro, the huge mouth of the Rio de la Plata (ree-o-de-la-plot-a; English: “silver river”), and for protection during winter on the last day of March 1520, Magellan sailed his fleet into a safe port with a narrow mouth which he named San Julian (san-hool-yan), which is in present day southern Argentina. Next time: mutiny and near disaster.

The producer of A Moment In Time is Steve Clark. At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

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