The History of Ferdinand Magellan in Punta Arenas | Trek Tips

Okay I'm here in the central plaza of Punta Arenas and just finished our Patagonia trip and checking out this statue of Ferdinand Magellan. Amazing explorers have been a big part of the history down here in Patagonia. Ferdinand Magellan, one of the greats I'd say, having found the Magellan, Straits of Magellan in 1521. And if you could imagine the ships that they boarded at that time and the reasons they went, usually financial, they were in search of a new route to the Spice Islands and Asia. So in the 1500s Portugal had dominated the trade route that went around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa down through West Africa and then around and into the Indian Ocean. It was the Spanish that wanted to try to find a new route that went west Ferdinand Magellan was the explorer that set out with five ships, a crew of 270 men, and was the first person to set out on an expedition to circumnavigate the globe. He fell short personally, he was killed in the Philippines in his second year, but they had already found the passageway from the Atlantic down past Rio de Janeiro and then down through the Straits of Magellan, here at the southern end of South America, and brought them through to the Pacific Ocean. And then once they set out here into the Pacific Ocean they set sail for over 96 days before they hit land at all, and many of the men died prior to that. Some of the ships had already turned back, one was sunk, and in the end when they set sail three years prior, 270 men with five ships, and in the end they had 18 men left on the one ship, the Victoria. So pretty amazing journey, and what I'm going to do today is go out to the Museum of Neo Victoria, which is just outside of downtown Punta Arenas, about 15 minutes in a taxi, and I'm going to go check out the replica of the ship that they sailed. Being a sailor myself, having crossed the North Atlantic, having sailed many times in a boat with great navigation and quite seaworthy, being able to make water on board and provision the boat appropriately, I have a tremendous amount of respect for people that went out into the ocean in those days with a completely different set of equipment, and as well no knowledge as to what was beyond. They had found that the ocean was much larger than they thought, but also being the first to actually prove that the earth was round and circumnavigate the globe. There's also a replica of the Beagle, which was the ship that Charles Darwin used on his journeys down here as well. Okay, so there it is, this boat, replica. They were all a little bit different actually, all five ships were a little bit different. About 50 to 60 men per ship for three years on this thing to circumnavigate the globe. First two years when Joan was on board, obviously, then he was killed in the Philippines, but okay, and this must have been the captain's quarters on the stern of the boat, the aft upper cabin, there's the bunk there, and looks like, you know, what would be a sexton, and some kind of chart on the table here, and the navigation desk, hangout area. I guess Joan was one of the guys that stayed healthy and didn't get scurvy because he had his own little stash of some kind of fruit, and that's why the men lacked vitamin c, and that's what gave them scurvy apparently. That's really cool, these crows nest up here where they could look out, and the way that these sail booms are two different trees that go all the way out each side. Fire pit, the dutch oven and cook, got some meats there hanging, some cannons. These guys did have enemies as they were going into the unknown, they didn't know who they'd find. Here's the rudder system from up above, there's just a single stick sticking up above, and then that steers the rudder down here, and then right above here would be where Magellan's cabin was. If you think about him on here, he was a Portuguese guy sailing for Spain, most of the crew was Spanish, there was some Portuguese, so he was a little outnumbered when it came to, I guess, politics of the fact that you were a Portuguese cabin sailing a Spanish ship. This must have been the crew quarters, which is kind of mid-deck, hammocks like that, little guys, about three feet from the floor here to the top here, and the base of the ship would have been all the supplies, all of the, you know, rancid water, the water they were drinking, and barrels of water and whatnot, and then crates probably of different kinds of food, looks like, you know, they've got, you know, some replicas of, you know, drying dried meats and, and burlap sacks full of stuff, dried fish. Okay, gotta say that it was pretty cool, the boats out there, definitely worth the visit, you know, and we spent 45 minutes or so out there, there's a number of other boats to check out, Darwin's boat and some of the other boats out there, but this one of, where Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the, circumnavigated the world, even though he didn't make it all the way back to Spain, his expedition, some members did, 18 out of 260 guys that set sail on five ships, the Victoria wasn't even the largest ship by far, there was two larger ships, but the expedition was successful in the end, and they circumnavigated the globe for the first time, and it's interesting, this park here where the statue is, there's a restaurant over here that has a picture of this area a long time ago before there was even any trees here, and that statue is right in the main plaza with the old, like, you know, cars from the early 1900s, I guess, and he's been a hero here ever since, so finding the Magellan Straits, putting this place on the map, and, you know, discovering the Pacific Ocean, but amazing exploration, and a lot of respect for Ferdinand Magellan.