Which expedition became the first to circumnavigate Earth, finishing under Juan Sebastián Elcano?

The Magellan expedition became the first to circumnavigate Earth, finishing under Juan Sebastián Elcano.

Ferdinand Magellan led the Spanish expedition that left Seville in 1519 with five ships seeking a westward route to the Spice Islands. The fleet found the passage now called the Strait of Magellan and crossed the Pacific Ocean, which Magellan named after encountering relatively calm conditions.

Magellan was killed in the Philippines in 1521 during the Battle of Mactan, so he did not complete the voyage. Juan Sebastián Elcano took command of the surviving ship Victoria and returned to Spain in September 1522 with 18 survivors. The expedition had demonstrated the practical connectedness and immense scale of the world’s oceans.

The voyage was not the first journey to reach the Pacific from the Atlantic, and its purpose was commercial rather than simply exploratory. The surviving Victoria carried spices and provided powerful evidence about global geography, though the expedition cost most of its crew and ships.