first global circumnavigation

The first single voyage of global circumnavigation was that of the ship Victoria, between 1519 and 1522, known as the Magellan–Elcano expedition. It was a Castilian (Spanish) voyage of discovery. The voyage started in Seville, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and after several stopovers rounded the southern tip of South America, where the expedition discovered the Strait of Magellan, named after the fleet's captain. It then continued across the Pacific, discovering a number of islands on its way, including Guam, before arriving in the Philippines. The voyage was initially led by the Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan, although he died during the voyage in Mactan in the Philippines in 1521. The remaining sailors decided to circumnavigate the world instead of making the return voyage and continued the voyage across the Indian Ocean, round the Cape of Good Hope, north along the Atlantic Ocean, and back to Spain in 1522. Only 18 men were still with the expedition at the end, including the Spanish Juan Sebastián Elcano, who was its captain at the end.

The next to circumnavigate the globe were the survivors of the Spanish expedition of García Jofre de Loaisa between 1525 and 1536. None of the seven ships of the Loaisa expedition nor the successive expedition leaders (Loaísa, Elcano, Salazar, Iñiguez, De la Torre died during the voyage) completed the voyage, but the Santa María de la Victoria reached the Moluccas in 1526 before being sunk in a Portuguese attack. Fernando de la Torre and eight other survivors, including Andres de Urdaneta, returned to Spain in 1536 aboard Portuguese ships via Portuguese India, the Cape of Good Hope and Portugal, and completed the second circumnavigation in history.

In 1577, Elizabeth I sent Francis Drake to start an expedition against the Spanish along the Pacific coast of the Americas. Drake set out from Plymouth, England in November 1577, aboard Pelican, which he renamed Golden Hind mid-voyage. In September 1578, the ship passed south of Tierra del Fuego, the southern tip of South America, through the area now known as the Drake Passage. In June 1579, Drake landed somewhere north of Spain's northernmost claim in Alta California, which is known as Drakes Bay, California. Drake completed the second circumnavigation of the world in September 1580, becoming the first commander to lead an entire circumnavigation.

Thomas Cavendish completed his circumnavigation between 1586 and 1588 in record time - in two years and 49 days; nine months faster than Drake. It was also the first deliberately planned voyage of the globe.

For the wealthy, long voyages around the world, such as was done by Ulysses S. Grant, became possible in the 19th century, and the two World Wars moved vast numbers of troops around the planet. However, it was the rise of commercial aviation in the late 20th century that made circumnavigation, when compared to the Magellan–Elcano expedition, quicker and safer.

Alexander von Humboldt


Alexander von Humboldt

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt's advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.

Arnold Henry Guyot


Arnold Henry Guyot

Guyot was born on September 28, 1807, at Boudevilliers, near Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He was educated at Chaux-de-Fonds, then at the college of Neuchâtel. In 1825, he went to Germany and resided in Karlsruhe where he met Louis Agassiz, the beginning of a lifelong friendship. From Karlsruhe he moved to Stuttgart, where he studied at the gymnasium. He returned to Neuchâtel in 1827. He determined to enter the ministry and started at the University of Berlin to attend lectures. While pursuing his studies, he also attended lectures on philosophy and natural science. His leisure time was spent in collecting shells and plants, and he received an entrée to the Berlin Botanical Garden from Humboldt. In 1835, he received the degree of PhD from Berlin.

Carl Ortwin Sauer


Carl Ortwin Sauer

Carl Ortwin Sauer (December 24, 1889 – July 18, 1975) was an American geographer. Sauer was a professor of geography at the University of California at Berkeley from 1923 until becoming professor emeritus in 1957. He has been called "the dean of American historical geography" and he was instrumental in the early development of the geography graduate school at Berkeley. One of his best known works was Agricultural Origins and Dispersals (1952). In 1927, Carl Sauer wrote the article "Recent Developments in Cultural Geography," which considered how cultural landscapes are made up of "the forms superimposed on the physical landscape."

Carl Ritter


Carl Ritter

Carl Ritter (August 7, 1779 – September 28, 1859) was a German geographer. Along with Alexander von Humboldt, he is considered one of the founders of modern geography. From 1825 until his death, he occupied the first chair in geography at the University of Berlin.

David Harvey


David Harvey

David W. Harvey FBA (born 31 October 1935) is a British-born Marxist economic geographer, podcaster and Distinguished Professor of anthropology and geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He received his PhD in geography from the University of Cambridge in 1961. Harvey has authored many books and essays that have been prominent in the development of modern geography as a discipline. He is a proponent of the idea of the right to the city.

Doreen Massey


Doreen Massey

Doreen Barbara Massey FRSA FBA FAcSS (3 January 1944 – 11 March 2016) was a British social scientist and geographer. She specialized in Marxist geography, feminist geography, and cultural geography, as well as other topics. She was Professor of Geography at the Open University.

Edward Soja


Edward Soja

Edward William Soja (/ˈsoʊdʒə/; 1940–2015) was a self-described urbanist, a noted postmodern political geographer and urban theorist on the planning faculty at UCLA, where he was Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, and the London School of Economics. He had a Ph.D. from Syracuse University. His early research focused on planning in Kenya, but Soja came to be known as the world's leading spatial theorist with a distinguished career writing on spatial formations and social justice.

Ellen Churchill Semple


Ellen Churchill Semple

Ellen Churchill Semple (January 8, 1863 – May 8, 1932) was an American geographer and the first female president of the Association of American Geographers. She contributed significantly to the early development of the discipline of geography in the United States, particularly studies of human geography. She is most closely associated with work in anthropogeography and environmentalism, and the debate about "environmental determinism".

Ernest Burgess


Ernest Burgess

Ernest Watson Burgess (May 16, 1886 – December 27, 1966) was a Canadian-American urban sociologist born in Tilbury, Ontario. He was educated at Kingfisher College in Oklahoma and continued graduate studies in sociology at the University of Chicago. In 1916, he returned to the University of Chicago, as a faculty member. Burgess was hired as an urban sociologist at the University of Chicago. Burgess also served as the 24th President of the American Sociological Association (ASA).

Gerardus Mercator


Gerardus Mercator

Gerardus Mercator (/dʒɪˈrɑːrdəs mɜːrˈkeɪtər/; 5 March 1512 – 2 December 1594) was a 16th-century geographer, cosmographer and cartographer from the County of Flanders. He is most renowned for creating the 1569 world map based on a new projection which represented sailing courses of constant bearing (rhumb lines) as straight lines—an innovation that is still employed in nautical charts.

top