1. “For those who believe, no proof is necessary.

2. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible.”

3. Alfred North Whitehead

Drake’s Circumnavigation

Historically, the first circumnavigation of the Earth is attributed to a Portuguese seafarer named Fernao de Magalhaes, more recognizably known as Ferdinand Magellan. His vision of completely circling the world eventually became a reality after he secured royal sponsorship for his journey. He departed from Spain on August 10, 1519, with 5 ships and a total of 232 crew members. Only one of those ships, with a crew of just eighteen individuals, completed the voyage. It had taken three years and twenty-seven days, returning eventually to Spain on September 6, 1522. Unfortunately, Magellan himself was not one of those very few survivors. He had been killed in a battle with natives in the Philippines on April 27, 1521. The honor of being the first to survive a circumnavigation was thus attributed to the Master of the one remaining ship, Juan Sebastian del Cano. However, despite this fact today, it is still Magellan’s name that is associated with this benchmark of exploration. With the evident record of danger and death suffered by this expedition, there was, understandably, no great encouragement to follow in Magellan’s wake [1].

Yet the spirit of exploration persists, and during the five decades that followed Magellan’s achievement, the notion of glory once again superseded the evident danger. It was thus amid the maelstrom of political maneuvering of the mid-Elizabethan era that the English seafarer Francis Drake [2] left England on December 13, 1577, with approximately 164 companions collected in a 5-ship flotilla. Drake’s expedition obviously suited Elizabeth I’s posturing with respect to Spain and its ruling monarch King Phillip, her half-sister Mary’s widower. Fifty-five years after the return of Magellan’s expedition, Drake set off on his own attempt to circle the globe.