Magellan led his ships through the deep and narrow strait w-
hich is now named after him. During this difficult exercise in
navigation , the captain and crew of the San Antonio managed
what they had failed to do at San Julian - they slipped away
and headed back to Spain. Undaunted, Magellan and his three r-
emaining ships entered the ��Great South Sea��. He called his
men together for a service of thanksgiving, and solemnly named
it the Mar Pacifico (��Peaceful Sea��).
Magellan reckoned it was now only a matter of days before t-
he expedition reached the Philippines or Spice Islands. He ea-
gerly plotted their westerly course across the blue Pacific,
aided once more by the brisk trade winds. But, as day followe-
d day, then week followed week, with no sight or sign of land,
the crews became anxious and restive. Magellan himself reali-
zed something was very wrong with his calculations. His ��sea��
was, in fact, the biggest ocean of all, covering a third of t-
he total surface of the world.
The voyage proved a terrible ordeal. In all that vast an-
d empty ocean, they came upon just one tiny, uninhabited isla-
nd. Stocks of food and water ran low. Worse still, as they sa-
iled back into the tropics, what little food was left went ro-
tten. The men ate anything they could find, rats, maggots, st-
rips of leather, even sawdust. They began to suffer from scur-
vy. Their skin broke out in sores, their limbs became horribl-
y swollen, they grew so weak they could not stand or even rai-
se an arm. One by one they died.
When the expedition finally reached the Mariana Islands, so-
me 2,000 kilometres ( 1,250 miles ) east of the Philippines,
the survivors had crossed nearly 13,000 kilometres ( over 8,0-
00 miles ) of the Pacific Ocean.