October 21, 1520

Strait of Magellan

Magellan’s four surviving ships find the eastern entrance to the strait

Two scouting ships disappeared into a storm. When they returned they flew their flags and fired their guns to announce that the channel continued.

21 October 1520, the feast of the Eleven Thousand Virgins

On 21 October 1520 the expedition reached the cape now called Cabo Vírgenes, at about 52° south, and encountered the mouth of a strait. The cape took its name from the feast day on which it was sighted.

Antonio Pigafetta recorded the sighting and placed the mouth some two to three leagues from the cape.

The date rests principally on Pigafetta's chronology; another early account supplied a different one.

Four ships, not five

Trinidad, San Antonio, Concepción and Victoria were present. The fifth original ship, Santiago, had already been wrecked during an earlier reconnaissance, although its crew survived.

Magellan had resumed the southward search for a navigable route after wintering in Patagonia and losing that ship.

Nobody yet knew it went through

The ships entered a short distance and anchored. Magellan sent San Antonio and Concepción to investigate the channels while Trinidad and Victoria waited near the entrance.

The scouts came back having found connected channels, and the fleet went on. Pigafetta wrote that the snowy mountains rose around water too deep for ordinary anchoring, forcing the crews to fasten mooring lines ashore.

What the fleet had not confirmed on 21 October was that the waterway reached another ocean. Pigafetta's figure for the strait's length — 110 leagues, which he equated to 440 miles — is retrospective.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources not yet audited

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What the sources leave uncertain

The 21 October date rests principally on Pigafetta’s chronology; another early account supplied a different date.
Pigafetta describes finding the entrance on 21 October, but his knowledge that the strait reached the Pacific is retrospective. The through-passage was not confirmed at first sight.
The primary narrative does not securely date San Antonio’s desertion to 21 October. Modern reconstructions variously place the mutiny in early November; the exact day remains uncertain.