The Man Who Beat Magellan

Another bit of historic trivia we missed in history class: Magellan was not the first person to circumnavigate the globe. It was a guy named Enrique (aka Henrique of Mallacca or Henry Black) , one of Ferdinand Magellan’s slaves acquired by the Portuguese explorer on one of his previous voyages in 1511 when the boy was 14 years-old, probably in the early stages of the Siege of Malacca (1511).

Enrique accompanied Magellan on all his voyages, including the voyage that circumnavigated the world between 1519 and 1521.When the expedition reached the Philippine islands, where Magellan was killed during the Battle of Mactan on April 27, 1521, it turned out that Enrique understood the language spoken by the local natives.

On 1 May he left the expedition in Cebu, with the presumed intention to return to his home island,[9] and there is nothing more said of Enrique in any document. So we don’t know for sure, but if he managed to return to Mallacca, then he would have been the first person in history to have completed the trip around the world.

This Statue of him stands in the Maritime Museum in Mallacca, and I actually passed by him 40 years ago on a visit to Malaysia, but I didn’t realize who he was. Too bad, because he would have deserved a mark of respect…