Laurence Bergreen

On September 6, 1522, a battered ship appeared on the horizon _ A small pilot boat was dispatched to lead the strange ship over the reefs _ The vessel they were guiding into the harbor was manned by a skeleton crew of just eighteen sailors and three captives, all of them severely malnourished. _ Their captain was dead, as were the officers, the boatswains, and the pilots; in fact, nearly the entire crew had perished _ the ship, Victoria, _ had departed three years earlier. No one knew what had become of her _ Despite the journey__ hardships, Victoria and her diminished crew accomplished what no other ship had ever done before. By sailing west until they reached the East, and then sailing on in the same direction, they had fulfilled an ambition as old as the human imagination, the first circumnavigation of the globe