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Finding today in the voyage…
The first voyage around the world
One day of the voyage for every day of ours
Five ships left Spain to sail west to the Spice Islands; one came home. The series tells the voyage one day at a time, on the same calendar, from the records the men on board and the king's clerks left. Drag through the voyage below. Gold marks are days with a film; the blue mark is where the series stands today.
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Films
The series so far
Short films, one for each day of the voyage, and longer ones each week that take one question and follow it through the records.
Ships
Five ships, one came home
What the records say about each ship: what she was, what she cost, who commanded her, who sailed in her, and what became of her. Plans and a walk through each ship are being built; the stubs below say what will be there and what it rests on.
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Primary sources
The First Voyage Round the World
The accounts of Pigafetta, the pilot Francisco Albo, the Genoese pilot, Maximilianus Transylvanus and others, in Lord Stanley's English translation (Hakluyt Society, 1874). Page numbers are those of the printed book. For what every record says about a given date, use the voyage map: each day lists its records.
People
Who was aboard
Every name the records give, with the ship each man sailed in, his job, where he came from and what became of him. Below the register, the people the series has introduced so far, with a little about each.
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Money
What the voyage cost
Every sum in the series is given twice: as days of an ordinary laborer's pay, and as that many days at a laborer's pay today. The film and the essay explain why, and apply it to the fleet's own accounts. Below them, every converted sum and every source, to read or download.
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Search
Search the witnesses
Full-text search across the 1874 volume, the films, the crew register, the date index and the money essay.
Behind the films
How This Series Is Created
What goes into each film, where the words and pictures come from, which of them are made by AI, and what is checked before anything is shown.
- The recordsLogs, journals, letters and the fleet's own accounts, in public-domain editions.
- The date indexEvery date any record names, by source and page, with disagreements kept.
- The day's storyWritten from the records for that date. What is recorded and what is inferred is marked.
- The storyboardEvery picture, caption and line break on one sheet, under the sentence the film must earn.
- ApprovalNothing is narrated or rendered until the board is approved.
- The filmMap, pictures, narration, music and a sound bed, with pauses at the turns.
- This siteThe story with its numbered sources, the records for the date, and the film.
Each day's film goes through the same seven steps. The blue step is the gate.
The calendar
The voyage lasted 1,086 days, from 20 September 1519 at Sanlúcar de Barrameda to 9 September 1522, when the Victoria's men gave thanks in Seville. The series keeps the same count, one voyage day for each real day. Day 1 was released on 3 October 2026, and Day 1,086 falls on 22 September 2029. Each day gets a short film. On Saturdays a longer film takes one question from the week and follows it through the records. Two introductions and the occasional special stand outside the calendar.
The records
Nearly everything known about the voyage comes from a few men who were there and the papers they left. Four accounts are on this site in full, in Lord Stanley's English translation for the Hakluyt Society (1874): Antonio Pigafetta's book, the pilot Francisco Albo's log of latitudes and courses, the account of an unnamed Genoese pilot, and the letter of Maximilianus Transylvanus, who questioned the survivors. Beside them the series uses Robertson's 1906 translation of Pigafetta from the Italian manuscript, and the Spanish documents printed by Navarrete (1837), Medina (1920) and Pastells (1920): the 1519 muster roll, the pay lists, the fleet's accounts, and the survivors' answers under questioning in 1522.
Words shown or spoken as quotations come only from the public-domain English translations, word for word and attributed. Spanish, Portuguese, Latin and Italian texts, and every modern history, supply facts, not quotes. The series does not invent dialogue, quotes or feelings.
Dates, and the day that went missing
Every date any record names goes into one index, with the source and the page: the dated records. The Voyage page shows them. Each day's card lists what the records say for that date, marked as written on the day, implied by a dated entry, or background. Dates are given as the men wrote them, in the Julian calendar. When witnesses disagree about a date, both readings stay in the index and the film says so.
One disagreement belongs to the voyage itself. When the Victoria reached the Cape Verde Islands in July 1522, her careful daily count was a day behind the calendar ashore: Wednesday aboard, Thursday on land. Sailing west, the ship went the same way as the sun, so each day aboard ran a little longer than a day ashore, about a minute and a half on average. Once round the world, the minutes made a whole day.
How a day's story is chosen
The record for the date comes first: every passage that names the day or plainly covers it. Then the other dated sources, and what historians have since established for that day. When nothing was written down, the fleet still existed that day, so the film says where it probably was and what the work was, then spends the day on one of four subjects: a person on board (the default; over three years every named man on the roster should get his day), the church calendar the crew lived by, how things worked (taking the sun, the watches, rations, the ships, the goods in the hold), or what was happening elsewhere in the world that the men could not know.
Before a word is written, one sentence is finished: "After watching this, the viewer will understand ___." It is printed at the top of the storyboard, and the film is judged against it. Each day must teach something distinct.
Citations
Every statement in a story that rests on a source carries a number. The Sources list under the story gives the edition and page, and "Read it in the source" opens that page of the 1874 volume on this site. Where the words are printed in another edition, the link goes to that edition online. Facts from outside the records are marked "Background" and cite a readable public page.
Pictures
The map is drawn in the manner of an old chart. A solid line is where the records put the fleet; a dashed line is an estimate. Period pictures (portraits, maps, manuscript pages, ships) are public domain or under a Creative Commons licence, shown with a slow pan and credited by title and source. For the long ocean crossings a three-dimensional globe turns to follow the track.
Some pictures are made by AI image generation, for moments no period picture shows: a lantern at night, a storm, a landing. All of them are made in one fixed style, a hand-coloured woodcut in the manner of a sixteenth-century printed book of voyages, so that none could be mistaken for a photograph or a historical document, and each is labelled "Illustration, AI-generated" in the film and on this site. They are never used for a named person's face, and never as evidence of what a place or an object looked like. Every picture without that label is a period image with a credit.
Sound
The narrator is an AI voice designed for this series. The music follows one rule: both the composition and the recording must be in the public domain. The pieces are sacred and court music of the voyage's own generation, among them Jean Mouton's Nesciens Mater (the series theme), works by Josquin des Prez and Cristóbal de Morales, and songs from the Cancionero de Palacio, in concert recordings by the choir Ars Mvsica of Murcia, released by the choir under a public-domain mark. Under the narration runs a quiet sound bed made with AI sound generation: a harbour at anchor, a ship under a steady breeze, a storm, cold wind in a narrow channel.
Money
Whenever the series names a sum, it gives it twice over: as days of an ordinary laborer's pay, and as that many days at a laborer's pay today. A Castilian laborer earned about 31.8 maravedís a day in 1518 to 1521; a construction laborer's eight-hour day in the United States was $188.90 in August 2026. Both figures are frozen for the whole series, so every number can be compared with every other. It is a comparison with working lives, not a price in today's goods. The Money page has the full method, every converted sum, and the sources.
Review before anything is made
Each film is first written as prose with its sources, then laid out as a storyboard: every picture, every caption with its line breaks, the places on the map, and the sentence the film must earn. Nothing is narrated or rendered until the board is approved; the approval is recorded, and the film is made from the approved board. A weekly film is built only after the days it draws on are settled.
Checking what comes from outside
Research gathered outside the project, such as machine-read texts of the old editions and a modern reconstruction of the crew list, is treated as a finding aid, not as a source. Before a fact from it is narrated it is checked against the page image or against a second source, and an entry in the crew roster that rests on one source alone is marked to verify and waits.
Text of the sources: Lord Stanley's translation (Hakluyt Society, 1874), from the Project Gutenberg transcription. Period images are public domain or used under the Creative Commons licence named in their credit; pictures marked "Illustration" are AI-generated. Film narration is an AI voice. Dates are as the crew wrote them (Julian calendar); positions marked estimated are reconstructions. Money is given as days of an ordinary laborer's pay and that many days at a laborer's pay today (see Money). Visits are counted with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which sets no cookies.