Philippine E-Journals

The 1521 Magellan Landing on Homonhon Island Revisited

Rolando O. Borrinaga

 

Abstract:

The town of Guiuan and the province of Eastern Samar commemorate the Magellan Expedition in 1521 with appropriate ceremonies on Homonhon Island every 16 March, a holiday in the entire province. This annual commemoration was apparently premised on the garbled information handed down since the 1970s that the sighting and discovery of the Philippines by Ferdinand Magellan on 16 March 1521 and the landing on Homonhon happened on the same day. But Antonio Pigafetta, the chronicler of the expedition, had made it clear that the sighting of our islands on 16 March was a different event from the landing on Homonhon the next day, 17 March. Additions that had expanded the Homonhon story include the presence of a Chamorro interpreter that the expedition brought from the Ladrones and the argued claim that an unrecorded “First Mass” and planting of the Cross happened here, ahead of the Pigafetta-recorded events in Mazaua (Limasawa) Island. This paper revisits the Magellan Landing on Homonhon from 17-25 March 1521 and sorts out the basic facts as narrated by Pigafetta from the later myths that got appended to the Homonhon story. The paper also presents archaeological artifacts presumably left by the Magellan expedition in Homonhon: the Magellan’s Rock (carved with FERNSO MAGALHAES, Magellan’s approximate name in Portuguese) and the Magellan Son’s Rock. The Magellan’s Rock, discovered in 1932 and installed with the Homonhon historical marker in 1952, disappeared along with its marker in the 1970s but was located again in heavily vandalized state early in 2018. The Magellan Son’s Rock, now partly vandalized on the side, has carved inscription that seemed to have been mistaken for a calendar date when seen and described in 1952.