Voyages Of Discovery

22 November, 2006 by The_Boss

BBC4 Thursday 23rd November 2006 9.00-10.00pm

Rugged adventurer Paul Rose travels the world to tell five gripping tales of adventure on the high seas. This stylish series reveals the true stories of the men who set sail into the unknown and made scientific discoveries that changed the world.

Paul sets sail on the trail of great adventurers like Ferdinand Magellan and Captain James Cook. But his journey also takes him from the heat of the Ecuadorian jungle to the frozen wastes of the north as he shows how the discoveries of lesser-known explorers have also impacted on our lives and shaped the world in which we live today.

The first of five films – Circumnavigation – looks at the voyages of Magellan. Five hundred years ago, a stricken ship limped into the port of Seville. Its crew were half dead from starvation and disease, having just completed a voyage that would change the course of history and profoundly shape the way we live today.

It was 1522, and the Victoria had just become the first ship to circumnavigate the globe. This voyage opened up the last great unknown ocean and proved, once and for all, that the world is round. It was a triumph of the human spirit – an epic tale of courage and endurance, starvation and mutiny, heroism and death. And it turned one man, Ferdinand Magellan, into one of the most celebrated explorers in the history of the world. But behind the legend of one of the greatest-ever Voyages Of Discovery lies another story...

Paul Rose sets sail on a replica of the Victoria and shows how the real hero was not, in fact, Magellan, but a member of his crew.