'Ferdinand Magellan,' a college student once wrote in his final exam, "was the first explorer to circumcise the Earth." Not quite. And neither, for that matter, was the intrepid Portuguese captain the first to circumnavigate the planet. That distinction belonged by chance to 31 sailors who, having set out with Magellan from Spain in 1519, endured a harrowing journey in which nearly 240 men in a fleet of five ships perished. Not for three years, after traveling east to west for more than 14,000 leagues, did the bedraggled survivors limp home in a lone carrack, the Victoria. Magellan had died in the Philippines, at the hands of natives enlisted, quite possibly, by members of the crew who had been roiled by false promises of a short journey to the Spice Islands. Only after reaching the Molucca Sea, near modern-day Indonesia, was a decision made to circle the globe as the quicker path to Europe.
Round About the Earth
By Joyce E. Chaplin
Simon & Schuster, 535 pages, $35
In "Round About the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit," Joyce Chaplin, a Harvard historian, has written a richly textured narrative devoted to 500 years of globe-trotting. Journeys by Francis Drake, Captain Cook and Charles Darwin, even the Soviet space dog Laika, are among the colorful adventures to fill the pages of this unconventional world history. The depth of detail can, at times, be daunting: By the fourth of 12 chapters, we have already lapped Mother Earth a dozen times. But Ms. Chaplin knows how to tell an absorbing story, weaving compelling reflections together with captivating vignettes. Augmented by first-person accounts, her prose can call to mind the late Samuel Eliot Morison, another Harvard historian whose dramatic narratives frequently unfolded at sea.
Ms. Chaplin identifies three eras in the history of circumnavigation. During the first 250 years, an amalgam of greed, glory and nationalism propelled European voyages. Among the casualties were indigenous peoples whom adventurers plundered, killed and kidnapped. But circling the globe itself was fraught with peril. Long periods at sea and the short shelf life of fruit high in vitamin C meant that scurvy took a heavy toll. Notwithstanding advances in shipbuilding and cartography, the capacity of European vessels to serve as "life-support systems" was dreadful. As Ms. Chaplin wryly observes, "Ships were designed for sailing, but not for sailors."
If anxiety defined this initial era, confidence was the watchword for the 19th century. By then, mortality rates had been sharply reduced through careful planning by ship captains, from stocking portable soup and cork life jackets to scheduling periodic shore leave. World travelers increasingly included scientists, artists and writers. By the 1840s, major shipping lines opened their gangways to paying passengers with a thirst for adventure at minimal risk. Long stretches of boredom posed the greatest problem en route, which the advent of speedy steamships and railroads helped to mitigate. In 1873, when Jules Verne's whimsical novel "Around the World in 80 Days" appeared, traversing land and sea in three months—rather than three years—had, in fact, become possible by means of the Suez Canal.
Yet over the past century, Ms. Chaplin contends, dangers endemic to air travel and space exploration fueled feelings of uncertainty about rounding the globe. The doubt was exacerbated by buyer's remorse over the "environmental costs of planetary domination"—a well-intentioned assertion of questionable relevance. The step from circumnavigation to ecocide is a long one. More apt than "doubt"—the title Ms. Chaplin has chosen for the final frame of her triptych—would be "indifference." By the last decades of the 20th century, circumnavigation had lost its glamour. Outer space inspired fresh flights of fancy, while our desire to see the world has found an outlet in television, the Internet or a package excursion abroad.
Ms. Chaplin takes pains to distinguish around-the-world travel from other long-distance exploits at sea. trans-Atlantic expeditions, for instance, likewise led to geographic and scientific discoveries, laying the foundations for expanded trade and the European colonization of the Americas. But Atlantic crossings were shorter, briefer and significantly less perilous; nor, consequently, did they pose such a formidable challenge to human endurance. Alternately, the Earth, as a result of circumnavigation, acquired newfound importance in the public mind, quite apart from its place within the cosmos. Handcrafted globes and commemorative medallions brought the world down to size, while globe-struck consumers purchased travel accounts printed in a variety of European tongues. Elizabethan actors jested about circling the planet during performances at the Globe Theatre. "All the world's a stage," Shakespeare said in "As You Like It." These were the first pangs of planetary consciousness, and Ms. Chaplin well captures the elation and uncertainty of girding the globe, without minimizing its cost for both newcomers and natives.
—Mr. Ekirch is the author of "At Day's Close: Night in Times Past."