Hagåtña > Agana Guam

…Guam, the largest, most populous, and southernmost of the islands.

Magellan and his fleet, continuing northwest with his three Spanish ships, had reached the equator on February 13, 1521.

Crossing the vast Pacific Ocean, he runs low on supplies, then runs out.

His crews, reduced to chewing leather, have begun to die of scurvy: about nineteen men have died since departing Cape Horn.

On March 6, 1521, three months after they left the Strait of Magellan, they become the first Europeans to discover the fourteen-member archipelago later known as the Mariana Islands, located in the western Pacific Ocean, about fourteen hundred miles (two thousand two hundred and fifty kilometers) south of Japan.

They find a suitable harbor at the southern end of Guam.

The Europeans are greeted by the Chamorro in hundreds of small outrigger canoes, called Proas, that appear to be flying over the water, due to their considerable speed.

Pigafetta describes the "lateen sail" used by the inhabitants of Guam, hence the name "Islas de las Velas Latinas", but he also writes the inhabitants "entered the ships and stole whatever they could lay their hands on", including "the small boat that was fastened to the poop of the flagship."

"Those people are poor, but ingenious and very thievish, on account of which we called those three islands the islands of Ladroni.” Conflicts with the nearby island of Rota initially prevent Magellan and Elcano from resupplying their ships with food and water.

The Spaniards cross to shore after a couple of days and forcibly requisition rice and fresh fruit, then sail east on March 9.

Alonso de Salazar, after just one month of holding the command of the Loaisa expedition, dies of scurvy shortly after having left Guam on September 5, 1526.

The United States gains Guam as one of the spoils of its 1898 war with Spain.