Magellan

The first white navigator to cross the Pacific was the Portuguese, Ferdinand Magellan, who sailed under the banner of Spain to prove his theory that there was a western passage to the east. He discovered the western passage, which was named the Strait of Magellan after him, and his fleet entered the "Great South Sea" in November, 1520. Magellan reached the Ladrones (Marianas) on March 6, 1521, and he was killed a month later at the small island of Mactan in the Philippines. One of his officers, another Portuguese named Sebastian del Cano, managed to navigate the small Victoria back to Europe and thus became the first to circumnavigate the globe.