Order of Magellan Round the World Navy Circumnavigation Patch

Of the five ships that sailed with Ferdinand Magellan in 1519, only Victoria came home, reaching Spain in 1522 under Juan Sebastian Elcano with 18 men aboard. Magellan himself was killed in the Philippines partway through the voyage, so the first trip around the world was finished by the men he left behind. Sailors have measured their own voyages against that one ever since. The Order of Magellan is the sailors' certificate for it, a sea tradition rather than a regulation award, kept for those who have taken a ship all the way around the globe. It asks for the whole circuit, not one line on the chart.

It belongs to the same family as the line-crossing traditions. Crossing the equator turns a pollywog into a shellback, crossing it at the International Date Line makes a golden shellback, and crossing the 180th meridian earns the Golden Dragon. The Blue Nose is for the Arctic Circle, and the Order of the Sparrow is for sailing all seven seas. The Navy does not formally recognize any of these, and the Magellan is harder to get than most, because a circumnavigation takes a specific mission and not just a detour for morale. The Great White Fleet steamed around the world from 1907 to 1909, and the submarine USS Triton (SSN-586) did it submerged in 1960. Crews since then have earned it on world cruises, ship transfers between oceans and long deployments that came home the other way.

The patch is round, 4 inches across, with a blue merrowed edge rolled around the rim. A red ring carries ORDER OF MAGELLAN in white lettering across the top and ROUND THE WORLD across the bottom. Inside it a white globe is gridded with blue lines of latitude and longitude, with North America in blue at the center, Greenland above it, and the edges of Europe and Africa at the right. The colors are plain red, white and blue, and the lettering reads from across a room. It has an iron-on backing and can also be sewn on.

A circumnavigation is a fact in a ship's log, with a start date, an end date and every time zone in between. The certificate records it, and the patch is something a sailor can wear or frame. Many sailors finish a career with a shellback card and nothing more, which is why the Magellan means something to those who hold one. It stands for months at sea, a long list of ports, and a crew that came home from the opposite direction it left. The globe on this patch is small, but the men who earned it know how much water it covers.

Sew it on a cruise jacket next to your Shellback and Golden Dragon patches, or iron it onto a vest for the ship's reunion. It also goes in a shadow box with the certificate and the cruise book, or makes a good gift for a shipmate who made the trip with you. The long way around, on one patch.