EXPLORERS

 

Henry the Navigator

Prince Henry (Henrique) the Navigator (1394-1460) was a Portuguese royal prince, soldier, and patron of explorers. Henry sent many sailing expeditions down Africa's west coast, but did not go on them himself. Thanks to Prince Henry's patronage, Portuguese ships sailed to the Madeira Islands (1420), rounded Cape Bojador (Eannes, 1434), sailed to Cape Blanc (1441), sailed around Cap Vert (1455), and went as far as the Gambia River (Cadamosto, 1456) and Cape Palmas (Gomes, 1459-1460).

Henry the Navigator, 1394–1460, prince of Portugal, patron of exploration. Because he fought with extraordinary valor in the Portuguese conquest of Ceuta (1415), he was created duke of Viseu by his father, John I, king of Portugal. The Moroccan campaign inspired Henry with a desire to extend his knowledge of Africa. In 1416 he established at Sagres in SW Portugal a base for explorations, later adding a naval arsenal and an observatory and a school for the study of geography and navigation. The nearby port of Lagos provided a convenient harbor. One of his navigators rediscovered the Madeira Islands (1418–20), and by degrees the west coast of Africa was explored. Cape Bojador was reached in 1434, Cape Blanco was passed in 1441, and the Bay of Arguim was discovered in 1443. When Henry's captains returned with slaves and gold, African exploration, long derided, became very popular; from 1444 to 1446 between 30 and 40 vessels sailed for the W African coast under the prince's authority. His navigators discovered the Senegal River and rounded Cape Verde (1444) and finally (1460) reached a point near the present Sierra Leone. The abuses of the slave trade caused Henry to forbid the kidnapping of blacks in 1455. Henry played an important political role in the minority of Alfonso V, establishing his brother Pedro as regent. His position as grand master of the wealthy and powerful Order of Christ (Portuguese successor to the Knights Templars) increased his influence, and much of the revenue for his ventures was derived from his ecclesiastical tithes. His military reputation, dimmed by a disastrous expedition (1437) against Tangier, was recovered by a subsequent Moroccan campaign (1458), and he was offered the command of several foreign armies. Henry's chief importance, however, lay in his notable contributions to the art of navigation and to the progress of exploration, which provided the groundwork for the development of Portugal's colonial empire and for the country's rise to international prominence in the 16th cent.

 

Bartolomeu Dias

Navigator / Explorer

Born: c. 1450

Died: May 1500

Best known as: Portuguese discoverer of the Cape of Good Hope

He was the first European to round (1488) the Cape of Good Hope, which he called Cabo Tormentoso [cape of storms]. That voyage opened the road to India. Dias accompanied Cabral on the voyage that resulted in the discovery of Brazil, but he perished in heavy seas off the African coast. He is also called Bartholomew Diaz.Bartolomeu Dias was a Portugese navigator whose 1487-88 Atlantic voyages around the southern tip of Africa opened sea routes between Europe and Asia. In 1486 King João II (King John II) assigned Dias, a member of the royal court, to command a voyage with both spiritual and material aspirations: Dias was to search for the lands of Prester John -- a legendary Christian priest and African king -- and challenge the Muslim dominance of trade with Asia. By 1488 Dias had unknowingly rounded the African continent in a storm and made landfall at what is now Mossel Bay. On his return voyage he discovered what he called the Cape of Storms (Cabo Tormentoso), later re-named the Cape of Good Hope (Caboda Bõa Esperança) by João. Although Dias did not find any sign of an African Christian, his voyage established a sea route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean and Asia. In 1497 Dias accompanied Vasco da Gama on a voyage as far as the Cape Verde Islands, and in 1500 he joined Pedro Alvares Cabral's westward expedition. Dias's ship went down in a storm and he perished at sea sometime in late May (Cabral went on to make landfall in Brazil).

Extra credit: Dias's brother, Pero Dias, was also part of the 1487-88 voyages, commanding the supply ship... The Cape of Good Hope is sometimes thought to be the southernmost tip of the African continent, but that title belongs to Cape Agulhas... His name is sometimes spelled Bartholomew Diaz.

Vasco da Gama

Explorer

Born: c. 1469

Died: 24 December 1524

Birthplace: Sines, Portugal

Best known as: Portugese explorer who opened up sea route to India

Naval commander Vasco de Gama's 1497 expedition from Lisbon opened a route to India and led to Portugese dominance of the Eastern spice trade. Little is known of his life before he was assigned command of the expedition that left Lisbon in July of 1497. He established a route around Africa's Cape of Good Hope, up the coast of East Africa and finally to Calicut in India. He returned to Portugal in 1499, having lost most of his men while establishing trade posts in East Africa and India. On his second voyage to India in 1502, the new "Admiral of the Indian Ocean" led 20 ships against rival Arab traders and secured military supremacy in Calicut and Goa; the treasures he brought home to Portugal earned him royal favor and even greater repute. Created a count in 1519, he was named Viceroy of India in 1524 and travelled to Goa. While in India he fell ill (probably malaria) and died.

The first European to journey by sea to India. His epochal voyage (1497–99) was made at the order of Manuel I. With four vessels, he rounded the Cape of Good Hope, passed the easternmost point reached by Bartolomeu Dias in 1488, continued up the east coast of Africa to Malindi, and sailed across the Indian Ocean to Calicut. This voyage opened up a way for Europe to reach the wealth of the Indies, and out of it grew the Portuguese Empire. Immediately Portugal gained great riches from the spice trade. Gama dictated the instructions for Cabral's voyage (1500–1502) to India, and in 1502 he himself led a fleet of 20 ships on his second India voyage. With this force he attempted to establish Portuguese power in Indian waters and sought to secure the submission of a number of chiefs on the African coast. He was harsh in his methods and was not as good an administrator as many of the Portuguese captains who later went to the East, but he was the first, and he was fittingly honored with many tributes and the title of count of Vidigueria. In 1524 he was sent back to India as viceroy, but he died soon after his arrival. Gama's voyage is the subject of Camoens's epic The Lusiads.

Christopher Columbus

European explorer
Born: 1451
Birthplace: Genoa, Italy

Christopher Columbus left home in Genoa, Italy, as a teenager to become a sailor on the Mediterranean Sea. In the late 1470s he settled in Lisbon, Portugal, where he worked closely with master navigators and adopted the then-radical idea that land—specifically Asia—could be found by sailing west. (At the time, many Europeans believed that a ship sailing west would eventually drop off the edge of the world.) It took Columbus years to find sponsors for such a westward journey; finally, on August 3, 1492, he sailed for Spain with three ships: the Santa Maria (which he commanded), the Pinta, and the Nina. After a stopover in the Canary Islands, Columbus sailed west from September 6 to October 7, and then southwest. Because the length and risk of the voyage alarmed the crew, Columbus kept secret his own log of distance traveled, and created a false log for the crew that indicated a lesser (and therefore less frightening) distance from Europe. Nevertheless, mutiny nearly occurred on October 10, just two days before reaching land in the Bahamas. After visiting numerous islands of the West Indies, Columbus returned to Portugal in January 1493, and on March 15 received a hero’s welcome in Spain.

On Columbus’s second voyage (1493–1496), he sailed for the West Indies with seventeen ships to establish colonies for Spain. But within months of the colonists’ arrival in Hispaniola—considered the most promising site—tens of thousands of natives had died from European diseases, forced labor, and murder at the hands of the Spanish. On his third voyage (1498–1500), Columbus explored Trinidad and some of the South American mainland, and learned that conditions in Hispaniola had grown worse. When reports of Hispaniola reached Spain, Spanish officials were sent to arrest Columbus and bring him back in chains. Columbus was permitted to make a fourth voyage (1502–1504), but after landing in Honduras, he was stranded on Jamaica for a year and had to be rescued by the Spanish. He died two years later, still believing that he had reached Asia. Columbus’s explorations changed the course of western history. As a result, he remains a controversial figure. While some admire his bravery and consider him a hero, others condemn his role in the colonization of the Americas and the genocide of native peoples.

Ferdinand Magellan

Explorer / Navigator

Born: c. 1480

Died: 27 April 1521 (killed in battle)

Birthplace: Villa Real, Portugal

Best known as: The first guy to circumnavigate the Earth

Portuguese name: Fernao de Magalhaes

Magellan was born in Portugal, but it was under the Spanish flag that he sailed in 1519 with the intention of reaching the Spice Islands by sailing west around South America. After much hardship he succeeded in reaching and then sailing across the Pacific Ocean. Soon thereafter he was killed while trying to subdue the natives on what is now the island of Mactan in the Philippines. After still more hardships, one of his original five ships, Victoria, eventually made it back to Spain. Though Magellan didn't complete the entire circumnavigation, as the expedition's leader he is usually credited with being the first man to circle the globe.With five vessels and about 265 men, Magellan sailed from Sanlúcar de Barrameda on Sept. 20, 1519. Sighting the South American coast near Pernambuco, he searched for the suspected passage to the South Sea. In Jan., 1520, the Río de la Plata was explored. While wintering in Patagonia (Mar.–Aug., 1520), he summarily put down a mutiny of some of his officers. On Oct. 21, Magellan discovered and entered the strait which bears his name, and on Nov. 28 he reached the Pacific. His fleet, by then consisting of three vessels, the Concepción, the Trinidad, and the Victoria, sailed NW across the Pacific. No land was sighted for nearly two months, no provisions obtained for three; the men suffered intensely. On Mar. 6, 1521, Magellan reached the Marianas and 10 days later the Philippines, where he was killed (Apr. 27) while supporting one group of natives against another. Soon after, the Concepción was burned as unseaworthy, but the remaining two vessels visited Borneo and then the Moluccas, where they loaded spices.The Trinidad sailed for Panama but was wrecked; only four of her crew eventually reached Spain. The Victoria, commanded by Juan Sebastián del Cano, sailed across the Indian Ocean and rounded the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese detained 13 of her crew at the Cape Verde Islands, but finally, with only 18 men, she reached Sanlúcar on Sept. 6, 1522, thus completing the first voyage around the world. Although he did not live to complete the journey, Magellan provided the skill and determination that took the vessels over the great unknown portion of the globe, one of the greatest achievements of navigation. The voyage proved definitively the roundness of the earth, it revolutionized ideas of the relative proportions of land and water, and it revealed the Americas as a new world, separate from Asia.

VESPUCCI, AMERIGO

Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) was an Italian explorer who was the first person to realize that the Americas were separate from the continent of Asia. America was named for him in 1507, when the German mapmaker Martin Waldseemüller, printed the first map that used the name America for the New World.On his first expedition (sailing for Spain, 1499-1500), Vespucci was the navigator under under the command of Alonso de Ojeda. On this trip, Ojeda and Vespucci discovered the mouth of the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers in South America, thinking it was part of Asia. On his second expedition (sailing for Portugal, 1501-02) he mapped some of the eastern coast of South America, and came to realize that it not part of Asia, but a New World.

 *** Prepared by John Argiel L. Victor III – 1 BSE Soc. Sci. ***