6


DiScOvErInG HiStOrY C. Portugal Begins to Explore


Portugal decided to explore further and further down the coast of Africa, and this decision was largely due to one man. Henry the Navigator (1394–1460) was the third son of King John I of Portugal. When he was made governor of the Algarve in Portugal, he decided to set up a navigational school at Sagres in 1420. His encouragement and financial support to explorers allowed them to travel and trade further down the coast. This made him and others very wealthy. The information picked up by explorers on these journeys was shared with other explorers. By 1460 Portuguese explorers had reached Sierra Leone in west Africa.


Fig 6.11 A map of Portugal and North Africa showing the locations of Africa which the Portuguese reached during the time of Henry the Navigator.


In 1487 a sailor named Bartholomew Diaz set off with the intention of finding the southern cape of Africa. He sailed as far as the Orange River but he was then blown off course by a bad storm. He sailed eastwards to try to find land, but when he found only open sea, he sailed northwards and eventually located a coastline. He realised he had found the cape and named it the Cape of Storms. When Diaz returned to Portugal, King John II decided to rename the cape the Cape of Good Hope as he hoped that this would be the route to the Spice Islands and did not want to discourage other sailors from using this route.


Fig 6.12 A map of Bartholomew Diaz’s trip on which he discovered the Cape of Storms, renamed by King John II as the Cape of Good Hope.


Vasco da Gama (1469–1524)


In 1497 another Portuguese sailor set out to find the route to the Spice Islands. His name was Vasco da Gama and he set sail on 8 July with four ships – a caravel (Berrio) and two naos (San Gabriel and San Raphael) and an even bigger ship that was abandoned along the African coast. Using the accurate maps that existed from Diaz’s journey, da Gama was able to sail to the Cape of Good Hope very easily and landed on Christmas Day in a place they called Natal – which is Portuguese for Christmas. Da Gama and his crew travelled up the coast to modern-day Mozambique where they met an Arab trader whose name is thought to have been Ibn Majid.


This trader knew the route to India and was able to give da Gama details of the sea route. Da Gama and his ships arrived in Calicut in India on 20 May 1498. After purchasing many spices


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