"It is often regarded as the most important work of Portuguese literature. The work celebrates the discovery of a sea route to India by the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama. King Manuel did not share that opinion. Keeping the D. João II plan, he went ahead to equip the ships and chose Vasco da Gama as the leader of this expedition and the captain of the armada. According to the original plan, John II had appointed his father, Stephen da Gama, to head the armada; but by the time of implementing the plan, both were deceased. Portuguese were after spices,"
"The expedition set sail from Lisbon on 8 July 1497. It followed the route pioneered by earlier explorers along the coast of Africa via Tenerife and the Cape Verde Islands. After reaching the coast of present-day Sierra Leone, da Gama took a course south into the open ocean, crossing the Equator and seeking the South Atlantic westerlies that Bartolomeu Dias had discovered in 1487. This course proved successful and on 4 November 1497, the expedition made landfall on the African coast. For over three months the ships had sailed more than of open ocean, by far the longest journey out"
"Corte-Real brothers, sons of João Vaz Corte-Real, in a failed attempt to find the Northwest Passage in 1501. In 1499, João Fernandes Lavrador and Pêro de Barcelos arrive to Labrador (named after the previous one) and map its coast. The greatest achievement of these exploration voyages was attained by Vasco da Gama, who in 1498 becomes the European discoverer of the sea route to India. In 1500, when leading a second Portuguese Armada of 13 ships to India, Pedro Álvares Cabral discovers and explores Brazil, claiming it for Portugal. In the same year, Diogo Dias, as one of the Captains"
"unlikely. Spanish explorers had certainly been tending south lately. Christopher Columbus had touched the coast of the South American mainland (around Guyana) in 1498, on his third trip. In late 1499, Alonso de Ojeda had discovered much of the Venezuelan coast, with one of his squadrons, under Amerigo Vespucci exploring parts of what is now northern Brazil. In early 1500, Vicente Yáñez Pinzón and Diego de Lepe, via generous southerly swings from the Canary islands, had reached at least what is now modern Ceará, perhaps as far east as Cape of Santo Agostinho (in Pernambuco), and explored much of the"
"east against the Agulhas current to Algoa Bay where the coast began to turn north. Guessing that he had found the route to India, he turned back, discovered and rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached Lisbon in 1488. In 1493 Columbus arrived at Lisbon with news of the new world and reported that he had sailed out of sight of land for five weeks. In 1497 Vasco da Gama chose a very obvious and very bold route. After rounding the bulge of Africa he sailed directly south across the trade winds and, helped by the Brazil Current reached"
"In the 1470s, Portuguese trading ships reached the Gold Coast. In 1471, the Portuguese captured Tangier, after years of attempts. Eleven years later, the fortress of São Jorge da Mina in the town of Elmina on the Gold Coast in the Gulf of Guinea was built. Christopher Columbus set sail aboard the fleet of ships taking materials and building crews to Elmina in December 1481. In 1483, Diogo Cão reached and explored the Congo River. In 1484, Portugal officially rejected Columbus' idea of reaching India from the west, because it was seen as unfeasible. Some historians have claimed that the"
"two Portuguese envoys, Pêro da Covilhã and Afonso de Paiva, were sent traveling secretly overland to gather information on a possible sea route to India, but also to inquire about Prester John. Covilhã managed to reach Ethiopia. Although well received, he was forbidden to depart. Bartolomeu Dias crossed the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, thus proving that the Indian Ocean was accessible by sea. In 1498, Vasco da Gama reached India. In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral discovered Brazil, claiming it for Portugal. In 1510, Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Goa in India, Ormuz in the Persian Strait, and Malacca. The"
"1497 Vasco da Gama led a fleet of four ships with a crew of 170 men from Lisbon. The distance traveled in the journey around Africa to India and back was greater than around the equator. The navigators included Portugal's most experienced, Pero de Alenquer, Pedro Escobar, João de Coimbra, and Afonso Gonçalves. It is not known for certain how many people were in each ship's crew but approximately 55 returned, and two ships were lost. Two of the vessels were carracks, newly built for the voyage, the others were a caravel and a supply boat. The four ships were:"
"Portuguese discoveries Portuguese discoveries (Portuguese: ""Descobrimentos portugueses"") are the numerous territories and maritime routes discovered by the Portuguese as a result of their intensive maritime exploration during the 15th and 16th centuries. Portuguese sailors were at the vanguard of European overseas exploration, discovering and mapping the coasts of Africa, Canada, Asia and Brazil, in what became known as the Age of Discovery. Methodical expeditions started in 1419 along West Africa's coast under the sponsorship of prince Henry the Navigator, with Bartolomeu Dias reaching the Cape of Good Hope and entering the Indian Ocean in 1488. Ten years later, in 1498,"
"trade, and gave the Europeans incentives to find a sea route. Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão explored the African coast south to present-day Namibia, and Bartolomeu Dias found the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. Vasco da Gama led an exhibition which led to the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India in 1498, and a series of expeditions known as the Carreira da Índia. Since then, the Cape Route has been in use. Christopher Columbus sought to find a sea route through India westwards, but instead found the way to the Americas. These expeditions marked the beginning of the"
"Pêro Escobar Pedro Escobar, also known as Pêro Escobar, was a 15th-century Portuguese navigator who discovered São Tomé (December 21, 1471), Annobon (January 1, 1472), Príncipe (January 17, 1472) islands, together with João de Santarém c. 1470. He is then recorded sailing with Diogo Cão on his first voyage in 1482, and as the pilot of the famous Bérrio caravel on Vasco da Gama’s first expedition in 1497 to sail directly from Europe to India. He was also on Pedro Álvares Cabral’s discovery of Brazil in 1500. In 1471, working in the service of Lisbon merchant Fernão Gomes, who had"
"of the dividing line, he claimed it for Portugal and this was respected by the Spanish. Portuguese ships sailed west into the Atlantic to get favourable winds for the journey to India, and this is where Cabral was headed on his journey, in a corridor the treaty was negotiated to protect. Some suspect the Portuguese had secretly discovered Brazil earlier, and this is why they had the line moved eastward and how Cabral found it, but there is no reliable evidence of this. Others suspect Duarte Pacheco Pereira secretly discovered Brazil in 1498, but this not considered credible by mainstream"
"eight years in Guinea and provided information about the Gambia region to Valentim Fernandes. However, more recent studies by Carmen Radulet have exposed weaknesses in this theory and attributed the ""Journal"" with more certainty to scrivener João de Sá. Editions of the ""Journal"": Álvaro Velho Álvaro Velho (15th-16th century, born in Barreiro, Portugal) was a Portuguese sailor or soldier who took part in the first Portuguese expedition by sea to India, led by Vasco da Gama in 1497. Velho is one of the purported authors of the anonymous ""Journal of Vasco Da Gama's trip of 1497"" (the other being João"
"to the northwest — that is, away from continental Portugal, and seemingly in the wrong direction—before turning northeast near the Azores islands and finally east to Europe in order to have largely following winds for their full journey. Christopher Columbus used this on his transatlantic voyages. The first explorations followed not long after the capture of Ceuta in 1415. Henry was interested in locating the source of the caravans that brought gold to the city. During the reign of his father, John I, João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira were sent to explore along the African coast. Zarco, a"
"nineteenth century. Gonçalo Álvares held the office of ""chief-pilot of the navigation to India and the Ocean Sea"" until his death in 1524. Gonçalo Álvares Gonçalo Álvares (, ?? – 1524) was a Portuguese explorer who actively participated in the Age of Discovery, starting from the second voyage of Diogo Cão. In 1497 he commanded the ship ""São Gabriel"" in the epic journey of Vasco da Gama to India, and in 1505, aboard the fleet of Francisco de Almeida – the first Viceroy of Portuguese India – he sailed south in the Atlantic to where ""water and even wine froze"","
"around Africa to India, arriving in Calicut and starting a maritime route from Portugal to India. Soon, after Pedro Álvares Cabral reaching Brazil (1500), explorations proceed to Southeast Asia, having sent the first direct European maritime trade and diplomatic missions to Ming China and to Japan (1542). In 1492, when a Spanish expedition headed by Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus sailed west to find a new trade route to the Far East but inadvertently found the Americas. Columbus's first two voyages (1492–93) reached the Bahamas and various Caribbean islands, including Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and Cuba. The post-1492 era is known as"
"Álvaro Velho Álvaro Velho (15th-16th century, born in Barreiro, Portugal) was a Portuguese sailor or soldier who took part in the first Portuguese expedition by sea to India, led by Vasco da Gama in 1497. Velho is one of the purported authors of the anonymous ""Journal of Vasco Da Gama's trip of 1497"" (the other being João de Sá).. This work survives in a single manuscript copy preserved at the Biblioteca Pública Municipal of Porto and first published in Porto in 1838. In 1945, historian Franz Hümmerich identified the author of this manuscript with an Álvaro Velho who had spent"
"Ottoman Turks consolidated control over the eastern Mediterranean, closing off key overland trade routes. The Portuguese spearheaded the drive to find oceanic routes that would provide cheaper and easier access to South and East Asian goods, by advancements in maritime technology such as the caravel ship introduced in the mid-1400s. This chartering of oceanic routes between East and West began with the unprecedented voyages of Portuguese and Spanish sea captains, and would eventually expand across the globe initiating European colonialism by Hispano-Italian 1492 exploring voyage by merchant, navigator, and colonizer Christopher Columbus. These voyages were influenced by medieval European adventurers"
"as one of the best cartographers of the time. Many of his charts are large scale. Portuguese discoveries Portuguese discoveries (Portuguese: ""Descobrimentos portugueses"") are the numerous territories and maritime routes discovered by the Portuguese as a result of their intensive maritime exploration during the 15th and 16th centuries. Portuguese sailors were at the vanguard of European overseas exploration, discovering and mapping the coasts of Africa, Canada, Asia and Brazil, in what became known as the Age of Discovery. Methodical expeditions started in 1419 along West Africa's coast under the sponsorship of prince Henry the Navigator, with Bartolomeu Dias reaching the"
"thing that can be gathered from Vallseca's 1439 map is that he probably only discovered the eastern and possibly central clusters of the Azores archipelago, that he probably did not reach the western islands of Flores and Corvo (although westerly islands are drawn, they are probably fantastical; Vallseca seems to have lifted the names directly from earlier maps, e.g. Catalan Atlas of 1375). Diogo de Silves Diogo de Silves (fl. 15th century) is the presumed name of an obscure Portuguese explorer of the Atlantic who allegedly discovered the Azores islands in 1427. He is only known from a reference on"
"Pacheco Pereira (author of the ""Esmeraldo""); nine chaplains; and some 1,200 men. From Cape Verde, they sailed southwest across the Atlantic. On 22 April 1500, they caught sight of land in the distance. They disembarked and claimed this new land for Portugal. This was the coast of what would later become the Portuguese colony of Brazil. The real goal of the expedition, however, was to open sea trade to the empires of the east. Trade with the east had effectively been cut off since the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Accordingly, Cabral turned away from exploring the coast of the"
"Bartolomeu Dias Bartolomeu Dias (; ; Anglicized: Bartholomew Diaz; c. 1450 – 29 May 1500), a nobleman of the Portuguese royal household, was a Portuguese explorer. He sailed around the southernmost tip of Africa in 1488, the first to do so, setting up the route from Europe to Asia later on. Dias is the first European peri-Age of Discovery to anchor at what is present-day South Africa. Bartolomeu Dias was a squire of the royal court, superintendent of the royal warehouses, and sailing-master of the man-of-war ""São Cristóvão"" (Saint Christopher). Very little is known of his early life. King John"
"Pedro Álvares Cabral Pedro Álvares Cabral ( ; c. 1467 or 1468 – c. 1520) was a Portuguese nobleman, military commander, navigator and explorer regarded as the European discoverer of Brazil. In 1500 Cabral conducted the first substantial exploration of the northeast coast of South America and claimed it for Portugal. While details of Cabral's early life remain unclear, it is known that he came from a minor noble family and received a good education. He was appointed to head an expedition to India in 1500, following Vasco da Gama's newly-opened route around Africa. The undertaking had the aim of"
"to appear in Italy at the end of the 13th century. However, their use did not seem to spread quickly: there are no reports of the use of a nautical chart on an English vessel until 1489. The commercial activities of Portugal in the early 15th century marked an epoch of distinct progress in practical navigation for Europeans. These exploration and trade expeditions sent out by Infante Henrique (later called ""Henry the Navigator"") led first to the discovery of Porto Santo Island (near Madeira) in 1418, rediscovery of the Azores in 1427, the discovery of the Cape Verde Islands in"
"Diogo Cão Diogo Cão (), anglicised as Diogo Cam and also known as Diego Cam, was a Portuguese explorer and one of the most notable navigators of the Age of Discovery. He made two voyages sailing along the west coast of Africa in the 1480s, exploring the Congo River and the coasts of the present-day Angola and Namibia. Cão was born in Vila Real (some say in Évora), in the middle of the 15th century, the illegitimate son of Álvaro Fernandes or Gonçalves Cão, fidalgo of the Royal Household, himself the illegitimate son of Gonçalo Cão. He married and had"
"a concession for the exploration and trade in the Gulf of Guinea, Pedro Escobar helped to discover the gold industry that would grow around Elmina in 1471. Pêro Escobar Pedro Escobar, also known as Pêro Escobar, was a 15th-century Portuguese navigator who discovered São Tomé (December 21, 1471), Annobon (January 1, 1472), Príncipe (January 17, 1472) islands, together with João de Santarém c. 1470. He is then recorded sailing with Diogo Cão on his first voyage in 1482, and as the pilot of the famous Bérrio caravel on Vasco da Gama’s first expedition in 1497 to sail directly from Europe"
"1447 and Sierra Leone in 1462. Combined with the empirical observations gathered in oceanic seafaring, mapping winds and currents, Portuguese explorers took the lead in the long distance oceanic navigation, opening later, at the beginning of the 16th century, a network of ocean routes covering the Atlantic, the Indian and the western Pacific oceans, from the North Atlantic and South America, to Japan and Southeast Asia. The Portuguese discovered the two large volta do mar (meaning literally ""turn of the sea"" but also ""return from the sea"") currents and trade winds of North and of South Atlantic ocean (approximately in"
"Ocean, reaching Calicut (the capital of the native kingdom ruled by Zamorins (This city also known as Kozhikode) in south-western India in May 1498. The second voyage to India was dispatched in 1500 under Pedro Álvares Cabral. While following the same south-westerly route as Gama across the Atlantic Ocean, Cabral made landfall on the Brazilian coast. This was probably an accidental discovery, but it has been speculated that the Portuguese secretly knew of Brazil's existence and that it lay on their side of the Tordesillas line. Cabral recommended to the Portuguese King that the land be settled, and two follow"
"Álvaro Fernandes Álvaro Fernandes (sometimes given erroneously as António Fernandes), was a 15th-century Portuguese slave-trader and explorer from Madeira, in the service of Henry the Navigator. He captained two important expeditions (in 1445 and 1446), which expanded the limit of the Portuguese discovery of the West African coast, probably as far as the northern borderlands of modern Guinea-Bissau. Álvaro Fernandes's farthest point (approximately Cape Roxo) would not be surpassed for ten years, until the voyage of Alvise Cadamosto in 1456. Álvaro Fernandes was the nephew João Gonçalves Zarco, discoverer and donatary captain of Machico (northern Madeira island). Fernandes was brought"
"the Portuguese navigator, Pedro Álvares Cabral while attempting to reproduce Vasco da Gama’s Atlantic route to the Cape and India was blown westwards to what is today Brazil. After taking possession of the new land, Cabral resumed his voyage across the Atlantic to the southern tip of Africa and India, finally arriving there in September 1500 – opening for the first time a route from the New World to Asia – and returning to Portugal by 1501. In 1511, Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Malacca for Portugal, then the center of Asian trade. East of Malacca, Albuquerque sent several diplomatic and"
"efforts fell short; Scott reached the pole in January 1912 only to find that he had been beaten by the Norwegian Amundsen. In 1494, the principal maritime powers, Portugal and Spain, signed a treaty which drew a line down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and allocated all trade routes to the east of the line to Portugal. That gave Portugal dominance of the only known route to the east—via the Cape of Good Hope and Indian Ocean, which left Spain, and later other countries, to seek a western route to the Pacific. The exploration of the south began as"
"of Brazil's existence and that it lay on their side of the Tordesillas line. Cabral recommended to the Portuguese King that the land be settled, and two follow up voyages were sent in 1501 and 1503. The land was found to be abundant in ""pau-brasil"", or brazilwood, from which it later inherited its name, but the failure to find gold or silver meant that for the time being Portuguese efforts were concentrated on India. On 8 July 1497 the fleet, consisting of four ships and a crew of 170 men, left Lisbon The travel led by Vasco da Gama to"
"the South African coast. Explorers of routes from Europe towards Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific Ocean, include Vasco da Gama (1460–1524), a navigator who made the first trip from Europe to India and back by the Cape of Good Hope, discovering the ocean route to the East; Pedro Alvares Cabral (c. 1467/68–c.1520) who, following the path of Gama, claimed Brazil and led the first expedition that linked Europe, Africa, America, and Asia; Diogo Dias, who discovered the eastern coast of Madagascar and rounded the corner of Africa; explorers such as Diogo Fernandes Pereira and Pedro Mascarenhas (1470–1555), among"