The Men Who Discovered America

Some readers have written to say they appreciate posts on Brazilian history. But this one, in terms of scope, is more ambitious than any that preceded it. So, after having written it once, I re-wrote it, simplified it, and included a number of links for those of you who would like to know more.

Here goes:

In my youth, if you’d have asked any little girl in the United States who discovered the New World, she would have told you it was a Spanish crew, under a Genoese navigator, Christopher Columbus, and many could have added a date: October 12^th, 1492.

These days, of course, we know that the European's discovery of North America should actually be credited to the Norwegians, who established short-lived colonies there in the earliest years of the eleventh century.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_colonization_of_the_Americas

Similarly, most Brazilian schoolchildren will tell you their country was discovered by Pedro Alvarez Cabral. It may be true (more on that subject at the end of this post) but, even if it is, it wouldn’t have happened had it not been for three of Cabral’s predecessors – and a fortuitous accident.

Here’s the story:

It all started with this guy, the third son of John the First of Portugal and his English wife, Philippa of Lancaster. They baptized him Henry, and we know him today as Henry “the Navigator”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_the_Navigator

In fact, he never navigated anything. But he did have an intense interest in the art and science that it entailed, and he patronized many voyages. In Henry’s day, exploration of the coast of Africa hadn’t gone much further than Cape Bojador, located a little over a hundred nautical miles south of the Canary Islands.

But Henry, obsessed with finding the legendary Christian kingdom of Prester John and also getting his country’s hooks into the West African gold trade, commissioned the construction of caravels.

These were newer and lighter ships better-suited to long-range exploration than the heavy Mediterranean vessels that preceded them. And he encouraged his captains to strike ever further southward.

Henry died without ever having learned that there was a way around the tip of Southern Africa. But his work, supported by the kings who followed, continued. And, in 1488, twenty-eight years after Henry’s death, the Portuguese achieved a striking success.

Bartolomeo Dias rounded what he called the Cape of Storms and was able to turn the bow of his ship northward.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolomeu_Dias

Dias wanted to continue on to India, but his crew refused to go further and he was forced to turn back. Upon his return to Lisbon, John II, renamed the place the Cape of Good Hope, because of the promise it offered of a sea route to the East. But, European concerns caused the Portuguese to suspend their explorations for the next ten years. And it wasn’t until July of 1497 that the next fleet set sail.

This time, under the command of this fellow:

Vasco da Gama.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasco_da_Gama

After many privations and adventures Gama returned, two years later, to report that he’d managed to make it all the way to India. And he was heaped with rewards and honors by King Manuel I.

Enter Pedro Alvarez Cabral, the next man up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_%C3%81lvares_Cabral

Cabral set sail with a fleet of thirteen ships at noon, on the ninth of March, 1500. The object of his undertaking was to return with valuable spices and to establish trade relations in India—bypassing the monopoly on the spice trade then in the hands of Arab, Turkish and Italian merchants.

It was the custom, in those days, to appoint a member of the nobility to command the fleets, but they were often men without maritime experience (as in this case) so decisions of a nautical nature were left to more-experienced captains and pilots, most of them commoners.

By that time, the Portuguese navigators had already become aware of the trade winds that prevail in the Atlantic, and they sailed west, to take advantage of them, before turning south and then eastward again toward the Indian subcontinent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volta_do_mar

They did not, however, have an accurate system for measuring longitude.

That was a development that came about only two-and-a-half centuries later, with the development of the marine chronometer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_chronometer

So they wound-up sailing too far. And, on the twenty-second of April, less than seven weeks after having first set sail, they bumped into Brazil and claimed it for Portugal.

And that remains the official history as far as most Brazilians are concerned.

But is it true?

Well, maybe.

But some historians claim that Duarte Pacheco Pereira got there first, maybe as early as November of 1498.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duarte_Pacheco_Pereira

And others think it was Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, who might have arrived just three months before Cabral did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicente_Y%C3%A1%C3%B1ez_Pinz%C3%B3n

Ah, for the good old days. When it was all so simple.

Leighton - Monday