The Portuguese had the best and most up-to-date navigational tools as well. Neves, was that "you could sail very close to the winds, meaning that you would sail basically where and when you wanted to." In a caravel you weren't restricted to winds that just pushed you along from behind, as square-riggers were.
The advantage to the type of rigging, said Lt. It was called the caravel, an ocean-going version of smaller fishing boats. New technology was key, and this is what it looked like, circa 1440: A ship with triangular sails. Goncalves Neves, who heads the research department at the Portuguese Maritime Museum in Lisbon, Portugal's reach extended from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Tanegashima in Japan.įrom Brazil to Japan, with everything in-between. and on it went, each explorer armed with knowledge provided by the last.Īt its peak, said Lt. Then, just two years after that, in 1500, Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered Brazil. Ten years later, Vasco da Gama reached India. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias made it around the Cape of Good Hope. But by that time, Portuguese explorers had inched their way south along the coast of Africa, as far as Sierra Leone. "So Christianity and exploration were always tied together?" asked Teichner. The idea, said de Jesus, was to take Christianity to other cultures, to other people, to other lands. Like a venture capitalist, he financed expeditions intended to push the boundaries of the known world - for profit, and to spread Christianity. Here, close to where many explorers began their voyages, Prince Henry surrounded himself with scholars, mapmakers, astronomers, as well as navigators, amassing knowledge and intelligence - the 15th century version of R&D.
they believe the sun dived inside the sea and might boil the sea." "They give you a picture, very interesting, how the sun sets here. "The classical people, Romans, Greeks and other civilizations, they believed this is the point where the world finished," said historian Artur de Jesus of the craggy and windswept southwest corner of Europe.
We'll begin at Prince Henry the Navigator's outpost in Sagres. How it happened is a story about innovation. All those names you memorized in grade school and immediately forgot.īut think about this: In the 1400s and 1500s, their daring and navigational skill made little Portugal - smaller than the state of Indiana - the first global sea power. In Lisbon, Portugal's capital, there's a monument to them: da Gama, Dias, Cabral, Magellan, Prince Henry the Navigator. Portugal is a country where the sea is and always has been regarded as a living being - to be stared down, confronted.Ī song laments the price paid, but Portugal's greatest heroes - Vasco da Gama among them - are its explorers and their patrons during the Age of Discovery. We have that kind of impulse to see what is after that." He did what Christopher Columbus tried to do but failed.Ĭasimiro said that as a country, Portugal turns to the sea: "Our backs are turned to the land, and we are always looking at the sea. The Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, came to Nazare, too, to pray before he set out in 1497 - and again after a successful return from his voyage to find a sea route to India with its rich spice trade. Pick your adjective for the monster wave McNamara rode in January just off the Portuguese coast near Nazare.
0 kommentar(er)
