Prince Henry the Navigator
Prince Henry the Navigator | |
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Duke of Viseu | |
Born | 4 March 1394 Porto, Portugal |
Died | 13 November 1460 Sagres, Portugal | (aged 66)
Burial | |
House | Aviz |
Father | John I of Portugal |
Mother | Philippa of Lancaster |
After procuring the new
Life
Henry was the third surviving son of
Henry was 21 when he, his father and brothers
With this ship, Portuguese mariners freely explored uncharted waters around the Atlantic, from rivers and shallow waters to transoceanic voyages.[7]
In 1419, Henry's father appointed him governor of the province of the Algarve.
Resources and income
On May 25, 1420, Henry gained appointment as the Governor of the
In 1425, his second brother the Infante Peter, Duke of Coimbra, made a diplomatic tour of Europe, with an additional charge from Henry to seek out geographic material. Peter returned with a current world map from Venice.[9]
In 1431, Henry donated houses for the
Henry also had other resources. When John I died in 1433, Henry's eldest brother
Henry functioned as a primary organizer of the disastrous
Vila do Infante and Portuguese exploration
According to João de Barros, in Algarve, Prince Henry the Navigator repopulated a village that he called Terçanabal (from terça nabal or tercena nabal).[11] This village was situated in a strategic position for his maritime enterprises and was later called Vila do Infante ("Estate or Town of the Prince").
It is traditionally suggested that Henry gathered at his villa on the
Referring to Sagres, sixteenth-century Portuguese mathematician and cosmographer Pedro Nunes remarked, "from it our sailors went out well taught and provided with instruments and rules which all map makers and navigators should know."[13]
The view that Henry's court rapidly grew into the technological base for exploration, with a naval arsenal and an observatory, etc., although repeated in popular culture, has never been established.
Henry's explorations
This section needs additional citations for verification. (May 2022) |
Henry sponsored voyages, collecting a 20% tax (o quinto) on profits, the usual practice in the Iberian states at the time. The nearby port of Lagos provided a convenient home port for these expeditions. The voyages were made in very small ships, mostly the caravel, a light and maneuverable vessel equipped by lateen sails. Most of the voyages sent out by Henry consisted of one or two ships that navigated by following the coast, stopping at night to tie up along some shore.
During Prince Henry's time and after, the Portuguese navigators discovered and perfected the North Atlantic volta do mar (the "turn of the sea" or "return from the sea"): the dependable pattern of trade winds blowing largely from the east near the equator and the returning westerlies in the mid-Atlantic. This was a major step in the history of navigation, when an understanding of oceanic wind patterns was crucial to Atlantic navigation, from Africa and the open ocean to Europe, and enabled the main route between the New World and Europe in the North Atlantic in future voyages of discovery. Although the lateen sail allowed sailing upwind to some extent, it was worth even major extensions of course to have a faster and calmer following wind for most of a journey. Portuguese mariners who sailed south and southwest towards the Canary Islands and West Africa would afterwards sail far 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.
Madeira
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 knight in service to Prince Henry, had commanded the caravels guarding the coast of Algarve from the incursions of the Moors. He had also been at Ceuta.
In 1418, Zarco and Teixeira were blown off-course by a storm while making the volta do mar westward swing to return to Portugal. They found shelter at an island they named Porto Santo. Henry directed that Porto Santo be colonized. The move to claim the Madeiran islands was probably a response to Castile's efforts to claim the Canary Islands.[17] In 1420, settlers then moved to the nearby island of Madeira.
The Azores
A chart drawn by the
By this time the Portuguese navigators had also reached the Sargasso Sea (western North Atlantic region), naming it after the Sargassum seaweed growing there (sargaço / sargasso in Portuguese).[18][19]
West African coast
In 1424 Cape Bojador was the most southerly point known to Europeans on the west coast of Africa. For centuries, superstitious seafarers held that beyond the cape lay sea monsters and the edge of the world. However, Prince Henry was determined to know the truth. He was persistent and sent 15 expeditions over a ten-year period to pass the dreaded Cape. Each returned unsuccessful. The captains gave various excuses for having failed. Finally, in 1434 Gil Eanes, the commander of one of Henry's expeditions, became the first known European to pass Cape Bojador since Hanno almost two millennium before.
Using the new ship type, the expeditions then pushed onwards.
No one used the nickname "Henry the Navigator" to refer to prince Henry during his lifetime or in the following three centuries. The term was coined by two nineteenth-century German historians: Heinrich Schaefer and Gustave de Veer. Later on it was made popular by two British authors who included it in the titles of their biographies of the prince: Henry Major in 1868 and Raymond Beazley in 1895.[12]
Contrary to his brothers, Prince Henry was not praised for his intellectual gifts by his contemporaries. It was only later chroniclers such as João de Barros and Damião de Góis who attributed him a scholarly character and an interest for cosmography. The myth of the "Sagres school" allegedly founded by Prince Henry was created in the 17th century, mainly by Samuel Purchas and Antoine Prévost. In nineteenth-century Portugal, the idealized vision of Prince Henry as a putative pioneer of exploration and science reached its apogee.[21]
Legacy
Henry is depicted in the Monument of the Discoveries located in Lisbon, featured in the front of the monument.[22]
In 1994, the Prince Henry Society in conjunction with the Portuguese government gifted Prince Henry the Navigator Park in New Bedford, Massachusetts.[23]
Ancestry
Ancestors of Henry the Navigator | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Notes
- ^ The traditional image of the Prince presented in this page, and coming from the Saint Vincent Panels, is still under dispute.
References
- ^ Ivana Elbl, "Man of His Time (and Peers): A New Look at Henry the Navigator." Luso-Brazilian Review 28.2 (1991): 73–89.
- ^ "Prince Henry the Navigator". The Mariners' Museum. Archived from the original on 7 April 2016. Retrieved 19 May 2015.
- ^ a b Bradford, 1960.
- ISBN 978-989-555-590-1.
- ISBN 978-0-87951-397-9– A companion to the PBS Series The Genius That Was China)
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: CS1 maint: postscript (link - ^ Castro et al. 2008, p. 2
- ^ Boorstin, Daniel (1985). The Discoverers: A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself. Vintage. pp. 156–164.
- ^ a b Prestage, Edgar. "Prince Henry the Navigator." The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. 7. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 23 May 2015
- ^ "Rush, Timothy. "Prince Henry the Navigator and the Apollo Project that Launched Columbus", 21st Century, summer, 1992" (PDF).
- ^ BRANCO, FERNANDO (2022). "HENRY THE NAVIGATOR AND THE ST. VINCENT PANELS". TRIPLO V, CLEPUL Univ. Lisboa.
- ^ Bluteau, Rafael (1721). Vocabulario portuguez & latino ... Lisbon: na officina de Pascoal da Sylva. p. 109.
- ^ a b Randles, W.G.L. "The alleged nautical school founded in the fifteenth century at Sagres by Prince Henry of Portugal called the 'Navigator'". Imago Mundi, vol. 45 (1993), pp. 20–28.
- ^ Mark, Hans. "Henry the Navigator and the Early Days of Exploration", American Association for the Advancement of Science, Annual meeting, February 1992
- ^ Marques, Alfredo Pinheiro (2005). Os Descobrimentos e o 'Atlas Miller' (in Portuguese). Universidade de Coimbra., p. 52
- ^ Rocha, Daniel (8 February 2009). "Brasil: historiador nega existência da Escola de Sagres". Público. Retrieved 16 October 2013.
- ^ de Albuquerque, Luís (1990). Dúvidas e Certezas na História dos Descobrimentos Portugueses. Lisboa. pp. 15–27.
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ISBN 1-4088-0950-8
- ^ "Wide Sargasso Sea – Setting". Book Drum. Archived from the original on 15 December 2013. Retrieved 13 April 2013.
- ^ "The Sargasso Sea". BBC Nature. Retrieved 6 June 2011.
- ^ Rice Jr., Eugene F.; Grafton, Anthony (1994). The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460–1559. W.W. Norton & Company. p. 35.
- ISBN 978-0-226-90733-8.
- ^ "O conjunto escultórico". Padrão dos Descobrimentos (in Portuguese). Retrieved 10 December 2023.
- ^ "New Bedford Area Visitor Guide - Prince Henry the Navigator Statue". 10 February 2007. Archived from the original on 10 February 2007. Retrieved 10 December 2023.
- ^ a b John I, King of Portugal at the Encyclopædia Britannica
- ^ a b c d e f Armitage-Smith, Sydney (1905). John of Gaunt: King of Castile and Leon, Duke of Aquitaine and Lancaster, Earl of Derby, Lincoln, and Leicester, Seneschal of England. Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 21. Retrieved 17 July 2018.
- ^ a b Peter I, King of Portugal at the Encyclopædia Britannica
- ^ a b de Sousa, Antonio Caetano (1735). Historia genealogica da casa real portugueza [Genealogical History of the Royal House of Portugal] (in Portuguese). Vol. 2. Lisboa Occidental. p. 4.
Sources
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Prince Henry the Navigator". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
- Ariganello, Lisa. Henry the Navigator : prince of Portuguese exploration (2007); for elementary schools. online
- Beazley, C. Raymond (1894). Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394–1460 A.D.: With an Account of Geographical Progress Throughout the Middle Ages As the Preparation for His Work. London: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
- Beazley, Charles Raymond (1911). Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 296–297. . In
- Boxer, Charles (1991). The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415–1825 (2nd rev. ed.). Carcanet Press. ISBN 978-0-85635-962-0.
- Bradford, Ernle. A Wind from the North: The Life of Henry the Navigator (1960) online or Southward the Caravels: The Story of Henry the Navigator (UK edition, 1961)
- Castro, F.; Fonseca, N.; Vacas, T.; Ciciliot, F. (2008), "A Quantitative Look at Mediterranean Lateen- and Square-Rigged Ships (Part 1)", The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 347–359, S2CID 45072686
- Diffie, Bailey; George D. Winius (1977). Foundations of the Portuguese empire, 1415–1580. ISBN 978-0-8166-0782-2.
- Cerqueiro, Daniel. El Navegante y la fuerza de las ideas. Ed. Pequeña Venecia. Buenos Aires 1999. ISBN 987-9239-09-1
- Elbl, Ivana. "Man of His Time (and Peers): A New Look at Henry the Navigator." Luso-Brazilian Review 28.2 (1991): 73–89. online
- Fernández-Armesto, Felipe (1987). Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonisation from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229–1492. London: MacMillan Education. ISBN 978-0-333-40383-9.
- Major, Richard Henry (1877). The discoveries of Prince Henry, the Navigator, and their results. London: Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington. OCLC 84044057.
- Martins, J.P. Oliveira (1914). The golden age of Prince Henry the Navigator. London: Chapman and Hall.
- Russell, Peter E. (2000). Prince Henry "the Navigator": a life. New Haven: Yale University Press. OCLC 42708239.
- Zurara, Gomes Eanes de, trans. Edgar Prestage (1896). Chronica do Descobrimento e Conquista da Guiné, vol. 1 (The chronicle of discovery and conquest of Guinea). Hakluyt Society.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - Zurara, Gomes Eanes de, trans. Edgar Prestage (1896). Chronica do Descobrimento e Conquista da Guiné, vol. 2. Printed for the Hakluyt Society.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)