Himilco the Navigator, a Carthaginian captain, reportedly…
453 BCE to 442 BCE
Himilco the Navigator, a Carthaginian captain, reportedly makes a voyage in 450 to the “Tin Isles,” presumably Britain’s western peninsula of Cornwall (where tin is still mined).
He is the first known explorer from the Mediterranean Sea to reach the northwestern shores of Europe.
His lost account of his adventures is quoted by Roman writers.
The oldest reference to Himilco's voyage is a brief mention in Pliny's Natural History (2.169a) by the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder.
Himilco was quoted three times by Rufus Festus Avienus, who wrote Ora Maritima, a poetical account of the geography in the fourth century CE.
We know next to nothing of Himilco himself.
Himilco sailed north along the Atlantic coast of present-day Spain, Portugal and France.
He reached northwestern France, the territory of the Oestrimni tribe living in Brittany, probably to trade for tin to be used for making bronze and for other precious metals.
Avienus asserts that the outward journey to the Oestriminis took the Carthaginians four months.
According to Avienus, Himilco was not the first to sail the northern Atlantic ocean; he followed the trade route used by the Tartessians of southern Iberia.
Himilco described his journeys as quite harrowing, repeatedly reporting sea monsters and seaweed, likely in order to deter Greek rivals from competing on their new trade routes.
Carthaginian accounts of monsters became one source of the myths discouraging sailing in the Atlantic.