Lançarote's second Lagos fleet is just one…

Lançarote's second Lagos fleet is just one of several that set out from Portugal for the Arguin banks in August, 1445 (or 1446).

Caught by bad weather, Lançarote arrives at Cape Blanc with only nine ships still together, the remaining having strayed off.

He proceeds to the northern end of the Arguin banks, anchoring in at ilha das Graças (possibly Madeleine island or Pelicans island).

There, Lançarote was met by one of his missing ships, Vicente Dias, who had gone on ahead to Arguin island and stumbled across a small fleet of three Lisbon ships, headed by Dinis Eanes de Grã, who had preceded them and devastated the remaining settlements on the northern end of the bay, taking some one hundred captives.

At Grã's suggestion, Lançarote's fleet, now thirteen strong (only Palançano's fusta remains unaccounted for) attacks Arguin island again, taking four captives, then heads to the southern end of Arguin Bay, taking fifty-seven captives at Tider and an additional five somewhere further down (possibly around Cape Timris).

The element of surprise being gone and the bulk of the population having already evacuated the coast, Lançarote's captives are principally Sanhaja Berber tribesmen who had decided to stay and put up a fight.

Dissatisfied with the meager number of captives and realizing that Arguin Bay is too thoroughly deserted to yield up any more, Lançarote decides to take his fleet south to raid the Wolof lands of Senegal, which had been discovered (but not yet raided) by Nuno Tristão and Dinis Dias the previous year.

However, not all his ships are up for the journey, several of them running short on supplies.

As a result, Lançarote partitions his fleet, taking only six or seven caravels with him, sending the remaining ships back to Lagos under the command of Soeiro da Costa (a few of which will conduct an unauthorized slave raid on the Canary islands of La Palma and Gomera on their way home).