Manuel I of Portugal, following up on…
June 1501 CE
Manuel I of Portugal, following up on the discovery of Brazil the previous year, had assembled a small exploratory expedition, under the command of Gonçalo Coelho.
The expedition carries aboard the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci.
Setting out from Lisbon in May, the little Brazilian expedition had made a watering stop in early June at Bezeguiche (as Senegal’s bay of Dakar is known to the Portuguese sailors) and stumbles upon Diogo Dias.
Dias relates to Lemos and Vespucci the tales of his misadventures—how he had been separated from Cabral at the Cape, how he had ventured up to the Gulf of Aden, and, finding no trace of Cabral on his return, decided to wait for him in Bezeguiche.
Just two days later, the lead ship of the returning India fleet—the Anunciada under Nicolau Coelho—sails into Bezeguiche, surprised to find both Dias and Lemos and Vespucci here (Bezeguiche had apparently been prearranged point of encounter for the Second Armada).
For the next two weeks, the captains and crews of the different ships exchange tales of their travels and adventures.
It has been since speculated that it was during this time that Amerigo Vespucci came up with his "New World" hypothesis.
Vespucci is quite familiar with the Americas, having participated in Ojeda's 1499 expedition to the coasts of South America, and it is said he had intense discussions at Bezeguiche with Gaspar da Gama, the Goese Jew aboard Coelho's ship, undoubtedly the person most familiar with the East Indies.
Comparing notes, it probably dawned on Vespucci that it was simply impossible to square what he knew of the Americas with what the men of the Second Armada knew of Asia.
While still at Bezeguiche, Vespucci writes a letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, relating his encounter, which he sends back with some Florentine passengers on the Anunciada.
This is a prelude to an even more famous letter of Vespucci to Lorenzo in 1503, shortly after his return, where he will finally asserts that the continent discovered to the west cannot be Asia, but must be an entirely different continent, a New World.
Lemos and Vespucci leave Bezeguiche for Brazil in mid-June.
Shortly after, Pedro Álvares Cabral and Simão de Miranda themselves reach Bezeguiche, where they find Diogo Dias and Nicolau Coelho awaiting them.
Cabral sends Coelho's swift Anunciada ahead to Lisbon to announce their return, while the remainder rest and wait in Bezeguiche for the remaining two ships.
Pêro de Ataíde's ship (making his way alone from Mossel Bay) and Sancho de Tovar's São Pedro (returning from Sofala) arrive in Bezeguiche by the end of June.