Portuguese explorers will sail the coast of…
1444 CE
Portuguese explorers will sail the coast of Africa throughout the fifteenth century, establishing trading posts for several common types of tradable commodities at the time, ranging from gold to slaves, as they look for a route to India and its spices, which are coveted in Europe.
A new ship, the small, highly maneuverable caravel, allows Portuguese seamen to sail to Senegal.
The lateen sails give her speed and the capacity for sailing to windward (beating).
The Portuguese prince Prince Henry the Navigator has placed at the disposal of his captains the vast resources of the Order of Christ, of which he is the head, and the best information and most accurate instruments and maps that could be obtained.
He seeks to effect a meeting with the half-fabulous Christian Empire of "Prester John" by way of the "Western Nile" (the Sénégal River), and, in alliance with that potentate, to crush the Turks and liberate the Holy Land.
(The concept of an ocean route to India appears to have originated after his death.)
On land, he had again defeated the Moors in their attempt to retake Ceuta in 1418; but in an expedition to Tangier, undertaken in 1437 by King Edward (1433–1438), the Portuguese army had been defeated, and could only escape destruction by surrendering as a hostage Prince Ferdinand, the king's youngest brother.
Ferdinand, known as "the Constant", from the fortitude with which he endured captivity, had died unransomed in 1443.
By sea, Henry's captains had continued their exploration of Africa and the Atlantic Ocean.
In 1433, Cape Bojador had been rounded; in 1434 the first consignment of slaves had been brought to Lisbon; and slave trading had soon become the most profitable branch of Portuguese commerce, and will remain so until India is reached.
Dinis Dias had soon come across the Senegal River and rounded the peninsula of Cap-Vert in 1444.
By this stage, the explorers had passed the southern boundary of the desert, and from now on, Henry has one of his wishes fulfilled: the Portuguese have circumvented the Muslim land-based trade routes across the western Sahara Desert.
The naval expeditions that Henry had been sending down the West African coast since at least the early 1430s had, during their first few years, yielded little profit, sailing mostly along the Sahara desert coast, with no native settlements in sight or encounters worth reporting.
But in 1443, one of Henry's captains, Nuno Tristão, had returned from an expedition with some fourteen captive African natives, Sanhaja Berbers seized from small native fishing settlements he had found in the Bay of Arguin, on the Atlantic shore of Mauritania.
The prospect of easy and profitable slave-raiding grounds around the Arguin banks has aroused the interest of numerous Portuguese merchants and adventurers.
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A lateen-rigged caravel, Caravela Latina (photo taken by Brazillian Navy, January 2006)
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