Carreira da Índia

Having broken the barrier of fear “and the shadow of fear,” Prince Henry was on his way. Year after year he dispatched expeditions, each reaching a bit farther into the unknown. In 1435, when he sent out Eannes once again, this time with Afonso Baldaya, the royal cupbearer, they reached another fifty leagues down the coast. There they saw footprints of men and camels, but still did not encounter the people. In 1436, when Prince to interview at Sagres, he reached what seemed to be the mouth of a huge river, which he hoped would be the Senegal of “the silent trade” in gold. They called it the Rio de Ouro, even thought it was only a large inlet and not a river, for the Senegal actually lay another five hundred miles farther south.

The relentless step-by-step exploration of the west African coast proceeded year by year, although commercial rewards were meager. In 1441, from Prince Henry’s household went Nuno Tristão and Antão Gonçalves, reaching another two hundred fifty miles farther to Cape Branco (Blanco) where they took two natives captive. In 1444 from that area Eannes brought back the first human cargo – two hundred Africans to be sold as slaves in Lagos. […]

“The Portuguese Discoverers”, from “The Discoverers”, Daniel J. Boorstin, The National Board for the Celebration of Portuguese Discoveries, Lisbon, 1987

When Gil Eannes reported back to Prince Henry in 1433 that Cape Bojador was in fact impassable, the Prince was not satisfied. Would his Portuguese pilots be as timid as those Mediterranean or Flemish sailors who plied only the familiar ways? Surely this Gil Eannes, a squire whom he knew well in his own household, was made of bolder stuff. The Prince sent him back in 1434 with renewed promise of reward for yet another try. This time, as Eannes approached the cape he steered westward, risking the unknown perils of the ocean rather than the known perils of the cape. Then he turned south and discovered that the cape was already behind him. Landing on the African shore, he found it desolate, but by no means the gates of hell. “And as he purposed,” Zurara reported, “so he performed – for in that voyage he doubled the Cape, despising all danger, and found the lands beyond quite contrary to what he, like others, had expected. And although the matter was a small one in itself, yet on account of its daring it was reckoned great.”

“The Portuguese Discoverers”, from “The Discoverers”, Daniel J. Boorstin, The National Board for the Celebration of Portuguese Discoveries, Lisbon, 1987

At home in Sagres Prince Henry knew that he could not conquer the physical barrier unless he first conquered the barrier of fear.

He would never reach farther into the unknown unless he could persuade his seamen to go beyond Cape Bojador. Between 1424 and 1434 Prince Henry sent out fifteen expeditions to round the inconsequential but threatening cape. Each returned with some excuse for not going where none had gone before. At the legendary cape the sea bounced with cascades of ominous red sands that crumbled from the overhanging cliffs, while shoals of sardines swimming in the shallows roiled the waters between whirlpools. There was no sign of life along the desert coast. Was this not the very image of the world’s end?

“The Portuguese Discoverers”, from “The Discoverers”, Daniel J. Boorstin, The National Board for the Celebration of Portuguese Discoveries, Lisbon, 1987

When we look at a modern map of Africa, we look long and need a magnifying glass before we can find Cape Bojador (Portuguese for “Bulging Cape”), on the west coast, just south of the Canary Islands. Some thousand miles north of the continent’s greatest westward bulge we see a tiny bump on the coastal outline, a “bulge” so slight that it is almost imperceptible on maps of the full continent. The sandy barrier there is so low that it can be seen only when one comes close, where was no worse than a score of other barriers that skillful Portuguese sailors had passed and survived. But this particular Cape Bojador they had made their ne plus ultra. You dare not go beyond!

When we see the enormous risky promontories, the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn, that European seafarers would manage to round within the next century, we must recognize Bojador as something quite else. It was a barrier in the mind, the very prototype of primitive obstacles to the explorer. […]

“The Portuguese Discoverers”, from “The Discoverers”, Daniel J. Boorstin, The National Board for the Celebration of Portuguese Discoveries, Lisbon, 1987

2

Beyond the Threatening Cape

Unlike Columbus, who would aim straight for the Indies, Prince Henry the Navigator had a larger, a vaguer, and more modern destination – true to his horoscope. […].

We have no evidence that Prince Henry had in mind the specific purpose of opening a sea-way around Africa to India. What beckoned him was the unknown, which lay west and southwest into the Sea of Darkness and southward along the uncharted coast of Africa. The Atlantic islands – The Azores (one-third of the way across the Atlantic Ocean!), the Madeiras, and the Canaries – had probably been discovered by Genoese sailors in the mid-fourteenth century. Prince Henry’s efforts in that direction were less an enterprise of discovery than of colonization and development. But when his people landed in Madeira (madeira means wood) in 1420 and set about clearing the thick woods, they set a fire that raged for seven years. Although they never planned in that way, the potash left from the consumed wood would prove a perfect fertilizer for vineyards of the Malmsey grapes imported from Crete to replace those forests. The justly famous “Madeira” wine was the lasting product. Yet, as his stars foretold, Prince Henry was by nature and by preference not a colonizer but a discoverer.

“The Portuguese Discoverers”, from “The Discoverers”, Daniel J. Boorstin, The National Board for the Celebration of Portuguese Discoveries, Lisbon, 1987

A 1 de Dezembro de 1640, a revolta de Lisboa afastaria definitivamente a ambição de união dos dois reinos, ascendendo ao trono português o duque de Bragança, D. João IV. A restauração da independência portuguesa apenas viria a ser reconhecida em 1668, já depois da morte de Filipe IV de Espanha (que reinava ainda aquando da vitória portuguesa em Montes Claros, em 17 de Julho de 1665), quando a monarquia espanhola atravessava um período de grande crise.

Total de 01.01.07 a 30.11.08 - 154 020 visitas, por 91 070 visitantes
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A Biblioteca Nacional disponibiliza na íntegra o ficheiro PDF do Catálogo de manuscritos da «Aula da Esfera» do colégio jesuíta de Santo Antão, o qual se encontrava esgotado desde poucas semanas após a sua publicação.

Trata-se da mais famosa colecção de manuscritos científicos, tendo a «Aula da Esfera» sido a mais importante instituição de ensino e prática científica em Portugal no período entre 1590 e 1759, distinguindo-se não apenas pelo ensino de náutica, mas também por ter proporcionado a divulgação de alguns dos mais significativos progressos da ciência, na época: «as teorias astronómicas de Galileu e o debate cosmológico, o telescópio e outra instrumentação óptica, o uso de logaritmos e outras técnicas matemáticas, o ensino da cartografia científica, estudos de máquinas simples, o debate acerca do estatuto científico da matemática»

Os manuscritos (correspondendo essencialmente a notas de aulas) compreendes temas variados, nomeadamente:  matemática, astronomia, astrologia, cosmografia, geografia, engenharia, estática, náutica e navegação, arte militar, instrumentos científicos, máquinas e artefactos tecnológicos.

Prince Henry’s caravel was specially designed for these explorer’s needs. He found some clues in the caravos, ships used by Arabs since ancient times off the Egyptian and Tunisian coasts, modeled on the still more ancient fishing vessels that the Greeks had made of rushes and hide. These dhows, rigged with “lateen”, slanting ant triangular sails, carried Arab crews of as many as thirty, in addition to seventy horses. A similar smaller, even more maneuverable vessel, called the caravela (-ela = diminutive) was in use on the Douro River in northern Portugal. Prince Henry’s shipbuilders produced the famous caravel, which combined some of the cargo-carrying features of the Arab caravos with the maneuverability of the Douro River caravelas.

These remarkable little vessels were large enough to hold an explorer’s supplies for a small crew of about twenty, who usually slept on deck but in bad weather went below. The caravel displaced about fifty tons, was about seventy feet in length and about twenty-five feet in the beam, and carried two or three lateen sail. “The best ships that sailed the seas” was what Alvise da Cadamosto (1432?-1511), the experienced Venetian mariner, called the caravels in 1456 after his African voyage in a caravel organized by Prince Henry. The caravel became the discoverer’s standard ship. Columbus’ three ships – the Santa Maria, The Pinta, and the Niña – were all of caravel design, and the Santa Maria was only one-fifth as big as the large Venetian square-riggers of his day. The caravel proved that bigger was not always better. […]

“The Portuguese Discoverers”, from “The Discoverers”, Daniel J. Boorstin, The National Board for the Celebration of Portuguese Discoveries, Lisbon, 1987

At Sagres and at the nearby port of Lagos, experiments in shipbuilding produced a new type of ship without which Prince Henry’s exploring expeditions and the great seafaring adventures of the next century would not have been possible. The caravel was a ship specially designed to bring explorers back. The familiar heavy, square-rigged barca or the still larger Venetian carrack was suited for sailing with the wind. These worked well enough within the Mediterranean, where the size of a trading vessel was a measure of its profit, and by 1450 there were Venetian square-riggers of six hundred tons or more. A larger ship meant a bigger profit from more cargo.

A discovery ship had its own special problems. It was not a cargo-vessel, it had to go long distances in unfamiliar waters and had to be able, if necessary, to sail into the wind. An exploring ship was no good unless it could get there and back. Its important cargo was news, which could be carried in a small parcel, even in the mind of one man, but which was definitely a return product, While discovery ships did not need to be big, they had to be maneuverable, and adept at the return. […]

“The Portuguese Discoverers”, from “The Discoverers”, Daniel J. Boorstin, The National Board for the Celebration of Portuguese Discoveries, Lisbon, 1987