Early Portuguese Voyages in the South Atlantic by A. Teixeira da Mota
As the world this year celebrates the SOOth anniversary of Bartolomeu Dias's setting out on his epochal voyage around the Cape of Good Hope, we are privileged to present the views of the late Rear Admiral Teixeira da Mota on the Portuguese voyages that opened the Atlantic world, both north and south, and linked that world by sea to India and the Far East. Admiral Teixeira da Mota (1920-1982) was a leading scholar of that era, and is held in immense esteem by his colleagues and students on both sides of the Atlantic. He served as president of the Portuguese Naval Academy and as a director of the Center for the Study of History and Cartography. This article is adapted from a paper delivered at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1964. Portuguese expansion began with the conquest of Ceuta, in 1415. The causes of this expansion were multiple-scientific, religious , political , social and economic. The Portuguese people, once they had consolidated their borders with Spain , and had brought about internal peace, felt restricted in their small territory, and realized that the only way they could expand , or even survive , was through the sea. Facing them, however, were two barriers: one was the Islamic power in North Africa, the other the Atlantic, which continued to bebeyond the narrow stretch of the European waters-the "Sea of Darkness ."
The Islamic Barrier The North African states, stretching through the Near East and through other Moslem states, constituted a barrier preventing direct access to the wealth of black Africa and tropical Asia . Several Italian cities, particularly Venice, lived in symbiosis with Islamic states, serving as middlemen in the trade of these riches with the rest of Western Europe. But Portugal, Spain , France, England, Flanders and the German states were, generally speaking , dependent on these intermediaries and on the North African and Levantine Islamic states for gold and spices. Gold came mainly from the goldfields of upper Senegal and the upper Niger, and was carried through the Sahara in caravans . The hunger for gold from which Europe suffered during the Middle Ages and the grave financial and economic consequences that resulted, are well known . If Portugal could not hope to break the Islamic barrier in the Mediterranean, its only recourse was to overcome the Atlantic , which had at that time been navigated southward only as far as the Canaries. During the fourteenth century, the Portuguese had successively lengthened their voyages along the coast of Morocco and multiplied their expeditions to the Canaries. They had even travelled round the northern regions of the Sahara desert, but they stopped short at Cape Bojador. From the end of the thirteenth to the beginning of the late fourteenth century there had been an attempt at Atlantic expansion by the Italians, with expeditions to the Canaries and the ill-fated voyage of the Vivaldi brothers in search of the East. Although the expedition of the Norman Jean de Bethencourt to the Canaries in 1402 failed in its main objective of establishing a settlement, it presaged the Atlantic movement that was then starting to grow. The Spaniards eventually conquered the Canaries, but not without the Portuguese having made an attempt, by diplomatic and military means , to take possession of them, only giving up their struggle with the treaty of Alcac;:ovas-Toledo (1479-80). It should be borne in mind that from the beginning of Atlantic expansion there was rivalry between Portugal and Spain. The establishment of the settlers on Madeira island after 1419 constitutes an important event in the history of Portuguese expansion in the Atlantic . An uninhabited island with rich SEA HISTORY , AUTUMN 1987
Bjorn Landstrom' s reconstructions of Portuguese caravels in the vintage year 1500 shows the seaworthy shape of these vessels, which were the spearheads of the era of the great oceanic discoveries. Above, the original pure lateen-rigged type, and below it, the caravela redonda, fitted with squaresails for trade wind sailing. Christopher Columbus refitted the lateen-rigged Nina as a caravela redonda on a stopover in the Canaries on the way to his discovery of the Americas in 1492-she became his favorite ship and was the one he came home in.
Below, Bartolomeu Dias goes down in his caravel off Brazil in Pedro Cabral' s voyage of 1500, as shown in a contemporary record book. Dias, a true sailorman, carried the Portuguese flag around the Cape of Good Hope , opening the way into the Indian Ocean. in his epochal voyage of 1487-88. Scholars today suspect he made a second voyage which reached round to Sofala, inside Madagascar on Africa's east coast . He is on record designing the caravels that finally carried Vasco da Gama around the Cape to India in 1498. He was captain of a ship in Cabral' sfleet which formally claimed Brazil in 1500-but from this voyage there would be no return. He went down with his ship in heavy weather en route to the Cape. Photo courtesy the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.
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