CHAPTER XIII.
THE ARMADA OF 1445.
hile Gonsalo Pacheco had been wasting time and men and the good name of Europe and Christendom in his plunderings between C. Bojador and C. Blanco, the memory of the death of Gonsalo de Cintra was kept alive in Lagos, and the men of the town came in solemn deputation to the Prince, before the summer of this same year (1445) was out, to beg him for permission to take full, perfect, and sufficient vengeance. In other words, they offered to equip the largest fleet that had ever sailed on an ocean voyage—as it now began to be called, a Guinea voyage—since the Prince began his work. As far as we know, this was also one of the greatest armadas that had been sent out into the new-discovered or re-discovered or undiscovered seas and lands since the European nations had begun to look at all beyond their own narrow limits.
Neither the fleet of 1341, which found the Canaries, and of which Boccaccio tells us, nor the Genoese expedition of 1291, nor the Catalan venture of 1346, nor De Béthencourt's armament of 1402, for the conquest of the Fortunate Isles, was anything like this armada of 1445. For this last was a real sign of national interest in a work which was not only discovery, but profit and a means to more; it proved that in Portugal, in however base and narrowly selfish a way, there was now a spirit of general enterprising activity, and till this had been once awakened, there was not much hope of great results from the efforts of individuals.
The first contingent now equipped in Lagos—for the Prince at once approved of his men's idea—numbered fourteen caravels—fourteen of the best sailing ships afloat, as Cadamosto said a little later; but this was only the central fleet, under Lançarote as Admiral. Three more ships came from Madeira, one of them under Tristam Vaz, the coloniser of Funchal; Diniz Diaz headed another contingent from Lisbon; Zarco, the chief partner in the discovery and settlement of Madeira, sent his own caravel in command of his nephew; in all there were seven and twenty ships—caravels, galleys, and pinnaces. Since the Carthaginians sent out their colonists under Hanno beyond the Pillars of Hercules, a larger and braver fleet had not sailed down that desolate West of Africa.
Gil Eannes, who had rounded Bojador, was there, with the Diaz, who had passed the Green Headland and come first to the land of the Negroes, and the list of captains was made up of the most daring and seasoned of Spanish seamen. Scarcely a man who had ventured on the ocean voyages of the last thirty years was still alive and able-bodied who did not sail on the 10th August, 1445.