The Story of the Nations: Portugal

by H. Morse Stephens

VII.
THE PORTUGUESE EXPLORERS.

THE internal history of Portugal under the rule of John “the Great,” his son Edward, and his grandson Affonso V., has an interest of its own, yet it is not at home that the most important development of Portuguese energy is to be perceived. Great as were the services rendered to Portugal by King John, they mark no stages in the progress of Europe as the achievements of Dom Henry, his son, have done. Around the name of this prince, the discoveries of the Portuguese navigators may best be grouped, for he was the guiding spirit of these adventurers, and alike inspired and rewarded them.

Henry, Duke of Viseu, Grand Master of the Order of Christ, and governor of the Algarves, was the third son of John “the Great” and Philippa of Lancaster, and after winning great credit in the capture of Ceuta, he took up his residence at Sagre, near Cape St. Vincent, in 1418, and devoted himself to the task of maritime exploration. His father and his brothers assisted him, but they recognized his special fitness for the work, and therefore, though encouraging him as much as possible, they did not interfere with his projects, and made no attempts to contest his well-earned title of Prince Henry “the Navigator.”[9] The prince was too wise to neglect scientific knowledge, and he therefore summoned learned mathematicians and astronomers from all parts of Europe to his aid. Enjoying immense wealth, he established an observatory and a school of navigation at Sagre, where he employed the men of science in making charts and, above all, in improving the working of the compass. This was the theoretical side of his work; the practical was not less important. He collected together all the most daring captains and mariners he could find, and sent them forth year by year on voyages of discovery along the western coast of Africa. He never went on any of these expeditions in person, but he was acknowledged by all the men of science and sailors in his pay to be their master and presiding genius.

The idea in Prince Henry’s mind was that it was possible to sail round Africa to India, and thus trade directly with the East, and he died after more than forty years of endeavour without having fulfilled his dreams. There were legends of old time, which he knew well, that the southern continent could be sailed round, legends probably founded on the tales of Carthaginian sailors, but no geographer of that period could assert that these legends were founded upon fact. If it were true, and ships could sail direct from Lisbon to India, it was easy to see what enormous profits must accrue to the people who found and followed this route. At that time the products of the East came by a long and dangerous journey to Venice, whence they were distributed over Europe. They had either to be conveyed by land all the way to the Levant, or else to be borne up the Red Sea and carried across Egypt. By either way the expenses and risk were enormous, and the prices of the commodities of the East were proportionately great. Could a direct sea route be discovered, it was obvious that these risks and expenses would be avoided, and that Lisbon would take the place of Venice as the distributor of the treasures of the East to Europe. Dom Henry understood this, and, urged by patriotism, as well as by an ardent zeal for the cause of exploration, he devoted his wealth and time to discovering this direct sea route. As has been said, he did not himself succeed in attaining this great end, but he did much towards it, and the navigators who were successful, Vasco da Gama and Pedro Alvares Cabral, were men imbued with his ideas and in a way his disciples. In speaking of the explorers of Prince Henry’s time, the word “ship” must not be taken to mean the comparatively well-built and well-appointed vessels of the end of the sixteenth century. Modern sailors would think but little of Drake’s famous ship the Pelican, yet it was far superior in size and equipments to the wretched sailing boats of the first explorers of the fifteenth century. The enterprise of Dom Henry did much to improve the ship-building of the Portuguese, and towards the end of his life their vessels could carry as many as sixty men, but at the beginning of his career his ships were little better than half-decked sailing boats, with a crew of at most thirty-six sailors.

A mere record of discoveries, a list of names of places along the inhospitable west coast of Africa, may be monotonous in itself; but when the scanty means of these early Portuguese mariners is considered, and the greatness of the goal at which they were aiming, a fresh interest arises in the study of the map of Africa. The first-fruits of Prince Henry’s exploring ardour were the discovery of the island of Porto Santo by Bartholomeu Perestrello, in 1419, and of the more important island of Madeira by João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz, in 1420. These successes delighted Prince Henry and his father, and John “the Great” immediately granted the two islands to the Order of Christ, of which his son was Grand Master. Prince Henry at once rewarded his captains, and leased Porto Santo to Perestrello, and Madeira in equal parts to its two discoverers. The provinces of the larger island were named Funchal, from “funcho,” the Portuguese word for fennel which abounds there, and Machico, said to be derived from the Englishman, Robert Machin. Prince Henry’s first effort, before proceeding further with his explorations, was to colonize these two islands. With Porto Santo he was not successful, for the rabbits introduced by Perestrello ate up the whole produce of the island; and a similar fate seemed to await Madeira, where the indigenous vegetation was almost entirely destroyed by a great fire, which lasted seven years. However, he did not despair, and it was Dom Henry who had the sugar-cane and the vine, which are to this day the chief sources of its wealth, introduced into Madeira.