As a young soldier, Prince Henry had fought against Arabs, and he was determined to drive them from the Iberian peninsula and from North Africa. At the same time, he learned much from his avowed enemy: their trade routes, their science and mapmaking, and most of all, their navigational techniques. When Prince Henry came to Sagres, Europeans knew little about the ocean beyond latitude 27°N, marked by Cape Bojador in West Africa. It was believed that the waters south of this point teemed with monsters, that their storms made them too violent to navigate, and that inescapable fogs would envelop wayward ships. In the face of all these dangers, Prince Henry offered a bold reply, “You cannot find a peril so great that the hope of reward will not be greater.”
In pursuit of his goal, he attracted navigators, shipwrights, astronomers, pilots, cosmographers, and cartographers, both Christians and Jews, to the academy at Sagres, where they cooperated in the enterprise of exploring the world, under Henry’s direction. They designed a new type of ship, the small, maneuverable caravel, distinguished by her triangular lateen sail (the name lateen came from the word “Latin”), borrowed from Arab vessels. Until this time, European vessels such as galleys relied on oarsmen or fixed sails for power. With their shallow draught and movable sails, Henry’s caravels could set a course close to the wind, and they could tack, that is, shift their course to take advantage of the wind from one direction and then from another, zigzagging against the wind toward a fixed point. With their maneuverable sails and impressive seaworthiness, caravels became the vessels of choice for exploration.
Even so, the ocean proved extremely hazardous. Prince Henry sent no less than fourteen expeditions to Cape Bojador within twelve years, and they all failed. He convinced Gil Eannes, a Portuguese explorer, to try once more, and in 1434, Eannes finally accomplished what so many had said was impossible: He sailed safely past Cape Bojador. The following year Eannes, together with Alfonso Gonçalves Baldaya, returned to Cape Bojador; fifty leagues past the cape, they explored a large bay and came upon a caravan of men and camels. Baldaya sailed farther south and collected thousands of sealskins; this was the first commercial cargo brought back to Europe from that part of Africa. On subsequent voyages, Portuguese ships brought gold, animal hides, elephant tusks—and slaves.
Every captain sponsored by Prince Henry was under orders to record the tides, the currents, and the winds, and to compile accurate charts of the coastlines. Voyage by voyage, these charts added to the Portuguese knowledge of the oceans and of the world beyond the Iberian peninsula.
Although Portugal was celebrated for leading Europe into the Age of Discovery, Portuguese kings often frustrated their heroic mariners. In 1488, during the reign of João II, Bartolomeu Dias reached the southernmost point of Africa and rounded what is now known as the Cape of Good Hope; his voyage opened new possibilities for Portuguese trade and conquest. On his return, Dias attempted to claim a reward for his feat, but received practically none. Ten years later, when King Manuel I had succeeded to the throne, Vasco da Gama retraced Dias’s route around the tip of Africa and reached Mozambique on the southeastern coast; there he replenished his supplies and sailed farther east to establish an ocean route to India. Da Gama received a royal appointment as viceroy of India, and King Manuel anointed himself “Lord of Guinea and of the navigation and commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India”—all of it thanks to Vasco da Gama. Across Europe, other monarchs disparaged Manuel as “The Grocer King,” and Vasco da Gama came to believe that he had been inadequately rewarded for his service to the crown. In time he joined the ranks of explorers who became estranged from this vain ruler.
King Manuel’s indifference to those who had risked their lives to advance the cause of the Portuguese empire had much to do with his ingrained fear of rivals within Portugal. Ever since the start of his reign in 1495, he had enjoyed great commercial success as the wealth of the Indies flowed into the royal coffers, thanks to the exploits of da Gama and other Portuguese explorers, all of which the king took as his due. But King Manuel was no adventurer, and he lacked an appreciation beyond the strictly commercial aspects of what his explorers had done for the Portuguese empire. Rather than doing battle himself, he preferred to remain in his palace, faithful to his wife and to the Church, and tending to Portugal’s domestic issues.
Manuel’s harshest policies concerned the Jews of Portugal, who distinguished themselves as scientists, artisans, merchants, scholars, doctors, and cosmographers. In 1496, when King Manuel wished to take the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella as his wife, he was told that he could do so only on condition that he “purify” Portugal by expelling the Jews, as Spain had done four years earlier. Rather than lose this valuable segment of the population, Manuel encouraged conversions to Christianity—forced conversions, in many cases. As “new Christians” (the title fooled no one), Portuguese Jews continued to occupy high positions in the government, and received royal trading concessions, in Brazil especially. Despite these accommodations, anti-Semitism in Portugal led to a massacre of Jews in Lisbon in 1506. Manuel punished those responsible, but the legacy of bitterness lingered, and many Jews left the country for the Netherlands.
Throughout all the turmoil, Portugal retained its ambition to wrest control of the spice trade from the Arabs, and to reach the Spice Islands. In pursuit of this goal, daring, even reckless mariners presented themselves to the king to seek backing for their journeys of exploration to these exotic and dangerous new worlds. Most met with frustration, for the Portuguese court was a place of intrigue, suspicion, double-dealing, and envy.
Among the most persistent supplicants was a minor nobleman with a long and checkered history in the service of the Portuguese empire in Africa: Fernão de Magalhães, or Ferdinand Magellan. According to most accounts, he was born in 1480, in the remote mountain parish of Sabrosa, the seat of the family homestead. He spent his childhood in northwestern Portugal, within sight of the pounding surf of the Atlantic. His father, Rodrigo de Magalhães, traced his lineage back to an eleventh-century French crusader, De Magalhãis, who distinguished himself sufficiently to be rewarded with a grant of land from the duke of Burgundy. Rodrigo himself qualified as minor Portuguese nobility, and served as a sheriff of the port of Aveiro.
Less is known about Magellan’s mother, Alda de Mesquita, and there is room for intriguing speculation. The name Mesquita, meaning mosque, was a common name among Portuguese conversos who sought to disguise their Jewish origins. It is possible that she had Jewish ancestry, and if she did, Ferdinand was also Jewish, according to Jewish law. Nevertheless, the family considered itself Christian, and Ferdinand Magellan never thought of himself as anything other than a devout Catholic.
Even these basic outlines about Magellan’s ancestry are in doubt. In 1567, his heirs began squabbling over his estate, and questions arose over his exact place in the Magalhães family tree. The difficulties in tracing Magellan’s ancestry arise from the idiosyncrasies of Portuguese genealogy. For example, until the eighteenth century, males usually assumed their father’s last name, but the females often chose other surnames for themselves. They took on their father’s name, or their mother’s, or even a saint’s name. And some children assumed a grandfather’s name, or their mother’s last name, or still other family names. Ferdinand Magellan’s brother Diogo took on the name de Sousa, from his paternal grandmother’s family. The irregularities make it difficult to determine even today exactly which branch of the Magalhães family tree can rightfully claim the explorer.