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Mercator's World Magazine - July/August 1999
The tall, blonde, and muscular man stood on the cliff's edge, staring quietly into the limitless blue horizon ahead. The promontory jutted maybe three hundred paces into the ocean, and was so high and jagged, the man could barely see the waves crashing down below. And yet he could hear the ocean well, and feel the spray and mist that shot up with each relentless attack of water against stone. The winter onshore wind was blowing steadily, bringing with it unfamiliar, salty scents from a hundred leagues away. He fastened the lapels of his coat against the cold and breathed in the fresh air.
Oh, where had these winds come from, he wondered. Beyond the point where ocean merged with sky, boiling seas and monster-filled islands awaited any man who wished to attempt sailing into the unknown, or so it was believed. But no one really knew what lay past Cape Bojador, the feared African cape that marked the beginning of Terra Incognita, the land of the unknown. What really lay ahead? The man could not help himself but ponder these questions, for the cliff upon which he stood was as far south or west as anyone could go by land; it was the southwestern tip of Portugal and in that it was also the frontier of the Christian world. A few days' sail south brought one to the infidel-controlled Morocco, and a few days' sail west took one to a storm-filled ocean where many had gone and few have returned. Indeed he was standing on the threshold of another world.
At the young age of twenty-two, he had already been to Ceuta, where he fought with distinction during the Portuguese capture of the city in 1415, and learned much from its Muslim traders about the gold routes which crossed the Sahara desert and ended up in Morocco and Tunisia. While in Ceuta, he realized that to conquer Morocco, a land two to three times the size of his own, with its mountains and deserts, was impossible for the small Portuguese kingdom. Castile, Leon and Aragon, the intimidating giant kingdoms that surrounded Portugal to the east and north and isolated it from the rest of Europe, were far too powerful. Expansion for the small kingdom was unlikely, unless His eyes set again on the deep blue expanse in front of him: a "land" which no one owned or controlled, and a territory so huge it made the combined kingdoms of Europe seem miniature. Something stirred within the man. The ocean actually seemed inviting, embracing, calling. The plan he has been toying with for more than a year suddenly became crystal clear. "This will do," he told the squire which stood silently behind him. "We will launch the crusade from here."
In order to understand Prince Henry's ambitions and frame of mind, we must first explore his background and connections. And to do that we will go a few centuries back in time, to the year of 1118, two decades after the First Crusade conquered Jerusalem and established a Frankish kingdom in Palestine. At that time, lightly armed bands of pilgrims began making their way to Jerusalem and the already troubled Frankish knights were in desperate need of reinforcements and settlers, not pilgrims. However, the pilgrims had to be protected.
A small band of knights took the task upon themselves, and in 1120 were officially accepted by Palestine's new king as an order. They were called the Templars because they were quartered near the Temple. They also referred to themselves as the "poor knights of Christ" since they all took a vow of poverty, obedience, and chastity, in the usual monastic manner. Thus was created the first military order in Christian history, where chivalry and religion blended into one. The Templars quickly took on the "responsibility" of waging a general war to keep the infidel at check, and began receiving monetary support from the West. By 1139, the knights were too influential to remain under a king's direction and the Pope formally recognized the Templars as an international order under no King's rule, answerable directly to the Pope.
With the joining of Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the greatest figures of Christendom at that time, to the ranks, the Order was organized and divided into provinces, each governed by a master, with a Grand Master in Jerusalem overseeing all of the provincial leaders. Beside monastic vows, the knights also vowed to keep all Order matters and meetings a secret, and any breaches were dealt with stern disciplinary penalties. Owing no allegiance to any secular ruler, the Order expanded rapidly and steadily, and soon became the most powerful organization in Europe second only to the Church. As early as 1148, the Order began lending money and developed a banking network unrivalled in Europe. For a fee, sums could be deposited at one Templar chapter and withdrawn at any of the other chapters across the continent. And, despite their non-secular entity, the Templars didn't hesitate to charge interest on their loans.
On the other side of Europe, Spain and Portugal were involved in the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims, and the Templars were only too glad to join the battle against the infidel. Templars fought along Spanish and Portuguese armies as early as 1143. Over the next century, local military orders and brotherhoods resembling the Templars sprouted in Spain and Portugal, such as the Spanish order of Calatrava, near Toledo, and the Portuguese order of Evora, which was founded in 1160's under the jurisdiction of Calatrava. In 1238 the order of Evora, which was renamed the Order of Aviz, became independent of Calatrava, and eventually provided Portugal with its second ruling dynasty, when the Order's Master, Joćo, became King Joćo I in 1385. Meanwhile, the scene in Palestine was turning grim. The well-equipped Egyptian army began pushing Christian forces out of the Holy Land and by 1289, the Templars lost their hold on Jerusalem.
Danger loomed over the Order not only in the East, but also in the West. In 1307, the French king Phillip, jealous of their fortunes and fearful of their powers, launched a campaign against the Templars, accusing the knights of practicing heresy and secretly spitting on the crucifix during their initiation ceremonies. In a time when Inquisition "questioning" sessions were in fashion, most knights chose to confess rather than endure the terrible tortures. Thus, in 1312, the Pope was forced to suppress the Order of the Templars and disband all of its chapters. However, since the Templars had helped to expel the Muslims from his country, the Portuguese king Diniz could not forget their service. Instead of complying with the Pope's orders to capture all Templars, the knights were allowed to escape, and the king seized and occupied their property and established his own national order, The Military Order of Christ.
The new order was quite similar to the Order of the Templars. The new knights even continued to wear the Templar's crusading cross as their emblem. Although the new Order had a different name and owed allegiance to a secular sovereign, most Templar rules, including that of keeping utter secrecy, were still adhered to. Now, even before setting upon the conquest of Ceuta in 1415, Prince Henry was appointed Master of the Order of Christ, and began directing its operations. The young Master, not even twenty years of age, took the vows of chastity, and remained unmarried till his death. The military and religious outlook of the Order influenced Prince Henry to a great extent. The title of the Master came with heavy responsibilities, and Prince Henry assumed these with a passion. In the best personification of centuries of Templar tradition, Prince Henry gathered his knights in the utmost of confidentiality and embarked upon a new and unique kind of crusade: the maritime voyages of discovery.
The basic plan comprised of several steps. First and foremost, Prince Henry was obsessed with finding a way to India by sea. The infidel controlled all of the routes to China and India and held a monopoly over the prestigious spice and gold trades. If he could only reach India by sea, bypassing the Muslim traders, their financial empire would quickly crumble, followed by their military demise. He knew that military attacks against the infidels would achieve nothing -- the only successful Christian campaign against the Muslims to date was the reconquest of Spain, and that took centuries to accomplish. He realized his only chance to do some real damage was to take over their trade monopoly and thus sweep the Muslim's financial magic carpet from under their feet. Second, Africa was filled with the heathen.
If he could sail past Morocco and land in the midst of the African tribes, thousands of barbaric men, women and children could be introduced to Christianity. Also, the rumor that the mysterious Prestor John ruled a vast and powerful Christian kingdom somewhere in Africa presented a possibility for an important alliance. Last but not least, Prince Henry intended to transform Portugal into a powerful maritime kingdom. With its superior seamen, its numerous ports, and the strategic position just west of the Gibraltar Straits, Portugal had the potential to take over and control most of the Atlantic Ocean. Prince Henry had to contend with several major obstacles - he didn't know for certain what lay south of Cape Bojador, there were no ships designed for long journeys in the rough seas, and the costs for the crusade were enormous. But he tackled each obstacle in a methodical manner and came out victorious.
Prince Henry knew that if he were to achieve anything, he would have to establish a center where all of his activities could take place and where he and his aides could go about their business without being disturbed. With his authority -- besides being Master of the Order of Christ, Prince Henry was also governor of Portugal's southern region, the Algarve -- he established such a base in Sagres. The little fishing port, tucked behind the cliffs of Cape St. Vincent, was the perfect location as it offered both easy access to the Atlantic Ocean as well as protection against violent storms. Once established, Prince Henry obtained sanctions from his father the king to set about his plan.
Since the Crown was busy recovering from its campaign against Ceuta, it could only provide Prince Henry with limited financial support. From the time of its inception, Prince Henry dipped into the Order's deep pockets in order to keep his "crusade" going. Prince Henry had an amazing ability to make the most out of each and every resource he had available. Then, Prince Henry sent invitations to reputable sea pilots, map makers and scientists across Europe, to come to Sagres and participate in his crusade. Many responded and soon Sagres was bustling with prominent and world-famous foreign scholars and navigators. Even though Prince Henry seemed to thus be willing to share his knowledge with others, inviting so many foreigners to his court who would undoubtedly leak information to their kings, he entrusted the keeping of the important charts and sea journals to unquestionable members of the Order of Christ. And many of the voyages were either led or supervised by Prince Henry's faithful aides, who were also members of the Order. In that way, Prince Henry achieved confidentiality for the most crucial information.
At the same time, the presence of members of the Order, whom even the most boorish deckhand usually respected, helped maintain discipline aboard the ships. Although referred to as 'the navigator,' Prince Henry himself rarely set foot on a ship and never physically participated in the discovery voyages. Following the premise that his organizing powers were needed more on shore, he stayed behind, where he supervised the preparations for the voyages as well as oversaw those who transformed and tabulated the information gathered during the voyages into maps, charts and manuals.
The first voyage from Prince Henry's court to be recorded was in late 1418. The two Portuguese captains who headed the expedition, reported they had landed in an uninhabited island approximately a thousand kilometers southwest of Portugal which they had named Porto Santo. A year later they landed on the nearby island of Madeira, also uninhabited, and colonization began in 1420. In later voyages, these islands served as safe waypoints for Prince Henry's navigators on their way down the African coast. In 1427, the Islands of Azores, an archipelago stretching over 400 miles and located a third of the way across the Atlantic in the latitude just south of Lisbon, were officially discovered by another navigator sent by Prince Henry. A few of the islands had been sighted before, evidenced by their appearance, though not exact in terms of location and size, on Portuguese maps in the 1300s.
Prince Henry saw to the colonization of the new territory and soon the islands became busy ports of call for the Portuguese merchants. He received a fifth of the total revenues from the Azores. Then began the methodical exploration of the West African coast. Year after year Prince Henry sent out ships in vain to pass the Cape Bojador. Finally, in the year of 1434, after being ordered to sail for the cape and not to return until he had rounded it, Gil Eanes, Prince Henry's squire, successfully navigated past the cape and returned with the news that shattered the naval superstition of those times. The first and most significant barrier to Prince Henry's plan was surmounted.
Up to that time, Prince Henry's pilots and crews bravely sailed to sea on board a variety of different small fishing boats, since no other boat designs were available. The one used most often, the barca, measured a mere thirty feet, and was equipped with only one mast. It utilized square sails for a rig. The next breakthrough was the advent of the caravel, designed and built in Prince Henry's shipyards in Lagos (a port town in the Algarve.) About 75 feet long and carrying a crew of twenty and up to 80 tons of cargo, these double-masted, lateen-rigged boats were bigger, faster and easier to sail into the wind. Again, Prince Henry made sure the blueprints for the ship were kept secret. With its unique design and shape, the caravel made it possible for the voyagers to stay out at sea for a much longer period of time, and the extensive use of this vessel quickly became a factor in the acceleration of Prince Henry's discoveries.
As a note, caravels were used later by other European kingdoms in their own discovery voyages. Christopher Columbus' ships in his historic 1492 voyage to America under the Spanish flag, were large caravels. With the return of each voyage, Prince Henry made sure the charts would be updated with the latest information, and here we see the first systematic survey of Africa's West Coast. The use of navigational charts and maps was brought to a whole new level during Prince Henry's time. Prince Henry's navigators pushed further and further south with each journey and by 1446, they had reached the Gambia River.
Commercial sailors closely followed discoverers, and unfortunately the purchase of Moors and blacks by those merchant sailors soon became the highly profitable slave-trading business. Prince Henry wisely sent letters to various European thrones inviting their collaboration in his quest in Africa and offering to divide with them all profits. Each politely declined the kind offer and informed Prince Henry that he may go ahead alone -- they were quite ready to desist from all their rights. He presented their responses to the Pope, Nicholas V, who in 1454, issued a Bull which stated "the conquest extending from Capes Nun and Bojador and all the coast of Guinea to the whole Orient is everlastingly and for all time the sovereign property of King Afonso V of Portugal." In September 1460, shortly before his death, Sierra Leone was discovered which constitutes the final discovery voyage he sponsored. Prince Henry died in debt; all of the African trade could not generate enough funds to support his explorations.
Of all the great figures of the 15th and 16th century, such as Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and Sir Francis Drake, none matched Prince Henry for brilliance, organizing ability, inspiring leadership and persistence. Faced with an utterly unknown field - maritime exploration - and equipped with a medley of mis-scaled charts and misleading information, he nonetheless kept on with his plan, shattering the myths of the Medieval Ages and paving the way for science and logic as he went.
Even though he did not live to see it, Prince Henry's ultimate goal was achieved when the Portuguese Vasco Da Gama reached Calicut in 1498, the first European to reach India by sea, and secured for Portugal a brief but very profitable monopoly over the riches of the orient. And perhaps Prince Henry's character and outlook on life were best explained in his own words, when he said, "You can not find a peril so great that the hope of reward will not be greater."