Henry the Navigator
Prince Henry the Navigator sponsored the voyages that began European overseas expansion and never navigated anything. Born in Porto in 1394, the third surviving son of João I of Portugal and Philippa of Lancaster, he took part in the capture of Ceuta in Morocco in 1415, which is generally treated as the start of the Portuguese empire and which gave him a view of the trans-Saharan gold trade arriving from the south. He was made governor of the Algarve and administrator of the Order of Christ, the successor to the Templars in Portugal, whose revenues funded almost everything he did. He sent expedition after expedition down the West African coast from the 1420s. Cape Bojador was the barrier — sailors believed the sea beyond it boiled and that return was impossible against the winds — and Gil Eanes rounded it in 1434 on his fifteenth attempt. The technical development that mattered was the caravel, a small lateen-rigged vessel that could sail closer to the wind and work back north, and the volta do mar, the practice of standing far out into the Atlantic to find westerlies for the return. Madeira and the Azores were settled, and by his death ships had reached Sierra Leone. The trade that resulted was in gold, malagueta pepper and enslaved people; the first cargo of captives reached Lagos in 1444, and he took his fifth. The school at Sagres of legend probably did not exist as an institution, though he gathered cartographers and pilots. He died in 1460, heavily in debt.
- Lived: 1394 CE – 1460 CE
- Nationality: Portuguese
- Roles: patron, navigator, prince
