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11. Jerónimo Münzer, Viaje por España y Portugal (Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo, 1991), 177. Münzer visited Lisbon in 1494. See also Damião de Góis, Elogio da cidade de Lisboa (Lisbon: Lisboa Guimarães Editores, 2002), 145–53. Some authors have identified that large painting in the castle as Fra Mauro’s world map. See Roger Crowley, Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire (New York: Random House, 2015), 15–16. Although plausible, such an association is far from certain.
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12. Some of the shipyards were run by a royal agency called the Armazéns (warehouse or depot) da Guiné e Índia, related to the Casa da Guiné e Índia but somewhat autonomous. In spite of its pedestrian-sounding name, the Armazéns officials were charged with nothing less than organizing and outfitting the royal fleets. The great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 destroyed the archives of the Armazéns, thus depriving us of much information about their day-to-day activities. See Leonor Freire Costa, “Carpinteiros e calafates da Ribeira das Naus: Um olhar sobre Lisboa de quinhentos,” Penélope 12 (1994): 37–54; and Leonor Freire Costa, Naus e galeões na ribeira de Lisboa: A construção naval no século XVI para a Rota do Cabo (Cascais: Patrimonia, 1997), 264–70.
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13. On Columbus’s marriage to Felipa, see las Casas, Historia de las Indias, 1:35–36; and Ferdinand Columbus, The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus by His Son, Ferdinand, trans. and annotated by Benjamin Keen (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1959), 14. The quote comes from the latter source. See also Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, 37–38.
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14. These quotes are marginal annotations or postils that Columbus made on a copy of Pierre d’Ailly’s Ymago mundi (1410). See Consuelo Varela and Juan Gil, eds., Cristóbal Colón: textos y documentos completos (Madrid: Alianza Editores, 1982), 90. Columbus’s 1478–79 voyage to Madeira is well documented and can be dated with certainty because he was unable to purchase the quantity of sugar agreed to in the contract, so he had to appear in person in a court in Genoa on August 25, 1479. See the court document in Pérez de Tudela, Colección documental del descubrimiento, 1:34–41. Columbus’s trip to the coast of Ghana is documented in his postils. See also Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, 36–37.
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15. The quote is from Gomes Eanes de Azurara, Crónica do descobrimento e conquista da Guiné (Lisbon: Publicações Europa-Amêrica, 1981), 59. See also C. R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415–1825, 26. Some authors contend that Cape Bojador was where Cape Juby is now, but its exact location remains uncertain. Strictly speaking, the term “gyre” is used in oceanography to refer to currents. As far as sailing is concerned, however, the winds propelling the currents matter even more. In this book I thus use the term “gyre” to refer to both the winds and the currents.
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16. There is precious little research into the Portuguese discovery of the Atlantic gyres. Some of the sources include Avelino Teixeira da Mota, A evolução da ciência náutica durante os séculos XV e XVI na cartografia portuguesa da época (Lisbon: Junta de Investigações Científicas do Ultramar, 1961), 7; and [Carlos Viegas] Gago Coutinho, A náutica dos descobrimentos, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Agência Geral do Ultramar, 1951), 1:86–88. Coutinho was an admiral who had direct experience in the Atlantic Ocean. He rightly belittles some of the reasons traditionally adduced by historians for the difficulty of rounding Cape Bojador, such as the belief in those days that the sea would become so hot in the more southerly latitudes that the water would boil or that the sea would plunge into an abyss. He also casts doubt on the idea that it was the introduction of the caravel, better able to sail against the wind, that finally allowed the Portuguese to round the cape.
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17. Dava Sobel, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (London: Fourth Estate, 1995), 4.
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18. Pedro Nunes, Tratado da Sphera, 131, quoted in António Barbosa, Novos subsídios para a história da ciência náutica portuguesa da época dos descobrimentos (Porto: Instituto Para a Alta Cultura, 1948), 23. Nunes is also quoted in Luís de Albuquerque, “Astronomical Navigation,” in History of Portuguese Cartography, 2 vols., ed. Armando Cortesão (Coimbra: Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, 1971), 2:227.
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19. For the start of this latitude revolution, see Laguarda Trias, Las más antiguas determinaciones de la latitud en el Atlántico y en el Índico (Madrid: Instituto Histórico de la Marina, 1963), passim; and Albuquerque, “Astronomical Navigation,” 227–28 and 245–73. The relationship between the altitude of the North Star and latitude had already been explained in the Libros del saber de astrología commissioned in the thirteenth century by the famous Castilian king Alfonso X, known as “el Sabio,” “the Wise.” In a broad sense, celestial navigation had been a common practice in many parts of the world since time immemorial. Phoenicians, Arabs, Chinese, Polynesians, and many other seafaring peoples had used stars and constellations to guide their movements. Some of these same peoples had also worked out the mathematics involved in calculating distances by triangulating with the Sun. Yet the Portuguese went well beyond their predecessors in that they effectively combined the practical observations made by pilots with the insights of mathematicians and astronomers. They also surpassed their predecessors in developing a navigational infrastructure that included procuring and adapting instruments to measure angles, sending expeditions to establish the latitudes of various islands and points along the African coast, updating charts and maps according to the new observations, developing navigational manuals that most pilots could use, and commissioning declination tables. This is a great story of technological innovation that has been told largely in the Portuguese language. Some of the key works include Joaquim Bensaúde, L’astronomie nautique au Portugal à l’époque des grande découvertes (Bern: Akademische Buchhandlung von Max Drechsel, 1912), passim; and Luciano Pereira da Silva, “A arte de navegar dos portugueses desde o Infante a D. João de Castro,” in Obras completas, vol. 2 (Lisbon: Divisão de Publicações e Biblioteca Agência Geral das Colónias, 1942), 223–432. Leite Pinto summarized some of his findings in a conference at the Société Astronomique de France in May of 1933 and published under the title L’astronomie nautique au Portugal, à l’époque des grandes découvertes (Orléans: H. Tessier, 1933). More substantial are Barbosa, Novos subsídios para a história da ciência náutica portuguesa da época dos descobrimentos; Teixeira da Mota, A evolução da ciência náutica durante os séculos XV e XVI na cartografia portuguesa da época; and various works by Luís de Albuquerque, including “Astronomical Navigation” and Curso da história da náutica (Rio de Janeiro: Serviço de Documentação Geral da Marinha do Brasil, 1971), passim. On the need to reevaluate Iberian science, see Francisco Contente Domingues, “Science and Technology in Portuguese Navigation: The Idea of Experience in the Sixteenth Century,” in Portuguese Oceanic Expansion, 1400–1800, ed. Francisco Bethencourt and Diogo Ramada Curto (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 460–79; Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, “Renaissance Iberian Science: Ignored How Much Longer?,” Perspectives on Science 12, no. 1 (2004): 86–125; and Cañizares-Esguerra, “On Ignored Global ‘Scientific Revolutions,’ ” Journal of Early Modern History 21, no. 5 (October 2017): 420–32.
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20. It was only in 1500 when a physician and astronomer named João Faras first described the Southern Cross in detail during Cabral’s expedition to Brazil. For the description of the Southern Cross, see Faras to the king, Vera Cruz, May 1, 1500, Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro 5, no. 19 (1843): 342–44. Even then, Faras expressed the opinion that “the best alternative is to navigate according to the altitude of the Sun rather than any other star.”
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21. Manuals on the altitude of the Sun began circulating in the fifteenth century, but only later publications survive such as the Manual of Munich (circa 1509)
and the Manual of Évora (1519). See the discussion in Barbosa, Novos subsídios, 48–80; and Albuquerque, “Astronomical Navigation,” 273–327.
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22. The method in question is the Reportório dos tempos and is both quoted and explained in Albuquerque, “Astronomical Navigation,” 233. I want to express my appreciation to Joaquim Alves Gaspar for improving my explanation.
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23. The quote is from João de Barros, Primeira década da Ásia (Lisbon: Aillud, 1920), bk. 4, chap. 2. By the nineteenth century, Alexander von Humboldt referred to Behaim as “the great cosmographer of Nuremberg,” and in 1890 Behaim’s natal city unveiled a statue in his honor. For a broader discussion of this breakthrough, see Bensaúde, L’astronomie nautique au Portugal, passim; Pereira da Silva, “A arte de navegar dos portugueses,” 326–28; Pinto, L’astronomie nautique au Portugal, à l’époque des grandes découvertes, 7–9; Albuquerque, “Astronomical Navigation,” 295; and J. Moreira Campos, “Mestre José Vizinho,” Revista Beira Alta (1955): 3–8; among others.
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24. On Zacuto’s life and a discussion of his work with extensive samples and running commentary, see Francisco Cantera Burgos, Abraham Zacut (Madrid: M. Aguilar, 1935); José Chabás and Bernard R. Goldstein, Astronomy in the Iberian Peninsula: Abraham Zacut and the Transition from Manuscript to Print (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2000); and Bensaúde, L’astronomie nautique au Portugal, 22. Zacuto’s astronomical tables existed in manuscript form at least since 1478 in his Ha-hibbur ha-gadol (The Great Composition) and were known in the Iberian Peninsula. Bensaúde notes that Augustinus Riccios, a famous astronomer in his own right who studied under Zacuto, had the greatest regard for his teacher’s astronomical tables. Bensaúde and Albuquerque note that all of Zacuto’s declinations assume that Earth’s rotation axis is tilted by twenty-three degrees and thirty-three minutes, which is the same tilt used in all Portuguese tables until the 1530s. Bensaúde, L’astronomie nautique au Portugal, 23; and Albuquerque, “Astronomical Navigation,” 295. For an excellent introduction to the work of Zacuto, see Luís de Albuquerque’s introductory essay in Abraão Zacuto, Almanach Perpetuum (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional–Casa da Moeda, 1986), 22–23. There are doubts about the exact date for which that one-year declination table was elaborated. See Fontoura da Costa, A ciência náutica dos Portugueses na Época dos Descobrimentos (Lisbon: Comissao Executiva das Comemoracoes do Quinto Centenario da Morte do Infante D. Henrique, 1958), 34–40; and Albuquerque, Curso de história da náutica, 108. See also Campos, “Mestre José Vizinho,” 3–8; Barbosa, Novos subsídios, 48–80; and Albuquerque, “Astronomical Navigation,” 288–95.
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25. For a fascinating discussion of the navigational methods used in the Indian Ocean by Arab pilots and the similarities and differences with their Iberian counterparts, see J. Custódio de Morais, “Determinação das coordenadas geográficas no Oceano Índico pelos pilotos portugueses e pilotos árabes no princípio do século XVI,” Boletim do Centro de Estudos Geográficos 2, no. 18 (1960): 3–49.
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26. The quote is from Columbus’s marginal annotation to Eneas Silvio Piccolomini’s Historia rerum ubique gestarum, in Varela and Gil, Cristóbal Colón, 91. The latitude of Sierra Leone reported by Columbus was erroneous, as well as some other information. Yet we have to bear in mind that this was just the testing phase of this novel system of navigation, or perhaps erroneous latitudes were deliberately reported for the benefit of spies from other nations. See also Bensaúde, L’astronomie nautique au Portugal, 107; Barbosa, Novos subsídios, 48–80; Albuquerque, “Astronomical Navigation,” 288–95; Chabás and Goldstein, Astronomy in the Iberian Peninsula, 158; Diffie and Winius, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 166–74; and Joaquim Alves Gaspar, “From the Portolan Chart of the Mediterranean to the Latitude Chart of the Atlantic: Cartometric Analysis and Modeling” (PhD diss., Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2010), 14–17.
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27. The quote is from João Barros, Decades of Asia, reproduced in Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, 71. On Columbus’s proposal to the Portuguese, see W.G.L. Randles, “The Evaluation of Columbus’ ‘India’ Project by Portuguese and Spanish Cosmographers in the Light of the Geographical Science of the Period,” Imago Mundi 42 (1990): 50–64; Diffie and Winius, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 166–70; Nicolás Wey Gómez, The Tropics of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the Indies (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008), chap. 2; Almirante Teixeira da Mota, “Cristóvão Colombo e os portugueses,” in Carlos Araújo, ed., Lisboa e os descobrimentos, 1415–1580: A invenção do mundo pelos navegadcores portugueses (Lisbon: Terramar, 1990), 151; and António Brásio, Monumenta missionaria africana, 2nd ser., vol. 1 (Lisbon: Agência Geral do Ultramar, 1958), 234–35.
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28. Randles, “The Evaluation of Columbus’ ‘India’ Project by Portuguese and Spanish Cosmographers in the Light of the Geographical Science of the Period,” 50–64.
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29. Manuel I to Ferdinand and Isabella, Lisbon, 1503, in Carta de El-Rei D. Manuel ao Rei Catholico, narrando-lhe as viagens portuguezas á India desde 1500 até 1505, reimpressa sobre o portotypo romano de 1505 (Lisbon: Academia Real das Sciencias, 1892), 9–31. See also a similar 1501 letter in William Brooks Greenlee, The Voyages of Pedro Álvares Cabral from Contemporary Documents and Narratives (London: Hakluyt Society, 1938), 41–52.
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30. Geniuses working in isolation seldom conceive the greatest ventures of exploration; these instead tend to spring from incremental technical advances shared by the entire community of pilots, navigators, and explorers. In this instance, the idea of finding a passage between the two oceans as a way to reach the Spice Islands had been in the wind for at least four years and probably more. Already in 1514 Juan Díaz de Solís had signed a contract with the Spanish to do exactly that, and just a few weeks before Magellan and Faleiro had their audience with the Spanish monarch, a fellow Portuguese pilot named Estevão Gomes had similarly offered to open a new way to the Spice Islands by sailing westward. The time was ripe for such an undertaking. See Jean Denucé, Magellan: La question des Moluques et la première circumnavigation du globe (Brussels: Académie Royale de Belgique, 1910), 248; and Tim Joyner, Magellan (Camden, ME: International Marine, 1992), 82–83. For a discussion of Juan Díaz de Solís’s expedition, see Rolando A. Laguarda Trías, “Las longitudes geográficas de la membranza de Magallanes y del primer viaje de circunnavegación,” in A viagem de Fernão de Magalhães e a questão das Molucas, ed. Avelino Teixeira da Mota (Lisbon: Junta de Investigações Científicas do Ultramar, 1975), 143–45. It is unclear whether Gomes had initially traveled with Magellan to Spain in 1517 or what prior dealings they may have had.
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31. The first quote is from Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias, 3 vols. (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1986), 3:174–75. The second quote is from Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Historia general y natural de las Indias, 5 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1992), 2:217. Las Casas and other Spanish sources refer to Rui Faleiro as a bachiller in the same way that Portuguese sources such as Damião de Góis refer to him as a bacharel. Damião de Góis, Chronica do felicissimo Rei D. Manuel, 4 vols. (Coimbra: Universidade da Coimbra, 1949), 4:95. For information about Rui Faleiro’s background, see Denucé, Magellan, 139–42; F.H.H. Guillemard, The Life of Ferdinand Magellan and the First Circumnavigation of the Globe, 1480–1521 (London: George Philip and Son, 1890), 95–97; Joyner, Magellan, 66–67; Laurence Bergreen, Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe (New York: William Morrow, 2003), 22–23; and André Rossfelder, In Pursuit of Longitude: Magellan and the Antimeridian (La Jolla, CA: Starboard Books, 2010), 46–47, among others. Joyner and others have speculated that Rui Faleiro may well have been among King João’s group of mathematical experts in the 1480s and 1490s who famously solved the problem of determining latitude by the altitude of
the Sun and also turned down Columbus’s proposal. Alongside José Vizinho and Martin Behaim, a certain “Mestre Rodrigo” or “Mestre Rui” is mentioned in contemporary chronicles. See Joyner, Magellan, 66. I believe that this is very unlikely on the grounds of age alone. If Rui had been active as a cosmographer in the 1480s in his twenties at the earliest, then he would have been older than sixty by 1518. This in itself is not completely out of the question, but we also know that Rui traveled to Spain with his parents, who therefore must have been in their eighties or nineties, unlikely considering that lifespans were much shorter in the sixteenth century and travel more difficult. Finally, Rui’s brother Francisco would go on to live and work in Spain until the 1570s, so he would have had to be thirty or forty years younger than Rui if the latter had indeed worked as a cosmographer as early as the 1480s, once again quite unlikely. On Rui’s younger brother, see Francisco Faleiro, Tratado del esphera y del arte del marear (Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1998). The introduction by Timothy Coats offers relevant biographical information. See also A. Teixeira da Mota, “A contribuição dos irmãos Rui e Francisco Faleiro no campo da náutica em Espanha,” in Teixeira da Mota, A viagem de Fernão de Magalhães e a questão das Molucas, 217–341. On Francisco Faleiro’s career as a cosmographer in Spain, see also the luminous essay by Edward Collins, “Francisco Faleiro and Scientific Methodology at the Casa de la Contratación in the Sixteenth Century,” Imago Mundi 65, no. 1 (2013): 25–36.
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32. All quotes are from las Casas, Historia de las Indias, 3:175, emphasis added. The possibility that navigators before Magellan knew about a strait between the oceans in South America is crucial and has garnered considerable scholarly interest. Contemporary testimonies by Antonio de Herrera and Antonio Pigafetta establish further that Magellan was confident in finding the strait because he had seen a nautical chart elaborated by Martin Behaim (son of the Martin Behaim discussed earlier). Both of these sources are transcribed and commented on in Avelino Teixeira da Mota, O regimento da altura de leste-oeste de Rui Faleiro: Subsidios para o estudo náutico e geográfico da viagem de Fernão de Magalhães (Lisbon: Edições Culturais da Marinha, 1986), 55–56. In addition to Teixeira da Mota, see more recent discussion in Rossfelder, In Pursuit of Longitude, chap. 3. On Portuguese and Spanish efforts to find a passage between the two oceans before Magellan, see Rolando A. Laguarda Trías, El predescubrimiento del Río de la Plata por la expedición portuguesa de 1511–1512 (Lisbon: Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, 1973), 21–23; and Martín Fernández de Navarrete, Colección de los viages y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los españoles desde fines del siglo XV, con varios documentos inéditos . . ., 5 vols. (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1825), 4:iii–iv.
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