W HEN we consider all the wondrous achievements on the part of the Ancients, when we consider how many centuries they were engaged in maritime matters, it is a matter for some surprise that, with the exception of what was done by the Ph?nicians, there was practically no maritime discovery made by them. They were content with the limitations of the Mediterranean, and beyond the Gaditan Straits they did not venture.
At first sight it certainly is a little strange. But the reason is quite obvious. Their seamanship was good enough, but their navigation was of an inferior order. The Romans, for example, were not geographers, and without some knowledge of geography even the crudest navigational methods lose their value. Among the Greeks and Romans there existed curious and uncertain ideas concerning the earth. Some thought that it floated on the water like a bowl. Some believed that it was like to a column or stone pillar; others that it was hollow as a dish. Some said it was as flat as a table; some that its shape was similar to a drum. So with all these conflicting ideas there was no accurate knowledge of the world.
115 Further, though there were astronomers, yet they were incompetent and of little value from a practical point of view. Lastly, the ancients had yet to learn the essential value of the loadstone. Hence their mariners were not fitted for such long voyages as were to be made later on by the Portuguese. The early Mediterranean mariners were efficient so long as they kept within the confines of their own enormous lake, for their voyaging was practically coastal. Even when they had to sail North and South they had such places as Rhodes to enable them to break their journey and make a good departure from. They could never lose themselves for long, for they knew the aspect of the various promontories and bays. They could “smell” their way through most channels even when the light failed them. And remember, too, that theirs were not big ships if compared with the caravels which were to come later. There were plenty of oarsmen in the warships if it became necessary to claw off a lee shore, and these shallow-draught vessels could float in the most shallow channels.
But if they had been called upon to cross the Atlantic or, rounding the South of Africa, traverse the Indian Ocean, they would have soon lost themselves when out of sight of land for many days; so they kept to their own sea and left the discovering of the world to others who should come centuries later. Hipparchus had been the first to make a catalogue of the stars about the year 150 B.C. Pass over a somewhat barren interval till you come to the year A.D. 150 and you find Ptolemy correcting the tables of Hipparchus. In Ptolemy we have the summit of classical knowledge as reached during the times of the ancients. His account of the universe and the movements of the heavenly bodies had a great influence on the seafarers in the Middle Ages, and so on the world’s discoveries.116 Now Ptolemy’s geography was based for the most part on “itineraries.” These, in modern parlance, were simply guide-books for travellers: that is to say, they consisted of tables and routes showing the stopping-places. Such data as these afforded had been obtained for the most part from military campaigns—especially Roman—and from the voyages made by sailors, but also from merchants.
Ptolemy made a wonderful improvement in cartographical representation by introducing correction with converging meridians, this method having been commenced by Hipparchus. But Ptolemy was singularly fortunate to have been living at the time when the Roman Empire was at its height, and so enabled to obtain a mass of geographical details through the extensive administration of this far-reaching dominion.
In Northern Europe the mists had not yet cleared. It was a long time before they did. It is not till the eighth century of our era that there is any certain mention in literature concerning the voyaging to the Arctic Circle. This was when the good monks from Ireland discovered the Faroe Isles and Iceland after setting forth across the sea, and settled down there, baptising the inhabitants and teaching them Christianity. Indirectly, they were doing more than this: they were linking up one portion of world that was unknown to or by the other. Already King Arthur, by his conquest of Scandinavia, Ireland, Gothland, Denmark, and other northern territories, had caused an addition to geographical knowledge by intercommunication. “Now at length,” to quote Hakluyt, “they are incorporated with us by the receiving of our religion and sacraments, and by taking wives of our nation, and by affinitie, and mariages.”
Add to these the northern voyages of Octher, King Edgar, together with the frequent raids of the Norsemen117 and the increasing number of missionaries, and it is easy to see the world’s geographical knowledge accumulating. But these, again, were mostly coasting voyages; or, at any rate, the voyagers were not out of sight of land for many days. The Norse discoveries are, in fact, the first great achievement of the western maritime world between the time of Constantine and the first Crusade. We have already alluded so fully to their seamanship that it remains only to remind the reader that as early as A.D. 787 they had landed in our country; in 874 had begun to colonise Iceland; in 877 had sighted Greenland; and in 888, or thereabouts, had reached the White Sea. In Southern Europe there was nothing comparable to this. Notwithstanding that the workmanship of the Italian shipbuilders was as good as, if not better than, the work of the Norsemen; notwithstanding, also, that the latter were further away from civilisation and scientific knowledge, yet for all that the Vikings were peering into the Unknown World, while the Southerners were content to leave the curtain to hide a little longer the wonders of the universe from the eyes of mankind.
As we look at the manner in which the world has been opened out, discovered, revealed, linked up, we shall find that this was brought about as follows: The Southerners, then, were too content with their Mediterranean to leave it in quest of other seas, while the Vikings were exactly the reverse in their own sphere. Then comes the influence of Christian devotion. Not merely the missionaries, but the bands of pilgrims begin for the first time in their lives to travel long distances. The Crusades astound the Crusaders themselves. They marvel at the possibilities of the world. A permanent link is forged between the North and the near East. The Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean are accomplished in safety. Why should they not118 come back again, after their vows have been filled, to trade? They have fought, they have said their prayers. Why might they not buy and sell? Thus there is formed a connection between the Levant and England which time was to develop.
We see, then, the merchants of the world getting restless for greater wealth: anxious for new markets for their wares, new places whence to gather fresh imports. Owing to the natural dread of the sea the land routes were frequently patronised in preference to the sea lanes, though this was not always. Now the great treasure-house of the world in men’s estimation lay in India. There was to be found a rich store of commodities, so thither merchants repaired by the long overland routes. But there was a growing feeling among the Genoese, the Venetians, and the Spanish that there ought to be a sea path to India just as there was to Northern Europe. There was a great risk attached to the present method of bringing goods across from India by land. There was the risk of pilfering or of bandits, besides the great cost of transportation. Furthermore, these sons of the Catholic Church longed to crush the power of Islam, longed to place the ruling of the world in the hands of a Christian Empire. It is necessary to bear in mind this potent desire to find a sea route to India, because by this desire was given an impetus which not only revealed India to seamen, but unfolded the New World in the Western Hemisphere. As far back as the year A.D. 1281, Vivaldi set forth from Genoa in his fruitless endeavour to reach the Indies via the west coast of Africa; so also Malocello had sailed as far as the Canary Isles about the year 1270; and there were numbers of other gallant adventurers who had started forth optimistically. But the sea route to India had not yet been ploughed by the ships of men.
119 Meanwhile there arrived on the scene the best friend mariner ever had. Up till now the compass had not been used. It is possible and extremely probable that from very early times the Chinese understood the communicating of the magnetic fluid to iron, and the marvellous and mysterious power which that iron possesses when thus magnetised. One may take it that the Chinese introduced this notion to the famous Arabian seamen sailing between the Far East and the east coast of Africa. Thus, via the Red Sea, this information of the utility of the magnetised needle for the use of seamen was brought into Europe. Prior to the tenth century the invention had gone no further than placing a bar of magnetised iron in the arms of a wooden figure on a pivot. In China the South took the place of North, and the former was indicated by the outstretched hand of the little man erected on the prow of the vessel, or by the bar of pulverised iron which the image held like a spear in its hands. With such magnetic indications the Chinese from the third century A.D. voyaged from Canton to Malabar and the Persian Gulf.
By the second decade of the twelfth century the Chinese were using the water-compass. It was not seen in Europe till about the year 1190; or rather it is not mentioned till about that date. What is most probable is the suggestion that the sailors of Northern Europe first saw it at the time of the Crusades, and took back to their own ports the idea which the Arabian dhow skippers had employed for so many years in navigating the Indian Ocean. There is a clear reference in an old French ballad of the late twelfth century to the Pole-star and magnet:—
120
“By this star they go and come
And their course and their way do keep:
They call it the polar star.
This guide is most certain.
All the others move
And change positions and turn;
But this star moves not.
An art they make, that cannot deceive,
By the power of the magnet:
A stone ugly and brown,
To which iron spontaneously is drawn,
They have: observing the right point.
After they have touched it with a needle
And in a straw have placed it
They put it in water without other support,
And the straws keep it afloat.”
This ballad was afterwards known as “The Song of the Compass.” Doubtless this crude compass was used only when the sailors could not see the sun in cloudy weather, or it may have been also used when making night passages. It certainly cannot have been more than a frail aid in stormy weather, when these clumsy ships were pitching and rolling in the trough of the sea. Still, excepting this innovation, there is not between the time of the ancient Greeks and that of the fourteenth century more than the slightest advance in the seaman’s art. Frankly, they hardly needed the compass in their coasting voyages, and when its utility was demonstrated they declined, for a long time, to put to sea in any ship having such an infernal and superstitious article on board. Although the date 1190 has just been given as the approximate period when the lodestone was employed in European navigation, yet it was not till the beginning of the fourteenth century that a Neapolitan pilot suspended the needle on a fixed pivot in a box, though some authorities deny that this man accomplished so much. The origin of the fleur-de-lys, which the reader still sees on every compass card to this day—flower-de-luce, as the rude Elizabethan sailors used to call it—is variously attributed to the fact that this pilot was a subject of the121 King of Naples, who was of the junior branch of the Bourbon family. Or it is possibly a conventional representation of the dart which the Arabians called the needle.
Let us then sum up. Thanks to the Vikings and Crusaders, the warriors and the traders, there was a greater knowledge of the world’s geography. And now also men had the instrument which would enable them to find their way across trackless oceans and reach home again in safety. Concerning those places which they had never seen, they had much hopeful curiosity, but there was little actual information. All the time the East was calling in its magical way to the European adventurers. The land travellers of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries had drawn back the veil hiding the golden harvest of the East. Those who had been and seen related such wondrous yarns that men of action and ambition longed to be away thither at once. The effect of the Crusades had not yet passed away. The desire for travel which has spread so enormously till it has reached the present-day obsession was growing rapidly.
Understand, that since the time when those Ph?nicians circumnavigated the Continent there had been no repetition of this achievement, and in fact no serious attempts. In 1270 Malocello had found the Canaries. Ten or twenty years later the Genoese had made some sort of effort to find a sea route to India, but they only reached Gozora in Barbary. Various other explorers also found their way to the islands of the Atlantic adjacent to the West African coast. In the history of exploration there are plenty of instances where one man in a certain century has discovered a new region. Many years later, after this has been forgotten, some other explorer lands on this territory and claims to have been there first. In other instances122 the secret of the first adventurer has been well kept and well utilised by those who lived long after the first man had died.
Take Madeira as a case in point. This was discovered not by a Genoese, a Venetian, or a Portuguese, but by an Englishman of the name of Macham. He eloped from England with a certain lady, went on board his ship, reached Spain, and then arrived “by tempest” in Madeira, “and did cast anker in that haven or bay, which now is called Machico after the name of Macham. And because his lover was sea-sicke, he went on land with some of his company, and the shippe with a good winde made saile away, and the woman died for thought.” This was about the year 1344. For years after, Madeira remained unknown to men’s minds. But Prince Henry the Navigator knew of the Macham incident, and he put it to good use.
It is true that before the close of the Middle Ages the tendency of the Italian seamen-traders was to emerge from the limits of their Mediterranean Sea. The voyages to the Canaries and to Barbary are instances of this growing enterprise. They had for years established an overseas trade also with Northern Europe, and every year the Venetians made a voyage to Flanders and back. We have not space to deal in detail with the voyage of the two Venetian brothers Zeno to Greenland in the fourteenth century, though the record is still in existence for those who wish to read.
 
Thirteenth-Century Merchant Sailing Ship.
But still, in spite of the voyages of Viking and Venetian, the Crusading expeditions, and the enterprising travels which had been undertaken, yet the real progress in navigation, as a science and an art, was made not by the sailors of Christendom, but by the Arabians. The latter had calculated their tables of latitude and longitude by astronomical observations. They had produced rough coast-charts; and what was124 more, they had been using the compass and other nautical instruments for some time. But thanks to the travel craze which had set in, the Christian ships which were seen in the Mediterranean about the beginning of the fifteenth century were supplied with the compass, an astrolabe, a timepiece, and charts just as you would have found on board an Arabian trading to the Indian Ocean. At length the Christian seamen overcame their prejudice, and were glad to avail themselves of the magnetised needle; but its use was by no means universal.
Bear in mind, also, the wave of the New Learning that was spreading over Europe. Mathematics and astronomy had already begun to be studied in Portugal at the beginning of the fourteenth century. And with regard to cartography, or map-making, something new was happening. Already by 1306 a Venetian map had been made which put into form the ideas which inspired the first Italian voyages in the Atlantic. These charts were made for the purpose of recording the discoveries of the great contemporary seamen. It is indeed surprising to note how accurate these charts really are. The Italians with all their artistic ability were now the great map-makers, and they managed to produce a number of portolani which were of the greatest use to the mariners and merchants of the Mediterranean. These were made by means of the knowledge and assistance of seamen, and were intended to be of service to the latter in their navigation.
 
Fourteenth-Century Portolano of the Mediterranean.
Showing vague idea of the shape of Africa
A portolano was nothing more or less than a plan or map-sketch. That which is here given is from a reproduction in the Map Room of the British Museum. When we consider that this was made as far back as the year 1351, or one hundred and thirty-five years before the Cape of Good Hope was rounded, it is wonderfully accurate, and the shape given to Southern Africa125 is a curiously clever guess. But it should be remembered that though the continent had never been rounded (except in Ph?nician times), yet there was a vague idea of the probable shape of the west coast from those who had been to Barbary; and it is most probable that by the information received from the Arabs, who knew the East African coast intimately, this side of the continent would be described to them. Thus a not wholly incorrect idea was conveyed of the shape of the whole of Africa’s coast-line.
But if we examine the configuration of the portions depicted as being in Europe, notably the northern shores of the Mediterranean, this portolano is most pleasing and accurate, and cannot have failed to have saved the skippers of that time many an anxious moment. That which is here reproduced dates from the year 1351, but portolani were in use as far back as the twelfth century as practical guides to seamen. The next improvement occurred when the compass began to be used in the Mediterranean, and so the portolani began to be drawn with this aid. Gradually, with practice, they were beautifully finished, and contained practically no large error or any wrong proportion, while the mariner had very full details given him regarding the coastlines, rivers, mouths, headlands, bays, and so on.
But everything that we have written in this chapter has been leading up to a consideration of the most important epoch in the whole history of seamanship or navigation. It is necessary to have in mind that south-west extremity of Portugal which is now so well known to students of naval history as Cape St. Vincent. On this strip of territory were to dwell a community that would, so to speak, dictate the maritime policy of the world. Here was to be the finest naval college which ever existed even to this day. Here were brought126 together the pick of the world’s seamen and navigators of that time. From here were to issue both great explorers and the influence which caused all those other navigators to open up the world as a man opens a closed book. To this day civilisation has not realised one tithe of what it and the seafaring nations especially owe in respect of shipbuilding, navigation, and overseas commerce to that small stretch situated at the end of the Spanish peninsula. The success which followed was the result of a wonderful personality. It was the triumph of a man who possessed in one combination the gifts of a far-seeing imagination, a scholarly mind, and a genius for organisation allied to a passion for the sea and the finding of new lands.
This man was Prince Henry, the third son of King John I of Portugal and nephew of Henry IV of England. His life is the old story of a man who wishes to do good work, and in order to bring out the best which is in him, finds it essential to retire from the world. Just as the monastic finds it desirable to withdraw from the hurly-burly of his age; just as the scientist in search of some new invention applies himself to no other study and lets every other consideration slide, so Prince Henry the Navigator, as he came to be called, thrust aside the attractions of Court life and wedded himself to a work which has benefited humanity to an extent that it does not yet and perhaps never will appreciate. It is not too much to say that it is entirely owing to Prince Henry’s influence that ships now sail backwards and forwards to India, South Africa, America, Australia, and elsewhere. If only people understood half they owed to this man they would commemorate his name in every important seaport of the world.
 
Prince Henry the Navigator.
After a print by Simon de Passe.
By nature a student and seaman, he retired (as his biographer, Mr. Raymond Beazley, appositely remarks) “more and more from the known world that he might127 open up the unknown.” That exactly sums up his life. In olden times, what is now called Cape St. Vincent was known as the Holy Promontory. Just to the right of this comes Sagres, and a little further east is Lagos. In the year 1415 Prince Henry settles at Sagres, a cold, barren, dreary, inhospitable promontory, but one singularly suitable for quiet study and research, with the whole extent of the Atlantic to look out upon, and the fresh sea breezes to invigorate the mind away from the insincerities of civilised life. The fifteenth century has always been regarded as the last of the “Dark Ages,” but few more wonderful things happened either then or after than the activities which emanated from the Sagres community. For here the Prince had brought and sifted all the geographical knowledge inherited from the ancients. Here were studied the subjects of mathematics, navigation, cartography in a manner and on such a scale as had never before been attempted. From Italy and Spain were sent the practical men—the boldest and most experienced seamen and navigators that could be found.
Sagres was a kind of international bureau created for the future development of the world, but especially and primarily it had for its object the reaching of India. Henry’s countrymen who had been about over the continent of Europe had encountered in the markets of Bruges and London travellers and merchants from other parts of the world, and in course of conversation managed to pick up a good deal of information regarding the overland trade to India and the Far East. Henry’s chief-of-staff was his own brother Pedro, who also had travelled extensively and had visited all the countries in the west of Europe. He, too, had come back not empty-handed, but with maps and plans, books and much verbal information regarding the places visited. All this information went to swell the general geographical128 knowledge which Henry was accumulating and systematising.
Close to Sagres was the naval arsenal of Lagos, over which the Prince was governor. Here he built those caravels which were to carry out the theories that he had worked out for his captains. On their return he set to work to sift the data which his ships and men had brought back with them, to correct the maps according to this new information, to readjust the instruments, to compare the accounts of travellers ancient and modern, and then to hand the conclusions of all these to the captains of the next ships that went forth to explore. Thus the Sagres naval college was at once highly theoretical and highly practical. It was also founded on a strong religious basis. Besides the palace, observatory, and study which he built for himself, Henry had erected a chapel, a village for his helpers, and among the instructions to those whom he sent out to explore was the admonition to bring Christianity into all new territory. Here were men engaged in teaching navigation to seamen; here were others instructing pupils how to draw maps and nautical instruments. Even Arabians and Jews were imported to give the Portuguese the benefit of their learning in astronomical and mathematical subjects. It was indeed a cosmopolitan crowd which collected at this Atlantic village. Orientals and Portuguese, veteran pilots from Italy, shipbuilders, seamen, and students of all kinds, cartographers and instrument-makers. But they were assembled there for one purpose. Led by the example and patience and single-hearted enthusiasm of their governor, who guided their labours with prudence and forethought, this little band was to be the nucleus which should form that magnificent race of Portuguese seamen who were to achieve so much during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
129 We cannot but admire Prince Henry for his admirable enthusiasm, for his patience, his wisdom, and his solid hard work. Nevertheless we respect him possibly even more for having begun at the right end. Instead of sending out his fleets to blunder their way along, they set forth more adequately fitted both as to ships and men than any which had ever put to sea since the beginning of the world. In the schools of Sagres, the shipyards of Lagos, and the voyages of Prince Henry’s ships, we have one of the finest combinations of theory and practice which the mind of man could ever devise. It must indeed have been a most fascinating institution. From this school graduated a fearless race of sailors, who for their daring and enterprise have never been surpassed either in Elizabethan or Nelsonian times when we consider the limitations of their equipment.
Here at last, then, the seaman’s art, for the first time in the history of the world, had a chance of being taught properly. From 1415 to 1460, with the exception of brief intervals, Prince Henry remained here doing this splendid work till death released him from his labours. What then was the aim of his life’s labour? What, in fact, were the results which accrued? Let us see first of all his aims.
He wished to find a way round Africa to India partly for the love of the new knowledge itself, just as any scientist shares the world’s delight in having discovered some invaluable invention. But also it would mean greater dominion, and Portugal would add to her distinctive position among the nations of the world. Already at least a century before his time it had been suggested by Raymond Lulli, a famous Majorcan alchemist, who lived from 1235 to 1315, that India might probably be reached by rounding Africa on the west and east, and it is curious how that idea persisted130 without any apparent reason or justification before it was actually proved to be correct. Secondly, Henry wanted to find out what was the shape of the world, and to put an end to the rival theories which existed. Marco Polo had done something for the southern coast-line of Asia, and the shape of Africa had been fairly guessed by the portolano, as already seen. On the east coast of Africa there were the Arab settlements, and there was a vague sort of knowledge concerning the west coast so far south as Guinea. This information had been obtained through the Sahara caravan trade.
But there was a third reason for Henry’s enterprise. The research work, the education of his seamen, the making of maps, the providing of instruments, the building and fitting out of ships and so forth could not possibly go on without some sort of financial basis. Such a project, however philanthropic, could not be allowed to continue without some means of sustenance. Henry’s idea was to make the overseas trade pay for all of this. There were riches enough in India and elsewhere to cover handsomely the cost of making Portugal a race of sailors, the leader of the world in maritime exploration. The land route across Asia along which were brought such rich commodities of eastern goods alone proved that India was worth aiming at. If only these goods could be brought by water, then not only would delay, pillage, and money be saved, but Portugal would become the owners of the Indian carrying trade, and the richest of the eastern merchants. One cannot emphasise too strongly the fact that in the minds of the people of the Middle Ages India was the prize of the world, the depository of the greatest wealth. India, then, was the inspiration, Sagres the medium by which the countries of the globe outside Europe have been discovered and developed.
And there was another reason. The political power131 of the Catholic Church was very considerable. A Portuguese seaman was a true son of the Church, whether skipper or deck-hand. Wherever he colonised, wherever he discovered or traded, he was anxious to spread the Catholic religion. He hated Islam, he wanted to add the territory of the world to the great Christian empire. In no heart did such aspirations flourish so strongly as in Prince Henry the Navigator. India was to become not merely the means of encouraging seafaring, but an invaluable possession.
But what were the results of Henry’s great organisation and activities? Indirectly he was the cause of Columbus finding the New World when looking for India in 1492; of Da Gama reaching India in 1498; of Magellan encircling the globe in 1520–2: less directly still to him may be traced the round-the-world voyages of Drake and Anson. To Prince Henry the Navigator may be ascribed at least half the honour in conquering the islands of the Atlantic and the western coast of Africa, the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope, the founding of transoceanic empires and magnificent cities. To his genius may be traced the opening up of the Western Hemisphere, and the sea path to India and the Far East, the discovery of Australia, and other voyages embraced within the limits of a century. In fact, but for Henry the Navigator we should have remained for a much longer period ignorant of one-half of the world. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are essentially a sea epoch more than any age in history, and their influence was felt in all subsequent periods even down to the present day. Sagres focussed all the world’s knowledge of the nautical arts, and shed a powerful searchlight which revealed to nations the wonderful possibilities that lay by way of the sea. It led to India and America, to gold mines and rich plantations, to wealth, to prosperity, to power. The132 seamanship, the navigation, a............