LECCION 17 - PAGINA 2   índice del curso   página anterior   página siguiente

The first and decisive step in the expansion of Europe overseas was the conquest of the Atlantic Ocean. That the nation to achieve this should be Portugal was the logical outcome of her geographical position and her history. Placed on the extreme margin of the old, classical Mediterranean world and facing the untraversed ocean, Portugal could adapt and develop the knowledge and experience of the past to meet the challenge of the unknown. Some centuries of navigating the coastal waters of Western Europe and Northern Africa had prepared Portuguese seamen to appreciate the problems which the Ocean presented and to apply and develop the methods necessary to overcome them. From the seamen of the Mediterranean, particularly those of Genoa and Venice, they had learned the organization and conduct of a mercantile marine, and from Jewish astronomers and Catalan mapmakers the rudiments of navigation. Largely excluded from a share in Mediterranean commerce at a time when her increasing and vigorous population was making heavy demands on her resources, Portugal turned southwards and westwards for opportunities of trade and commerce. At this moment of national destiny it was fortunate for her that in men of the calibre of Prince Henry, known as the Navigator, and King John II she found resolute and dedicated leaders. The problems to be faced were new and complex. The conditions for navigation and commerce in the Mediterranean were relatively simple, compared with those in the western seas. The landlocked Mediterranean, tideless and with a climatic regime of regular and well-defined seasons, presented few obstacles to sailors who were the heirs of a great body of sea lore garnered from the experiences of many centuries. What hazards there were, in the form of sudden storms or dangerous coasts, were known and could be usually anticipated. Similarly the Mediterranean coasts, though they might be for long periods in the hands of dangerous rivals, were described in sailing directions or laid down on the portolan charts drawn by Venetian, Genoese and Catalan cartographers. Problems of determining positions at sea, which confronted the Portuguese, did not arise. Though the Mediterranean seamen by no means restricted themselves to coastal sailing, the latitudinal extent of the Mediterranean was not great, and voyages could be conducted from point to point on compass bearings; the ships were never so far from land as to make it necessary to fix their positions in latitude by astronomical observations. Having made a landfall on a bearing, they could determine their precise position from prominent landmarks, soundings or the nature of the sea bed, after reference to the sailing directions or charts. By contrast, the pioneers of ocean navigation faced much greater difficulties. The western ocean which extended, according to the speculations of the cosmographers, through many degrees of latitude and longitude, was an unknown quantity, but certainly subjected to wide variations of weather and without known bounds. Those who first ventured out over its waters did so without benefit of sailing directions or traditional lore. As the Portuguese sailed southwards, they left behind them the familiar constellations in the heavens by which they could determine direction and the hours of the night, and particularly the pole-star from which by a simple operation they could determine their latitude. Along the unknown coasts they were threatened by shallows, hidden banks, rocks and contrary winds and currents, with no knowledge of convenient shelter to ride out storms or of very necessary watering places. It is little wonder that these pioneers dreaded the thought of being forced on to a lee shore or of having to choose between these inshore dangers and the unrecorded perils of the open sea.

Questions 1-8

LECCION 17 - PAGINA 2   índice del curso   página anterior   página siguiente