The Age of Discovery
The earths map in the 1400’s was fragmented. Although the
Chinese had voyaged as far as East Africa in the voyages of Admiral Zheng Ho[1]
and mapped the voyages with Portolan type coastal strip maps and the Mediterranean
was covered by Portolan charts[2],
the majority of the earth’s surface was not mapped[3].
Although ancient Greek philosophers had postulated that the earth was round as early as 300BC no confirmation of this had been made by the mid 1400’s.
The earth’s land masses were rather a series of independent
regions of culturally diverse populations[4]
unmapped and relatively self-sufficient.
Marco Polo wandered east along the Silk route in the 1200’s
for over 20 years bringing back to Europe information on the rich resources of
the Middle and Far east, especially China[5].
This spurred the Europeans to seek means to reach these riches and led to the “Age
of Exploration” by mariners[6]
and the mapping of the earths coastal land masses.
From the early 1400’s to the middle of the 16th. Century
Portuguese and Spanish mariners discovered and mapped many of the Earths
coastal areas and confirmed the major oceans. It all started with Africa.
Mapping Africa
“Henry the Navigator” was Prince Henry of Portugal, born in early 1400’s, who is regarded as the pioneer who started the “Age of Discovery” exploring and conquering lands in northern and western Africa as well as the Atlantic islands of Madeira and the Azores.[7]
Not only did he explore, but he also used new technology to build new ships capable of sailing closer to the wind using a lateen sail from Mediterranean ships. Thus, he discovered the oceanic trade winds and currents of the Atlantic which he used to his advantage on his maritime adventures.[8]
Glory, God and Gold[9]
The motivation for exploration had more earthly reasons for these voyages than altruism or adventure.
Colonialisation gave
power and glory; the establishment of the Catholic faith was to combat the
expansion of Islam and trade brought gold and wealth. These were the main
drivers for the voyages of exploration, to discover new lands and exploit them.
The vision of the Spice Islands far to the east spurred the Portuguese and Spaniards
to set out into unknown waters.
Bartolomeu Dios, a Portuguese mariner started in 1488 and
explored the West African coast and got as far as the Cape of Good Hope which
he called the Cape of Storms and rounded it thus confirming the southernmost
tip of the African continent and realised that the Indian Ocean was not an enclosed
sea but opened the way to sail north and east in what was the Indian ocean
towards the Spice Islands.[10]
Westward to the Americas
Christopher Columbus, an Italian cartographer and mariner, was entrusted by the Spanish King to try to reach the Spice Islands by sailing westward and the start of the age of exploration began with Portugal and Spain competing to capture the riches of the Spice Islands.
He left Spain in 1492 and reached land 5 weeks later which
turned out to be the Bahamas, a part of the American continent. He explored
further visiting Cuba and the Dominican Republic before returning to Spain in
1493 and the fury of the Portuguese who contended the voyage was in violation
of a treaty between the two countries.
The consequence of this impasse between the Portuguese and Spanish monarchies was that the Pope issued a new treaty, the “Treaty of Tordesillas”[11] that divided the world into two sections, one for the Portuguese and one for the Spanish realms to claim. The dividing line was from pole to pole, some 2000km west of the Cape Verde islands.
Round Africa to India
Four years after Christopher Columbus’s return the Portuguese explorer Vasco Da Gama set off in 1497 on a voyage to the Spice Islands continuing the route pioneered by Bartholomeu Dias around the Cape of Good Hope. With the help of Arab pilots, he crossed the Indian ocean to India, learning enroute the seasonal monsoons that greatly affect the passage of sailing ships. He returned in 1499 having established the first international maritime trade with the Indian sub-continent and placed the Indian ocean, the African continent and the Indian sub-continent on the global map.
Westward around the world
Twenty years later the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, sailing for Spain, set off on voyage westward to find a route to the Spice islands. Following the trade wind route to Brazil, now part of the Portuguese empire, he sailed south until he found a westward passage through a strait he named after himself and entered a vast ocean, the Pacific Ocean. Sailing westward he stopped at the island of Guam and reached the Philippines after a 98-day voyage crossing the Pacific Ocean. There he was killed and his navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano took command and returned to Spain via India, the Cape of Good Hope and the Atlantic Ocean
arriving in Spain in 1522 after a 3-year voyage that was the
first to circumnavigate the globe and establish new land masses on the earths
map and one new ocean, the Pacific Ocean.
The role of technology in these voyages of discovery
What contributed to the success of these voyages?
One factor was the
adoption of new technologies in ship building that was applied to both the
Portugues and Spanish ships built specifically for these voyages.[12]
They needed to be capable of extended voyages offshore with
unknown winds.
Two types of ship were used the caravel and the carrack,
both carvel built.
The caravel was based on Portuguese fishing vessels. It
could be rigged with lateen sails that enabled it to sail closer to the wind
than a ship with square sails but could also be rigged with both lateen and
square sails making it a very versatile ship.
A much larger vessel was designed for these voyages in order to carry stores, weapons and a
larger complement of sailors. This was the carrack, a 100-ton, 3 masted vessel of about 19 metres in length and was the flagship of the fleet. It had both a forecastle and after castle, a characteristic of the design. Rigged with square sails it was the slowest vessel in each voyage of exploration carrying the captain.
Both types of vessels also introduced stern mounted rudders hung
with gudgeons and pintles, [13]something
the Chinese had done some 80 years before. This gave the ships much more
control over the traditional side rudder or steering oar characteristic of Mediterranean
ships.
Navigation techniques also benefitted of new technologies, the astrolabe.[14]
Probably adapted from a land-based version, the astrolabe
enabled the navigator to accurately measure the altitude of the sun at its meridian
passage at local noon and also measure the altitude of stars. Therefore, the
ships latitude could be determined with some accuracy whilst the measurement of
longitude remained a mystery and was determined by estimates of daily distance
travelled, “dead reckoning”. This affected the navigator’s ability to fix the
east/west position of land accurately and resulted in distorted maps of the
world. Additionally, these voyages were unable to take account of the curvature
of the earth, and the resulting maps were represented as planar maps, a further
distortion.
However, after a 34-year period of exploration a new map of
the world appeared in 1542, the Battista Agnese map.[15]
Incomplete in many ways and misshapen in parts, it was the
first global map founded on maritime exploration.
It was the beginning of a new era in plotting the oceans and
producing charts in a more systematic manner.
References
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Dias | Biography, Voyage, Significance, Accomplishments, Areas Explored, Death,
& Facts | Britannica’. 14 May 2026.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bartolomeu-Dias.
Blake, John. The Sea Chart: The Illustrated History
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2026. https://www.maphistory.info/PortolanOriginsMENU.html.
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[4]
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[7]
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[8]
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[9]
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[10]
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Dias | Biography, Voyage, Significance, Accomplishments, Areas Explored, Death,
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https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bartolomeu-Dias.
[11]
‘Treaty of
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[12]
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[13]
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[14]
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[15]
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