Henry the Navigator

Timeline

1. 1394–1420Porto · Northern PortugalPrince Henry was born in Porto on 4 March 1394, the third son of King John I of England and Philippa of Lancaster. In 1415 he took part in the capture of Ceuta in North Africa, first coming into contact with information about African trade routes, which awakened his ambition to explore the West African coast. In 1420 he was appointed Grand Master of the Order of Christ, gaining a steady source of funding for exploration.
2. 1420–1451Sagres · Southern PortugalHenry established a base at Sagres, the southernmost point of Portugal, gathering navigators, cartographers, astronomers, and Arab scholars to systematically study the geography of the African coast. With his sponsorship, Gil Eanes rounded Cape Bojador in 1434, breaking a psychological barrier that had held Europeans back for a century; thereafter expeditions pushed south year by year, reaching the mouth of the Senegal River (c. 1444) and beginning to bring back gold and slaves, making exploration commercially sustainable.
3. 1451–1460Sagres · Southern PortugalIn the 1450s Henry continued sending fleets deep into the Gulf of Guinea, with Diogo Gomes and others exploring the Gambia River and the Cape Verde region. In 1455–1456 the Venetian Cadamosto and the Genoese Antontiotto, sponsored by Henry, produced the first detailed accounts of the Cape Verde Islands area. By 1460 Portuguese exploring ships had reached the coast of present-day Sierra Leone, a decisive geographic breakthrough for Henry's exploration program. Henry died of illness at Sagres on 13 November 1460, leaving behind decades of accumulated navigational data and maps that profoundly influenced the Age of Discovery in Portugal and all of Europe.