The Portuguese worked systematically to open a sailing route to the spices, silk and riches of Asia, bypassing the Middle East, where the local merchants held a tight grip on Oriental goods and made good profit margins. That region had become part of the Ottoman Empire since the 1300s, and finally defeated and conquered the Eastern Roman Empire in 1453 when the Turks took Constantinople, renaming it Istanbul.
The Portuguese had been looking for a route to Asia around Africa and had developed their navigation skills since the early 1400s. They had begun by advancing into the Atlantic, discovering Madeira Island (1419) and the Azores Islands (1427). The Canary Islands were known to the Europeans, and Castille had taken them starting in the early 1400s. The Portuguese made their way along the African Coast, discovering the Cape Verde Islands (1450s), the Gulf of Guinea and Santo Tomé and Principe Islands (1470), and finally Cape of Good Hope (1488) in South Africa, and a route along the Eastern coast of Africa, and the Indian Ocean into India in 1498. Later they would extend their reach into South East Asia, what is now Indonesia and the Philippines, Taiwan, which they named Formosa, and Macao where they established a post, and held onto it until 1999.
The Discovery of Brazil
The official version is the following: An expedition led by Pedro Alvares de Cabral set off for India in the year 1500. Columbus had discovered America 8 years earlier (in 1492). After passing by the Canary Islands on March 14, 1500, they set sail towards Cabo Verde Islands which they reached on March 22. They crossed the Equator on April 9, 1500, and to avoid the Equatorial calms or "doldrums" (an are close to the Equator with lack of wind, or very light winds), they moved away from the African coast. The wind and the east-to-west South Equatorial Sea Current took them across the South Atlantic and on April 22 they saw seaweeds and the next day, they saw a mountain, Monte Pascoal (Easter Mountain) named so because it was discovered on Easter. They had "accidentally" reached the Brazilian coast, which "what a surprise" was also within the Portuguese sphere of influence, as determined by the Treaty of Tordesillas.
The use of oceanic currents to cross the seas was a technique developed by the Portuguese known as "Volta do mar" (around the sea) in the South Atlantic it was a counter clockwise circuit from the Gulf of Guinea westwards to Brazil (South Equatorial Current) south along the Brazilian coast pushed by the Brazilian Current and then to the southeast, towards the southern tip of Africa. They used it on their Portugal to Asia journeys. A similar route was used by sailors in the North Atlantic as there is a current rotating clockwise.
The cunning Portuguese diplomats had secured a Treaty (Tordesillas Treaty) with Castille and Aragon (Spain) in 1493, by which the Pope divided the world into two hemispheres, one would be Portuguese, the other Spanish. The meridian that divided the globe was set (as requested by Portugal) 370 leagues west of the Cabo Verde Islands. This is roughly 1785 km or 1110 mi. wests of these islands, and cuts right through the northeastern tip of Brazil. The Portuguese must have known back in 1493 that Brazil was there, and they wanted to secure their piece of the New World that had just been discovered by Columbus.
The antipodes of this meridian sliced across the eastern side of Papua New Guinea and Australia, and Japan and eastern Siberia. The Pope had excluded all other nations from the discovery and trade with Asia. The Dutch and French were not happy.
The Portuguese may have discovered South America by accident during one of their voyages along the coast of Africa between 1450 and 1490. They then found the currents and winds that allowed them to return to Brazil, and developed the "Volta do Mar" technique. The Spaniards were unaware of Brazil's existence in 1493.
Later, Portugal managed to breakout from the constraints of the 370 leagues and expanded their foothold in Brazil into the fifth largest country in the world, spanning most of South America, a country with a surface area of 8.515.767 km2 - 3,287,956 sq. mi.
I prepared the following map. It showed the sea currents, I added the site of Cabral's landing in 1500, and the Tordesillas Treaty Meridian, with Spain to the West and Portugal to the East.
Americo Vespucio and Patagonia
Americo Vespucio, the man who gave America his name (and the first person to realize that Columbus had discovered a new continent), navigated across the Atlantic several times, on one occasion with Spanish ships to the Caribbean, and later with the Portuguese.
According to Pohl and Loeb (1), in one of these journeys, in May 1501 he left Portugal, and sailed along the coast of Brazil to the meridian of the Tordesillas Treaty at a spot named Cananea River (modern town of Cananea in the state of Sao Paulo roughly 25°S. See it in Google maps).
Continuing south along the coast in 1501 would mean that they were the first to explore the area, and that they would enter the Spanish sphere of influence. The expedition continued (this is disputed by some scholars) after Gonzalo Coelho the Portuguese commander resigned his post and Americo took over (as a Florentine citizen he was supposedly not affected by the Treaty).
The ships navigated not too close to the shores of South America and supposedly discovered the Rio de la Plata (River Plate) named River Jordan, then along the coast of Patagonia to Porto San Giuliano (very likely San Julián where Magellan wintered in 1519-20). Americo stated they reached 50°S, almost the latitude of the Strait of Magellan. The weather turned sour and the expedition returned to Lisbon persuaded that America was a continent that ran from north to south on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Vespucio wrote that he had sailed to a southern latitude of fifty degrees (source) and this is reasonable since he also stated that they had sailed 600 leagues south of Cabo Frías (close to Rio de Janeiro), this would take them right down to the Strait of Magellan.
For those interested in the Argentine and Patagonian part of Vespucio's journey see this El descubrimiento del río de la Plata y la Patagonia por Vespucio en 1502 - Pruebas y concordancias By Roberto Levillier. Argentina Austral, 1952, Vol. 24 No.256.
Could the Ancient seafaring nations of the Mediterranean have used the same route that Cabral or Vespucio used? The Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Romans didn't have ships as versatile as those used by the Iberian people like caravels, and lacked the compass and astrolabe used by the Spaniards and Portuguese. However, the Vikings managed to weather the choppy North Atlantic, and the Ancient navigators sailed around Africa, to "Thule" and traded with Britain and Gaul, so why should we have doubts about the navigating skills of the ancient Mediterranean people?
Sources.
(1) Americo Vespucio—Pioneer Celo-Navigator And Geographer. By Frederick J. Pohl and Captain Leonard B. Loeb, U. S. Naval Reserve (Ret.) April 1957 Proceedings Vol. 83/4/650.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©
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