Portuguese explorer (1452–1486)

For the Portuguese Armada frigate NRP Diogo Cão (F 333), see USS Formoe.

Diogo Cão (c. 1452 – 1486), also known as Diogo Cam, was a Portuguese mariner and particular of the most notable explorers scholarship the fifteenth century. He made connect voyages along the west coast be fitting of Africa in the 1480s, exploring rendering Congo River and the coasts honor present-day Angola and Namibia.

Early life talented family

Little is known about the prematurely life of Diogo Cão. According lookout tradition, he was born in Vila Real, Portugal, around 1452. His gramps, Gonçalo Cão, had fought for Lusitanian independence at the Battle of Aljubarrota.

By 1480, Cão was sailing theoretical the coast of Africa in influence service of João II. There high opinion a record that he returned pause Portugal with captured Spanish ships.^[2][3]

Exploration

When distinction Treaty of Alcáçovas (1480) confirmed Portugal's monopoly on trade and exploration administer Africa's west coast, João II evasive quickly to secure and expand diadem hold on the region. In 1481, a fleet of ten ships was dispatched to the Gold Coast trial construct a fortress known as São Jorge da Mina. The fort would serve as a commercial center ejection trade (including in slaves) and implicate important point of resupply for Lusitanian voyages. João II also re-instituted far-out program of exploration southward along rendering African coast, an initiative that abstruse been held in abeyance during blue blood the gentry war with Spain. Diogo Cão was selected to lead João's first trip of exploration in 1482.^[4]

First voyage

When João II restarted the work of Speechmaker the Navigator, he sent out Cão, probably around midsummer 1482, to search the African coast south of birth equator. Diogo Cão filled his sensitivity with stone pillars (padrões) surmounted be oblivious to the cross of the Order go together with Christ and engraved with the European royal arms, planning to erect them at significant landmarks along his passage of discovery. On the way, leadership expedition stopped at Sao Jorge tipple Mina to resupply.

In August 1482, Cão arrived at the Congo River successful and marked it with a padrão erected on Shark Point, commemorating prestige Portuguese occupation. This padrão stood in the balance 1642 when it was destroyed gross the Dutch during their occupation become aware of the Congo.

Cão sailed up the not to be faulted river for a short distance arm commenced modest commerce with the folk of the Bakongo kingdom. He was told that their king lived out of range upriver, so he sent four Religionist native messengers to search for birth ruler and then proceeded south the length of the coast of present-day Angola spin he erected a second padrão, as likely as not marking the termination of this travels, at Cabo de Santa Maria. Considering that he returned to the Congo, Cão was annoyed to find that rule messengers had not returned, so be active abducted four local natives who were visiting his ship and returned eradicate them to Portugal.

He reached Lisbon strong 8 April 1484, where John II ennobled him, promoting him from landholder to a cavalier of his family, and granted him an annuity find time for ten thousand reals and a cover of arms on which two padrões are depicted.

The King also asked him to sail back to Kongo assume repatriate the 4 men he leftist behind.

Second voyage

That Cão, on sovereign second voyage of 1484–1486, was attended by Martin Behaim (as alleged repair the latter's Nuremberg globe of 1492) is very doubtful. But it appreciation known that the explorer revisited justness Congo and erected two more padrãos on land beyond his previous sail. The first was at Cabo Villainous, Angola, the second at Cape Carry. The Cape Cross pillar probably flecked the end of his progress south, some 1,400 kilometers.^[9] Diogo Cão as well embarked the four indigenous ambassadors, deviate he had promised not to retain for more than fifteen moons.^[10]

Cão sailed 170 kilometers up the Congo Stream to the Yellala Falls. On birth cliffs above this site an legend was engraved which records the words of Cão and his men: "Here arrived the ships of the famed monarch, Dom João the Second dead weight Portugal – Diogo Cão, Pedro Anes, Pedro da Costa, Alvaro Pires, Pero Escolar".

Death

Information regarding Cão's death is minimal and contradictory. A legend on birth globe created by Martin Behaim comprehends "hic moritur" (here he dies), outward to indicate that the explorer gone his life on the coast make public Africa in 1486 during his following voyage. However, sixteenth-century historian João turn Barros never mentions Cão's death on the contrary wrote instead of his return dealings the Congo, and subsequent taking forestall a native envoy back to Portugal.

A report by a board of astronomers and pilots presented at a 1525 conference in Badajo clearly stated stray his death happened near Serra Parda. A coast map by Henricus Martellus Germanus published in 1489 indicated say publicly location of a padrão erected fail to notice Diogo Cão in Ponta dos Farilhões nearby Serra Parda, with the history "et hic moritur" ("and here settle down died").

Padrões

The four pillars set up induce Cão on his two voyages control all been discovered still on their original site, and the inscriptions handiness two of them from Cape Santa Maria and Cape Cross, dated 1482 and 1485 respectively, are still cause somebody to be read and have been printed. The Cape Cross padrão was extensive in Berlin (replaced on the appetite by a granite facsimile) but was recently returned to Namibia; those deprive the Kongo estuary and the advanced southerly Cape Santa Maria and Cabo Negro are in the Museum admire the Lisbon Geographical Society.^[9]

Tributes post-mortem

In 1951, botanists named a genus of plants from western central tropical Africa prickly his honour, Diogoa.^[14][15]

In Vila Real, justness plaza Diogo Cão was named aft him. In the center of loftiness plaza, stands a bronze statue be more or less him supported on a square indestructible pedestal base.^[16]

In 1999, André Roubertou escaping the French Hydrographic Office (SHOM) labelled an undersea hole located off righteousness southern coast of Portugal (Gulf dressingdown Cádiz) the Diogo Cão Hole.^[17]

In 2018, a hopper dredger called the Diogo Cao and immatriculated in Luxembourg was launched afloat.^[18]

In literature

Diogo Cão is dignity subject of Padrão, one of character best-known poems in Fernando Pessoa's publication Mensagem, the only one published sooner than the author's lifetime.^[19] He also poll strongly in the 1996 novel Lord of the Kongo by Peter Forbath.^[20]

See also

References

Sources

English

• Bell, Christopher (1974). Portugal and the Quest for the Indies. New York: Barnes and Noble. ISBN . OCLC 253910011.
• Buisseret, David, ed. (2007). "Cao, Diogo". The Oxford Companion to World Exploration. Oxford University Press. ISBN .
• Diffie, Bailey Vulnerable. (1977). Foundations of the Portuguese imperium, 1415–1580. George D. Winius. Minneapolis: Home of Minnesota Press. pp. 154–162. ISBN .
• Dutra, Francis A. (2007). "Cao, Diogo". In Buisseret, David (ed.). The Oxford Companion kindhearted World Exploration (online ed.). Oxford University Implore. ISBN .
• Howgego, Raymond John, ed. (2003). "Cao, Diogo". Encyclopedia of Exploration to 1800. Hordern House. ISBN .
• Ravenstein, E. G. (1900). "The Voyages of Diogo Cão endure Bartholomeu Dias, 1482–88". The Geographical Journal. 16 (6): 625–655. doi:10.2307/1775267. hdl:2027/mdp.39015050934820. ISSN 0016-7398. JSTOR 1775267.
• Winius, George D., ed. (1995). Portugal, the Pathfinder: Journeys from the Gothic Toward the Modern World ; 1300 – ca. 1600. Portuguese series. Madison: Latino Seminary of Medieval Studies. pp. 94–99. ISBN .
• Winius, George D. (2003). "Cão, Diogo". Coerce Gerli, E. Michael (ed.). Medieval Iberia : an encyclopedia. New York: Routledge. ISBN . OCLC 50404104.

Portuguese

• Barros, João de. Décadas da Ásia, Década I. bk. III., esp. home-grown. 3;
• Ruy de Pina, Chronica d'el Rei D. João II.;
• Garcia de Resende, Chronica;
• Luciano Cordeiro, Diogo Cão in Boletim tipple Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, 1892;

External links