Although he was called Prince Henry the Navigator by the English, Prince Henry never sailed on any of the voyages of discovery he paid for. Instead, Prince Henry started a school for the study of the arts of navigation, mapmaking, and shipbuilding. This way ball of his sailors would have a better knowledge of sailing and the coarse to Africa could be safer and easier.
Despite the knowledge shared at his school for sailors, Prince Henry had a great deal of difficulty persuading his captains to sail beyond Cape Bojodor off the west coast of Africa. According to legend, beyond this point in an area known as the "Green Sea of Darkness," the sun was so close to the Earth that a person’s skin would burn black, the sea boiled, ships caught on fire, and monsters hid waiting to smash the ships and eat the sailors most sailors became uneasy when thinking of the dangers. It took fourteen voyages over a period of 12 years until a ship finally reached the equator.
During the two-year period from 1444 to 1446, Prince Henry made this trip a little more fun the , sending between 30 and 40 of his ships on missions. The last voyage sponsored by Prince Henry sailed over 1,500 miles down the African coast.
Although he never sailed on the expeditions, the voyages that he paid for in the mid-1400s helped launch Portugal into the front of the race to find a sea route to the Indies.
http://www.thornr.demon.co.uk/kchrist/phenry.html
Prince Henry the navigator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_the_Navigator By AntiSpamBotenator
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://cache.eb.com/eb/image%3Fid%3D1194%26rendTypeId%3D4&imgrefurl=http://www.britannica.com/eb/art/print%3Fid%3D11537%26articleTypeId%3D45&h=450&w=316&sz=24&hl=en&start=11&um=1&tbnid=dFk-JcZusqY9tM:&tbnh=127&tbnw=89&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dprince%2Bhenry%2Bthe%2Bnavigator%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26sa%3DN
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.