Bartolome Diaz

Bartolomé Díaz (in Portuguese, Bartolomeu Dias (IPA: baɾ.tu.lu.'mew 'di.ɐʃ), (ca. 1450 - near the Cape of Good Hope, 29 May 1500) was a Portuguese navigator known for being the first European explorer to round the southern tip of Africa in early 1488, reaching the Indian Ocean from the Atlantic, one of the most important events in the history of sailing.

Bartolomé Díaz was the first navigator to travel far from the coast in the South Atlantic. His voyage, continued by Vasco da Gama a decade later (1497-1499), contributed to the discovery of the sea route to India.

Biography

About his family, it is only known that a relative, Dinis Dias e Fernandes, in the 1340s would have led and accompanied some maritime expeditions along the coasts of North Africa, having visited the Cape Verde Islands. It is known that he had a Jewish background, although his ancestors are not known, but the weapons and favors that were granted to him were passed on to his descendants. His brother was Diogo Dias. Some say that he was a descendant of Dinis Dias, squire of D. João I, who as a navigator discovered the Cape Verde peninsula in 1445.

In his youth he would have attended his mathematics and astronomy classes at the University of Lisbon and would have served in the fortress of São Jorge de la Mina, in the Gulf of Guinea. He had knowledge of navigation both to determine the coordinates of a place and to face storms and calms, like the usual ones in the Gulf of Guinea.

In 1481 he accompanied the navigator Diogo de Azambuja on an expedition to the Gold Coast. Shortly thereafter he was made a knight of the Court, superintendent of the royal department stores and master sailor of the warship São Cristóvão.

Journey to South Africa

In 1486, King John II entrusted him with the command of a small fleet to tour Africa to the south, with the public purpose of learning news about the mythical Christian kingdom of Prester John, with whom the king wished to establish friendly relations and had sent that same year, by land and on a secret mission, Pêro da Covilhã and João Afonso da Aveiro. The unstated purpose of the expedition was to investigate the true extent of the southern African coasts, to assess the possibility of a sea route to India. After he had died, he gave the testimony to his sons. It took Díaz ten months to prepare the expedition and he left Lisbon at the end of July or beginning of August 1487, with two 50-ton armed caravels and a ship of provisions. On this trip he would be accompanied by Pêro de Alenquer, as pilot of the flagship, São Cristóvão, who recounted Vasco da Gama's first voyage; João Infante, in command of the caravel S. Pantaleão, which was piloted by Álvaro Martins; and Pêro Dias, Bartolomé's brother, commanding the supply ship, with João de Santiago as pilot. João Grego also participated in the expedition and was accompanied by two black men and four black women, captured by Diogo Cão on the West African coast, who would serve as interpreters to explain the objective of the expedition to the natives. Well fed and clothed, they would be released on the eastern coast to testify to the local populations of those areas of the goodness and greatness of the Portuguese, while gathering information about the reign of Prester John.

The expedition sailed south along the west coast of Africa, first sailing to the mouth of the Congo River, discovered in 1486 by Diogo Cão and Martin Behaim. They provisioned themselves in the Portuguese fortress of San Jorge de la Mina, on the Gold Coast (currently Elmina, see map). From there they toured the African coast of Angola and then Díaz arrived on December 8 at the gulf of Santa Maria da Conceição (Walvis Bay, in present-day Namibia), the southernmost point mapped by the expedition by Diogo Cao. At the end of December 1487 they reached a place near the mouth of the Orange River and erected a stone padrão and called the place Angra dos Voltas. Continuing south, they first discovered Angra dos Ilhéus and towards Port Nolloth, northwest of present-day South Africa, they moved away from the coast and were swept away by a violent storm during the month of January 1488, passing by to the south the cape that it is currently called the Cape of Good Hope, without actually seeing it. Thirteen days later, taking advantage of the winds from Antarctica that blow strongly in the South Atlantic, they sailed northeast, rediscovering the coast, which already had an east-west and north orientation (already east of the Cape of Good Hope) and They continued east, mapping various bays along the coast of present-day South Africa (useful in the future as natural harbours). They arrived at Aguada de São Brás (Bay of San Blas) (today Mosselbaai, Mossel Bay) on February 3, 1488, which they named bahia dos Vaqueiros ( Vaqueros Bay). They followed the coast to the east and reached Algoa Bay (700 km east of the Cape of Good Hope) and then reached the Groot-Visrivier River (or Fish River) which they named Infante River, in honor to João Infante, commander of the second caravel. Díaz's expedition reached its furthest point in the Indian Ocean on March 12, 1488, when they anchored at Kwaaihoek, near the mouth of the Bushman River, where a padrão—the Padrão de São Gregorio—was built. Díaz wanted to continue sailing to India, but was forced to turn back when his crew refused to go further, due to lack of provisions and the ships being badly damaged by the storm. The revolting crew forced the captain to return to Portugal Following the coastline to the west. On the way back, always within sight of the coast, they discovered Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of the continent, and cabo das Tormentas ("Cape of Storms"), now Cape of Good Hope, because it was the place where the storm occurred and which they had circumvented by high seas on the outward voyage. On this return trip, he placed patrões of stone at the main discovered points: the current False Island (False Island), the tip of Cape Storms, then discovered, and in Cabo da Volta, now Punta Díaz.

In December 1488, after making several stops on the west African coast, including again in San Jorge de la Mina, they arrived in Lisbon after 16 months and 17 days of travel. King João renamed the cape cabo da Boa Esperança (Cape of Good Hope), because it was the place where a route to the east was opened to reach India to buy both spices and other articles of luxury. At that time, to get to India, it was necessary to cross the Mediterranean Sea through Genoa and Venice, which were great commercial centers thanks to the Renaissance, only now they were dominated by the Turks. After crossing the Atlantic, called The Dark Sea, since he believed that there were monsters in it that devoured boats and managed to go around Africa, a possible path to India was opened. That discovery of the passage through Africa was significant because, for the first time, Europeans could trade directly with India and other parts of Asia, bypassing the overland route through the Middle East, with its expensive intermediaries. The official report of the expedition has been lost.

Case and death

Statue of Bartolomé Díaz in Cape Town.

After these first attempts, the Portuguese took a decade-long break from exploring the Indian Ocean. During that recess, it is likely that they received valuable information from the secret expedition of Pêro da Covilhã, which had reached India and sent useful reports to navigators. Díaz's career as a navigator was in decline because the king had taken in consideration of other Portuguese navigators to lead the large-scale expedition that should reach the Indies after skirting southern Africa to the east.

Díaz participated as a subordinate in Vasco da Gama's voyage to India which began to be prepared in 1497. He supervised the construction of the ships São Gabriel and its sister ship, the San Rafael, and accompanied Vasco da Gama's fleet in 1499, as captain of a ship bound for São Jorge da Mina, accompanying him as a guide on the first leg of the trip to the Cape Verde Islands. On that trip, Vasco da Gama would manage to reach Calicut, in India, skirting the southern tip of Africa again in 1498.

Díaz was also one of the captains, and main navigator, of the second Portuguese expedition to India, headed by Pedro Álvares Cabral (the letter from Pero Vaz de Caminha makes several references to him, pointing out the confidence that the captain-major). This flotilla first reached the coast of Brazil, taking possession of it in 1500. After touring the far east of the country in April, the fleet sailed east for India. On May 29, when the expedition reached the shores of the Cape of Good Hope, a powerful storm occurred that caused the sinking of four of his ships, including Diaz's own, perishing him and all his men. Ironically, the brave sailor met his death near his most famous discovery, the Cape of Good Hope, which he had prophetically named Cape of Storms

A shipwreck found in 2008 by the Namdeb Diamond Corporation of Namibia was initially thought to be the remains of Díaz's ship, although the coins recovered were from a later era.<ref>«Destroços descobertos no Atlântico sul devem ser de barco português». May 4, 2008. Archived from the original on February 28, 2009. Accessed May 4, 2008.

Descendants

Bartolomé Díaz was married and had eight children:

• Simão Dias de Novais, who died without descendants;
• António Dias de Novais, a gentleman of the Order of Christ, (although his relative, for the last name of Novais was transmitted through his brother of breeding)
• Joana Fernández, daughter of Fernão Pires and wife Guiomar Montês (and sister of Brites Fernandes and Fernão Pires, married to Inês Nogueira, daughter of Jorge Nogueira and his wife, and who had descendants), and both had children.

Díaz's grandson, Paulo Dias de Novais, was a Portuguese colonizer of Africa in the 16th century.

A granddaughter of Díaz, Guiomar de Novais, married twice, being the second wife of Dom Rodrigo de Castro, son of Dom Nuno de Castro and his wife Joana da Silveira, with whom he had Doña Paula de Novais and Doña Violante de Castro, both dead single and without issue, and Pedro Correia da Silva, natural son of Cristóvão Correia da Silva, without issue.

Her legacy

The discovery made by Bartolomé Díaz marked the end of the project that Prince Henry the Navigator had established in the 1410s to find the southern tip of Africa and look for an alternative route to the Indies there, to establish a maritime route between Europe and Asia that would be safer than crossing the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East, which were off-limits to the Ottomans in the second half of the century XV. Indeed, his trip helped lay the foundations for establishing the Portuguese Empire at the beginning of the XVI century, which would give rise to to an increase in trade in Africa and Asia with Portugal.

Acknowledgments

The Portuguese poet Luís de Camões posthumously dedicated song V of his epic Os Lusíadas (1572) to the navigator.

In the city of Mosselbaai, South Africa, the Dias Museum Complex marks the historic landing site of Bartolomeu Dias. Also the Dias Cross Memorial in Alexandria, near the mouth of the Bushman River, the place where Dias erected a cross or padrão on March 12, 1488, is a heritage site Provincial heritage site (Provincial heritage site), in the Eastern Cape Province. A replica of the cross has been erected on the same exposed spot.