Final maritime ventures of Henry the Navigator

After Alfarrobeira, Henry spent most of his time at Sagres, his castle in the far south of Portugal. He was accorded by the king the sole right to send ships to visit and trade with the Guinea coast of Africa. He appeared occasionally at the Lisbon court and in 1450 helped arrange for the marriage of the king’s sister to the emperor Frederick III. During most of his last decade, Henry concentrated on the sponsorship of voyages. These accomplished only minor discoveries, as the prince now seemed mainly interested in exploiting enslaved Africans and from 1452 the sugar of Madeira—in the regions already contacted. The last two important mariners sent out by Henry were the Venetian explorer Alvise Ca’ da Mosto and the Portuguese Diogo Gomes, who between them discovered several of the Cape Verde Islands.

Afonso V had small interest in discovery but great zeal for Crusading and knight-errantry. Resuming the old attempt at Moroccan conquest, he led an expedition in 1458 against Alcácer Ceguer (now Ksar es-Seghir), in which Henry accompanied him. The prince, now 64, did well in the fighting, and, when the town capitulated, Afonso left the surrender terms to his uncle, who showed remarkable leniency. Henry lived for two years after his return from Alcácer Ceguer.

Legacy

The farthest point south that was reached during Henry’s lifetime was probably present-day Sierra Leone; after his death, the pace of progress in Portuguese exploration accelerated markedly, suggesting that the prince’s reputation as a patron of explorers has been exaggerated. Although the colonization of Madeira proved, at least for a while, to be a brilliant success, most of his enterprises failed. The Canary Islands, the focus of his most unremitting obsessions, eventually fell to Spain, and Portugal did not succeed in garnering much of the African gold trade until more than 20 years after the prince’s death. His desire to convert the peoples of the Canary Islands and West Africa to Christianity was often voiced but was largely unsupported by action. Nor is Henry’s traditional reputation as a champion of the advancement of science supported by any genuine evidence. His sponsorship of the trade in enslaved West Africans, moreover, began an enterprise that culminated decades later in the transatlantic slave trade, in which some 10 to 12 million enslaved Africans were transported to the Americas for forced labour. He did, however, commission chronicles by Zurara that presented a heroic image of himself—an image that persisted into the 21st century. His long-term importance thus has been as a legendary figure of the early stages of European exploration and discovery, as well as an exemplar of Portuguese nationalism.