Bartolomeu Dias

Now known as a Mount Everest-like feat in ocean sailing, the Cape of Good Hope constitutes the southernmost terminus of the African continent, and the dividing line between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, which was first traversed by Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias in 1488, although Greek historian Herodotus chronicled a three-year journey by Phoenician sailors, sometime around 590 B.C., with claims of a successful passage around some of the fiercest winds, currents and waves that routinely threaten sailors who challenge what is known known as Good Hope.

Little Known Early Years

Little is known about Dias prior to his historic voyage, until King John the 2nd of Portugal handed him command of an expedition in search of a sea route to India, after the collapse of land trade routes to Asia following the Ottoman Empire’s 1453 conquest of the Byzantine Empire. Having already dispatched overland explorers into southern Africa, King John the 2nd provisioned Dias with three ships for his

Stations Ship in Angola

expedition, and when Dias reached the coast of modern-day Angola, he left a supply ship at port before venturing farther south into the treacherous seas routinely encountered in the coastal waters off Good Hope. Blown badly off course by a storm, Dias employed navigational intelligence from a 1460 voyage into the Indian Ocean, which allowed him to navigate safely around the Cape of Good Hope, before returning to Lisbon under a hero’s welcome.

Disappointed King

While King John the 2nd was privately disappointed at Dias’ failure to meet up with his overland explorers, his successor to the thrown, King Manuel the 1st, ordered Dias to serve as a shipbuilding consultant for two planned expeditions by Vasco da Gama, who later reached India via the Cape of Good Hope—a decade after Dias’ historic voyage. Later captaining a number of ships on a voyage led by Pedro Álvares Cabral, on May 29th, 1500, Dias passed away after four of Cabral’s thirteen ships wrecked at the Cape of Good Hope, making Bartolomeu Dias, a pioneering stepping stone during the Age of Exploration.