Voyages of Henry the Navigator

Prince Henry of Portugal sponsored voyages that settled Madeira and the Azores and pushed exploration south along the West African coast.

Henry sponsored the discovery and settlement of Madeira in 1418–1419 and the Azores around 1427. In 1434 Gil Eanes passed Cape Bojador, long thought to be the point of no return, and in the 1440s Portuguese ships reached Cape Verde and the Guinea coast. The Portuguese used caravels that could beat against the wind and accumulated charts of the coast. From the 1440s they also began seizing Africans and shipping them home as slaves. The story that Henry founded a "school of navigation" at Sagres is widely regarded as a later legend.