Expeditions To Africa
In August, 1454 at the age of 22, Alvise and his brother Antonio embarked on a Venetian merchant galley, captained by Marco Zen, destined for Flanders. On the outward journey, the galley was detained by bad weather near Cape St. Vincent, Portugal. While waiting for the weather to improve, the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator, who had his seat nearby at Sagres, dispatched a couple of his commercial agents, led by his secretary Antão Gonçalves and the local Venetian consul Patrizio di Conti, to interest the stranded Venetian merchants into opening trade contracts for sugar and other goods from the prince's Madeira island. Informed by the visitors of Henry's recent discoveries in Africa, Cadamosto "inflamed with the desire of visiting these newly discovered regions" immediately applied to Prince Henry at his residence at Raposeira to undertake an expedition on his behalf. Henry hired him on the spot.
(Note: the 16th C. Portuguese chronicler Damião de Góis, uniquely among historians, mistakenly asserted that Cadamosto's encounter took place in 1444 rather that 1454. Given the eminence of Góis, this erroneous dating has been cited by others, and has been a cause of much confusion for later histories and chronologies.)
Read more about this topic: Alvise Cadamosto
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