The Discovery of the Sea

The Discovery of the Sea "This On© YSYY-60U-YR3N The Discovery ofthe Sea J. H. PARRY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley • Los Angeles • London Copyrighted material University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles University of California Press, Ltd. London, England Copyright 1974, 1981 by J. H. Parry All rights reserved First California Edition 1981 Published by arrangement with The Dial Press ISBN 0-520-04236-0 cloth 0-520-04237-9 paper Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 81-51174 Printed in the United States of America 123456789 Copytightad material ^gSS3S38SSSSSSSSSS8SSgS8SSSSSS8SSSSSS©SSSSSSSSSSSSS8SSg CONTENTS PREFACE ix INTROn ilCTION : ONE S F A xi PART J: PRE PARATION I A RELIABLE SHIP 3 U FIND TNG THE WAY AT SEA 24 III THE OCEANS OF THE WORI.n TN ROOKS 42 ]Jl THE TIES OF TRADE 63 V THE STREET CORNER OF EUROPE 80 VI WEST AFRICA AND THE ISI ANDS 95 VII THE WAY TO INDIA 1 17 PART JJ: ACHJF.VKMKNT VIII TECHNICAL PROBL EMS AND SOMITTONS 1 39 IX THE INDIAN OCEAN C R O S S T N C. 164 X THE ATLANTIC C R O S S T N C 1 84 XJ A NEW WORT D? 20C) XII THE PACIFIC CROSSING AND THE WORI.n ENCOMPASSED 234 EPILOC.IJE 261 BIBLIOGRAPHIC AI. NOTE 26.^ INDEX 269 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1 An Arab bagMa from Oman, from a model in the Science Museum. 9 s World map, engraved, from Ptolemy, Geographic, Rome, 1478. 61 3 World map, woodcut, by Henricus Martellus, c. 1490, from Imularium^ in the British Museum. 135 4 Chart of the north Atlantic, Ms, by Pedro Reinel, c. 1504, in Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Miinchen, from Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica, Lis- bon, i960. 158 5 Reconstruction of the Toscanelli chart of c. 1474, from H. Wagner, "Die Re- " konstruktion del ToscanelHkarte . Nachrichten von derKmigLGesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen, 1894, No. 3. 189 6- 7 Approximate appearance of Columbus's ships: A lateen-rigged caravel, late 15th century, drawing by Bjdrn Landstrom, {rom The Ship, London, I g6 1. 196 A square-rigged caravel, late 15th century, drawing by Bjorn Landstrom, from The Ship. 197 8 Chart of the Adantic, Ms, by Vesconte Maggiolo, 151 1, in the John Carter Brown Library, Providence. 228 9 "Orbis typus universaHs"; world map, woodcut, by M. WaldseemiiUer, from Ptolemy, G^ograpAia, Strasburg, 1513. 231 10 World chart, Ms, by Diogo Ribeiro, 1 529, in the Vatican; from Portugaliae MonutnerUa Cartographica. 254 Copy tig htsd material 88888SS88®88S@®®SS®S8888SS8SS888S8@88S@8888SS88SS8@8S@S PREFACE The purpose of this book is to narrate and explain the principal events of the "great age of discovery." In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Europeans gained access, in a series of tremendous voyages by sea, to great areas of the world formerly unknown to them, or if known, inaccessible: southern and eastern Africa, southern and eastern Asia, and the Americas. This is the aspect of discovery which has chiefly caught the attention of historians and of their readers. Beyond this, however, the voyages also revealed features of the globe formerly unknown, not only to Etuopeans, but to mankind as a whole. Of these, the most important was the luiity of the sea: the geographical fact that the salt seas of the world are connected; that all countries possessing sea coasts are mutually accessible by sea. In all the long experience of man there have been few discoveries more signihcant than this, and this is the theme of the present book. The original edition, published by the Dial Press in 1974, was a big volume, illustrated by many reproductions of contemporary maps, and pictures of ships and places. It was correspondingly expensive and is now out of print. The purpose of this edition is to offer the text in a more modest form, less lavishly illustrated, in the hope that it may be of use to students both of geographical discovery and of maritime history in general. The text has been extensively revised, to include the findings of recent research and re-interpretation. My thanks are due to many friends and colleagues who made suggestions for improving the original text, in particular the late Samuel Eliot Morison and Phoebe de Kay Wil- son. I would wish also to thank the Director and Editors of the Univer- sity of California Press, not only for their willingness to undertake this edition, but for their patience in accepting repeated changes of text and changes of mind. Harvard University J- H. Parry 29 July 1981 ix Copytightad maleiial — INTRODUCTION: ONE SEA All the seas of the world are one. With a few insignificant ex- ceptions— salt lakes rather than seas—they are all connected one with another. All seas, except in the areas of circumpolar ice, are navigable. A reliable ship, competently manned, adequately stored, and equipped with means of finding the way, can in time reach any country in the world which has a sea coast, and can return whence it came. These bare facts have become so familiar, so essential in the conduct of an interlock- ing world society, that they are usually taken for granted; yet their accept- ance, in the long record of human experience, is comparatively recent. Knowledge of continuous sea passages from ocean to ocean round the world — established knowledge, not geographical hypothesis—was the outcome of the century or so of European maritime questing which, in European history books, is generally described as the Great Age of Dis- covery. Until the last quarter of the fifteenth century most of these passages were unknown to Europeans, and some were absolutely unknown unknown to anyone. The only major connecting passages known and regularly used by European shipping were the straits which join the Mediterranean and the Baltic with the North Atlantic, and the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. No ship had penetrated the Caribbean, the Mediterranean of the Americas. On the opposite side of the world, Chi- nese, Malay and probably Arab navigators were familiar with the long tortuous passages, threading between the islands, which connected the Bay of Bengal with the China Sea, and so, more remotely, the Indian Ocean with the Pacific; but none of them, so far as we know, had ven- tured far into the Pacific. That was a maritime world of its own; to Euro- peans, its very existence as a separate ocean was unknown, and so was the great continental barrier of the Americas which divides it from the Atlantic. Both European and Arab seafarers were well aware, of course, of the separation between the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, and of the other great barrier of Africa, between them; but no one knew how far the barrier extended or whether it had an end. According to some respected authorities, the Indian Ocean was a landlocked sea. The South Atlantic was wholly unexplored; no seagoing ship, so far as surviving ev- xi introduction: one sea idence reveals, had ever entered its waters, much less crossed it, or sailed from it to the Pacific or the Indian Ocean. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries all these feats were accomplished. Ini5i9-22a ship actually sailed round the world. The Great Age of Discovery was essen- tially the age of the discovery of the sea. The discovery of the sea, in the sense of the discovery of continuous sea passages from ocean to ocean, was a European, specifically an Iberian achievement. This is not to suggest, in Portugal, Spain or any part of fifteenth-century Europe, a deliberate, conscious program of maritime exploration for its own sake. Discovery as an end in itself, exploration in intellectual pursuit of geographical knowledge, or in romantic pursuit of unusual adventure, is characteristic of a safer, richer, more comfortable society than that of fifteenth-century Europe. In such a society, the exploration of wild places may even be a form of social display. In Europe it enjoyed its greatest vogue in the nineteenth century, against a back- ground of established prosperity, security and ennui. One cannot imag- ine fifteenth-century explorers searching for the North Pole. They were practical men, like the rulers and investors who sent them out, and their purposes were practical—principally, to establish contact with specific countries outside Europe, countries known to exist and believed to be of sophisticated culture and commercial importance, countries whose in- habitants could supplv valuable merchandise, and whose rulers might be approached for political alliance and support. Exploration might reveal other prizes, of course— unexploited fisheries and fertile islands where fiefs and farms might be had for the seizing. Even islands, however, were best if they were inhabited, preferably by docile and industrious people. An empty wilderness had few attractions for fifteenth-century Euro- peans. For the most part, the explorers sought not new lands, but new routes to old lands. Initially, the process was slow and tentative. Through- out most of the fifteenth century it was confined to the eastern Atlantic. Only in the last quarter of the century did Iberian seamen and Iberian governments consider the practical possibility of sailing beyond the eastern Atlantic, and making other oceans their highway to India, the Spice Islands and Cathay. The originality and the significance of the fifteenth-century voyages, then, consisted not so much in revealing the uninhabited and the unknown, as in linking, by usable maritime routes, separate areas of the inhabited and the known. Vasco da Gama's famous voyage is the classic example: his destination, Calicut on the Malabar coast of India, was known to Europeans by report; the shape of the Indian peninsula, and its geographical relation to Europe, Africa, and the Asian land mass, were also roughly known; and anyone familiar with Mediterranean trade • * Xll Copynghtad material introduction: one sea knew that pepper, the product of India, was carried in Arab ships across the Arabian Sea.

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