It is amazing how often historians and scholars insist on getting it wrong when dealing with taking a route around Africa and heading up the Atlantic coast for a sailing ship in 600 BC. The history of the Portuguese, the first to round that cape of South Africa in the late 15th century, and open up a route from Portugal to India, is much longer and far more difficult and dangerous than we read in history books or were taught by teachers and professors, or see in brief articles on the internet.
In order to understand this sea route, we need to understand the history and value of the trade network involved. First of all, the Portuguese were after spices from their trade network, but the spices were very expensive and were inconvenient, time-consuming and dangerous to obtain for they had to travel overland from Europe to India and back. At the time, Portugal and other European nations already had long-established trade ties to the Arabs of Asia, but the arduous overland route had been closed in the 1450s due to the Ottoman Empire’s conquest of the remnants of the Byzantine Empire.
Portugal’s King João II, known as King John II, and his predecessors had obtained navigational intelligence, including a 1460 map from Venice that showed the Indian Ocean on the other side of Africa. As a result, King John II, painstakingly worked out a maritime route around Africa and intended for Stephen da Gama, of a noble family, to head the armada.
However, by the time the plan was implemented, both King John and Stephen da Gama had died. King John’s successor, King Manuel, chose Stephen da Gama’s son, Vasco da Gama, as the leader of the expedition. They were to explore the coast of Africa to see if India was navigable via around the cape, and through the Indian Ocean.
Bartolomeu Dias was appointed by King John in October 1486, a Portuguese mariner and explorer, he was probably in his mid to late thirties. He was appointed to head an expedition to sail around the southern tip of Africa, and helped in the construction of the Sao Gabriel and its sister ship, the Sao Rafael that were used by Vasco da Gama who later sailed past the Cape of Good Hope and continued on toward India.
Prior to this time, many Portuguese mariners had tried to reach the Cape and failed, either from turning back, believing the plan was impossible because of encountering difficult waters, or because of shipwreck and never returning.
This area around the African Cape, called the “Graveyard of Ships,” is the final resting place of 3,000 sailing ships that were sunk attempting to round the tip of Africa, as well as more modern shipwrecks that have been victims of the extensive, terrible storms, violent, turbulent waters and notoriously treacherous gale force winds. The coast around the Cape is rugged and rocky though spectacularly beautiful—although the mariners wrecked there probably did not see that beauty.
The waters at times may look calm, but don’t be fooled; this is one of the world’s most dangerous coastal stretches for ships—as indicated by the broken relics that litter the shoreline or lie beneath the waves. Dating back to early Portuguese sailing, numerous wrecks from storms and rough waters have contributed to the thousands of sunken ships lying on the bottom. Thus the “Graveyard of ships” is an apt name for the the Cape of Good Hope for this coastal line is marred by so many sunken ships and the many that went to the bottom of the sea.
In August 1487, Bartholemeu Dias’ trio of ships departed from the port of Lisbon, Portugal. Dias followed the route of 15th-century Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão, who was one of the most notable navigators of the Age of Discovery and sailed along the West Coast of Africa and reached Cape Cross 1110 miles north of the African cape.. Sailing along the west coast, he discovered and explored the Congo River inland, as well as the coasts of present-day Angola and Namibia.
The first sighting of the Cape by Dias occurred in 1488, when he became the first mariner to reach the cape he called the Cape of Storms, believing it to be the tip of Africa. Though he was the first Portuguese to reach that cape, he could press no further toward India because of the fierce storms that drove his fleet far to the south. It was here that he made his way to open waters away from the coast and sailed there for several days. Having lost sight of land, he unknowingly picked up the Southern Ocean and was blown eastward for several days, fearful of his ships being dashed on the notoriously rocky shoreline.
It was a risky decision, but it worked. He finally turned northward and the crew spotted landfall on February 3, 1488, about 300 miles east of present-day Cape of Good Hope—it was a bay they called São Bras (present-day Mossel Bay) and the much warmer waters of the Indian Ocean. While in the Southern Ocean, he had passed Africa’s southern tip without knowing it.
Dias continued sailing on and reached the farthest point of his journey when they landed at Algoa Bay in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, 425 miles east of the Cape of Good Hope. They erected a large stone cross and claimed the land for Portugal, and Dias, though determined to make his way to India, was pressed by his tired crew who were running low on supplies and refused to go farther, to turn around and head for home. Dias had no choice but to head back for Portugal.
On the journey back, Dias observed the southernmost point of Africa, later called Cabo das Agulhas, or Cape of Needles. It was on this return, that he was met once again with tempestuous storms and strong Atlantic-Antarctic currents that made ship travel so perilous. He encountered turbulent waters and his ship was almost wrecked on the waters that he named the area “Cape of Storms” (Cabo das Tormentas).
However, this point reached by Dias, was not the southernmost tip of Africa—in fact, it’s Cape Agulhas, which is 96 miles southeast of the Cape of Good Hope. In any event, it was a few years later, in 1497, that Vasco da Gama sailed out of Lisbon and into the history books as the first European ever to travel by sea to India.
The Cape of Storms was later renamed, by King John II of Portugal, the Cape of Good Hope because of the great optimism engendered by the opening of a sea route to India and the East. A major maritime victory for Portugal, Dias’ breakthrough and da Gama’s success opened the door to increased trade with India and other Asian powers. It also prompted Genoan explorer Christopher Columbus, then living in Portugal, to seek a new royal patron for a mission to establish his own sea route to the Far East.
Following this voyage, king Manuel I ordered Dias to serve as a shipbuilding consultant for the expedition of Vasco da Gama, sailing with da Gama’s expedition. His ships reached their goal of India in May 1498, nearly a decade after Dias’ historic trip around the tip of Africa. Afterward, Manuel sent out a massive fleet to India under Pedro Álvares Cabral, and Dias captained four of the ships. They reached Brazil in March 1500, then headed across the Atlantic toward South Africa and, further ahead, the Indian subcontinent. At the feared Cabo das Tormentas, severe storms struck the fleet of 13 ships. Four of the ships were wrecked, including Dias’vessel, with Dias and all the crew lost at sea on May 29, 1500, off the Cape of Good Hope.
There can be no question that the experience of ancient mariners around the southern tip of Africa, sailing in either direction, has been fraught with extreme dangers, turbulent winds, and tempestuous storms. The 3,000 ships that have been wrecked and sunk rounding this Cape of Good Hope is legend, and before steam powered ships, one so dangerous early mariners were reluctant to sail those waters.
In fact, the waters near the Cape, where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet, can be treacherous for ships. The warm Agulhas current from the east runs into the cold Benguela current from the northwest, creating dangerous waves that have caused many shipwrecks. This makes the Cape of Agulhas on the coast of South Africa, just east of the Cape of Good Hope, along which the Agulhas Current flows, the most dangerous waters in the world to sail, and form a natural boundary.
Thus the division of waters here is not an arbitrary borderline between ocean currents, but one that represents the natural flow of these waters, where the cold water Benguela current of the Atlantic Ocean meets the warm-water Agulhas current of the Indian Ocean and turns back on itself in what is called retroflection, against a counter-current in a recirculation region along with Agulhas Rings, and flows back into the Indian Ocean, causing extremely turbulent waters.
It would seem strange that the Lord would send Lehi into that cauldron of waters with not a single bit of experience in his crew at sailing whatsoever, when other, less dangerous routes were available. In fact, it would be most foolish thing in the world for a non-mariner to have attempted in a wooden ship with fixed sails “driven forth before the wind.” No amount of instruction can compensate for experience in the face of immediate threat and extreme danger as would be encountered along this route.
Excellent reasoning, good work. We have heard some of this before but you have really done the homework for us this time.
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