Where did bartolomeu dias explorer biography template

Bartolomeu Dias, also spelt: Bartholomew Diaz. He was a Portuguese navigator whose discovery in of the Cape of Good Hope showed Europeans there was a feasible route to India around the storm-driven southern tip of Africa. He also discovered for Europe the south-east trade winds and the westerlies to the west and south of South Africa, thus establishing the wind system for those who sailed after him.

It is very unlikely that Dias was, in fact, the first mariner to round the Cape. Nevertheless, the voyage of Dias was fraught with consequences, for at the time the search for a passage to the Indies was a move in the great struggle between the Moslem world and Christendom. The epoch-making voyage of Dias not only opened up the sea route to the Indies; it paved the way for contact between Europe, Africa, and the East, greatly extending the Portuguese sphere of influence.

However, historians have reconstructed story from chronicles written in the sixteenth century, from near-contemporary maps, and from the stone pillars or padroes which the explorers raised on headlands along the African coast during their voyages, and from old rutters sailing instructions.

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The route-book of Duarte Pacheco Pereira has been particularly useful. Pereira wrote the Esmeraldo de Sito Orbis, in which he records his own adventures on the Guinea coast. He wrote from direct experience because Dias rescued him in on his return voyage after the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope. Dias's squadron of three ships departed from the River Tagus below Lisbon in August They were to be landed at various places on the coast to praise the greatness of the Portuguese and to explain to local chiefs that the Portuguese king wished to establish friendly relations and make contact with Prester John, the legendary Christian king of Ethiopia.