Question on Portuguese South Atlantic sea routes in the 1500s and 1600s?

raharris1973

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Folks on the board treat it as pretty much inevitable that any European power sailing south around Africa would accidentally bump into Brazil because the best winds to go around the Cape of Good Hope are available in the the southwestern Atlantic. This wind catching maneuver is called the "Volta Do Mar".

However, does practice between the 1500s and 1700s really bear this out-

Did a majority of Portuguese voyages aiming for the Indian Ocean go along the coastal route ou thor Volta Do Mar?

How many of them involved *deliberate* reprovisioning stops in Brazil while heading round Africa?

Were there many unintended accidental Portuguese landings in Brazil after Cabral's over the next century, few or none?

If Portuguese mariners routinely used to Volta do Mar while getting to India, omitted deliberate stops in Brazil from their itinteraries, and if Portuguese ships intended for India hardly ever [let's measure it and say no more than one or two times a century) got forced to bail out around Brazil, then it is hard to say accidental discovery of Brazil was inevitable in the early 1500s.

However if trips bound for India in the 1500s and 1600s involved frequent (frequent would mean like once a decade or more) unplanned landings in Brazil, due to storms etc., it suggests the Brazilian hump was not only not missed, it was "hard to miss" and an early 1500s European encounter with Brazil was inevitable, regardless of whether the Spanish go to the Caribbean.

---Also, why in virtually all threads based on the PoD of no Columbus voyage, why do people assert that John Cabot's voyage from Bristol to Newfoundland was going to happen on schedule in 1497 regardless?

I mean, think of it this way: Henry VII could not be bothered to send further expeditions to North America after the Cabot voyage turned up nothing too exciting. He does not seem to have been an extravagant speculator. Don't you think the only reason Henry was willing to take a risk on Cabot's plan was that Colombus had undisputably found *something* already in that westward direction.

In short, It strikes me no Cabot in Newfoundland is direct knock-on from no Columbus in Caribbean. Whereas Cabral's trip to Brazil, if it was truly accidental, was not likely knock-ons, and might have been unrelated or at most a butterfly effect of the Columbus voyage.

----and another thing-

If Columbus was a minority of one regarding the size of the earth (and therefore the feasibility of reaching Asia by sailing west), with everybody else knowing better the world was way too big....then how come people kept looking for the northwest passage through Captain Cook's time? And why did French explorers going up the St. Lawrence talk about China being on the west side of Niagara Falls (hence the placename la chine, in Canada).
 
They did the Volta do Mar, as It was much faster than the coastal route. But it wasn't commom for them to stop in Brazil, at least during the Europe to Cape part of the journey. After the middle XVII century it became normal a stopover in Salvador, both because St Helena and Ascension became centers of pirate activity and because trade with Brazil became more important (the loss of many territories in Asia and competition with the Dutch and the English meant the ships many times weren't carrying all the cargo they could, and so they needed to try to compensate it with Brazilian goods).
 

Lusitania

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There has been many tale and legend told by Portuguese historians about the Portuguese suspicions of the lands west of Azores.

1) the Portuguese claimed that after the Azores were settled in the middle of 15th century strange woods would was ashore and this led the Portuguese to theorize about lands west of the Azores.

2) the Portuguese goal was not conquest of new territory west of the Azores but to find a way around Africa and the Ottoman Empire. They believed the fastest way was south and not west. Portuguese spies knew the Indian Ocean and African continent went south so rhey theorized (or hopped) the Atlantic and Indian oceans met.

2) 1492 Portuguese reach cape and name “cape of good Hope”, thus paving the way for subsequent “Vasco da Gama expidition”. So when Columbus came to Portuguese court requesting funding the Portuguese on the crisp of reaching India turned Columbus away.

3) new of Columbus discovery led to the Portuguese navigators being told to swing out a bit further to see if there was anything there while traveling back and forth between Lisbon and India.

4) the first successful sighting was in 1500 and by Cabral. Now it so happen that they discovered doing the loop also saved lots of time due to winds.
 

raharris1973

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Going by what both of you say, but especially what Lusitania says, it seems to me that if Columbus & co. never go or return alive, not only will Cabot's journey likely not take place, but Cabral will not be sent looking as far west as OTL. The Portuguese could take some decades coasting around Africa, and only discover the Volta Da Mar later, and even using the Volta Da Mar, might not sight Brazil until a few decades after that. In the meantime, the Portuguese, and any other European who can try to horn in, will be emphasizing the Cape route to the east.
 
You cannot sail back north from African coast without Volta Do Mar, so you cannot use the Cape route without.

And if you have a lot of traffic doing it, I'd say odds are decent that someone will eventually sight South American coast, even if just by accident.

EDIT

There were expeditions down African coast before the Portuguese. They did not come back. You need to swing out on the ocean to sail north, and I see no reason for not exploring for the fastest route if there is significant commercial traffic. Any ship swept west by the winds would also know how to sail back, so I'd _assume_ that eventually this would happen.
 
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Just to give a better idea of the route:
Map_of_Portuguese_Carreira_da_India.gif
 
For the first question you seem to be under the mistaken impression you have to be pretty close to notice land is there, in truth for every travel that accidentally got close enough for landing to even be considered there are dozens that simply get more than enough information to conclude there is land somewhere west.

For the third question initially people searched for it because it could be useful(certainly better than going around South America and potentially better than the route Spain used of China-Mexico-Spain) and because there would be a lot of prestige to be the one first made through such passage; as years, decades and centuries accumulated with everyone failing being the one who did gained an almost mythical status even as the actual use became more and more questionable. Or to put it another way initial lack of knowledge followed by Sunken Cost Fallacy and dick waving essentially.

As for why people talk of China being close a mixture of wishful thinking and flat out lies, though I suppose there would have been the odd person who actually believed it.
 

raharris1973

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For the third question initially people searched for it because it could be useful(certainly better than going around South America and potentially better than the route Spain used of China-Mexico-Spain) and because there would be a lot of prestige to be the one first made through such passage; as years, decades and centuries accumulated with everyone failing being the one who did gained an almost mythical status even as the actual use became more and more questionable. Or to put it another way initial lack of knowledge followed by Sunken Cost Fallacy and dick waving essentially.

As for why people talk of China being close a mixture of wishful thinking and flat out lies, though I suppose there would have been the odd person who actually believed it.

I love your answer to this question.

For the first question you seem to be under the mistaken impression you have to be pretty close to notice land is there, in truth for every travel that accidentally got close enough for landing to even be considered there are dozens that simply get more than enough information to conclude there is land somewhere west.

That is a very good point, but would mere knowledge of land be enough to make Portugal or others care? Without the Columbian example and Spanish competition, Portugal's deliberate exploration of the suspected landmass to the west could be delayed some decades after its OTL circumstances under Cabral.
 
If Columbus was a minority of one regarding the size of the earth (and therefore the feasibility of reaching Asia by sailing west), with everybody else knowing better the world was way too big....then how come people kept looking for the northwest passage through Captain Cook's time? And why did French explorers going up the St. Lawrence talk about China being on the west side of Niagara Falls (hence the placename la chine, in Canada).
Adding on this, as to why we kept searching for a passage: at the end, when we saw we couldn't find a passage, we just made one, the Panama Canal.
If your technology allows it (and I think it does, at least from the whaling age), a direct route through the Pacific to China (and the West Coast of the US) would be shorter than going around the Cape of Good Hope and then through the Indian Ocean.
Having a second route also diminishes possibilities of control. If you can go through two routes, any nation willing to control the passage would have to spend at least twice as many resources
 
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