exploration by sea for Europeans was, for many centuries, nearly always motivated by trade and profit. The desire for conquest and to spread Christianity were also important corollaries for exploration, and in more recent times science has been the motivator. The Arabs were commercially oriented, too, as were the Chinese, who, as they expanded southwards and eastwards, sent trading fleets to Japan and Korea, and into the Indian Ocean.
It should be remembered that many voyages of exploration were clouded in secrecy, so important was it to keep sea routes from trading rivals. That, and the loss of documentary evidence, both in Europe and the Orient, may have left undocumented the achievements of some of the earliest voyagers. It should also be remembered that what is called exploration by some is called invasion by others.
The Earliest Voyages.
Exploration by sea began centuries before the time of Christ. The Greek historian Herodotus (
c.480–
c.425 bc) wrote how the Pharaoh Necho II, who lived in the late 7th and early 6th centuries
bc, sent Phoenicians in ships from the Arabian Gulf with orders to return by way of the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar) which, after three years, they duly did. In the 3rd century
bc the Greek navigator Pytheas sailed to northern Europe and reached as far north as the Orkneys. Possibly he also reached Iceland, which may have been the Arctic land shrouded in mist to which he give the name Thule.
For centuries the south-west
monsoon wind in the Indian Ocean was known as Hippalus, after the Greek pilot who first sailed with it in about 100 bc from the Gulf of Aden to India. By then western traders had certainly sailed to several South-East Asian countries and may even have reached China, or Cathay as it was then called. By the time of the Roman Empire Greek ships, using the monsoon winds, traded regularly between the Red Sea ports and India. From the 3rd century, when the Roman Empire was in crisis, to the 15th century, when the European powers began to expand into the area, the Arabs dominated these sea routes. They founded trading posts down the east African coastline from the 8th century, and gradually explored southwards, reaching Madagascar in the following century. This is why, though fiction, the tales of Sinbad the Sailor are based on centuries of the ways of the sea and the adventures of those who sailed them.
Later, the expansion of the Greek states into the western Mediterranean brought Greece into conflict with Rome, to whom control of that sea passed after the battle of Mylae in 260 bc. On the other hand, the Phoenicians, who founded Carthage, preferred trading to war. They sold their goods by sea from their ports in present-day Lebanon and before 1000 bc they had sailed beyond the Mediterranean to colonize the Spanish and North African coasts.
Gades, as Cadiz was at first known, was a typical Phoenician city. The Carthaginians also explored beyond the Mediterranean as early as 500 bc, with Hanno sailing forth around the African coastline with 60 ships and 30,000 colonists ‘to found cities’; and Himilco, around the same time, sailing north to reach Brittany, and perhaps Britain.
The 9th–11th centuries were the time of the great Scandinavian exodus, when the Norsemen swarmed all over western Europe and the Mediterranean. They also headed westwards in their
longships, reaching Iceland in 875, Greenland in 984, and
Vinland in, or just after, 1000. Other early northern European explorers included Ohthere of Norway who, curious to know the northerly extent of his land, sailed round the North Cape in ad 890, and along the coast of Lapland to the White Sea (Beloye More), NW Russia, while the Irish saint
Brendan voyaged to western Scotland and, probably, Iceland, and maybe even further afield.
As the Greek and Roman civilizations spread westwards, the centre of sea power moved westwards too, with Spain and Portugal eventually becoming the dominant powers. However, it was two other great maritime galley-trading powers, Venice and Genoa, which first produced the
portulan charts that aided
navigation of the Mediterranean coastlines.
The Search for Trading Routes to Africa, India, and the Orient.
By the end of the 14th century the Mogul Empire was disintegrating, making the overland routes to China insecure. Also, the power of the Ottoman Turks was increasing. They were hostile to Christians and blocked well-established trade from the East being shipped from eastern Mediterranean ports. Instead,
Henry the Navigator, Prince of Portugal, mounted many of the early voyages of discovery down the west coast of Africa in search of gold and slaves, and developed the
caravel for this purpose. By the time of Henry's death in 1460 the Portuguese had reached as far south as present-day Sierra Leone.
These early ventures were capped in 1488 by another Portuguese,
Bartholomew Diaz, who became the first European now known to have rounded what was later called the Cape of Good Hope. Four years later the Genoese-born
Christopher Columbus, funded by the Spanish throne, began his momentous voyage across the Atlantic in the vain hope of discovering the Orient by a western route. In doing so he inadvertently opened up the New World to Europeans, but it was a Florentine merchant-adventurer,
Amerigo Vespucci, who gave America its name; and another Florentine,
Giovanni da Verrazzano, who realized it was not part of Asia.
Early Chinese Voyages of Discovery.
In the 3rd century
bc it is possible that the Chinese emperors sent sailing
rafts to search for Pacific islands on which grew plants that would give them immortality, or at least longevity. From the 2nd century onwards diplomatic missions and
junk-rigged trading ships sailed westwards and had, by the 11th century, reached East Africa. In 1294 a fleet of fourteen ships escorted
Marco Polo to Ormuz (Hormuz) in the Persian Gulf; and in 1301 an even larger fleet returned there. Then, when China found its overland trade routes were barred by the Tartar warlord Tamerlane (1336–1405), it built a formidable fleet of warships, known as
treasure ships. Between 1405 and 1431 these ships mounted a series of trading expeditions which roamed far and wide. There is evidence to indicate that some of them may have sailed down the East African coastline as far as 20° S., and possibly rounded the Cape of Good Hope, before returning. But by the time the last expedition returned new political forces, hostile to maritime power, were at work in China. The treasure ships fell from favour, the construction of seagoing vessels was banned, and virtually all documentation and
charts were destroyed.
Unlike the Europeans, the Chinese explored peacefully, though in strength. They traded with those they visited, who were overawed by their sea power, without attempting to colonize their countries.
Treaty of Tordesillas.
Columbus's voyage, and his conviction that he had found and landed on Cathay, led the Spaniards to persuade the Spanish-born Pope Alexander VI to decree, from pole to pole, a line of demarcation 100
leagues (later 370 leagues) west of the Cape Verde Islands. Spain was given the right to all lands, discovered or undiscovered, west of the line, and Portugal was given the right to those to the east of it, though those already ruled by a Christian monarch were not to be occupied. This agreement was enshrined in the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) and gave both Portugal and Spain the right to oust interlopers. It was never recognized by other European maritime nations, and the English and the Dutch were to go to great lengths to circumvent the treaty.
The first notable voyage of exploration from England started in 1497 when the Venetian
John Cabot sailed from Bristol to reach the East by a western sea route. He reached Newfoundland and took possession of it on behalf of Henry VII, and convinced the king that the island was off the coast of Cathay. A second expedition under Cabot sailed in May 1498 with the objective of finding Cipangu (Japan) to the west of Newfoundland, but it was never heard of again. Cabot's son Sebastian (1476–1557) was also an explorer. He led a Spanish expedition in 1525 to reach the Orient by way of the Magellan Strait but never got further than the mouth of the Paraguay River.
The Sea Route to India and Early Circumnavigations.
In May 1498 the Portuguese
Vasco da Gama, with the help of Arab knowledge, reached India. To exploit his voyage a second expedition led by Pedro Cabral (
c.1467–1530) was dispatched. He left Lisbon for India on 9 March 1500 with thirteen or fourteen ships and on the advice of da Gama steered south-south-west from the Cape Verde Islands to take advantage of the south-east
trade winds. On 22 April he reached Brazil, on a
latitude of 17° S., still east of the line decreed by the pope. However, he was not the first European to have arrived there, for three months previously a Spaniard, Vicente Yañez Pinzon, who had commanded the
Niña on Columbus' first voyage, had landed in the same area; and during the same voyage he also discovered the estuary of the River Amazon and Costa Rica.
After coasting north to Porto Segura (Baia Cabralia) at 16° 20′ S., where he erected the usual wooden cross that denoted a claim to Portuguese sovereignty, Cabral set sail for India. A number of his ships, including that of his second in command Bartholomew Diaz, foundered during this voyage. The remainder reached Calicut (now Kozhikode) on Kerala's Malabar coast, but when trouble erupted with the Arab traders there, he sailed south to Cochin. There he founded the first European settlement on Indian soil before returning to Lisbon in July 1501 with a rich cargo. He was appointed to command a second fleet, but this eventually went to da Gama, leaving Cabral to retire to enjoy his wealth.
Da Gama's second trading voyage was highly successful and the Portuguese began to build an empire in India. Among those taking part was a young Portuguese,
Ferdinand Magellan, who later transferred his loyalty to Spain. He persuaded the Spanish king to allow him to sail for the Spice Islands (Moluccas) in the East Indies by a western sea route—first visited by a Portuguese, Francisco Serrao, in 1512—and in October 1520 he discovered the strait off the tip of South America which now bears his name.
Magellan was possibly the first European to reach the Philippines and was killed there attempting to spread the Catholic faith. The survivors, in two ships, sailed on to the Moluccas, and so completed a momentous voyage of discovery. But only one ship, the
Vittoria, commanded by a Spanish pilot, Juan Sebastian del Cano (
c.1486–1526), made it home, via the Cape of Good Hope, in July 1522. This made del Cano and his surviving crew the first Europeans known to have sailed around the world, their voyage proving that Columbus had, indeed, discovered a New World. However, the first person known to make a circumnavigation was Magellan's Filipino manservant, whom Magellan had acquired during an earlier voyage to the East Indies.
Sailing into the Pacific from Peru, the Spanish navigator Alvaro de Mendaña (d. 1596) discovered the Solomon Islands in 1567 while trying to find
Terra Australis Incognita, the fabled great south land. In 1595 he and Pedro Fernandez de Quiros (1565–1615) came upon the Marquesas, and in 1606, during a later voyage, de Quiros discovered the New Hebrides group of islands before being forced to return. However, his second in command, the Portuguese navigator Luis Vaez de Torres (d. 1613), continued westwards. He sailed through the strait which now bears his name, before reaching the Moluccas and then the Philippines. It is not surprising, in the days when there was no accurate measurement of
longitude, that many of these discoveries were lost again, some for many years, but the explorations of both men were known to
Captain Cook, who made use of this knowledge on his first voyage.
The first captain to make a circumnavigation in his own ship was the Englishman
Sir Francis Drake, between 1577 and 1580. As much a
privateer as an explorer, he was, nevertheless, the first to discover that Tierra del Fuego was an island. He also sailed up the coast of North America to a high latitude in an attempt to find a strait that led to the
North-West Passage. Between 1586 and 1588 another Englishman, Thomas Cavendish (1555–92), also circumnavigated the world, discovering the island of St Helena on the way.
The Search for Arctic Routes to the East.
Despite the successes of Drake and Cavendish, the Treaty of Tordesillas barred the way of the British and Dutch to the East's riches by the normal sea routes, just as the Ottoman Turks barred the land routes. During much of the 16th century they therefore tried to find other ways to reach China and Japan. Rumours had long circulated that a passage through Arctic waters to the Pacific existed, and in May 1553 an Englishman, Sir Hugh Willoughby (d. 1554), led an expedition of three ships in search of what was to become known as the North-East Passage. The crews of two perished in a Lapland harbour but the third, commanded by Hugh Chancellor (d. 1556), turned back and reached the White Sea. Chancellor landed, and visited Ivan the Terrible in Moscow, a meeting that led to the founding of the Muscovy Company designed to stimulate trade between England and Russia.
Spain annexed Portugal in 1580 and after the defeat of the
Spanish Armada eight years later, the British and the Dutch formed
East India Companies to exploit the spice trade via the sea routes which had so long been denied them. However, this did not prevent others from continuing to try and find a North-East Passage. They included the Dutchman
Willem Barents, who led three expeditions in the 16th century, and two Englishmen,
Henry Hudson and
John Franklin, who tried in the 17th and 19th centuries. But none managed to penetrate further east than the western part of the Kara Sea. This was still a long way from the Bering Strait, named after the Danish explorer
Vitus Bering. While sailing for the Russians, he built two ships at Kamchatka in eastern Siberia and passed through it in 1728.
In the 18th century the Russian Navy mapped the whole northern coast of Russia and established that a North-East Passage did exist, but it was not finally navigated until the Swedish Finn N. A. E. Nordensjköld (1832–1901) navigated it in two seasons. By then, science and national prestige vied with commerce as the principal motive for exploration. Several expeditions were mounted to the region for these reasons, those led by
Fridtjof Nansen and
Roald Amundsen, both from the new nation of Norway, being the most notable.
Frustrated at failing to find a North-East Passage, Hudson and Franklin, among others, searched for a North-West Passage instead. This search was primarily a British undertaking, though the French
navigator Jacques Cartier (1491–1557), with his exploration of the St Lawrence River between 1534 and 1541, was the first to claim he had found it. For well over three centuries huge amounts of British government money and resources, and a great deal of human effort and sacrifice, were poured into finding the passage before it was eventually navigated. It was never commercially reliable, but with
climate change it might still become so.
Southern Hemisphere Exploration.
Even that great explorer James Cook was peripherally involved in attempting to find a North-West Passage. Though his main explorations were to find Terra Australis Incognita, which did not of course exist, his great achievement on his first voyage was to prove New Zealand was an island and to chart it and Australia's east coast. The Dutch navigator Jacob Le Maire (1585–1616) also sought the Great Unknown Land, by sailing south-east from the Magellan Straits until he came to the strait later named after him, and then became the first European to round South America's southernmost tip. This he named Cape Hoorn after the town in Holland where most of the backers of his expedition lived. It is an irony that when he eventually reached the East Indies his discovery was not believed and his ship's
log was branded a forgery.
By the mid-16th century French charts derived from Portuguese sources, known as the Dieppe maps, show an extensive coastline south of the Spice Islands. Some of these had Portuguese place names on the unknown land and this has led to speculation that the Portuguese were the first Europeans to discover Australia. However, there is no hard evidence to support this theory. What is incontrovertible—because he left an inscribed pewter plate nailed to a post on the West Australian island later named after him—was that the Dutchman Dirck Hartog, in 1616, became the first European known to have landed on Australian soil. However, the Dutch explorer Willem Jansz, who in 1605 sailed from the East Indies to search for New Guinea, was probably the first European to sight the continent. He reached the Torres Strait shortly before Luis Vaez de Torres himself and saw, and named, the western coastline of Cape York Peninsula; and another Dutchman, Pieter Nuyts, explored part of Australia's southern edge in 1627. Because of these early discoveries Australia was, for a time, known as New Holland, but the Dutch did nothing to exploit their knowledge of it.
In the following two centuries navigators such as
Tasman, George Bass (1771–
c.1802),
Dampier,
Vancouver,
Flinders, and the Frenchman Nicolas Baudin mapped previously unknown parts of the coastline, and another Frenchmen,
Louis Antoine de Bougainville, added his discoveries to what was already known of the Pacific Islands.
The Final Phase.
By the end of the first decade of the 19th century much of the exploration by sea, with the exception of the Arctic and Antarctic, had been completed. The Arctic had been known since the days of Pytheas' visit to the Orkneys, and in 1909 the North Pole was finally conquered, so it appeared, by Captain Robert
Peary USN. However, research undertaken in the 1980s and 1990s cast doubt on this achievement.
The Antarctic remained a mystery to Europeans for much longer, though it had long been postulated that a Great South Land existed, and that it was a rich and fertile region populated with natives anxious to trade. However, as voyagers penetrated further southwards the imaginary continent diminished. The discovery in 1739 by the French explorer Jean Baptiste-Charles Bouvet de Lozier (1705–86) of the ice-covered island that now bears his name; and the discovery of the equally frozen Kerguelen Islands in 1772 by the French navigator Yves-Joseph de Kerguélen-Trémarec (
fl. 1771–4), convinced most people that the Great South Land, if it existed at all, would be a frozen, barren place. But it was Cook's second voyage which finally proved it did not exist.
Other explorers contributed to the discovery of Antarctica and its surrounding islands, one of the most outstanding being the Russian
Fabian von Bellingshausen, who circumnavigated the continent in 1819–21. Other voyages designed to open up new
sealing and
whaling grounds followed, and scientific expeditions were also mounted by several nations. Among them were those led by the Frenchman Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d'Urville (1790–1842); the American
Charles Wilkes; the Belgian Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery (1866–1934); the Swede Otto Nordenskjöld (1870–1928); the Englishman
Ernest Shackleton; and the Australian
Sir George Wilkins. The Norwegian Roald
Amundsen, reached the South Pole first, in December 1911, beating the Englishman
Captain Robert Scott by a month.
In the 21st century
oceanography is opening up new areas of exploration by sea, not on the surface of the oceans but beneath them. Seventy per cent of the earth is covered by water and 99% of it is still unexplored.
Bibliography
Whitfield, P. , New Found Lands (1998).
