We flew into Lisbon and immediately rented a car to drive to the edge of the Earth and the beginning of the world. This edge has a name: Cabo de Sao Vicente. A small cape jutting into the Atlantic Ocean, it is the bitter end of Europe. Beyond this point, the world was once unknown to Europeans, becoming a realm inhabited by legends of sea monsters and fantastic civilizations. Cabo de Sao Vicente still makes you feel these fantasies are more than realistic. Even on a bright sunny day, the sea is forbidding and the wind howls at you, while on a gloomy day you peer into the abyss.
Just 3 miles west of Cabo de Sao Vicente at the base of the Ponta de Sagres lies Sagres, a pleasant little town of small villas and apartments. For the most part, these are summer homes, many owned by Germans and British, judging from the flags flying. It was here in 1410 that Prince Henry the Navigator founded a school for navigators. If Cabo de Sao Vicente is where the Earth ended for the Europeans, Ponta de Sagres became the place where the world began.
The Making of the Modern World
Prince Henry was the second son of Portuguese King John I. As a member of the royal class, he had the means to finance his ambitions. Those who attended his school included Vasco da Gama, who made the first voyage from Europe to India, and Magellan, whose expedition first circumnavigated the globe. Columbus was once shipwrecked and rescued off the coast, subsequently learning many of his later nautical skills in Portugal. This school gave rise to the most extraordinary alumni association imaginable.
How prosaic business opportunities generate the most risky and grandiose undertakings has come to interest me. This school arose with the specific goal of training sailors to go farther and farther south along the African coast in search of a sea route to India. The Portuguese sought this route to cut out the middleman in the spice trade. Spices were wealth in Europe; they preserved and seasoned food, and were considered medicinal and even aphrodisiacs. But they were fiendishly expensive, since they came to Europe via the Silk Road through Muslim-controlled territory, with each merchant along the way increasing their price.
Henry didn't just train seamen, he also financed explorations. During the 15th century, year after year, ships went out. Many, even most, never returned, but all of them pushed just a bit further south. Each voyage produced logs that Henry collected, collated, studied and relied on when planning future expeditions.
The more I learn more about Henry, the more his program reminds me of NASA and of Tom Wolfe's classic, The Right Stuff, about America's space program. Like NASA, each mission built on the last, trying out new methods in an incremental fashion. Henry didn't try to shoot to the moon, as they say. He was no Columbus, risking everything for glory, but rather a methodical engineer, pushing the limits a little at a time and collecting data.
His school has long since disappeared along with his palace. Only a single round marker on the ground remains, perhaps 30 feet wide, segmented in equidistant lines emanating outward to a circle. There is speculation that this is a sundial or a wind gauge of some sort. It could also be nothing; scholars never find an object that isn't filled with meaning, oftentimes religious. Of course, the physical remains of his school don't mean much. History was made here.
It was the place where Europe discovered the world, not only in the physical sense, but also in the direct encounters over time with the myriad cultures that made up the world. Europe wasn't kind to the world it discovered. But over time it did force each culture to become aware of all the others; after centuries, a Mongol student might learn about the Aztecs. Instead of a number of isolated worlds, each believing itself to be the center of the Earth, each new discovery fed the concept of a single world.
The Buccaneering Spirit
On this cape, early in the 15th century, well before Columbus sailed, Henry planned Europe's assault on the world. In the process, he laid the foundation of the modern world and modern Europe. Standing on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic, even on this cheerful day, it is possible to imagine the courage it took to sail into probable death. I can't help but think of the voyages of astronauts and cosmonauts, one part dispassionate engineering and science, one part pure hubris.
