A Wind From the North (8 page)

The sight of Africa combined with his first long sea voyage was to effect a revolution in Prince Henry. The attack on Ceuta had been planned so that he and his brothers might win their spurs of knighthood on a foreign battlefield. It was a religious crusading spirit that had given Henry his certainty and purpose when even the King contemplated calling off the expedition. This medieval, militant conception of Christianity remained an integral part of Prince Henry’s character all his life.

No man of Henry’s temperament could sail into the Atlantic and see the illimitable ocean spreading away to south and west without wondering what secrets it contained. There it lay, mile upon mile of unknown ocean, the long level planes of water dovetailing into one another under the swell. The sun went down beyond the western rim, and there was no hiss of expiring fires, as the ancients had maintained. Flying fish rose in silver flights in front of the galley’s bows, and in the silence he could hear the flicker of their wings. He saw no sea monsters.

The capture of Ceuta had strengthened his self-confidence. All his life he had heard tales of the Moors, the terror of Christendom, the heathen who had once occupied his own country, Portugal, and all of Spain. Yet Ceuta had fallen easily enough, with only a handful of Portuguese dead to weigh in the balance against the capture of so great a city, and the slaughter of many of the infidel. Perhaps even the power of the Moors was something of a legend? If Ceuta, why not Gibraltar, and then Tangier, and then all Morocco? As the galley turned north and headed toward the coast of Algarve, the southernmost province of Portugal, he could see the bulk of Cape Spartel dropping away astern. Cape Spartel was the western limit of Morocco, yet beyond it, as he could see, the coastline still existed. It trended away to the southwest, tawny under the midday sun, a land of desert, but nevertheless a land.

It may have been during those days aboard the galley that he heard for the first time the old sailors’ saying: “Quern passar o Cabo de Nam, ou tornara ou nam^ “He who would pass

Cape Not, either will return or not.” Beyond it few ships had ever gone, and not far to the south lay Cape Bojador, where the unknown began, the boiling sea and the Ocean of Darkness. At that point it seemed as if the waters ran downward in a curve, so that, it was said, no ship could ever sail back. The winds drew always from astern, so that even if the curved ocean was a myth, the fact remained that a square-sailed vessel had little chance of beating her way north again. Cape Not lay almost opposite Langarote, the northernmost of the Canary Islands, and—whatever else might be unknown—the Canaries had been familiar to mariners for many centuries. One established fact weighs heavily against a vast bulk of legend, and it was the facts that Henry acquired on the expedition to Ceuta that gave him the foundation on which to build a whole system of acquired knowledge. If he had been no more than a dreamer, he might have been content to evolve poetry or fantasy out of the unknown ocean. But instead, he dedicated himself to finding out more about that coastline, which with every stroke of the galley’s oars faded into the distance.

He went back to Ceuta three years later, in 1418. The Governor had reported that the city was heavily beseiged by Moors from Granada and Fez, and that he required help. Once again, King John put Prince Henry in command of the fleet that was sent to Ceuta’s relief. This time there were no calms or foul weather to delay the ships, and they reached the city in three days. At the sight of the Portuguese sails lifting over the horizon, the Moors lost heart. Prince Henry, who was this time accompanied by his young brother John, now aged eighteen, had the satisfaction of raising the seige and reinforcing the garrison. But it was a satisfaction that was mingled with disappointment, for the Moors withdrew at once. Henry found himself in command of a fleet and a body of trained soldiers, and no enemy to engage.

The idea of attacking Gibraltar immediately suggested itself and, had he been king, there is no doubt that this would have been his next move. But his father was growing old and consequently less ambitious. He had foreseen that—finding nothing to do at Ceuta—Prince Henry would turn to Gibraltar. Orders were sent for the Portuguese fleet to return home immediately. King John no longer required additional proofs of his country’s ability in war, and he still feared Castile. He knew that the capture of Gibraltar would seem a provocative act to the King of Castile—who no doubt preferred an inactive Moorish garrison on the Rock to an active army under the command of Prince Henry, the son of his old enemy.

This second expedition was a stimulant to Henry’s interest in Africa. He had spent three months in Ceuta after the city had been relieved, and it was probably during this time that he first made acquaintance with some of the desert Arabs. There were captives from the army of Fez, and there were still some traders who had dealings with the city that had once provided their principal market. These men had information of value: tales to tell of the direction in which caravan routes ran inland after leaving the coastline; gossip, fact and fiction, inextricably interwoven about the interior of the continent. Henry now learned the feel of Africa—the blinding sun at noon, the hot dusty streets, the shuttered houses, the bite of the sand when the wind comes off the desert, and the extraordinary clarity of the nights. Then, when the desert suddenly shudders to an icy coldness—within an hour of sundown—the stars seem big as brilliants.

On his return, Prince Henry’s fame was such that the kings of Europe vied with each other to secure his services. It was now widely known that he had been the driving force behind the original capture of the city, and the alacrity with which he had just come to its relief was taken as further evidence of his ability. At twenty-four he was governor of Ceuta, and—by merit alone—one of the first dukes in Portugal.

The ambassadors of the various powers resident at Lisbon confirmed all that rumor said. This prince, they reported, possessed his father’s military prowess and astuteness. More than that, he was a man who seemed impervious to the weaknesses of the flesh. In an age of license, he was chaste. In an age when noblemen habitually befuddled themselves, he drank little or nothing. In an age when the letter of the Church was obeyed, but not its spirit, he was ascetic. Mindful of all the Christian observances, he spent many hours of the week in solitary prayer. Such a strange, if somewhat disturbing, paragon of virtue could hardly fail to impress. The Pope, Martin V, invited him to take command of the Greek armies of Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus in the war against the Turks. Sigis-mund, Emperor of Germany, offered him the command of his army in the field. Even the King of Castile, his father’s former enemy, asked for help in ridding Granada of the Moors.

Henry V of England, whose ideal was a Christian hero and leader like King Arthur, offered him command of the English armies in a war against the infidel. Henry V (whose last wish was that he might live to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem) saw perhaps in his Portuguese cousin the qualities that he respected more than any other. If one were searching for a parallel character in British history to Henry of Portugal, Henry V is perhaps as close as one could come. He too was courageous and resourceful, a skilled leader in war, and a far-sighted diplomatist. He too delighted in sport and was a man of culture and learning. The difference between the cousins lay in the quality of intensity that Henry of Portugal possessed in an uncommon degree. But the youthful vices of Henry V (probably exaggerated by Shakespeare) make him more comprehensible to us. Like Nelson’s passion for Emma Hamilton, they serve to make him a weaker, but nevertheless more lovable, figure. Henry of Portugal had few such fallible human characteristics. He moves across the stage of history a remote and somewhat perplexing figure—because of his lack of vices. If, as John Addington Symonds remarked, “… the best known figures of history are not necessarily the most important,” the reason is that their fame often stems from their weaknesses. Every schoolboy has heard of Henry VIII, because of his private life and not because of his political brilliance.

Henry of Portugal, who set in motion a train of events of more far-reaching consequence than either Henry V or Henry VIII of England, has been commonly ignored outside his own country. As Marshal Lyautey said of him, “He combined the disinterestedness of the scientist with the austerity of the saint.” Such men are admired but not loved. Human beings tend to make their heroes out of men in whom they can see reflected not only their own potentialities but also their weaknesses. In his own lifetime, though, his talents were so conspicuous that no one could ignore them. This was the reason why two kings, an emperor, and even a pope tried to secure his services. Henry was flattered, no doubt, but he was not to be distracted from the vast plans that obsessed him. As a prince of Portugal his duty lay first with his own country, and he had seen already the goal of his ambitions in the long shores of Africa.

Disappointed at his father’s rejection of his plan for attacking Gibraltar, he retired more and more from the court. His eldest brother, Prince Edward, was being groomed for the throne. Prince Peter—still cherishing his enigmatic motto Desir—had set out on a series of travels that would take him all over Europe and most of the Near East. His two younger brothers, and his sister Isabel, remained as companions to the King. There was little to detain him in the court. As duke of Viseu in the southern province of Algarve, and governor of Ceuta, it was natural that Henry should establish himself somewhere in the south of Portugal. From there he could be ready, if need be, to sail again to the relief of Ceuta, and from there he could find out more about the African coastline. If his father’s respect for political considerations did not allow him to attack Gibraltar, then he must seek another way. The Moors must be outflanked, not from the land but from the sea.

The key to power, Henry sensed, lay in the unknown Atlantic, and in order to win it he must study his opponent. Ships in those days were small and chancy craft, unsuitable as headquarters from which to plan campaigns, or conduct affairs of state. Henry sought a place that would be as like a ship as possible, where he could be alone with his grand design, and yet where he could have easy access to all sources of information. He found this place in the bluff, spray-swept rock of Sagres. It was there that, shortly after his second return from Ceuta, he began to build the Vila do Infante—the City of the Prince.

In Sagres the surge and thunder of the sea are never absent. Standing on this scoured promontory, where the Atlantic meets the southwestern point of Europe, man is dwarfed by the ocean. There is no room here for anything other than contemplation and speculation. To a man of Prince Henry’s day, speculation may have been uppermost; to a man of his character, contemplation was never absent. Sagres was a happy accord between an ambition, a temperament, and a world.

It is difficult today to understand the magnitude of the task he had set himself. It may be that within a few years we shall see men landing on the moon or exploring other planets. They will meet hazards as yet unknown, but they will know a great deal more about the geography and the probabilities of those areas than was known in the fifteenth century about the Atlantic. In the early fifteenth century, the long sleep of the Middle Ages was only just ending and the Renaissance had not begun. Throughout his life Prince Henry was a divided personality—a Janus with one face looking into the medieval past and one into the new age of scientific thought. To him, more than to any other individual, we owe the direction that the world was to take in the succeeding five hundred years. He was born into an age of myth and superstition, where no certainty existed except in what was promulgated by the Church. When he died, the mists were peeling away off the sea, half of the Atlantic and the west coast of Africa had been explored, and all the central and eastern Atlantic islands had been charted. At the time of his death in 1460 the main fruits of the Age of Discovery were yet to come—the discovery of the sea route round the Cape of Good Hope to India, of the West Indies and America. But it was Prince Henry alone who had initiated and set in motion this chain of events.

We have seen some of the reasons that prompted him to devote himself to the exploration of the Moroccan coast of Africa, but it was only his position and office that enabled him to devote money and ships and time to the enterprise. The fact that his father had made Prince Henry grand master of the Order of Christ enabled him in the first place to have money to equip his expeditions. The Order of Christ, the supreme pontifical order, had been founded by Diniz of Portugal in conjunction with Pope John XXII in 1318 on the abolition of the Templars. Today the papal branch survives as a distinct order from the Portuguese order, but in the time of Prince Henry nominations to it could be made either by the King of Portugal or by the Pope. Such was the expense of equipping ships and expeditions, however, that when Henry died he was deeply in debt. The funds of the order enabled him to begin his task, that was all. Because it was in his office of grand master that he sent out his ships, one of the chief objectives was the conversion of the heathen and the establishment of the Christian faith. It was for this reason too that the galleys and caravels dispatched by Prince Henry bore the red Cross of Christ on their sails.

The riddle of the unknown Atlantic had perplexed and fascinated men for centuries. There were several reasons why, before Prince Henry, no one had attempted to do anything about it. The first was the superstitious and legendary awe in which the ocean was held. The second was that no one attempted navigation except for profit, and what profit could there be in the unknown? The trade routes of Europe were established—the northern route from Holland and England to Portugal and Spain, and the Mediterranean routes. Merchant ships sail only where there is trade, and there was no trade in the Sea of Obscurity.

The Sea of Obscurity, or the Ocean of Darkness, it was called. There dwelt monsters, and the sun stood so high overhead that the water boiled. The men who lived on the outermost edge of the African shore were known to be burned black by the sun, so how could man go farther without being roasted alive? There were magnetic rocks that made a compass spin like a wheel, rocks that would draw the iron fastenings from a ship’s side. The pitch would boil in the seams, the calking would be lost, and the ships would sink. If you escaped these hazards, worse was to come. As you neared the outermost limits of the earth, you would be caught in the steady flow of water that poured night and day over the edge. It was not an old wives’ tale—sailors themselves would tell you that you could see the edge of the world running away downhill. It dropped down in a great shimmering curve, and if you went too far south, the hill would grow steeper and you could never sail back. Then the eternally rushing water would catch you and sweep you away, into the darkness.