Portuguese maritime exploration resulted in the numerous territories and maritime routes recorded by the Portuguese as a result of their intensive maritime journeys during the 15th and 16th centuries. Portuguese sailors were at the vanguard of European exploration, chronicling and mapping the coasts of Africa and Asia, then known as the East Indies, and Canada and Brazil, in what came to be known as the Age of Discovery.
The Cantino planisphere, made by an anonymous cartographer in 1502, shows the world as it was understood by Europeans after their great explorations at the end of the fifteenth century.
Vasco da Gama lands in Calicut on May 20th 1498.
Prince Henry the Navigator, generally credited as the driving force behind Portuguese maritime exploration.
The caravel was an existing ship type that was prominent in Portuguese exploration from about 1440
Prince Henry the Navigator
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Dom Henrique of Portugal, Duke of Viseu, better known as Prince Henry the Navigator, was a central figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire and in the 15th-century European maritime discoveries and maritime expansion. Through his administrative direction, he is regarded as the main initiator of what would be known as the Age of Discovery. Henry was the fourth child of King John I of Portugal, who founded the House of Aviz.
Approximate routes of the Portuguese ships under Henry's command.
Henry the Navigator bronze by Léon-Joseph Chavalliaud (1899), outside the Palm House at Sefton Park, Liverpool (appears similar to a sculpture of the beginning of the 16th century, in the Jerónimos Monastery, Lisbon, possibly close to a true likeness of Prince Henry)