Santa Maria
Today, we visited the first island in the Azores to be discovered by the Portuguese. A group of islands that lay far to the west of Cape St Vincent had been known to the Genoans, who marked their charts with what they deemed to be a shipping hazard. In 1431, a remarkable figure named the Infante Enrique (known to the English as Henry the Navigator even though he rarely left land) sent Gonçalo Velho Cabral on a mission to locate the islands. He reached the easternmost islet of Formigas (Ants) – lying off Santa Maria – whereupon his crew insisted on returning immediately to the security of the continent. Henry sent them back the following year and on August 15, 1432 (The Feast of the Assumption), they discovered and duly named the island Santa Maria. This is the official history: a local version has Santa Maria discovered by one Diogo Silves in 1427.
It took a generation until the western group in the Archipelago, Flores and Corvo were charted in 1457. None of the islands were inhabited when the Portuguese arrived, and it was their achievement to settle and make them productive. Pine was introduced from Portugal to grow timber for Henry's ships, and the fertile soil soon put to use for grain, vines, and pasture. The productive offshore fisheries produced copious supplies of fish that could be salted for export. Indeed, it can be inferred from some accounts that some Portuguese fishermen may have sailed north from the Azores, following the wind and the Gulf Stream to meet the Newfoundland current. The Archipelago became known as Açores (the Portuguese for "goshawk") as the first sailors had mistaken buzzards for goshawks. It has taken us only a week to see more of these breathtakingly beautiful and astonishingly unspoiled islands than most of the locals will ever see. A constant refrain in recent days has been: "We're going to have to come back!"
Today, we visited the first island in the Azores to be discovered by the Portuguese. A group of islands that lay far to the west of Cape St Vincent had been known to the Genoans, who marked their charts with what they deemed to be a shipping hazard. In 1431, a remarkable figure named the Infante Enrique (known to the English as Henry the Navigator even though he rarely left land) sent Gonçalo Velho Cabral on a mission to locate the islands. He reached the easternmost islet of Formigas (Ants) – lying off Santa Maria – whereupon his crew insisted on returning immediately to the security of the continent. Henry sent them back the following year and on August 15, 1432 (The Feast of the Assumption), they discovered and duly named the island Santa Maria. This is the official history: a local version has Santa Maria discovered by one Diogo Silves in 1427.
It took a generation until the western group in the Archipelago, Flores and Corvo were charted in 1457. None of the islands were inhabited when the Portuguese arrived, and it was their achievement to settle and make them productive. Pine was introduced from Portugal to grow timber for Henry's ships, and the fertile soil soon put to use for grain, vines, and pasture. The productive offshore fisheries produced copious supplies of fish that could be salted for export. Indeed, it can be inferred from some accounts that some Portuguese fishermen may have sailed north from the Azores, following the wind and the Gulf Stream to meet the Newfoundland current. The Archipelago became known as Açores (the Portuguese for "goshawk") as the first sailors had mistaken buzzards for goshawks. It has taken us only a week to see more of these breathtakingly beautiful and astonishingly unspoiled islands than most of the locals will ever see. A constant refrain in recent days has been: "We're going to have to come back!"
