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Age of Exploration

15th Century Europe

Life on board ship

  • Life on board ship was extremely difficult

  • The youngest crew on ship were cabin boys. These boys aged around twelve years old were normally kidnapped and forced aboard ship. They were up early in the morning to light the fire box and cook the sailors breakfast who slept in hammocks on deck

  •  Sailors ate food such as ships biscuit (a mixture of water and flour) which was also contaminated with weevils and maggots

  • Meat was salted to keep it fresh and water was kept on barrels

  • Fresh fruit was impossible to store and as a result sailors suffered from rickets and scurvy from lack of vitamins

  • The crews of the ships were extremely nervous and were often bribed with gold on their return but many didn't return

  • Punishments were extremely harsh on sailors. These included floggings, walking the plank etc

  • Some captains such as Columbus kept two log books, one with real and one with false information on their travels to fool nervous sailors into thinking they had only travelled small distances

  • In 15th century people knew very little about life behond their immediate area

  • This was due to many fears faced by the people of that time

  • Fears such as: The world was flat and if one went too far they may fall off the edge

  • That if people travelled too far south the seas would begin to boil

  • That the sea was full of monsters

  • However despite these fears people were still curious about the world behond their shores

Why did Europeans want to explore?:

  • The spirit of the rennaisance made people question old ideas and become more curious about the world around them

  • When the Turks conquered Constantinople (modern Istanbul) ,which formed a link between Europe and Asia, they charged a tax on all merchants passing through by land to buy spices and silk. Therefore the price of such goods went up and people now wished to find a sea route from east to west

  • Travellers such as Marco Polo, who travelled to China from Venice, wrote accounts of their travels which encouraged others to to the same and therefore want to find new sea routes to the East

  • Merchants wanted to become richer by travelling to Asia to buy spices and silk and sell them back in Europe

Left: The city of Constaninople under Byzantinian rule. It formed an important link between east and west
 
Right: Marco Polo wrote The Travels of Marco Polo which tracked his journey from Venice to China
Improvements in Ships and Navigation:

  • Caravels: This was a new and larger ship which was built and designed for long and dangerous journeys across the Atlantic

  • These Caravels were clinker built meaning they were built from overlapping boards

  • They also had both square and lateen (triangular) sails which increased speed and rudders which allowed steering of the ship

  • Finally the ship had look out posts called castles

  • Three new instruments were invented which allowed sailors to find their latitude (distance north or south of the equator):

  • Astrolobe: Pointed at North Star

  • Quadrant: Pointed at the North Star or Sun

  • Cross Staff: Pointed at North Star or the Horizon

  • Speed was measured using a rope with knots tied along the lenght of it. Knowing how long the rope of knots took to pass through the sailors hand indicated speed

  • Potalan charts were used to show coastal areas e.g lighthouses, tides etc

  • Water depth was measured using a rope with a lead weight tied to the end of it

  • The captain recorded all this information in his log book

Top Left: Ships Biscuit was a staple food of a sailor and was cheap to produce (salt and water)
 
Top Right: An astrolabe was an ancient piece of equipment which used both the stars and sun to find out time and position
 
Bottom Left: Rickets caused by a lack of vitamin D led to this "bending" of the legs. This condition made it difficult for sailors to walk
 
Bottom Right: A caravel was built to last in the rough Atlantic Ocean. Prior to that most boats could only endure waters like the Mediterranean which were calmer
 
 
The Portuguese Voyages
Henry the Navigator

  • The Portuguese were they first explorers

  • The son of the King of Spain, Prince Henry the Navigator, wanted to explore the coast of Africa and in doing so convert Muslims to christianity

  • He set up a school for navigation in Sagres (South of Spain) and set off from there to explore the coast of Africa

  • During this exploration teh Canary Islands, Azores and the Cape Verde islands were all conquered for Portugal 

  • They got as far as the Cape Verde and Cape Bojador

Bartholomew Diaz

  • This captain set off from Portugal, like Prince Henry, to exlore the Coast of Africa 

  • He got as far as the tip of Africa named the Cape of Storms

  • However he soon renamed it the Cape of Good Hope

Vasco De Gama

  • This Captain set off 10 years later from Portugal

  • He used maps from the previous expiditions and rounded the tip of Africa

  • From there he hired local pilots to guide him to Calicut (Calcutta), India

  • The Portuguese then set up trading posts along the coast of Africa, to trade spices with them (initially)

Vasco De Gama
Bartholomew Diaz
Henry the Navigator
Christopher Columbus (People in History)

  • Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy, where from a young age he learned to sail on both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, so he was very experienced

  • He believed that the world was round and that you could reach the East by sailing West

  • He tried several times to find a rich sponsor that would fund his voyage. Eventually King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain agreed to fund the voyage. They believed that he would convert foreigners to christianity, bring back gold and spices and conquer land for Spain

  • Columbus left Spain in 1492 (in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue) with 3 ships-The Pinta, the Nina and the Santa Maria. He intended to reach the East by sailing west

  • His sailors were very nervous and discipline was harsh to prevent sailors from mutineering. Columbus kept two log books. one with false information on distances travelled to fool nervous sailors.

  • After 4 weeks at sea, land was sighted. Columus went ashore, planted a Spanish flag and a cross and named the island San Salvadore

  • He also called the natives Indians as he believed he was near India

  • He returned to Spain a hero with a little gold, exotic parrots, fruits like pineapples and slaves and went back to discover Cuba

  • Columbus was made Governer of the newly discovered islands, however he was forced to return to Spain accused of cruelty to the natives

  • Columus had not discovered India but instead a new land which was later named America after Columbus' captain Amergio Vespuci

  • His voyage paved the way not only for other explorers but soldiers to conquer that new land

  • This newly disocvered land was a rich source of gold and slaves which would be soon exploited by the Europeans

Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain
Christpher Columbus
Lines tracking Columbus' Voyage
Ferdinand Magellan

  • Magellan was potuguese and tried to persuade the king to sponsor him. Eventually the king of Spain agrred to fund his voyage

  • He was given 5 ships and sailed across the Atlantic, reaching the coast of South America. Here he discovered the passage "El Paso" between South America and the fire island "tierra de fuega"

  • Following this he reached the Philippine Islands where he got involved in a war with the local chieftans and was killed

  • His captain Sebastian Del Cono continued home with 18 sailors left out of 260

  • Magellan is credited with proving that the world was round by circumnavigating (sailing around the world)

Conquistadors-Conquerors

  • The first of the two Conquistadors we will look at is Hernado Cortes

  • Cortes was not an explorer but a soldier who wanted to explore South America as he had heard it was ripe with gold and slaves

  • He landed at Vera Cruz where he destroyed his ships to show there would be no turning back

  • Cortes used the help of local tribes, who hated the Axtecs, to bring down their empire

  • The Aztecs seeing Cortes approaching believed he was a god who had come back to Earth

  • As he approached the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, their emporer Montezuma came to greet him

  • However, he was killed by his own people as they believed he had betrayed them

  • The Conquistadors, along with the other tribes, ransacked the Aztec capital and completely destroyed it. It was later rebuilt as Mexico City. As well as this, the Aztecs were forced to mine gold and silver to be sent back to Spain

Pizarro

  • Pizarro set out to capture the Incan Empire in Peru, with an army of 170 men, 2 ships and cannons

  • He met the Incan Emporer, Atahualpa with an army of 30,000 men but he was no match for and took him captive. The Incans offered a ransom of a room filled with silver and gold for his release but Pizzaro had him killed anyway

  • He then marched his army into the Andes, to capture the Incan capital of Cuzco where he seized everything of value, in the end the conquistadors fought among themselves and killed Pizzaro

  • The remaining Incans,like the Aztecs, were turned into slaves to mine gold and silver to be sent back to spain  

Hernando Cortes
Francisco Pizarro
Results of the Age of Discovery

  • For Europeans the Age of Exploration brought wealth, power and prosperity, as they discovered large amounts of gold and silver which they forced the Incans and Aztecs to mine and bring back to Spain

  • Europeans created Empires in these new lands

  • New products were now available to Europeans such as chocolate, tomatoes, turkeys, cotton and maize

 

  • For the native people the Age of Exploration brought death and disease

  • The Aztec and Incan empire were completely destroyed

This engraving by Theodore De Bry show the cruelty of the Spaniards towards the Native Poeple
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