The Age of Discovery

1405 O.S. – 164374 items

early modernmaritime
The Age of Discovery

Two centuries that joined the oceans

In 1415 Europeans knew the coast of Africa as far as Morocco. By 1642 ships had sailed around the world, crossed every ocean and charted the coasts of four continents they had not known existed. This timeline follows that reach, from Zheng He's treasure fleets, the road not taken, to Tasman's landfall in New Zealand. It also follows what the ships carried: gold and spices, smallpox, and millions of enslaved people.

How to read it

  • Bands are the great voyages and conquests; the events inside them are the turning points of each.

  • Filter by portugal or spain to follow one crown, spice trade for the money, maps for how the world was drawn, northwest passage for the search for a way round America, and slavery for the price.

  • Dates before 15 October 1582 are Julian, as the sources give them. After it, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch dates are Gregorian and English ones stay Julian. The Piri Reis map carries its own Hijri date.

What made it possible

  • the caravel, small and able to sail close to the wind

  • latitude from the Pole Star and the noon Sun, taken with quadrant and astrolabe

  • the volta do mar: swinging far out to sea to find a wind home

Por mares nunca de antes navegados — “through seas never sailed before”. Luís de Camões, Os Lusíadas (1572), canto I.

Items

  1. Zheng He's treasure voyages

    28 years

  2. Capture of Ceuta

    Ceuta

  3. Prince Henry's voyages

    ≈ 41 years

  4. Madeira settled

    Machico, Madeira

  5. Gil Eanes rounds Cape Bojador

    Cape Bojador

  6. Captives sold at Lagos

    Lagos, Algarve

  7. Fall of Constantinople

    Land walls of Constantinople

  8. Bull Romanus Pontifex

    Rome

  9. ≈ 21 years, 7 months

  10. São Jorge da Mina founded

    São Jorge da Mina (Elmina Castle)

  11. Diogo Cão's pillar at Cape Cross

    Cape Cross, Namibia

  12. Bartolomeu Dias lands at Mossel Bay

    Mossel Bay

  13. Capitulations of Santa Fe

    Santa Fe, near Granada

  14. Behaim's globe

    Nuremberg

  15. Columbus's first voyage

    7 months, 14 days · Columbus's first voyage (known stops)

  16. Landfall in the Bahamas

    San Salvador, Bahamas

  17. Santa María runs aground

    Off Cap-Haïtien, Hispaniola

  18. Columbus's second fleet sails

    Cádiz

  19. Treaty of Tordesillas

    Tordesillas

  20. John Cabot reaches North America

  21. Vasco da Gama's first voyage

    ≈ 2 years, 2 months · Vasco da Gama's outward route (known stops)

  22. Landfall at St Helena Bay

    St Helena Bay

  23. A pilot joins at Malindi

    Malindi

  24. Arrival at Calicut

    Kappad, near Calicut

  25. Cabral reaches Brazil

    Monte Pascoal, Bahia

  26. The Cantino planisphere

    Lisbon

  27. Casa de Contratación founded

    Alcázar of Seville

  28. Columbus predicts an eclipse

    Santa Gloria (St. Ann's Bay), Jamaica

  29. Waldseemüller map names America

    Saint-Dié-des-Vosges

  30. Battle of Diu

    Off Diu, Gujarat

  31. Albuquerque takes Goa

    Old Goa

  32. Albuquerque takes Malacca

    Malacca

  33. Montesinos's Advent sermon

    Santo Domingo, Hispaniola

  34. Francisco Serrão reaches Ternate

    Ternate, Moluccas

  35. Piri Reis draws his world map

    Gallipoli (Gelibolu)

  36. Balboa sights the Pacific

    Darién, Panama

  37. Charles V licenses the slave trade to the Americas

  38. Conquest of the Aztec Empire

    2 years, 4 months

  39. Magellan–Elcano circumnavigation

    ≈ 2 years, 11 months · Magellan–Elcano circumnavigation (known stops)

  40. Cortés meets Moctezuma

    Huitzillan, on the southern causeway into Tenochtitlan

  41. Mutiny at San Julián

    Puerto San Julián

  42. La Noche Triste

    Tlacopan causeway, Tenochtitlan

  43. Smallpox in Tenochtitlan

    Tenochtitlan

  44. Through the strait into the Pacific

    Cape Pilar, western mouth of the Strait of Magellan

  45. Landfall at Guam after 98 days on the Pacific

    Guam

  46. Death of Magellan at Mactan

    Mactan

  47. Fall of Tenochtitlan

    Tenochtitlan

  48. Cloves at Tidore

    Tidore, Moluccas

  49. A day lost at Cape Verde

    Ribeira Grande, Santiago, Cape Verde

  50. Victoria returns to Sanlúcar

    Sanlúcar de Barrameda

  51. Verrazzano enters New York Harbor

    The Narrows, New York Harbor

  52. Treaty of Zaragoza

    Zaragoza

  53. Conquest of the Inca Empire

    ≈ 40 years

  54. Atahualpa captured at Cajamarca

    Main square, Cajamarca

  55. Cartier reaches Hochelaga

    Hochelaga, island of Montreal

  56. Orellana descends the Amazon

    8 months, 3 days · Down the Napo and the Amazon

  57. Portuguese guns reach Japan

    Tanegashima

  58. Silver found at Potosí

    Cerro Rico, Potosí

  59. Urdaneta finds the way back across the Pacific

    Acapulco

  60. Mercator's world map

    Duisburg

  61. Frobisher's voyages

    2 years · Kodlunarn Island, Frobisher Bay

  62. Drake's circumnavigation

    ≈ 2 years, 9 months

  63. Drake blown south of Tierra del Fuego

    South of Tierra del Fuego

  64. The Golden Hind takes the Cacafuego

    Off Cape San Francisco, Ecuador

  65. Iberian Union

    ≈ 60 years

  66. Catholic Europe skips ten days

  67. Linschoten publishes Portugal's route to Asia

  68. First Dutch fleet reaches Banten

    Banten, Java

  69. Barentsz's crew winters on Novaya Zemlya

    ≈ 9 months · Ice Haven, Novaya Zemlya

  70. Dutch East India Company founded

  71. The Duyfken reaches Australia

    Pennefather River, Cape York

  72. Hudson set adrift

  73. Le Maire and Schouten round Cape Horn

    Cape Horn

  74. Dirk Hartog's plate

    Cape Inscription, Dirk Hartog Island

  75. Tasman reaches New Zealand

    Golden Bay (Mohua)