Sagres

The Sagres Point, in southern Portugal, was at least as important during the Age of Discovery as Cape Canaveral was during the early years of space exploration. It was from that place that Prince Henry the Navigator came in the 15th century to work on his obsession to push back the frontiers of the known world, and opened Europe to the Great Discoveries.

Even tought the exact location of Henry's School of Navigation is not known nowadays (it is popularly believed to have been destroyed by an earthquake in 1755), on the past, it atracted the best scholars in Europe concerned with the nautical sciences. Under Henry's patronage, a community of brilliant scientists came there to teach and to study, and accumulated correlated nautical knowledge as it was brought back by captains of successive voyages to once unknown places. The scholars in turn instructed less experienced captains about Atlantic currents and wind systems and the latest navigation methods.

At the Sagres Academy, among many important discoveries, Cartography was refined with the use of newly devised instruments, maps were regularly updated and extended, and a revolutionary type of vessel was designed: the caravel.