Dias had achieved two major breakthroughs. He had shown definitively that Africa was a continent with a seaway to India, abolishing some of the precepts of Ptolemy’s geography; and by his inspirational swing out to sea, he had unlocked the final part of the riddle of the winds and suggested the way to get there—not by slogging down the African coast but by arcing out into the empty Atlantic in a widening loop and trusting to the reliable westerlies to carry ships around the continent’s tip. It was the culmination of sixty years of effort by Portuguese sailors, but it is not clear that the
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“Dias had achieved two major breakthroughs. He had shown definitively that Africa was a continent with a seaway to India, abolishing some of the precepts of Ptolemy’s geography; and by his inspirational swing out to sea, he had unlocked the final part of the riddle of the winds and suggested the way to get there—not by slogging down the African coast but by arcing out into the empty Atlantic in a widening loop and trusting to the reliable westerlies to carry ships around the continent’s tip. It was the culmination of sixty years of effort by Portuguese sailors, but it is not clear that the achievement was apparent to the men to whom Dias told his tale.”
Reference
Crowley, Roger (2015, Sep.). “Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire.” Kindle Edition. Chapter 2 The Race, p 23 of 351, 8%.
