The first expeditions under Henry’s auspices departed soon after the battle of Ceuta, and landed, somewhat accidentally, in the Madeiran archipelago, which Henry ordered to be claimed for Portugal. Not long afterward, in the late 1420s and early 1430s, the Azores islands were also colonized. In the 1450s a Venetian explorer and slave trader called Alvise Cadamosto laid claim to the Cape Verde Islands during an expedition along the Guinea coast.
