page_title: History of navigation
section_title: Age of exploration
hierarchical_section_title: History of navigation / Age of exploration
context_page_description: The history of navigation is the history of seamanship, the art of directing vessels upon the open sea through the establishment of its position and course by means of traditional practice, geometry, astronomy, or special instruments. A few people have excelled as seafarers, prominent among them the Austronesians, the Harappans, the Phoenicians, the Iranians, the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the ancient Indians, the Norse, the Chinese, the Venetians, the Genoese, the Hanseatic Germans, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the English, the French, the Dutch and the Danes.
context_section_description: The commercial activities of Portugal in the early 15th century marked an epoch of distinct progress in practical navigation for Europeans.  These exploration and trade expeditions sent out by Infante Henrique (later called "Henry the Navigator") led first to the discovery of Porto Santo Island (near Madeira) in 1418, rediscovery of the Azores in 1427, the discovery of the Cape Verde Islands in 1447 and Sierra Leone in 1462.
  Combined with the empirical observations gathered in oceanic seafaring, mapping winds and currents, Portuguese explorers took the lead in the long distance oceanic navigation, opening later, at the beginning of the 16th century, a network of ocean routes covering the Atlantic, the Indian and the western Pacific oceans, from the North Atlantic and South America, to Japan and Southeast Asia.
  The Portuguese campaign of Atlantic navigation is one the earliest examples of a systematic scientific large project, sustained over many decades. This program of study recruited several men of exceptional ability, had a well-defined set of objectives, and was open to experimental confirmation through the success or otherwise of subsequent navigations.
caption: The Fra Mauro map, "considered the greatest memorial of medieval cartography" according to Roberto Almagià[39] is a map made between 1457 and 1459 by the Venetian monk Fra Mauro. It is a circular planisphere drawn on parchment and set in a wooden frame, about two meters in diameter.
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