page_title: Prince Henry the Navigator
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: Prince Henry the Navigator / Life
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait assumed to be of Portuguese prince Henry the Navigator (Infante D. Henrique), inserted as the frontispiece in a 15th C. edition of Gomes Eanes de Zurara's 1453 book Crónicas dos Feitos de Guiné.
context_page_description: Infante Dom Henrique of Portugal, Duke of Viseu, better known as Prince Henry the Navigator, was a central figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire and in the 15th-century European maritime discoveries and maritime expansion. Through his administrative direction, he is regarded as the main initiator of what would be known as the Age of Discovery. Henry was the fourth child of the Portuguese king John I, who founded the House of Aviz.
  Henry was responsible for the early development of Portuguese exploration and maritime trade with other continents through the systematic exploration of Western Africa, the islands of the Atlantic Ocean, and the search for new routes. He encouraged his father to conquer Ceuta, the Muslim port on the North African coast across the Straits of Gibraltar from the Iberian Peninsula. He learned of the opportunities offered by the Saharan trade routes that terminated there, and became fascinated with Africa in general; he was most intrigued by the Christian legend of Prester John and the expansion of Portuguese trade. He is regarded as the patron of Portuguese exploration.
context_section_description: Henry was the third surviving son of King John I and his wife Philippa, sister of King Henry IV of England. He was baptized in Porto, and may have been born there, probably when the royal couple was living in the city's old mint, now called Casa do Infante (Prince's House), or in the region nearby. Another possibility is that he was born at the Monastery of Leça do Bailio, in Leça de Palmeira, during the same period of the royal couple's residence in the city of Porto.
  Henry was 21 when he and his father and brothers captured the Moorish port of Ceuta in northern Morocco. Ceuta had long been a base for Barbary pirates who raided the Portuguese coast, depopulating villages by capturing their inhabitants to be sold in the African slave trade. Following this success, Henry began to explore the coast of Africa, most of which was unknown to Europeans. His objectives included finding the source of the West African gold trade and the legendary Christian kingdom of Prester John, and stopping the pirate attacks on the Portuguese coast.
  At that time, the ships of the Mediterranean were too slow and too heavy to make these voyages. Under his direction, a new and much lighter ship was developed, the caravel, which could sail further and faster, and, above all, was highly maneuverable and could sail much nearer the wind, or "into the wind". This made the caravel largely independent of the prevailing winds.
  With the caravel, Portuguese mariners explored rivers and shallow waters as well as the open ocean with wide autonomy. In fact, the invention of the caravel was what made Portugal poised to take the lead in transoceanic exploration.
  In 1419, Henry's father appointed him governor of the province of the Algarve.
caption: Frontispiece of Zurara's Crónicas dos Feitos de Guiné (Paris codex), with the phrase talent de bien faire ("the talent of doing well" or "Hunger for good deeds") and the pyramids, of Prince Henry's motto. It has been argued that the image inserted portrays his brother, King Duarte, rather than Henry. The empresa or divisa placed below is Henry's motto. According to Friar Luis de Sousa, based on papers of Henry's contemporary chronicler Gomes Eanes de Zurara, and other 15th-century documents, Henry's pyramids represented the pyramids of Egypt, at Giza, and at the top of his pyramids was a golden sun.
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