Duarte Pacheco Pereira 1505.(Atlantic Navigation)

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Anatol
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Duarte Pacheco Pereira 1505.(Atlantic Navigation)

Post by Anatol » Thu Nov 23, 2017 10:15 pm

Duarte Pacheco Pereira c. 1460 – 1533),[1]called the Portuguese Achilles (Aquiles Lusitano) by the poet Camões, was a Portuguesesea captain, soldier, explorer and cartographer. He travelled particularly in the central Atlantic Ocean west of the Cape Verde islands, along the coast of West Africa and to India. His accomplishments in strategic warfare, exploration, mathematics and astronomy were of an exceptional level.
Pacheco Pereira was the son of João Pacheco and Isabel Pereira. In his youth he served as the King of Portugal's personal squire. In the year of 1455, having graduated with honors, he was awarded a study fellowship from the monarch himself. Later on, in 1488 he explored the west coast of Africa. His expedition fell ill with fever and lost their ship. Pacheco Pereira was rescued from the island of Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea by Bartolomeu Dias when Dias was returning from rounding the Cape of Good Hope for the first time.
The knowledge he collected from Dias expedition as well as his own explorations granted him the post of official geographer of the Portuguese monarch. In 1494 he signed the Pope-sanctioned Treaty of Tordesillas, which shared the non-Christian world between Portugal and Spain.
In 1503 Duarte Pacheco Pereira departed for India as captain of Espírito Santo, one of the three ships in the fleet headed by Afonso de Albuquerque. In 1504, he was placed in charge of the defence of Cochin, a Portuguese protectorate in India, from a series of attacks between March and July 1504 by the ruling Zamorin of Calicut. (see Battle of Cochin (1504)). Having only 150 Portuguese and a small number of Malabarese auxiliaries at his disposal, Cochin was vastly outnumbered by the Zamorin's army of 60,000. Nonetheless, by clever positioning, individual heroics and a lot of luck, Duarte Pacheco successfully resisted attacks for five months, until the humiliated Zamorin finally called off his forces. His son Lisuarte (or Jusarte) took a leading part in the fight.
For his exploits in the defense of Cochin, Duarte Pacheco was given a grant of arms by the Trimumpara Raja of Cochin, and greeted with honors the King Manuel I of Portugal and public festivities upon his return to Lisbon in 1505.
Between 1505 and 1508 Duarte Pacheco Pereira composed a book, Esmeraldo de situ orbis, inspired on Pomponius Mela's De situ Orbis, which has been described as one of the first major scientific works "reporting on what was observed and experimented in the newly 'discovered' environment." Never completed, it was not published until 1892, possibly to avoid giving others information about Portugal's valuable Guinea trade.
Duarte Pacheco Pereira was probably the first man to scientifically study the relationship between the tides and the phases of the moon, which played a critical importance in the course of the Battle of Cochin, and carefully took notes on the timing of the tides. Pacheco is said to have been the first to notice their connection to the moon and establish rules for predicting the progress of tides by reference to lunar observations. He also sifted through his data to correct and improve astronomical observations (notably correcting the average daily deviation of the moon from the sun) and constructing nautical measurements to be used by future Portuguese navigators.
In 1508, Duarte Pacheco was commissioned by the Portuguese king to give chase to Mondragon French privateer which operated between the Azores and the Portuguese coast, where they attacked the ships coming from Portuguese India. Duarte Pacheco located and cornered Mondragon off Cape Finisterre in 1509, and defeated and captured him.
Later in life, while away governing São Jorge da Mina, he was slandered by his enemies at court with accusations of theft and corruption. He was recalled to the capital and briefly imprisoned until he was exonerated by the Crown being proved innocent. But the damage was done as he had lost his governorship, his wealth, and influence. Although he was acquitted his protector, King João II of Portugal had died and been replaced by a king who didn't acknowledge the value of Duarte Pacheco. He had many enemies abroad, and few friends in the capital to defend him. He died alone and penniless.
According to one of its most important biographers, the Portuguese historian Joaquim Barradas de Carvalho, who lived in exile in Brazil in the 1960s, Duarte Pacheco was a genius comparable to Leonardo da Vinci. With the anticipation of more than two centuries, the cosmographer was responsible for calculating the value of the degree of the meridian arc with a margin of error of only 4%, when the current error at the time varied between 7 and 15%.
It has also been suggested that Duarte Pacheco Pereira may have discovered the coasts of Maranhão, Pará and Marajó island and the mouth of the Amazon River in 1498, preceding the possible landings of the expeditions of Amerigo Vespucci in 1499, of Vicente Yáñez Pinzon in January 1500, and of Diego de Lepe in February 1500; and the Cabral`s expedition in April 1500, making him the first known European explorer of present-day Brazil. This claim is based on interpretations of the cipher manuscript Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, written by Duarte Pacheco Pereira.
Duarte Pacheco Pereira's Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis is the first European navigation script book to mention the coast of Brazil.
Portugal 1993;4,0;SG?
Source: wikipedia.org/wiki/Duarte_Pacheco_Pereira.
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