What lurked below
Sea serpents, beach giants, boiling seas--ancient mariners feared them all
Fearing Bojador's reefs and currents, Eanes took what seemed a riskier route. He skirted the cape, farther into the trackless ocean than any other Portuguese captain had ever ventured. In primitive minds, such a route might end with the ship sailing off the edge of the world. But Eanes kept westward until favorable winds enabled him to head east. After many days, he spotted land and went ashore. The land below Bojador, he found, was no worse than the land above it. And there was no Green Sea of Darkness.
Once the captain returned home and reported his feat, the imagined horrors of the sea began to dissolve. "Although the matter was a small one in itself, yet on account of its daring it was reckoned great," reported one of the captain's contemporaries. The voyage signaled the dawn of the Age of Discovery, as Henry swiftly ordered a series of expeditions beyond the once impassable cape.
The prince died a quarter century later, just as his captains were finding that the waters near the equator were warm but far from boiling. Henry never found Prester John. But he left a legacy far more durable: He tore down the wall of fear that barred the superstitious from the sea.
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